Sighting, how far from a scope should your eye be?

[Steyr]

It sounds a bit long winded but before you fit the scope to the rifle, if you hold it freehand with a ruler touching your eyebrow & resting alongside the scope , you can very quickly find the correct eye relief. Because you consentrate on the sight picture alone, rather than how the rifle feels which can happen when its mounted, 75/85mm works for me.

Wow you like to make things difficult dont you

All you need do is put the clamps on the rail in nominal positions and then mount the scope. Do up the top halves so the scope can slide in the mounts with a little friction to hold it in place.

Then you mount the rifle with your eyes shut and adjust the scope back and forth until the image is right repeating the closed eye mount proceedure.

Tighten up the front or rear mount to hold the scope in place and loosen and move the opposite mount on the rail for its final position say to allow for a lamp mount to be fitted or to avoid saddle/mag clash.

Tighten the adjusted mount then do the same with the last mount if requroed.

The other important question you need to consider is what height mounts yo go for - low med or high. The front objective is a consideration here as big diameter scopes may need med or high rings to clear the action/barrel and the mag projection needs to be considered too along with saddle clash.

If the scope is too high, you encounter the floating cheek problem so whilst the scope is on the right eye releif position, your eye is below or above (and in some cases) left or right of the perfect eye alignment.

In reality, an adustable cheekpeice is the only way to correctly set up your rifle but most stocks do not include this as std. An adjustable butt plate to tweak height and angle of contact with the shoulder is also a big aid too otherwise your like a quaver - "floaty sight".......