Mosin,
Re your 17 out of 20 in the black at 25 yards through your scoped 10/22, I don't know what the size or configuration of the target is, but (and this is education, not chipping) that leads me to believe the problem is you.
Unless there's something severely wrong with that Ruger, you should be getting 1-inch groups at 25 yards with a scope off a rest at that distance.
Two inches at most.
I've taught a niece & a nephew to shoot a .22 rifle at 25 yards & they were both doing better than it sounds like you are, with an H&R Sportster single-shot, iron sights. Both were younger than you are now.
The nephew, at the end of his first session, was busting biodegradable clay pigeons up & down a hillside easily & repeatedly at a lasered 60 yards with that gun.
Those here watching & trying to help genuinely wish you good luck.
People are not trying to dump on you just for fun.
Frustrating to see you trying to learn with poor equipment & no apparent local guidance or instruction from anybody at your end.
Your introduction to shooting, as far as you've laid it out here, has been largely the RG, an off-brand .22 rifle with questionable sights (don't recall if you ever learned how to use that one), and a Mosin of unknown condition.
None of those are particularly conducive to learning good shooting skills.
You've been handicapped from the start.
You say you've had some exposure to quality hunting rifles. Apparently not much.
Indications are you've now moved up to a Ruger 10/22, a quality gun with an established pedigree. We can talk about that Ruger as something of a "known quantity", as you scientists at NASA would say.
The vast majority of 10/22s function to a predictable standard of performance out of the box. That level of performance can be altered in either direction, up by tweaking, down by uneducated tinkering.
Assuming yours is unaltered, you should be able to get tight groups at 25 yards off a rest with whatever iron sights came on it.
You should be able to consistently cover five-shot groups at 25 yards with a quarter, a 50-cent piece at the worst, using a scope & even halfway decent ammunition.
It should be far, far better than 17 out of 20 in the black.
I'm not saying this to criticize or embarrass you, but to give you a standard to compare your performance to, so you'll know that the results you gave for your 10/22 are not what you should be getting, not what the rifle is capable of getting, and not what you should consider "acceptable".
By acceptable I mean a yardstick to measure your learning by.
Unless you're shooting that Ruger at tiny (REALLY tiny) black bulls, or don't have the scope properly zeroed, every hole should be in the black at 25 yards.
And they should be well inside 2 inches.
So far, you've mentioned very little involvement by your Dad, who you say shoots rifles.
Can he not help you with all of this?
Is there no experienced adult shooter who can help you work on your basic skills?
I may be wrong, but sounds to me like the issue isn't the hardware, it's you.
In which case, I'd try for competent instruction, as others have suggested, and I'd suggest you put the Mosin on hold while you work with that Ruger some more.
Even if you dislike glass, with the scoped Ruger you've eliminated variables like a questionable bore, long & indistinct trigger pull, bedding, warped wood, possible wandering heat-related zero issues, and sight regulation irregularities.
Once the scope's been zeroed, you can concentrate on "pure" shooting technique that should be largely unaffected by the above distractions & influences inherent to your Mosin.
The .22 may be boring for you, and it isn't an absolute requirement as a "first gun" or first learning tool, as also pointed out above, but as long as you now have a good one, better to work on your learning skills with it than with the Mosin.
Which would you see more accomplishment in: A boring .22 that you can actually HIT something with when you want to, or an exciting Mosin that you can't?
When you can produce a sub-2-inch five-shot group at 25 yards with the Ruger consistently, move it out to 50 yards & work on doing at least 2-inch groups there. Some will do better than 2 inches at 50, some won't. A good rifle should do at least 2 inches at 50 yards with a scope.
When you can do that, remove the scope, make sure the irons are zeroed, start back at 25 with them, then out to 50 yards with them.
Don't necessarily expect the same-sized groups with the irons, but you shouldn't be all that far off at those two distances.
These are clear graduated shooting goals to work on.
Known quantity rifle, same loads each time, same number of shots each time, zeroed scope, same rest each time, same shooting position each time, same SMALL black bull's-eye each time, same known distance each time.
Same shooting technique, breathing, trigger pull, "sighting" eye open.
With the scope, center the crosshairs in the black bull.
With the irons, adjust them so that you can use a 6 o'clock hold, which is essentially aiming at the bottom edge of the bull. Line up front & rear, put the black "dot" right on top of the front sight.
This gives you a more precise & more precisely repeatable aiming point & sight picture than trying to put the blade in the imprecise center of the bull.
This is not necessarily the sight picture you may end up using for hunting, but you're not hunting here.
You can adjust the sights to make holes an inch or two high above point of aim, or adjust them to strike close to point of aim, depending on how the sights are built & how much latitude they give you.
In learning, you're working on consistency & accuracy here, with this gun, not your final "working" zero, so start out zeroed at 25, change that zero if necessary at 50 when you get there. (Again- we're talking THIS Ruger. Slightly different adaptation of zero & distances with the Mosin.)
There's a reason adjustable sights were invented, use the adjustment feature for your practice.
Understand that .22s can be picky about ammunition, one rifle may shoot one brand better than an otherwise-identical rifle will.
For max accuracy in a .22, best to EVENTUALLY try several loads & go with the one that shoots the tightest groups for a given purpose (paper or critters, solid or hollowpoint), but DON'T worry about that starting out.
Pick ONE load & go with it while you're learning. If you practice with different loads, you'll be adding variables, getting different points of impact, and leaving yourself open (again) to wondering if it's the gun or you.
If you can find it in quantity, the CCI standard vel solid is considered the industry "Standard" as far as quality & reliable performance goes, I'd recommend that.
Failing that, I've had consistently good results with the humble American Eagle HP. Not always the most accurate, but almost always up there near the top, and very consistent. I've used it in a lot of .22s of all types, and it's pretty much a regular in new gun tests for me.
Again- known quantity.
There are problems reported with some Remington loads & some Winchester loads.
Federal's typically pretty good.
Early on, as laid out repeatedly above, you're looking for CONSISTENCY, not necessarily dime-sized groups.
As John said- set goals & work towards them.
Keep it simple & keep things standardized so you have a way to measure progress.
Once you've mastered that 10/22, with & without glass, you should have a much better grasp of shooting in general that you can later transfer back to the Mosin.
With your level (or lack) of experience, you're not ready to either hunt coyotes or to judge the inherent shootability of your Mosin.
You were talking elsewhere about shooting at a moving target.
You can forget that for the immediate future.
By all means, go along on a hunt if you can, but as an observer. You can get the basics of coyote hunting down that way, while you're still learning how to shoot at 25 yards.
Denis
