Shooting More Accurately – How to Mount and
Sight-In Scopes
What’s the Best Reticle
 Editor’s
Note: The secrets to shooting accurately include choosing
the best rifle for your hunt, the correct ammunition
and the right bases and rings, mounting your scope properly
and then sighting-in your scope correctly. To gather
the best information on how to make rifles shoot more
accurately, I talked with Russ Sockwell of Mark’s
Outdoors in Birmingham, Alabama, a gunsmith with 10
years of experience who mounts scopes and sights-in
thousands of rifles each year.
“ You
need to think about the style of reticle you want for
your scope, with the most-popular reticles today the
German No. 4s, which have three bold crosshairs with
finer crosshairs in the middle of the reticle,”
Russ Sockwell says. “Late in the evening, you
still can see the bold crosshairs, even if the fine
ones disappear. So, you can make the shot even under
low-light conditions. The other popular reticle configuration
is the Leupold Duplex, which many scope manufacturers
have copied. The Duplex features a heavy crosshair that
narrows-down to a much-finer crosshair in the center
of the scope. Both these kinds of reticles enable the
hunter to aim accurately in extremely-low light.”
Many rifles now feature reticles with mil dots, which
allow the hunter to hold dead on at 100 yards and then
use the dots to make shots out to 200, 300, 400 and
even 500 yar ds.
However, Sockwell warns that, “If your gun’s
capable of shooting from 200 to 400 yards, and you want
to use those mil dots as sighting references, you need
to aim at those distances with those mil dots and see
where they place the bullet at those distances. Mil
dots are set up for certain distances inside the scope
without considering your bullet weight, your gun, the
manufacturer of the bullet, the grains of powder you’re
shooting and/or your shooting ability. If you want to
purchase a riflescope that has mil dots as a part of
the reticle, don’t think you can use those mil
dots for aiming without sighting-in your rifle at those
distances with those mil dots. The dots aren’t
idiot-proof. You still have to sight -in
your rifle with the style of ammunition that you’ll
shoot at the distances that the mil dots are set up
to shoot accurately. For most hunters, I believe the
duplex type of reticle, which is bold at the walls of
the scope and narrows down to the center of the field
of view is the best all-around reticle for most hunters
to use.”
The Best Scope for Squirrel Hunters:
When choosing a riflescope for squirrel hunting, Russ
Sockwell recommends a 3-9X variable scope. “A
Simmons or a Tasco that cost about $150 each is usually
adequate for the squirrel hunter. I have put $400 and
$500 Zeiss Conquest riflescopes on squirrel rifles.
You also need a fairly-compact scope because the squirrel
gun isn’t a big or a heavy rifle.”
To learn more, go to www.marksoutdoors.com,
email Sockwell at mark@marksoutdoors.com
or call (205) 822-2010.
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