Ok I grant you that a level can help some people shoot better,butt for the

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boscoebrea

boscoebrea

Member
Oct 27, 2017
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SF Bay Area,, vallejo United States
most part it is used to level your scope to your gun,not you to your scope..People talk about cant and I think cant is taken care of by proper alignment of rifle,body ,target integration,in other words you do the best you can by alighting your sight picture the same way every time.

So the fit of your gun to your body plays a more important role and frankly sometimes you cannot be comfortable with a true level gun to scope alignment.So you just do the best you can ...which is to be comfortable and sight your gun and scope for that comfortable position..then you shot 1000s and 1000s for rounds that way and get really good at it and you will never think about you "cant' possibly be an accurate shooter.

Now I am not knocking levels on scopes,hey people use bobbers when fishing,what I am saying is you should use and do what you think can make you a better shooter.Maybe I got this whole level thing wrong...yea because part of your sight picture ,just as taking pictures with a camera you want your camera level so your picture looks good=level ;now when did you see a level on a camera?So good body mechanics comes with practice.Excuse me for going on and on,point .is something has to become"intuitive"and that's on the level.






 
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I had to work on my technique. For myself I had a tendency to cant from a straight up 12 towards the 1 o clock angle. I picked the gun up and rapidly aimed for a building with clap board siding sighting in on a corner. The crosshairs will quickly reveal your bad habits. As for fishing we are now in an age with simple electronics that you can plot your course and location for a couple of hundred dollars. The older days we were using anchor balls that were placed on rips during daytime painted with day glo paint then located at night with the aid of a black light. Loran A cost what a good used truck went for.
 
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It's not to level the scope to the gun, it is to level the gun to the force of gravity. To be effective, it is first necessary to ensure the scope is aligned to the barrel but these are distinctly different things.

I do agree that good, repeatable shooting mechanics can be learned but it's by no means trivial. For example, it's much easier to achieve this repeatability when practiced daily in a familiar location but it is quite easy to be fooled when on unfamiliar terrain. Considering a suitable level can be fitted for $5, why be without it?
 
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I get what you're saying, when I'm hunting or plinking with the boys I don't tend to look at the level very often and don't need to. But when I'm shooting long distances from the bench for extreme accuracy, or even shooting pests at long distance, it's imperative that the gun stays level. For me this is especially true when I'm dialing my corrections. If the gun is not absolutely level when I dial 4-5 mils for example, the projectile flies off at an angle and misses the target. If I can use a cheap $15 tool that lets me glance up and make sure my gun is level before pulling the trigger, I'll use it every time. It's just a tool, I don't think using a tool takes individual skill out of the equation at all.

Stoti
 
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 I see no problem using any tool that makes you a better shooter,I don't need a level after my scope is level to my gun;I do check to make sure my "stance"is level by knowing my targets are level,that is when I am target shooting,I done so much shooting over the years that instincts are honed,that is what practiced is about.

One other thing is when I was target shooting with a good friend of mine, who happened to be a national champion some 30 years ago,I beat him...because he had not shot a rifle in decades,I beat him easy,no big deal,butt and this is a Big Butt,he did not like it and over the next weeks of shooting everyday he was determined to beat me,I could see his old skills returning to him and that determination that a champion has to have returned to him,I watched the way he gripped the rifle and his stance and breath control,I watched him get better and better and he started beating me a lot and he Loved it and I learned more in those weeks and months from him than I had in the many years before.

His name was Bill and we would shot five shots each,off hand at a target 15yards away,we used my old special R-7 and our groups had to be less than a dime to win,get this, my R-7 was set up for me and I shoot left handed so Bill had to overcome that small problem... as we never adjusted the scope..And here is the kicker, Bill could only take 5 shoots, it is a lot of concentration,but after 5 shots Bill had to hit his oxygen bottle.

Moral of the story,you can save yourself a lot of time by learning how to shoot from someone that knows how to shoot.........good.
 
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A level helps overcome human nature when you are shooting longer in mountainous areas. There is a tendency to "assume the ground is level" and try to put the windage part of the crosshairs parallel with the ground. This introduces cant on longer shots. But if you are shooting in the flatlands (such as a gun range), then this is less of a problem.
 
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A case could be made, that if you ease your grip up on a gun then it should naturally balance in a near perfectly level position.

Thanks to gravity.

If you're having a problem over-canting then maybe some exercise holding a clipboard or a book upright might help.
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I cannot see a gun being naturally balanced at all. Doesn't seem it could have any tendency to be vertical on it's own.

If I recall correctly, one of the NRA shooting videos suggested that most people cannot readily detect cant until you get above 5 degrees and that 3 degrees of cant can begin to make a noticeable difference in POI.
 
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I think I will experiment and see how far a distance it takes for cant to effect shots.....Even when I was shooting 100yds with my rifle on bags I did not see any problems....What if your scope has no crosshairs,just a Centered dot,you would not be able to tell if you were canting the rifle ,wouldn't you just center the dot on the target,a dot is a circle your rifle bore is a circle,if those two circles are aligned right how could canting happen..What I am thinking is that the scope and rifle bore are not centered perfect and that is what is effecting the accuracy.

I read those articles on canting and will not dispute them,I believe what was said,I am not trying to start anything other than to think and learn.

If everything is set up 'right"canting will have little effect...just my thought..I do listen to what the gentlemen are saying about long distance shooting and they proved it to themselves and in the end that is all that matters,a level helps them shoot better .
 
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If everything is set up 'right"canting will have little effect...just my thought..
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Sorry, I’m not following this statement. If everything is set up correctly, cant will absolutely have a predictable effect based on the angle and the amount of trajectory drop relative to the zero distance. It’s trigonometry, no way around it.


 
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If everything is set up 'right"canting will have little effect...just my thought..
Click to expand...

Sorry, I’m not following this statement. If everything is set up correctly, cant will absolutely have a predictable effect based on the angle and the amount of trajectory drop relative to the zero distance. It’s trigonometry, no way around it.

Click to expand...

im with jason,



1. cant is real



2. a scope level is used to level the reticle in relation to gravity

(after aligning the vertical crosshair to the bore of the gun "use the mirror method,it rocks!" )



3. a scope level does not make you a better shooter,if you cant shoot....you cant shoot lol

4. a scope level does allow you to make long range (and short range) shots with calculated repeatable consistency 😎
 
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