Such a thing as too much glass (scope)?

RichCoyle said:

How about us shooters who hold the rifle like they would a BB gun? No need for a "cheek weld". Therefore, there is no big deal using a 56mm scope.

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Hold a rifle like a BB gun? I always aimed my BB gun just like I do my rifles. Needed a solid cheek weld there too!
Just my opinion based on my age & experience (78 now) but this new craze of big heavy scopes is just a craze that most will get over as they age because they won't want to carry 10 pound rifles any more! To me - long range is 400 yards and a hunting rifle with scope while fully loaded is 7 pounds maximum!

Crockett12 said:

Hold a rifle like a BB gun? I always aimed my BB gun just like I do my rifles. Needed a solid cheek weld there too!
Just my opinion based on my age & experience (78 now) but this new craze of big heavy scopes is just a craze that most will get over as they age because they won't want to carry 10 pound rifles any more! To me - long range is 400 yards and a hunting rifle with scope while fully loaded is 7 pounds maximum!

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The scope on my eight-pound rifle is a March 2 1/2-25X52 (24 ounces). The next rifle will be about the same weight including a 5-50X56 (30 ounces). I started moving up in magnification about 1975-77. It was a Redfield 6-18X. I discovered way back then 6X was too much for woods hunting. I had a Swarovski z5 5-25X52 and that worked okay at 5X.

I keep hearing about cheek weld and in my over 60 years of hunting with scoped rifles I've yet to encounter a problem with it or lack of it. It seems to be one of those "common knowledge" things that is parroted over and over and over.

I acknowledge that it could become an issue with some scopes on some rifles but I've just never encountered it except on some AR platforms but that's usually easily solved with a decent butt stock or whatever they're called. I admit to being much more of a conventionally stocked bolt action rifle kind of guy.

It could be that somehow muscle memory gives me an immediate proper position behind my scopes on my rifles which have different stocks and scope sizes and mounting heights and all my center fire scopes do have parallax adjustments so it's not as big an issue.

Once again this whole cheek weld issue keeps being repeated over and over and I just don't get it. Am I the only one?

LDHunter said:

Once again this whole cheek weld issue keeps being repeated over and over and I just don't get it. Am I the only one?

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I've read about it in shooting articles ever since I began to read about rifles! For me, a low mounted scope gives me the stability of being able to hold the rifle still while shooting and especially while shooting offhand! When the scope is mounted too high, I lose the stability a firm cheek weld gives me! Off the bench, it's not as important for me! I do know some guys with a long neck and they sometimes have difficulty if their scope isn't mounted just so for them! I don't remember exactly what their issue is but I think they've got to have it mounted further forward but may be wrong about that!