So you purchased a red dot scope and must now mount it. At first it seems easy to do but it can be a little tricky. After All, you bought it to help you shoot more accurately right? Well, here are a few tips to help walk you through the mounting process so it does help you instead of being a big headache.

Scopes with the normal crosshair configuration at the very least will give you a sense of left/right (the vertical crosshair), up/down (the horizontal crosshair), orientation on your rifle.

 The red dot scopes don't offer you any orientation because all you have is the scopes body or tube and a round dot within the scope itself. This is sort of an exaggeration but will demonstrate what happens if the scope is not mounted correctly. If the scopes left/right, up/down, axis is rotated slightly then you will not have a true bullet tracking adjustment. Let's say your bullets impact is printing the target at 6 inches to the right @ 100 yards. Therefore we know we must move the scopes left/right adjustment to the left 6 clicks. If the scope is mounted with a rotation to the right, it will print the next round somewhat higher than the first shot as well as to the left because we don't have it mounted in true left/right, up/down, tube rotation zero. Hopefully, you can visually imagine what is happening here. Now, here is what you can do about it.

MAKE SURE YOUR RIFLE IS NOT LOADED !!!!

Lets assume you have a bolt action or inline muzzleloader that you can remove the rifles bolt and/or breech plug so you can look straight through the barrel at a close up target. Take a piece of standard white printer paper and make a perfectly aligned black crosshair with something like a black magic marker, etc. Tape this paper to a cardboard box or other flat surface like a wall, etc. Leave the scopes rings loose so that you can still rotate it left and right. Align the scope as best you can.

Set your target about 20 yards away (you can change this distance if needed) and place your rifle on a steady rest. Look through the rifle barrel and center the crosshair you drew within the rifles barrel. Turn on your scope and adjust the dot so it is perfectly centered over your black crosshair.  With the rifle steadied solidly, move the left/right adjustment full left. The dot should trace over your targets horizontal line to the left without change to the up/down axis. Do the same by rotating the left/right adjustment full right. Once again, the dot should trace over the horizontal line to the right without change to the up/down axis. If your dot traces along the horizontal line with an up/down shift, rotate your scope so it follows perfectly to the left and then to the right, along the horizontal line. Once this is established, alternately tighten the screws on the rings by making a turn or two on the front ring screws and then a turn or two on the back ring screws until secured in place. Do not over tighten; these screws do break easily, even with the best brands.

I personally know of one red dot scope that makes mounting a whole bunch easier. It is the Millet line of red dot scopes. Millet has gone the extra mile and has placed a "white" colored mark on the scope tube and another "white" mark on the rings. These marks are precise top dead center. You simply rotate the scopes white mark until it lines up with the rings mark, tighten the screws and you are done. It's that simple.

So if your not happy with sighting in your red dot, give this a try and your resulting shoots may get a lot better. This too may not work well enough for all red dot scopes but it's worth a try. Happy trails.