Sniper Rifle Protocol – Part 4
Acquiring your Equipment – Optics

by Mark Bunch/Royal Gorge Gun Club President/
Chairman Fremont County NRA

Choosing a Riflescope
The first documented telescopic rifle sight was
invented between 1835 and 1840. This sight was called the Chapman-James sight and by today’s standards it was a piece of junk but back in its day it was considered pretty good.
Having a good quality scope on your rifle can mean the difference between coming home with meat for the freezer or not at all. It can also mean the difference in helping you get back home safely from some far-off dangerous place. Unfortunately, numerous shooters buy a good quality rifle and the cheapest piece of junk scope money can buy and then wonder why they can’t
hit anything.

A scope has to be ruggedly built and able to withstand the recoil from whatever caliber rifle or pistol you are putting it on. The official standardized testing for recoil tolerance is plus 7 lbs. of recoil pulse energy over and above the max rating for your scope. These figures aren’t usually printed anywhere for you, but typically good quality scopes will come with a manufacturers recoil tolerance guide for their scopes which takes this overage into account. These recoil guides will tell you what the maximum caliber your scope can be used on safely. This safety overage allows for repeated recoil in a short time duration. For example, if you have a high power semi-automatic firearm such as an M1A or HK 91, FN-FAL that is scoped, you have the ability to easily fire 20 or more rounds
per minute.
You also want to choose a scope that is nitrogen filled and fog proof. I can’t even count how many times I have been hunting in adverse weather conditions, ie wet and cold where someone I was with had a scope that had fogged up and was unusable under the conditions at the time. Seems like a no brainer to me, save your money and buy yourself a good quality scope that is sealed, waterproof and won’t fog up on you when you need it the most. Having owned and operated my own gun and pawn shop and long-distance gun range for many years, I am always shocked to see what some of my customers and gun club member’s use for glass on that fancy new precision rifle they just bought.

