Rifle shooting five feet low!

Assuming your statements of being 5 ft down and 30ft down are correct, something is majorly wrong not having anything to do with the 20MOA mount. I'm with the "redneck boresight" crew.
Try removing the bolt and looking down the bore at a target dot even 10 yds away with the rifle sandbagged. Then...adjust the scope crosshairs to be on or maybe 1" above the dot. You can do this in your home. At the range, you will be on paper at 25. Adjust then go to 50, adjust then go to 100.

With this large a problem, missing 5-30ft low @ 100...you either a) shouldn't be able to get the crosshairs on the dot your looking at through the bore at all, or b) if you are able to, then due to a broken scope, it will get out of wonk when you fire a live round and confirm the scope is messed up because you know the crosshairs were in line with the bore at some point before the recoil of the live round.

Or, if you have any other scope, mount that and see what happens?

Don't forget to check your crown/muzzle for dings

If you removed your rifle from the stock, did you retorque the screws properly?

If it's a freefloating barrel is it being touched by the stock?

Try a different grain of ammo.

i have been watching this one, sounds fishy. if you could show a pic if the scope mounted that would help a little. something is way wrong or broken especially if all the way down is 30 feet low lol. If your having these kinda of problems mounting a scope i'll stay off the side walk when your driving.

Don't forget to check your crown/muzzle for dings

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it'd have to be a heck of a ding.

That rail mount is clearly mounted backwards.

BUT....with the scope mounted on the pictured mount, the rifle would shoot a mile HIGH, not low. That is, the line-of-bore would be FAR above the line-of-sight.

Is this a late April Fools' joke?

It's not backwards. Imagine a laser mounted to the top of the rail. Because of the base it will drop below the bore line fairly rapidly as it travels in a straight line downrange. Now mentally pull that laser up to hit the target. Your bullet's going *high,* but that's what you want. It's traveling in an arc, whereas your line of sight (the laser) just keeps going straight. Ideally your 'laser' (line of sight) will cross the bullet arc at point of impact. With a 20 MOA base you should have plenty of down adjustment on the scope to compensate for the difference in angle at medium ranges.

I'd say swap your rings. Failing that swap your scope. If you only have the one set of rings, you could always reverse which one is positioned up front and see if it swings your point of impact wildly.

Mout is correctly mounted. Makes no sense at all. Should be shooting way high.

Question: How can you tell that it's shooting 5 and/or 30 feet low?

IF the specs shown in the link are for your scope it shows about 50MOA of total adjustment, which should be about 50inches at 100yds.(4ft2in)
"Adj Range in@100yds/ mm@100m 50 / 1 "

The scope shows 50MOA of adjustment and the base is another 20MOA.
That's 70inches @ 100yds.
You are hitting 60inches, 60MOA , low.

It seems odd that you're off by almost the total amount of adjustment as the scope and base has total??????

I adjusted it completely down just for kicks -- I was then shooting 30 FEET below the target instead of 5 feet below it.

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-WhiteKnight

That's another 25feet, HOLY CRAP!
That's 300MOA.

I am thinking the scope is bad, by adjusting the scope the full range you should have only seen about 4ft2in of movement. (the 50MOA the scope has available to travel per manufacturer specs) Or did you start shooting 600yds?

And how doesn one determine they'e 30 ft low @100yds. You must have some high target stands!

I'd shxx-can the 1,000 yard base and buy a cheap set of Weaver rings & bases.

Put the scope on it with them, see if you can bore-sight it, then shoot it.

That will quickly prove if it is the base, rings, rifle, or scope.

rc

Something doesn't look right with that mount to me----maybe its just the pic.

Your not going to get the crosshair on the same point as what your seeing through the barrel at 20 feet!

You don't have that much scope adjustment!

Stretch out to 50y at least and try it.

Also, is that mount for a square bridge Savage or a round top Savage?

You may have a mount for a round top on that square bridge....

Your not going to get the crosshair on the same point as what your seeing through the barrel at 20 feet!

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Maybe not, but if the bore is only 1.5-2" below the center of the scope, then the worse case scenario should be his crosshairs are 1.5-2" above the point he is looking through the bore. If he can't adjust the crosshairs to w/in 2" of the boreline at all...something is very wrong...especially with a 20 MOA base which should be throwing the crosshairs way down anyway (not up, which is his problem).

