You’re not alone. The current trend towards shorter eye relief scopes, shooting styles that lack solid a constant head position, a lack of emphasis on how to set up scopes for recoil, and the general perception that any contorted position a shooter can get himself into is acceptable fosters many scope bites, most we don’t hear about.
If there is a quicker way to develop a wicked flinch than getting a scope on the eyebrow or getting your glasses smashed into your sockets I don’t know what it is.
Gaining 1/4” in eye relief by ditching the scope covers may not fully solve your problem. I don’t know what the eye relief is, but there are many scopes on the market I would stay away from based on eye relief alone. If the scope is staying no matter what, a softer recoil rifle will be safer. If you pull the stock in firmer to the shoulder more firmly the entire rifle won’t recoil as far. MThere may not be any way around setting the scope far enough forward you just start to see the edge of the field of view when you’re at the natural point of aim. It’s not less accurate, and actually is a comfort to see for those of us with heavy recoil who set up scopes that way, and we just ignore it while shooting.
Just the mechanics of shooting with overly high rings puts the head higher and less supported, so if you don’t need the height in whatever rings you’re using to clear the objective, that helps. So does a check piece that provides better feedback on head position.
More than anything, shooting prone squared up to the rifle requires the scope to be set fairly far back, and then when shooting seated you’re automatically crowding the scope in a natural feeling hold. Not enough is said of this.
It’s funny eye relief is a simple question, but gets at a wide variety of topics, so I’m sure it will take some work to figure out what works for your situation and shooting style.
