For those who are not familiar with this product, the Accucover is a scope slip on flip up cover which has high visibility markings designed to help you improve the consistency of your eye to scope alignment, therefore reducing parallax error. The makers also state that it will aid the reduction of cant error and increase the speed of target acquisition.

See the Accucover site:
http://www.accucover.com/

As nearly all of my airgun shooting is currently concerned with the control of rats and squirrels , I was naturally going to be interested in any device which could potentially speed up target acquisition and reduce potential parallax and rifle cant error.

My first impression of the Accucover, was that of a well made quality item (as you’d expect from a flip-up costing nearly £20). Fitting the Accucover on my Hawke SR-6 was a little bit of a stretch, the Accucover I purchased was the largest in the range designed to fit scopes with oculars between 41-44mm.

Once the Accucover was aligned with the reticule, I practiced shouldering the rifle in slightly different standing positions. It immediately became apparent that the Accucover made slight inaccuracies in relationship between eye position and scope very obvious. Its fluorescent markings also made slight rifle cant errors very evident.

To simulate the taking of rapid standing shots, I skewered a dozen acorns on the barbs of a barbwire fence in the corner of a field (20° either side of me at 25 yards). I then randomly chose a target, shouldered the rifle and took a considered shot. The results were very pleasing, all the shots were taken in approximately 2 seconds and all were on target.

In summary, I found the Accucover did significantly increase the speed of target acquisition. The brightly coloured markers are excellent indicators of eye alignment and cant errors which make acquisition of the correct rifle hold a very rapid and intuitive process.

My initial field test of this product has greatly impressed me - sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.