This is why we we need to confirm zero before hunting

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Sheepdog1968

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Deer season starts next weekend. I took my 30-30 out to the range to check its zero. From years gone by, if I'm 3" high at 100 yards I have POA POI at 200 yards. Every year I check prior to start of the season.

Much to my surprise it was shooting 7" high. I had a suspicion it was off because I had done two matches of 200 standing silhouette shooting. The first match I hit 12 targets. The second time I only hit one. Now I know why I did so poorly the second match.

I'm now ready for deer season and I can't wait. It's kind of like counting down for Christmas when I was a kit.
 

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Yep, took a couple of my rifles out this morning to check them. Both were hitting where they were supposed to. I haven't shot them at 100 yards in over a year and a half. I have another couple of rifles I need to check out but one of those has never moved an inch in twenty years.
 
What gets me is when a guy shows up in camp with a
brand new rifle and scope the night before opening day. "How does it shoot?" someone asks. "I haven't shot it yet." ..."How do you know it's sighted in?"...."They sighted it in when they mounted the scope!" "You mean it's bore sighted?" ... "Yep,it's ready to go!" Really?!! I've heard this so many times,but still find to believe that people can be so ignorant. I don't hunt with a rifle until I've put at least 50 rounds through it,and nobody mounts my scopes but me. Familiarity breeds confidence,and makes for better marksmanship.
 
Quality equipment set up right shouldn't lose zero unless you drop it or give it a seriously hard whack.
 
It's Leupold scope and rings. Everything was torqued per Leupold specs and I rechecked yesterday and all was still tight. For the past four or so year, it had never lost zero. I even put some pencil markings around the scope so I could see if it moved in the rings and it looks unmoved. I'm not sure what happened. I will shoot the rifle more this year and see what happens.
 
Thats bizarre..Hmm lets see if you completely disasembled the rifle you could have got a differant torque pressure point on a barrel band causing a shift. But thats normally only a 1" to 3" at a extreme. Glad your sighted in now.. The wait for opening day sure is killer :D
 
I have had a Rem BDL since around '87 which has year after year put bullets into 1/2 - 3/4" groups at 200yds as long as I did my part. Like you m we always head out to "check" things over just to be sure. One year I found it shooting about an inch high figured it got bumped in the case as we were making some long road trips then. I adjusted and everything was fine. By the end of the season however it was back up an inch high again.

Everything checked out tight, so I adjusted and went on my way. About 6 months later again it was high but about 2" and I actually ran out of adjustment on the scope chasing this weird event. I pulled it out of service from hunting that year and pulled everything off including the stock. The scope was sent to Leupold for a check up. After that I laid a straight edge down the stock and was amazed to find it was bowed up like a banana on the forend. I took a barrel channel reamer and went to work on it and relieved it about 1/16 or more before putting it back together. Everything was fine for about another 6 months when it climbed up again.

About then Midway was clearing out some Fajen laminate stocks and I jumped on one of them. Once it was channeled and bedded it hasn't moved since. It still drives them in tight out at 200 and beyond, but I have now passed it over to my daughter and built myself a 25-06 AI which the oldest grandson has his eye on hard.....
 
I sat in a rather large deer camp once and watched an old fellow with his brand new Bushnell bore sighter adjusting scopes for other hunters. He insisted they had to be perfect when they were adjusted per his methods. This was about 40 yrs. ago and not that many people owned their own bore sighting tools then.
I declined his offer to adjust mine...
 
No, quality gear should not lose zero. With that said, it is still a really good idea to check zero before deer season or on any gun you haven't shot in a in long time that you plan to use to make ethical kills. Too many people don't and end up with ruined hunts, poorly shot and then lost deer. If anything, it helps the shooter refamiliarize with the rifle and its idiosyncrasies.
 
I am a threat to bang my guns around so I always check the zero a couple of weeks before hunting season just to make sure. Our season starts in late November so I still have a while. For the most part I will fire 4-5 hunting rifles and every one of them will be right where I want them but I still check them. Contrary to popular opinion it IS possible for screws to work loose and internals to break. If it happens regularly then you have a problem with your setup.
As Spy said, it also helps to reacquaint yourself with the rifle, how it operates and how the trigger pulls. I do not use my hunting rifles from February until November so it's good to get a feel for the triggers. I also will generally be taking a couple of kids that are new to deer hunting so we do some shooting to familiarize them with the gun they will be using.

