In anticipation of an upcoming trip to Big South Fork, I picked up a Winchester Wildcat on sale and took it to the local tube range at Curtis Lloyd Gates WMA for a crash course in zeroing a scope and range etiquette.
It wasn’t busy when I arrived so I was able to acclimate to the range, being my first time using it. Another user was there and he kind of walked me through the process. Once the range filled up and there were more and varied rifles being fired, everyone on the line had to be thinking and doing the same thing to make it safe. Was definitely a good time meeting and conversing with hunters and marksman and soaking up their knowledge.
The Wildcat has a 10-round spiral cartridge. I’m using Winchester 40 grain as they had a big box of those on sale as well. The BSA scope has a 40 grain specific declination dial. I need to go back and do a proper zeroing at 100 yards but currently have the scope sighted to 30 yards. Once I’d gotten the hang of adjusting the scope, daylight was fading and there just wasn’t time to get it done properly. (This wound up sabotaging me during the hunt.)
Part of the issue was that I was using little sandbags to hold the rifle as I tried to set the scope and it just wasn’t a good setup for someone my size on a rifle so small. I recently picked up a better Caldwell Steady Rest NXT system and want to get back to the range and get this rifle humming where I need it to be. There’s still some season left!