John Kielly
Shari's fan club
Long range benchrest isn't my first sport. I'm a belly shooter from way back, though since last year when the gel in my master eye collapsed, I've taken up F class instead of TR, to go along with my 1200 yard shooting. 1000 yard bench is just another opportunity for me. Shooting from 300 to 1000 yards takes a particular scope, one with at least 25 MOA of wind available each side of centre & 70 MOA of elevation if you want to get onto the shorts & have the big one close to the optical/mechanical centre of the scope where the adjustments are liable to be most positive.
Here in Australia, we tend to live close to the coast most of the time, so the local breezes tend to be a tad assertive & twitchy, if not downright unneighbourly so ¼ MOA adjustments are as popular as the finer ones. Variable, or fixed, most use 25x max, to allow a credible acquisition of the right target at the close distances. I use an older 25x Leupold 1" tube BR scope for most work, though I have a Sightron 36x big sky as an alternative for longer distances and 1000 yards bench, of course.
From what I've heard & read, the Sightron is an acceptable, reliable unit, but to my experienced (OK, old) eyes, it seems to run out of parallax precision, or maybe accommodation, beyond fly distances. I suspect that this is because I need to crank the focussing bell heaps to get crosshairs in focus these days, even though I wear current prescription spectacles when shooting.
Is there anything around with significantly better optics that won't cost me any or many of my more prominent body parts?
Am I missing an opportunity with what I have?
Here in Australia, we tend to live close to the coast most of the time, so the local breezes tend to be a tad assertive & twitchy, if not downright unneighbourly so ¼ MOA adjustments are as popular as the finer ones. Variable, or fixed, most use 25x max, to allow a credible acquisition of the right target at the close distances. I use an older 25x Leupold 1" tube BR scope for most work, though I have a Sightron 36x big sky as an alternative for longer distances and 1000 yards bench, of course.
From what I've heard & read, the Sightron is an acceptable, reliable unit, but to my experienced (OK, old) eyes, it seems to run out of parallax precision, or maybe accommodation, beyond fly distances. I suspect that this is because I need to crank the focussing bell heaps to get crosshairs in focus these days, even though I wear current prescription spectacles when shooting.
Is there anything around with significantly better optics that won't cost me any or many of my more prominent body parts?
Am I missing an opportunity with what I have?