I too like the guy that shows up with a $400 combo that was bore sighted and he is ready to hunt. Or the guy that brings his 12 year old nephew that has never fired a deer rifle but has shot his bb gun a lot. Or the guy who needs to borrow some ammo because he forgot his. I keep a couple of loaner rifles on hand for just such occasions, a bolt 30-06 and a break .243. Guns that I have recently sighted in with ammo I trust are better than letting someone shoot and miss or wound an animal because "all ammo shoots the same" and we all know that bore sighting will be dead on at 100 yards...SMH.
 
Club had "sight in days" before deer season. Non members could come in and sight in their rifles on 2 weekends before deer season. Many came in with new rifles and scopes mounted and bore sighted by the big box stores. Most were not on paper and we had members that had their own bore sight tools to help make them right.
 
I'm going to remark the pencils lines on the scope by the rings and keep a close eye on it. If they move or I see shift in POI I will ship the scope off to Leupold. Out of curiosity, how much of a scope shift would you expect to have to see POI increase by 4"?
 
Did you change ammo? That can cause big POI shifts. If you didn't and your scope mounts are tight then it is most likely a bad scope. I hear Leupold has a great policy on fixing their defective scopes. Also, I have used tons of scope mounts but have finally switched all of my hunting rifles over to DNZ Gamereaper one piece scope mounts. I have never had a POI shift after changing over to these scope mounts. They are around $50 apiece but that is a small price to pay to feel confident about my rifle when a buck walks into range. Good luck with it and good hunting.
 
I thoroughly end-of-season-cleaned my .30-30 after the last match this month (using it in black powder cartridge this past season), and removed the scope. I leave the backup peepsight left zeroed for smokeless. I noted somehow the front blade had been knocked loose and had to re-center it and go back to the range the next weekend to re-check the zero with both factory .30-30 and my IMR3031 reloads. Boresighting is not a substitute for actually zeroing the gun with live ammo. (*facepalm* bore sighting will put you on the paper at 100 yds, then you zero the rifle with the ammo you use, learned that as a teenager half a century ago.)
 
true, but sadly, it does. way, way too often
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Agreed, but often I feel the loss is for reasons other than the quality gear failing in some way. It has been my experience that "loss of zero" in such instances is usually due to user-induced problems. Since last year, users manage to do things such as drop the rifle, clean the rifle, take it apart, snug down the scope anew, change ammo, had loaned out the rifle to a buddy since last year, changed the muzzle device or suppressor, sight in under very different conditions (such as a different elevation), etc.

I had a buddy show up to my place to verify zero before we hunted hogs. He was several inches off at 100 yards and was perplexed. He knew he might be a little off because he had taken the scope off doing some maintenance. Never mind the fact that he was using a different weight of ammo and was using a different suppressor. It took several minutes of listening to him complain about being so surprised the rifle was so far off before this information came out.

He should never have been coming out to "verify" zero. He wasn't verifying anything. Unrealized by him, he was there to zero the rifle.
 
Out of curiosity, how much of a scope shift would you expect to have to see POI increase by 4"?
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Like mentioned above, if you changed the ammo in any way, means, or form, not a big deal to see that type of shift. Even a different lot of powder can make a difference like that sometimes, especially if your shooting up powder made a decade ago and switch to some made in the past 6 months. Sometimes a primer change can throw groups as well, all above working on the barrel harmonics.

Now if your shooting everything the same as it was with no changes what so ever, and you get back to zero I woud seriously run some ammo through it, making sure to clean after about every 20 or so rounds to make sure it stays put. My friend had a high end Leupold head south on him after only a hundred rounds from his .308. He shipped it back and when it returned it hasn't moved since after a BUNCH of rounds.

Sometimes those delicate hairs have a fit and all you can do is get them fixed or buy new. Leupold is great about fixing any scope they sell as far as I know. I have sent three in and got them back in only a couple of weeks at most in great shape.
 
When I started shooting Leverevolution out of my 30-30, the POI shifted three inches to the left and high of where I hit with 170 gr Corelokts.
 
Deer season in October? We get to wait until December in Iowa. I wish we had a rifle season. We will only have archery, muzzle loader and shotgun.
 
Dear season in CA happens before the rut. It was about 80 this weekend which is warmer than I'd like it.

The only other thing I can think of regarding the POI shift would be if I removed the scope and put it on a different slot on the rail. I don't recall removing it
 
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