Nightforce SHV 3-10 not dialing elevation correctly

[welkin]

Bought this used scope on here recently and I'm having an issue with it,was wondering if anyone's run into this before. Today I was shooting at 400y and using the elevation turret to account for drop I was consistently grouping 5-6" high. I double checked my numbers, which seemed good to me, then my zero at 100y, which if anything was slightly low. I then dialed to +8 MOA and from 100y it shot a group 9.5" above my point of aim, so 1.5" high. This corresponds to shooting about 6" high at 400y. I then shot 7" (1" high) dialing for 6 MOA and .75" high for 4 MOA. I've talked to nightforce who say theyve never had a scope do this before and said they'd take a look at it. And I'm contacting the person who sold it to me who will remain nameless. Thoughts?

 

[Pickettpuncher]

What are you shooting? 8 moa would be high for my 25cm at 400yards.

 

[Macintosh]

What are you shooting (cartridge/load), and how did you arrive at needing 8moa elevation at 400 yards? Are you basing each elevation on 3-round groups?

Most centerfire rifles Ive used need less elevation than 8moa at 400. For my rifles, that alone would have you printing about 5” high at 400 yards. If you just ballparked the dope that could account for what you’re seeing.

If you dont think the scope is tracking correctly do a real tall target test.

 

[HairyScandinavian]

I read his post to say he dialed 8 MOA and shot at 100 yards and was hitting 9.5" high groups. That sounds like a problem.

 

[welkin]

I read his post to say he dialed 8 MOA and shot at 100 yards and was hitting 9.5" high groups. That sounds like a problem.

This is correct, it's not an issue with my DOPE. For the record it's a 6.5 creedmoor cut to 16" shooting eld-x at 2500 fps. But none of that matters here because I think I isolated the problem to the scope by testing the elevation turret at 100m. It's consistently shooting 16.66% MOA higher than it should be regardless of what number I dial it to above the zero.

 

[Antares]

Bought this used scope on here recently and I'm having an issue with it,was wondering if anyone's run into this before. Today I was shooting at 400y and using the elevation turret to account for drop I was consistently grouping 5-6" high. I double checked my numbers, which seemed good to me, then my zero at 100y, which if anything was slightly low. I then dialed to +8 MOA and from 100y it shot a group 9.5" above my point of aim, so 1.5" high. This corresponds to shooting about 6" high at 400y. I then shot 7" (1" high) dialing for 6 MOA and .75" high for 4 MOA. I've talked to nightforce who say theyve never had a scope do this before and said they'd take a look at it. And I'm contacting the person who sold it to me who will remain nameless. Thoughts?

This is correct, it's not an issue with my DOPE. For the record it's a 6.5 creedmoor cut to 16" shooting eld-x at 2500 fps. But none of that matters here because I think I isolated the problem to the scope by testing the elevation turret at 100m. It's consistently shooting 16.66% MOA higher than it should be regardless of what number I dial it to above the zero.

100 yards or 100 meters?

 

[welkin]

Sorry, yards is correct. I use meters for work and I switch them up when I talk sometimes but my range finder's definitely set to yards

 

[Antares]

Assuming your target is at exactly 100 yards and your rifle is perfectly zeroed, you're hitting 1.1" high (8 MOA @ 100 y = 8.4"; 9.5" - 8.4" = 1.1").

How big are the groups your shooting? A lot of that error could easily be an artifact of small group size. Just food for thought.

 

[welkin]

Assuming your target is at exactly 100 yards and your rifle is perfectly zeroed, you're hitting 1.1" high (8 MOA @ 100 y = 8.4"; 9.5" - 8.4" = 1.1").

How big are the groups your shooting? A lot of that error could easily be an artifact of small group size. Just food for thought.

Forgot 1 MOA is not exactly 1", so good point. I did not have the ammo to shoot more than 2 rounds when I was dialing MOA adjustments at 100y, but they were pretty tight, the two at 8 MOA were touching on the paper. And my group when I was testing the zero was good, and my shooting at 400y was competent IMO, I shot 20 rounds and it was definitely recognizable as a group, just 5-6" higher than I was aiming. I think this would be easier to dismiss as user error for me if there wasn't a consistency to the errors in elevation (shooting a similar percentage higher regardless of MOA adjustment) and if the group I shot to check my zero had shown that my shooting was high or off in some other way.

 

[SomeJackassOnAForum]

You're wasting Nightforce's time (and yours) sending a scope in based off of 2-shot groups.

Read this on Group Size: https://precisionrifleblog.com/2020/12/12/measuring-group-size-statistics-for-shooters/





You can throw up a rifle sight in target and conduct this test yourself, no shooting required, and determine the increment of adjustment on your scope:

Tactical Scopes: Mechanical Performance Part 1

This is one of the last posts covering the detailed data collected over the past 4 months for an epi...

precisionrifleblog.com

 

[doverpack12]

Pull the elevation cap. My friend had an SHV 5-20 that dialed until it didn’t. He couldn’t believe it and neither could NF. He pulled the cap and had a vacuum like suction. A little moisture had gotten in there and had some weird pressure. When he pulled the cap hard enough there was an air hissing noise. Put the cap back on after wiping the moisture off. Back to dialing like it should.

Having shipped the scope there could be a weird pressure thing happening.

 

[flyfisher117]

Store - Box to Bench Precision

Snipers Hide 100 Yard Scope Tracking Target - MIL - MOA - For Milliradian and Minute of Angle Scopes - True Minute of Angle - Precision Shooting -

www.boxtobenchprecision.com

If you are near East Idaho I have one of these you can borrow to see how the scope tracks. I like this because it gives you a very visual representation. Otherwise I would say get a really tall target. Get your target perfectly on 100 yards, not 99 and not 101. Shoot a 10 round group at zero. Dial 30 MOA shoot another solid 10 round group and measure the distance between the average of the groups.

When you start trying to measure percentages of error in scope tracking a couple rounds isn't enough.