Henry Rifle Forums

earlier today I was able to spend much of the afternoon trying to site in a scope on our BBS H012 44 Mag .... we were firing HSM Cowboy Action 44 Mag 200 gr RNFP at very short range (10 yds or so) they did fine .... at 25 yds I couldn't get them to group with any consistency .... at 50 yards the spread became totally unacceptable .... I admit to being mystified because in past trips they performed well .... the only difference was mounting a different scope .... in checking I found several mounting screws that weren't completely tight so the mystery may have been solved .... needless to say, this is really bugging me, I hope to get back out there ASAP and find out ....

per the NFL ==== upon further review, the call on the range has been reversed .. .. I took a 3X9 Nikon (that I've had since the 80's) off of our 45-70 and installed it on our 44 Mag ... on the 45-70 it really worked well .... having just purchased a 2.5X10 Nikon I thought it made since to put the newest, best scope on our 45-70 .... at the range today it grouped really well but with the elevation adjusted as high as possible it still shot low .... my initial plan was to shim it so as to raise front of the scope .... after considering everything, I've changed my mind .... I'm going to put the older Nikon back on the 45-70, hopefully it will perform as well as it did before .... then, I'm going to install the new scope on the 44 Mag .... once it is tightened into place, my hope is it will do well on that rifle .... stay tuned, the saga continues ..

I feel a great deal better after spending some time at the range this morning .... switching the scopes paid dividends .... after going through about 80 rounds, at 70 yards, I was able to confirm that our 44 Mag Henry simply doesn't like the HSM 44 Mag Cowboy Action ammo .... groups ran no smaller than a softball and many more in line with a basketball ... I actually came to that conclusion rather quickly but that rifle is so much fun to shoot, I kept at it .... in addition to being fun, doing so gives me some brass for reloading .... reinstalling to our veteran Nikon 3X9 on our 45-70 was a very different story .... after firing 3 rounds of HSM 45-70 ammo at 10 yds (the first two were followed by adjustments), it was ready to move back to 70 yards .... the target below shows the 5 rounds fired at that range after the first shot I made a minor scope adjustment, after firing the second I made what proved to be way to big of an adjustment as can be seen by the third shot .... my goal was to have it shoot roughly an inch high at 70 yards, shots 4 & 5 were good enough for me .... I now have no doubt that once we get our reloading equipment setup and in operation, the scopes on both our 44 Mag and 45-70 can be fine tuned to deliver groups we will be happy with

JEBar wrote:... I now have no doubt that once we get our reloading equipment setup and in operation, the scopes on both our 44 Mag and 45-70 can be fine tuned to deliver groups we will be happy with

Thanks for the range and ammo report and the target photo, JEBar. I'm sure your scopes and handloads will make you quite happy.

Great job!