I always tell them, if you put a $100 scope on a $5,000 rifle, you now have a $150 rifle when it comes to shooting long distance with it. I know this to be pretty close to the truth, as I have had quite a few of my members/customers come back to see me and then order a decent scope the seconnd time around.
Another thing to consider is the diameter of your scope tube as you have several choices. Typically most scopes these days are either 1 inch (25mm) or 30 mm. Your high end 30mm European scopes such as Steiner, Svarovski, Schmidt & Bender will pass more light than a corresponding 1 inch scope but not by as much as you would think. The biggest reason for larger scope tube diameters is to accommodate larger erectors for more elevation travel. It does seem to make sense that the larger the tube the more light it will allow. However, the human eye can only recognize so much light, rated by the available exit pupil of the human eye. A youthful, dark adapted human eye under the age of 25 can recognize 8 to 9 mm of exit light and will slowly degrade every three to four years with age. A good rule is to figure that if you are younger than age 50 and relatively healthy that your pupil will expand to around 7 mm. For those 50 and over it is probably closer to 6 mm.
Therefore, if you choose to purchase one of the high end 34 or 35mm scope tubes do so knowing that you are purchasing increased elevation travel on the scope erector much more so than increased light transmission. The quality and type of ultraviolet coatings on your lenses and chromatic aberration are far more important in determining the light gathering ability of your rifle scope than is tube diameter. Generally, higher end scopes will come with a zero stop which is a very handy feature to have for rapid return to your zeroed in distance. I always zero all my rifle at 100 yards then either dial to my longer distance requirements or use my reticle.
Choosing your reticle and scope adjustments are both important choices. You can choose from M.O.A. (minute of angle) or MIL increments. One MOA is 1.047 inches at 100 yards or commonly referred to as 1 inch at 100 yards. At 1,000 yards, a one MOA group would be slightly over 10 inches in diameter, or commonly thought of as a 10-inch group. I prefer scopes with MOA adjustments as that is what I was trained with and what I have used my entire life. My scopes are mostly all 1 /4 MOA meaning that one click of elevation or windage will move my bullet’s impact approximately 1/4 of an inch at 100 yards. At 1,000 yards one click moves my bullet impact roughly 2.5 inches. Downside to MOA is that you have to be able to do math in your head and the rounded down variable is not an exact value.
MIL adjustments are all the rage these days and the craze for this began in Europe a few years ago although it was the need for precise aiming in artillery batteries during WWI where MIL adjustments were first used. A MIL or milliiradian is also an angular measurement which equals 1/1000th of 3600 or 3.6 inches at 100 yards. An MOA based reticle allows you as the shooter to make finer adjustments at long distance than you can make with a MIL based system. MIL based systems are almost always in .1 mil increments or .36 of an inch at 100 yards. For example one click with a 1 / 4 MOA scope at a distance of 1,000 yards will move your point of impact approximately 2.5 inches where a MIL based scope at one click will move your point of impact 3.6 inches.
Which one should you choose?
If you are shooting at known distance competitions that allow scopes such as F Class you are better served to use a scope that adjusts in MOA. The distance is known, you have no need to range, the targets are calibrated in MOA and you’ll be able to speak to your fellow competitors in a similar language. If you own a good quality laser range finder your need to range with your rifle scope reticle is not of critical importance in my opinion.
Ranging with a MIL based reticle is easier to do than with one that uses MOA. MILs operate on a base 10 and it is easier to use on the fly than MOA because the numbers are smaller and easier to work with, but they are not as precise to adjust as 1 / 4 MOA value scopes are. Converting from MILS to MOA is simple multiplication. Whatever your reading is in MILS you multiply by 3.44 and that will give you the corresponding MOA value. Going the other direction, MOA to MILS you simply divide instead.
1st or 2nd focal plane reticle
Now that you have decided whether to choose a scope with MOA or MIL adjustments, you need to pick what focal plane reticle you want to use. The older second plane reticle is the most common and these reticles stay the exact same size when you look through your scope regardless of whether you are on the lowest magnification setting or the highest. A first plane reticle will change size with the magnification setting you choose which keeps the range finding capabilities of your scope reticle constant and able to range correctly regardless of whatever power setting you are using. The older second plane reticle is placed on the back side of the erector tube or closest to your eye whereas the newer first focal plane is on the front side of the erector tube or furthest from your eye.
If you use a laser rangefinder to acquire distance or you are shooting at known distances, the second plane reticle will work just fine for you. I personally have both types, depending on the type of rifle I have them mounted on. If you are purchasing your optic new for your sniper rifle, I recommend choosing a first plane reticle.

Brands to consider
Today’s shooter has numerous high quality rifle scopes to choose from. It is less about what brand you choose to buy and more about the features/benefits of the scope you have chosen. You are definitely going to want a variable power scope and a good rule of thumb is that you want at least one power of magnification for every hundred yards you wish to shoot. For 1,000 yards you need a minimum of 10x. For running a NV clip on in front of your day optic, you need your day optic to power down to no more than 5x on its low end in order to work well with your NV optic.
You want to choose a scope that is nitrogen filled and is water/fog proof. You should also get one that has a minimum of 3.25 inches of eye relief to allow you more distance between your eye socket and the eye piece of your scope. This measurement is referred to as the Eye-Box. Longer eye-relief translates into less eye fatigue if you have to observe for long periods of time through your scope. Less chance of getting a black eye is another benefit. What you don’t want to do is buy a piece of junk low end scope such as Tasco, Simmons and the low end Bushnells. These things are notoriously unreliable and won’t hold a zero to save your life by. Bushnell does make some good middle tier scopes but that cannot be said for either Simmons or Tasco.
Scope brands to consider on the high end are: Swarovski, Schmidt & Bender, Leica, Zeiss, Steiner, Nightforce, some Leupold models, US Optics, etc., all of which are top quality scopes and not priced for your average shooter. Swavoroski and Zeiss have the best glass and image available regardless of what anyone else tells you about this subject. I have purchased several of the new Leupold 5HD scopes which are 35mm in the 5-25x range and they are simply spectacular.
Middle of the road scope manufactures to consider are Burris, some Bushnell models, Sightron, Vortex and some Leupold models will give you a good quality scope that will likely do everything you need a rifle scope to do while saving you thousands of dollars.