4-5" high at 20ft equates to roughly 63MOA above the boreline at 100yds. (20ft = roughly 7 yds X 14 = roughly 100. 14X 4.5" = about 63 MOA.

Bottom line, a scope always has to point down towards the bore by some minute amount (even at max down elevation travel) for the rifle to be zeroed at any range. For the bullet to cross the line of sight, the crosshairs have to point towards the bore to some degree, otherwise the bullet would always be at least 1.5" or so (bore to sight distance) below your point of aim...and dropping.

If his crosshairs are 4-5" high at 20ft...unless his scope is 5-6" above his bore, then the crosshairs are pointed up and away from the bore even in spite of a 20MOA downward base. His bullet will never intersect the line of sight. Based on what he is saying, this rifle and scope will never zero. The reticle must be broken or way off center.

Will shooting with a 20moa base put the scope so far up off of the bore line that it causes problems when shooting at close distances? Should I get a 0moa base?

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The 20MOA base puts the scope down from the bore line. I don't know what your problem is, but if you have the correct base for your rifle, it's not the base. Personally, I'd try putting a known good scope on it and see if you still have the problem.

Don

After aiming the bore at an object approximately 20 feet away (inside the house), the scope picture is approximately 4-5 inches high! All of the walkthroughs I read online say "physically adjust the scope in the rings so the sight picture then lines up with the bore." The problem with this is that, to make this work, I have to tilt the eyepiece end of the scope up about a full inch (lifting it completely out of the rear ring, and thereby obviously preventing me from mounting it or even coming close).

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Try to be a little more precise with your measurements when you describe the problem and we might be able to help more. The exagerated numbers are confusing the issue.

Just look at this last description. You said the crosshair was 4 to 5 inches off at 20 feet. If your rings are 12 inches apart (they're not, but it makes the math easy), lifting the scope 1 inch from one ring while it stayed in the other would move the point of aim 20 inches (almost 2 feet) at 20 feet. To move point of aim 4" at 20' the scope should need to move less than 0.25".

If the point of aim is moving as much as you describe I wonder if the reticle in the scope may be loose and just flopping around in there.

I can't help but wonder if the correct mount is being used? If your receiver is the newer round receiver style? any chance you have a gotten mount for an older rear square Savage receiver? If you could post a picture of YOUR set up looking at it may help. Picture posted is older style rear square Savage receiver hence the more than usual (for a 20 MOA) extra hight at the rear.

More and more I'm thinking your scope must be broken.

Try a shim under the rear mount.

What is the history of this scope? The 4 -12 X mentioned doesn't seem to be listed on the web site.

Their is always a chance the receiver was cut out of square. My Savage Model 12 was this way. Ran out of adjustment also. Their also has been posts in the past on a few Savage rifles at Benchrest Central. About Savage rifle barrels not pointing where they are supposed to be.

Some comments:

1. This is a bizarre thread.

2. IOR doesn't have a one-piece 20 MOA base for the Savage according to their website. Do you even have a Savage? If so, are you sure that you have the proper base for your Savage action, round (rear)/round (front) or flat (rear)/round (front) as shown in your photo. The newer Savages are round/round by the way.

http://www.valdada.com/product/1acb0de2-c79e-45f7-91c3-5376fbdb8588.aspx

3.

WhiteKnight said:

Is the base hurting me? I have it installed like the guy below (with the 20moa wedge to the rear) of the rifle.

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So the photo at the top of the thread isn't YOUR rifle, scope and base. All very odd.

4. Removing the bolt and bore sighting is the THE way to get on paper. I do it ALL the time, EVERY time when installing new scopes/rings and am 4" or less off the POA at 100 yards using this technique. A bore sighter is only useful for rifles where you can't look down the barrel from the receiver end.

5. This is a VERY bizarre thread.

There is a really simple solution to this, borrow another scope and try it...if it shoots to the same POI then the rail is flawed if it doesn't then the original scope is...

These are the type of mounts that I have on my LR rifle:


taken from the Accurate Rifle article The Two Mile Prairie Dog

Your concept and execution is correct but I really think your scope is broken.

Before trying it at 100 yds, sight in at 25 yards to be 5" high and then move out to 100 yds...

Take your scope and gently turn the elevation adjustment fully to the stop, then go the other way. This will tell you how much elevation your scope actually has.

I would think you would want at least 100 MOA of adjustment on a 20 MOA base.