Scope Magnification: Accuracy Increase?

.38 Special said:

the less stability you have...

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...the more practice you need.

Varminterror said:

...the more practice you need.

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Yeah, well, get back to me after you've tried the "running up the ridge and shooting offhand with a 36x scope" exercise.

.38 Special said:

Yeah, well, get back to me after you've tried the "running up the ridge and shooting offhand with a 36x scope" exercise.

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I don’t shoot fixed power scopes, so when I run up ridges - which inevitably gets my blood pumping pretty damned hard since flatlanders don’t do well at 11,000 feet, my heart rate climbs 8-10bpm even resting above 8,000 vs. my home elevation of 1300ft - but I typically crank down to about 15-18x when I’m shooting offhand, in hunting fields - including a buck I hit on the run, offhand, two years ago. I have some pictures posted here a couple years ago of an offhand target fired at 21x, holding a 10” plate at 200yrds, and 150 with a 22LR standing off hand fired at 18x. Of course, I do typically shoot across the top of my pack, my trekking poles, or a monopod when I’m hunting anyway. Pretty cheap insurance.

Shoot both eyes open, know your optics, practice with your rifle... it’s not magic. You’re wobbling just as much or more when you’re not zoomed in, you just don’t notice it.

Varminterror said:

You’re wobbling just as much or more when you’re not zoomed in, you just don’t notice it

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That took me a while to actually "get"
A miss at 20x would still be a miss at 4x, you just wont see the crosshair off target when you break the shot.......

Last sheep I shot was at 180yds, and id forgot to turn down my scope so it was still at 20x, no real issues....

Varminterror said:

I don’t shoot fixed power scopes, so when I run up ridges - which inevitably gets my blood pumping pretty damned hard since flatlanders don’t do well at 11,000 feet, my heart rate climbs 8-10bpm even resting above 8,000 vs. my home elevation of 1300ft - but I typically crank down to about 15-18x when I’m shooting offhand, in hunting fields - including a buck I hit on the run, offhand, two years ago. I have some pictures posted here a couple years ago of an offhand target fired at 21x, holding a 10” plate at 200yrds, and 150 with a 22LR standing off hand fired at 18x. Of course, I do typically shoot across the top of my pack, my trekking poles, or a monopod when I’m hunting anyway. Pretty cheap insurance.

Shoot both eyes open, know your optics, practice with your rifle... it’s not magic. You’re wobbling just as much or more when you’re not zoomed in, you just don’t notice it.

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What shooting facility is at 11,000 ft above sea level?

South Prairie Jim said:

What shooting facility is at 11,000 ft above sea level?

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I wouldn't call them "shooting facilities", but we had access to some areas that were higher than 11,000 feet or higher, until recently. We no longer have access to these areas- the taliban has them all now. Except panjshir. Its been in the news.

Yep.
Kinda hard to picture 50 year old guys running at those high elevations while packing a 22 pound rifles prior to heading to the shooting platform another 3000 ft up.
I picture a medical evacuation and poor old dude getting hauled off on a stretcher.

WrongHanded said:

Does anyone have some real world results from their own shooting to say how much increased magnification helps with their precision?

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I don’t and I don’t think there is an exact correlation, to the point where one could say, 60x will give you .xxxx”, smaller groups than 1x.

I have shot tiny groups with irons, using the right target with correct inserts for the globe and aperture. I have also shot less than stellar groups with a 60x scope.

South Prairie Jim said:

What shooting facility is at 11,000 ft above sea level?

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I don’t typically chase elk around shooting facilities.

Metallic Silhouette shooting is done all standing at ranges 200 - 500 meters. Scopes are often as high power as a target shooter on a bench, bipod, or prone.

Jim Watson said:

Metallic Silhouette shooting is done all standing at ranges 200 - 500 meters. Scopes are often as high power as a target shooter on a bench, bipod, or prone.

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Silhouettes are really tough at any power. I failed miserably..

A friend's 7x57 hunting rifle had a HUGE Lee Tackhole Dot reticle in a Weaver 1.5-4.5X.
I put two shots about an inch apart at 100 yards and handed it back before my luck ran out.

Gil Hebard had a pistol scope made up that accounted for wobble. It had a dot reticle sized such that if you held the black dot rattling around inside the black aiming area of a NRA target, you would be assured of a ten-ring hit.

Scope magnification can make a big difference or not depending on what your goal is. Hitting silhouettes at distance doesn't require much magnification. In that situation "10x is plenty for 1000 yards" is very true. Ive hit 1000 yards with less magnication. Ive also hit well beyond 1000 yards with 10x magnification.

However if you are wanting to shoot small groups then higher magnification is very helpful. This target below. Those squares are 1 inch. Im aiming at one of the arms of the tiny X I drew in the center circle. I keep the scope around 30x magnification so I can aim that precisely. When you have a rifle that is constantly capable of .3-.4 MOA groups, aiming a quarter MOA off will really open up the groups.

2020-01-13_03-25-21 by chase, on Flickr


This second picture was taken at a friends private range where they have steel set up from 25 yards out to a mile. This was a 500 yard silhouette. I decided to try a group at 500 yards and my aiming point was a 77 grain .223 strike on the steel which you can see just above my highest hit if the three round group. At 10x that hit is visible but not as defined. At 25-30 power, I could aim for the center of that hit to refine my aiming point.

