Lynn Garnand, Lead Instructor & NRA Training Counselor
If you are like me, the days of seeing that target clearly at 100 yards with open sights on your rifle are long gone. When you consider buying a scope, you quickly realize that making an educated decision on what is the right choice is not going to be easy or simple. Our optics class is intended to give you a leg up on the basics of what you need to know to make a good decision. Once you have made that decision, we then want to equip you with some knowledge of what to do next.
Coming into the class, we assume you know nothing about scopes. Of course, you likely do, but we level set everyone with the basics. The nomenclature and the basic types of scopes. Things like: First and Second Focal Plane, what does 3-9×42 mean vs 4-16×56; so, essentially how to read the specs.
Once you get that down, we need to talk about MILS vs MOA. This can turn into a religious discussion. We try to avoid that and give you some real-world situations of how both those systems work and how you would use them.
Next, the world of reticles. Like the MOA and MIL discussion, we will give you a taste of what is out there so you can consider what is right for your kind of shooting. A target shooter will likely make a different choice than a 150-yard deer hunter.
OK, once we get an idea of what you are buying, we need to talk about how you mount it. Rings, bases, bore sighting, and yes, shooting dirt, my favorite way of sighting in a new scope. We will present you with some options for mounting, tools, thoughts about services available for getting you started if its your first scope and things to consider if it’s not your first scope.
Lastly, we will cover some fun things to do with your scope that do not involve shooting. Reading wind and ranging to be exact. There is a lot of information available to us when we look through a scope if we take a moment to take it all in. The farther you shoot; the more information is available. We leave you with a couple handy formulas to try the next time you are out.
Join us for an interesting morning of sharing about joining optics to your rifle at our first Intro to Magnified Optics Course on Saturday, 12/21/2019 from 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.