Help Support Long Range Hunting Forum
That's fair. I'm now leaning towards leaving on my lightweight rifle for more backcountry hunts and putting a Vortex on a heavier bolt gun that'll be more close range/tree stand style hunting. In those situations, it's easy to have a spare rifle "close by".
Yes I have however it happened on a newer Burris and an older Redfield. he Redfield was at least 20 years into hard use on a 30-06 and probably had 5000 or more rounds. The zero would change just by rattling the rifle around. It was a 3 x 9 accurange/accutrack which worked wonderful once you had the drop figured out. Sent it to Redfield, (They were still in business then) and they repaired it free of charge.
Not quite sure what you mean by bad eye relief? Eye relief is set to YOU by the person installing your scope regardless of who the manufacturer is. Also keep in mind that eye relief changes when you change shooting positions. The eye relief for your rifle will be completely different in the standing position than it is in the kneeling, sitting or prone positions. As far as clarity, a lot of people who complain about clarity have not adjusted the scope focus for their eyes. When I was working at Cabela's when someone complained about lack of clarity on any of the scopes I had them adjust focus to their eyes and suddenly the clarity issue went away. All of the modern quality rifle scopes have good clarity but one has to adjust the scope to your individual eye for the best performance.
Well, Call it what you want. I have 8 or 10 Vortex scopes, 8 or 10 Leupold scopes, 4- 5 nightforce, and various cheaper scopes. Vortex are the hardest to adjust to get proper Eye relief. They are very touchy on head movement. Thats all Im saying. Dont agree with it, So be it!
Using a blanket statement like that can be somewhat misleading. What Vortex scopes are you talking about. I will agree with you to a point on the models with non-adjustable parallax where the parallax like all like scopes are set for 100 yards. As for eye relief, they are no different than any other rifle scope especially when you try to put a short scope on a long action rifle. It simply does not allow for adequate movement to adjust eye relief. Another consideration is what position you will be shooting in. Eye relief varies greatly depending upon your position. Most people sight in their rifles from a bench rest position or some variation of it, then try shooting standing, kneeling, sitting or prone and find the eye relief way off. This is a given. Different shooting positions require different eye relief, there is no one size fits all when it comes to eye relief. Set the eye relief to the position that you shoot most of the time. If you are not in that position realize that you might have to move your head a bit to get a clear reticle.
What you have written here is absolutely and technically correct but is nothing but a bunch of gobbledygook to the average shooter. All they want to do is bring their rifle up, center the reticle on the proper place on the critter they are pursuing and have the bullet find it's mark to cleanly dispatch said critter. The average person had little or no knowledge other than they want the scope to do what they want, when they want. You are absolutely correct saying that once eye relief is set it will not change, It is the optimum position of the relationship between the eye and scope where you get a clear and full view without any distortion. The issue is that the position of your cheek weld in relation to the eye relief changes with any change in shooting position. If you sighted the rifle in using a prone position your eye will be the closest to the ocular lens than in any other position. If the eye relief is set for a prone position it will be off for kneeling, sitting and especially standing. You will have to adjust your cheek weld to accommodate the set eye relief which make for an uncomfortable position. Ideally the eye relief should be set for the position that the shooter uses most often. A simple discussion on scopes can be found here: https://www.americanhunter.org/content/a-beginner-s-guide-to-riflescope-terminology/ This gives a person basic information on scope terminology which is the beginning of understanding how a rifle scope works.
