Good, bad or ugly.......here is what I found out.
Target 1 was shot with original, 45 year old Leopold scope. 3 shots each, only difference in hand loads was each number increased seating depth 0.003. Was looking to see if nodes would show up. After #1, moved scope to impact 1 inch to the right (prior target all were also impacting to the left). After scope adjustment, shots flying everywhere. .Some OK, 5, 6 and 8 were so wild and comingled, couldn't tell who shot what and one round missing entirely. Don't know where it went.
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Target below shot today after swapping to a spare inexpensive Nikon scope, hastily mounted. Bore sighting revealed crosshairs to be 2 feet below bull at 50 yards. Say What? Then remembered son had been trying to shoot it to half a mile on his 308 and had ran out of elevation, so must have left it there when he took it off to replace it with a Vortex.
Anyway, a few sight in shots, then 3 hasty fired groups at 100 yards. Center group.......4 rounds of 20 year old Remington factory ammo. Then moved bottom left......shot 5 rounds of some hand loads my buddy did a few years back (lot of variation in those) and finally, Then 8 clicks left to center shots above aim point and 1 more round to confirm. Then bottom right, 6 more rounds of Remington factory ammo to clean out the box. First two groups of factory and reloads did not impress me much, but better than average of what I had been doing. Last group, starts to resemble an actual repeating group. Wind was behind me if it matters and was a good breeze blowing stuff around a bit. 100 yards.
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I'm thinking problem lies in scope. Gun will probably shoot well enough to print 1 MOA groups with right loads and optics, so gun may have bought some more time. So either stick with Nikon as is or start shopping for a new scope. Decision time.