Ruger American Rimfire with a DNZ game reaper scope mount(medium height) with a Nikon Prostaff Rimfire II 3-9x40 BDC150. Sorry no gun pics, it looks like the rest though I promise

This was my first trip to the range I just joined and I just wanted to take a quick trip out there to check it out & sight in the Ruger. I've had the Ruger for a little while but only shot it with irons, the scope is a fairly new addition.

I took 8 different ammos out to try and see what it likes. This is mostly stuff I just picked up here and there during the shortage. My 10/22 likes Stingers so I have a little stockpile of those along with the bulk packs.

This was only 25 yards. Shot off a wooden front rest, no rear rest just using my hand. Shot all targets on 3x, the crosshair on the scope got really blurry if I turned up the magnification, no parralax or focus adjustment (fixed 50yard parralax) so that kind of sucked. All 5 shots were taken pretty quickly, just however long it took to cycle the bolt and get steady on the target. Only waited however long it took to load the mag between groups.

First group...
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Second group...
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Third group...
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Fourth group...
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Fifth group...
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Sixth group...
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Seventh group...
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Eighth group...
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I decided to zero the rifle in with the Stingers since they grouped well, aren't overly expensive, and I use them with the 10/22.

I haven't shot in awhile so I know I'm pretty rusty and could do better on some of these, especially with an adjustable parralax scope and higher magnification, but over all I'm pretty happy with the rifle. It's main purpose is a small game hunting rifle so it's more than adequate for that.

I want to take it back when I have more time & shoot it at 50 yards to see if the scope makes it any easier. I just didnt have the time today to switch ranges before shooting hours were up.

Actually not typical for a gun to group best with hyper velocity ammo. And keep in mind at extended ranges groups tend to fall apart faster with the hyper velocity and are also going to show more effect from the wind as the range increases

That is what I've always heard (have even seen a lot of hate for the stingers) but in my two Rugers and my dad's old .22 the stingers seem to shoot well & do good damage on small critters.

I'll try to repeat the test at 50 yards & maybe 100 yards to see the changes.

The Federal HV Match was the most impressive to me of those groups, I blame the one shot that "ruined" the group on myself.

Like I said in the 2nd post this gun is my small game hunting rifle so I wasn't super serious trying to shoot tight groups. I shoot most game between 10 and maybe 40 yards so it's shooting acceptable groups for that. I guarantee I could have cut those groups down if I had tried harder, but this was just a quick trip to sight it in and find a decent ammo for it. Other than the 4-5 shots I took to sight in those are the only groups I shot. After I shot the groups I shot 2-3 more to zero the Stingers & then shot 2-3 more for fun, then I had to pack up.

When I repeat at 50 & 100 I will shoot some groups consistent with how I did it today & then I can try to shoot some "serious" groups to see what the rifle can really do.

That's a little weird.  Mine will shoot groups like that at fifty yards.  Also I don't understand why your crosshairs are blurry.  In my experience the sight picture will blur a little if I'm using too much magnification for the range but the crosshairs will remain clear.  I always shoot for groups on the highest magnification as well.

I'm using a Mueller APV on mine BTW in Burris Signature Z rings.

Talking about your blurry crosshairs, did you adjust the eyepiece on the rear of the scope after you mounted it?

That gun looks to be a winner

I didn't understand it either. Standing in my yard using the scope at full mag the crosshairs are crystal clear even at 5-10 yards where the image is getting blurry. At 25 yards it's clear/clear.

I would normally shoot groups at a higher magnification, and if I could have I think they would have been better. 3x was better than nothing but I still felt it was difficult to be super consistent with my POA.

This Nikon doesn't have a quick focus eye ring on the occular side like some of my other Nikon's do. If I try turning the occular it does begin to unscrew but I don't think I'm supposed to do that, and I didn't notice a difference when I did move it a little.

