Scope question from noob.

[gmr4]

The thing about a great scope is you can keep it when you trade guns.. or I have a friend that moves his around…

Jumping from a $1000 scope to a $2300 Nighforce seemed good enough for me and I notice a great many Nightforce at competitions and on equipment list…

 

[Lefty2506]

I would say my shooting ability/eyesight is not good, not as good a my equipment at least. I average .8" for 5 shot groups(I keep a spreadsheet from range session to range session). I think my equipment is better than me cuz last week I took my son and his girlfriend out shooting. She had never shot a gun before that day, and my son has only shot a handful of times. Both of them were able to get .5 and .6" 5 shot groups with my rifle and my handloads on their first try.

Can a high dollar scope improve group size? Yes. Will they likely improve YOUR group size? No, not yet.

5 shot groups are pretty representative of capability. They fact that you sometimes get down around .5", but sometimes are up around 1", and your son and his GF were both down around .5" tells me that there's something you're doing that isn't consistent. Every little detail matters. When I was competing, I would put something on the cheek piece of my stock that I could feel to help make sure that my cheek weld was exactly the same every time. Even how much tension you have in your shoulders will impact your group size. I'm not trying to sound magical or anything, but as a competitor, there comes a point where you shoulder a rifle, and your mind automatically goes into the zone, the world slows down, and everything else drifts away. Take time, get behind the rifle and spend time dry firing. Focus on all the little things that you normally don't pay attention to. Take notes. Write everything down. Next time you go to the range, read your notes and repeat the process. Everything should feel EXACTLY the same. If everything is exactly the same, you can do some stuff wrong and still shoot better than 90% of the people you will meet at the range. Focus on this stuff first before dumping money into glass. Some have said that you have to be able to see it to hit it, and that's not entirely true. I did most of my competing with iron sights. In my prime, and on a good day I could cover the 600 yd groups (20 rnds) from my service rifle with a red solo cup. Even in my prime, I couldn't see a red solo cup from 600 yds on a hot july afternoon. In order to shoot good groups, you have to do everything the same every time and that includes pointing the gun at the same spot FROM the same spot. Even at 1/2 moa, your scope is not yet your limiting factor. When you DO get to the point where you're consistently at or below 1/2 moa, its worth upgrading your glass to make sure that it's not going to become a problem, but even then its more of a confidence thing. As others have said, if you're not dialing your wind and elevation, more $$ doesn't get you a whole lot.

As far as glass goes, technology and manufacturing processes have come a LONG ways in the past 30 years. My first rifle was a Rem 700 Sendaro that I picked up slightly used at a gun show. With had loads, it would consistently put 115gr NBTs into a 1/4 moa group. At the same gun show, I bought a Leopold Vari-X III 6-20 target scope for it. It was also lightly used. I gave around $600 for each of them at the time (1997) and it was considered a really good scope back then. About 6 years ago I bought a 6.5 Grendel upper and splurged for a new Athlon Ares BTR 4.5-27x50 scope for it. New price was $600 at the time, and I'd consider it to be a midrange scope at best by today's standards. I was SHOCKED by how much better the Athlon was than my old Leopold. That has now become my new baseline for my scopes. Unlike those great big NRA Highpower targets, I DO need to be able to see a prairie dog at 600 yds to hit it