2020-01-20_09-42-06 by chase, on Flickr

Another benefit of magnification is PID of your target. This picture was taken on a range set up by some US Marshalls I know. The target is partially covered by the right side crosshair at the 2 mil hashmarks. It's a 16x28 inch silhouette-ish and is around 1100 yards (I cant remember the exact distance). Finding that target with low magnification is somewhat difficult. Actually aiming at that target and not the black rocks in it's immediate background, is harder. This is at 25x magnification.

Edit: This picture was taken at the end of a decent monsoon season here in Az. You come back here in the early summer when it hasnt rained in 5 months, the ground is a lot more brown.

20191223_154813 by chase, on Flickr

WrongHanded said:

Spinning off from this thread https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/old-guys.893814/ about scope magnification power and age, let's talk about results.

If you take the same rifle and load combination, and mount two scopes of similar quality, but for example one is a 4x and the other is a 25x, what's the quantitative difference in group size?

Does anyone have some real world results from their own shooting to say how much increased magnification helps with their precision?

I feel like it helps to be able to see the target with good definition, and that perhaps 2.5x is a little limiting for me. But between 7x and 9x, I haven't seen an appreciable difference. I'm sure some of you have more experience over a wider magnification range than I do though. So let's hear it.

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Technically, the scope will have zero effect on the accuracy of the rifle.

All the scope can do is reduce aiming errors, and that is it.

So, high magnification with poor clarity might be worse for aiming error, than low magnification with excellent clarity.

Lower power is better. Less wiggle of you, trying to make the perfect shot.

CLEAR glass is better as well. Most (me included), do not, TRULY, know what good clear glass is.

dcloco said:

Lower power is better. Less wiggle of you, trying to make the perfect shot.

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Patently and completely false.

Low mag hides your wobble from you. You’re still wobbling even at low magnification. In many cases, you’re wobbling worse if you can’t tell you are, than if you’d be if you zoomed in and could tell. “Can’t manage it if you can’t measure it,” so if you can’t see your wobble, you’re not forced to do things to reduce it.

C-grunt said:

2/3 size silhouette and is around 1100 yards

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Great shot, and great illustration of the advantages of high magnification and good optic quality. Target must be bigger than 66% IPSC if it’s at 1100, or it’s only around 670. 1/2 mil wide for a 12” wide target: 12/.5*27.8...

I will admit, a big disparity in glass quality can upturn the paradigm of more zoom = better visibility. But that gap in quality has to be pretty dang big. We’re not talking about the difference in a 3-9x $500 scope seeing better than a 4-16x $300 scope. I’m not terribly convinced a better quality scope within $500 of the counterpart even extends range substantially over magnification. I know I can shoot better with a relatively cheap, $600 6-24x at 1200 yards than I can with a $900 4-16x with notably better glass. Shooting both at 12-16x, no question, the better glass is better, but when targets get small and far, the 16x becomes a liability as I simply can’t see the target as well to reliably and repeatably place the reticle as I can in the higher magnification scope. Sure, I can see better at 1000 yards with my 15x with my $2500 Swaro binos than I can with my $1600 Bushnell Elite spotting scope at 20x with the same apparent angle of view, or even at 40x zoomed in more than twice as much, but that’s a massive discrepancy in optic quality; a hurdle most folks simply won’t clear when making decisions about which optic to buy. Magnification is a “bigger knob” to improve visibility with a lower relative cost than glass quality.

South Prairie Jim said:

Silhouettes are really tough at any power. I failed miserably..

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Silhouette targets are dirty liars... they span a much, much larger area than the available area of the target to be hit. They look big abs are usually pretty easy to “see” because they do cover a lot of space, but they catch bullets like they’re much smaller targets!

Varminterror said:

Patently and completely false.

Low mag hides your wobble from you. You’re still wobbling even at low magnification. In many cases, you’re wobbling worse if you can’t tell you are, than if you’d be if you zoomed in and could tell. “Can’t manage it if you can’t measure it,” so if you can’t see your wobble, you’re not forced to do things to reduce it.

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Patently.....and only partially correct.

More magnification, more the human tries, the higher the heart rate, and higher the wobble.

Good bipod and rear sandbags (and effectively using) are other items that help, considerably.

dcloco said:

more the human tries, the higher the heart rate, and higher the wobble.

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Only if the “human” isn’t a practiced shooter.

Lots of folks own firearms. Apparently most aren’t actually shooters.

I don't have any expert or technical input, but for real world scenarios I've experienced I can only offer this:

When I've hunted game using a firearm equipped with variable optic, I've always set the magnification on its lowest setting. Not for wobble, mirage, etc ...but field of view. It's easier to pick up a moving target at ranges I'd comfortably shoot that way. Once I'm on the animal, (if it's not running) I'll turn the magnification up. Not because I can't see to shoot, but to see in better detail before shooting. A clean shot on 3x may not look as clean at 9x.

In the past, when trying to be as precise as possible, I'd usually fire my first shot at the x, then the rest at the hole my first shot made. I'd never be able to see that hole 100 or more yards away without the added magnification even when my eyes were at their best. But the idea was to make the hole seem as big as possible, while still being a lot smaller than the x.