Seeing better

There's advantages to seeing better whether it's seeing one's physical surroundings, into people's characters, motives and motivations or within ourselves with greater clarity; more information leads to better evaluation, planning, goal-setting and outcomes.

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I've owned and operated firearms for around thirty four years and over the time have become familiar and proficient with many different firearms. I've been trained and sought additional knowledge and understanding around the firearms themselves, how to most effectively use them and the systems and processes that are also required such as making my own ammunition, setting up the equipment and of course improving my shooting skills. I've enjoyed the journey and still learn to this day and no matter whether shooting hand guns, shot guns, rifles or other iterations of the firearm I find a lot of interest...it's not just about shooting.

I spend some of my time passing on the vast wealth of knowledge I've gained along the way, mostly on long range shooting which I am highly proficient in, and that's what I've been doing with a person over the last several months, someone I know well who would like to learn how to put rounds on at great distance, I mean well over a mile, (1609 metres).

We've been working through the process from start to finish and a lot of that has involved lengthy discussions and theory about aerodynamics, how the weather, (wind and humidity), altitude and azimuth and Coriolis effect long range shots, plus physics, chemistry, mathematics, the equipment and set up and human factors just to name a few. It's very complex and mastering each element is critical to the process and to putting accurate and repeatable rounds on target at long ranges in various conditions and for those shots to be effective, do what they are supposed to do when they impact on the target whatever that may be.

One of the biggest limitations of long rang shooting is the human operating the firearm.

Not understanding how the body affects the shot and where it lands down range will ultimately end in misses and they can be costly. I've written posts about this before so won't go into it but stance, breathing, grip on the rifle, the trigger-pull, the heart beat and eyesight are some of the factors. With training these things can be controlled and with the last, the vision, well rifle scopes help with a human beings' poor eyesight.

I decided to do a few shots of one of my favourite rifle scopes, my Kahles K624i6-24x56 which is an awesome bit of kit which helps me put accurate rounds on targets out past one mile (1609 metres) all day long. (Swarovski is the parent company of Kahles). I used to use Nightforce scopes a lot, and still do from time to time but I'm a Kahles man through and through.

I'm not going to go into lengthy discussions about this scope as I'd be here all day and it'd be pretty much meaningless to most people but there's a couple features I want to point out.

This scope is a precision-built item designed for shooting professionals, the price tag is commensurate to it's quality, that is to say it is high.

Everything about it is designed to help a shooters eye see a target better so a round can be placed with precision and accuracy. It is mounted to the rifle using a picatinny rail and top quality scope mounts (that's an important part as a poorly mounted/set up scope will be inaccurate) and has an elevation and windage turret to allow the shooter to input (dial in) adjustments as required.

The scope adjusts in MRAD (google it) and includes a parallax adjustment (google it), magnification is from 6-24 power (google it) and illuminated reticle (that dial on the left of the shot above) for reticle clarity - (google reticle) - and speaking of which, it uses the SKMR3 reticle...which you can google if you like as well. This post I wrote talks about MRAD and other things if you're interested.

There's some other cool features like the revolution indicator, that red dot that pops up letting the shooter know he's (or she's) reached one entire revolution of the elevation turret and is on the second. It pops back down when the second-rev is dialed back tot he first-rev.

The optics are amazing (thanks Swarovski) and allow the scope to pull in light even as it fades in the environment permitting the shooter to continue to operate for longer; I use this scope into the night with only small amounts of light and it's just as effective. Most of the cheaper scopes have poor optics and the increments of elevation and windage become more inaccurate the further the shooter dials; with this scope the increments are 0.1MRAD all the way to the very limit of the turret - That's why it's costly and cheap scopes are rubbish.

You'll also notice a couple bubble levels on the scope which I have mounted (and set up) myself. The bubble levels are a requirement for long range shooting; sure, it can be done without them but not with the same level of accuracy.

You see, when elevation is dialed into the elevation turret and the rifle is on a cant (tilted to one side or the other) adding elevation moves the point of aim away from the target. The further up one goes the further away it gets.

One wants the elevation input to move the crosshairs directly up in a straight line and, for instance, if the rifle is canted to the right the crosshairs will go up and to the right (away from the target.) This post I wrote a while ago explains it pretty simply.

You can see two scope levels mounted because I like to be prepared (and learn from failure). I had one fail once and it effected my shooting, made things more difficult, and that ended up proving costly - I'll not elaborate.

The main one is an Accuracy 1st unit, the best in my opinion as it has a ceramic marker in it rather than just a bubble which won't expand or contract at altitude like a fluid bubble will (refer last image below); it also has a tritium vial in it so it glows very faintly for night operations so it can still be utilised. The second is a (much) cheaper Vortex bubble level.

Anyway, this post is getting too long so I'll wrap it up.

If you have any questions I'm happy to some answers so feel free to comment below.