What's up with my optic/rifle setup?

[Laufen]

Not a dig at you or anything- but I'd rather have it level to my eye than whatever those bubbles are supposed to be telling me.

I get a new scope somewhat close at home and then actually get the eye relief and "straightness" set at the range when I can get behind the scope and see a 100 yard target.

There's a problem with that. If you need to adjust windage or elevation, your groups won't shift exactly horizontally or vertically, they'll move at an angle. That's a big, big problem.

Those bubbles don't "supposedly" tell you anything, they DO tell you level.

Set it up correctly, and adjust your melon to meet level.

 

[Echo 1]

Yep looks canted to me,always eye ball my scopes then site in.

 

[dial1911]

There's a problem with that. If you need to adjust windage or elevation, your groups won't shift exactly horizontally or vertically, they'll move at an angle. That's a big, big problem.

Those bubbles don't "supposedly" tell you anything, they DO tell you level.

Set it up correctly, and adjust your melon to meet level.

I should probably have been more specific-

I understand trigonometry pretty well, and yes if the lines aren't horizontal or vertical, you don't get a true 1/4 MOA per click (or whatever your adjustment may be). However, I didn't mean to imply my scopes might have 15 degrees of cant one way or the other. The cross hairs are darn close to horizontal/vertical. Given that we're probably talking about +/- 2 degrees at most, it's going to be hard for the average shooter to tell the difference in POI due to being slightly off the true horizontal/vertical plane.

 

[Last Call]

A perfectly leveled scope will look like they have left can't at least all mine do and according to the ladder test the are spot on. Shooting from 100 out to 500 all you move is elevation

 

[ngcsugrad09]

The problem is the adjustments aren't necessaily square to the reticle.

At least on our scopes, we index the reticle to the flat spot on the bottom of the saddle.