TNBillyEarl
Beginner
- Jan 31, 2021
- 75
- 268
Context: Last weekend was the opening of muzzy season. I had found a good rub line in a part of our lease where nobody had been. Opening day I set up properly based on the morning's wind and chose to sit on the ground in the hardwood due to leaves and field of view. Around 8:30AM comes a nice buck at 80 yards, he doesn't know anything about my presence, my gun is rested perfectly still on my knees, he stops, and I pull the trigger. I didn't hear him run after the shot. When the smoke cleared I expected him to be right there. But he wasn't. No blood, no hair, no deer. One hour later I gave up. I was so tore up about the presumed miss that I headed to the range. My muzzy has never missed...
Lesson #1 - Nikon scopes do break. At the range I wasn't able to hit paper at 100 yards. My scope wouldn't hold any zero. This 2-7 Prostaff has been shot 50 times or so on my .50cal CVA an it has been flawless. But it was scope failure. The last shot 2 days before was a half inch high at 100, opening day - who knows where it went?
Lesson #2 - A good way to check the glass on a scope is to look at the moon outside of town when there is no humidity. I took an older Bushnell Elite and put it on my muzzy. I was waiting to walk in the next morning and started fiddling around by looking first at Venus, then the moon. I have no idea why I did this. Seeing the craters and shadows so clearly on 10x was amazing. That older Bushnell glass is superb to anything else I have. That is going to be a new litmus test for me going forward.
Lesson #3 - That glass really is all that. This weekend I had a massive 6 beating up trees and making scrapes across the power lines from me around 70 yards. There were briers between us and I wouldn't have seen him if I hadn't seen the trees bending over. It was after sundown and behind the deer were dark hardwoods. All I could see were tines, mass, and the occasional nose. It was a sight I won't ever forget. You couldn't see it without the scope, but with the scope it was crystal. No advertising video could capture what I got watch Saturday night. Glass matters.
3 lessons learned in the first week of muzzy season, all around my optic.
-B
Lesson #1 - Nikon scopes do break. At the range I wasn't able to hit paper at 100 yards. My scope wouldn't hold any zero. This 2-7 Prostaff has been shot 50 times or so on my .50cal CVA an it has been flawless. But it was scope failure. The last shot 2 days before was a half inch high at 100, opening day - who knows where it went?
Lesson #2 - A good way to check the glass on a scope is to look at the moon outside of town when there is no humidity. I took an older Bushnell Elite and put it on my muzzy. I was waiting to walk in the next morning and started fiddling around by looking first at Venus, then the moon. I have no idea why I did this. Seeing the craters and shadows so clearly on 10x was amazing. That older Bushnell glass is superb to anything else I have. That is going to be a new litmus test for me going forward.
Lesson #3 - That glass really is all that. This weekend I had a massive 6 beating up trees and making scrapes across the power lines from me around 70 yards. There were briers between us and I wouldn't have seen him if I hadn't seen the trees bending over. It was after sundown and behind the deer were dark hardwoods. All I could see were tines, mass, and the occasional nose. It was a sight I won't ever forget. You couldn't see it without the scope, but with the scope it was crystal. No advertising video could capture what I got watch Saturday night. Glass matters.
3 lessons learned in the first week of muzzy season, all around my optic.
-B
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