It's an "old-school" adjustment.  You should have a little lock ring just forward of the ocular bell.  Loosen it and turn the entire bell as you look through it at a neutral background.  It could take several turns to get it right (the threads are very fine).  If the crosshairs start to blur turn back the other way.  When you have it as perfect as you think it gets put it down, snap it up to your eyes and look.  Any imperfections in the focus will show up that way and allow you to do minor tweaks.  Hope this helps.

http://download.nikonimglib.com/archive3/xOAsW00UNe1d03TOObc42sv27p64/814C_1_1410_PROSTAFF_RIMFIRE_II_RS_x_dl(2B)1.pdf

Here is a copy of the manual.  The lock ring is part #5

Thank you! That is indeed what I turned but I thought it wasn't supposed to adjust that way. I have a few other Nikons with the fast focus ring at the very back so I thought this might not have been adjustable. I guess I should have looked at the manual a bit better

I wonder why it made such a difference being at the range vs looking through it in the yard? Oh well, I'll just adjust it next time.

If you don't have it perfect it can look OK just fooling around but when you are really using it it will be out of focus.  Also important to focus it on a neutral background (I use the sky or a white wall).  Make sure to turn the entire rear bell of the scope AFTER you loosen the lock ring a few turns.  Don't just turn the lock ring it won't do anything.  Depending on your eyes it can take several turns to get it right.  If you use glasses/contacts be sure to wear them doing this.  Turn it one way and if it gets worse go back the other way, etc.  Good luck!  Be sure to snug up the lock ring after you're done.

Went to the range this afternoon to try again. 25 yard range was full so I went to 50 first. I shot all the ammo (except the cb22's) again to see how it grouped at 50. I'll have to add the group sizes for that later as I didnt take pics.

I took the 3 best from 50 & reshot at 25 once some people left. I was still getting a blurry crosshair at anything higher than minimum magnification when on target @ 25 (50 was fine). On a nuetral background the crosshair was clear but once over the target it got fuzzy. I figured out if I closed my eye & reopened it would be in focus for a second so I shot that way @ 9x. Just shot 1 group of each at 25y.

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I started a google spreadsheet document to record what size groups I'm shooting and at what range with this rifle. That way I can just put whatever group size I shoot right into that and it will keep track of whatever the best group for that ammo type was and it will keep a running average.

This was what I shot at 50 today.

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Not so great. I'll just keep shooting it and see if it "breaks in" at all. The CCI Standard velocity seems promising at both ranges and I resighted the rifle for that for now.

It will and CCI Sub-Sonic HPs (just a HP standard vel) is the cat's ass in my suppressed squirrel rifle.

Mine likes CCI SV best as well.  Second place is CCI "Suppressor", which is what I use for hunting (I have a Spectre II).  The crosshairs blurring out on you still has me wondering.  Many times your eye can "accomodate" for an out-of-focus situation momentarily.  Best way to check is to hold the gun, look at the sky (or a distant object), then snap the gun up and look through the scope.  If the focus is not dead-on you may notice your eye trying to focus.  It's a weird feeling and I don't know how to describe it but you know something is a little off.  If small tweaks to the focus don't make it better I might start to look at possible defects in the scope.  Those groups you got aren't too bad though.  I get MOA groups (1/2 inch) with mine at fifty.  My scope also goes to 14x so that may have a little to do with it.

Some of the groups were ok, some were horrible. IMO, none were great. Not sure if it's me, the ammo, the gun, or a combination.

The cross hair thing is weird. Pointed at the concrete that surrounds the berm the cross hair was in focus. If I take it out right now and point it out the window at the sky, the grass, the neighbors house, etc the cross hair is in focus no matter the range or magnification. As soon as I put the cross hair over the backstop/target area it went blurry on me. Any adjustment I made (it's pretty much turned all the way in, so I was unscrewing it) just made the cross hair worse on the "blank" backgrounds and I couldn't really notice a difference on the target.

Like I said, if i closed my eye and reopened it everything was in focus for a split second then the cross hair went fuzzy. Sometimes I could "walk" my eye into the scope and keep the cross hair in focus for a bit as well. What I mean by walk is if I had my eye positioned outside the "eyebox" of the scope and slowly moved it in I would pick up the sight picture and could keep it crisp for a bit.

Didn't have any of those problems at 50 yards.

Didn't have any of those problems when I switched to my .30-06(shot at 25 yards a couple times to sight in then switched to 100), although that does have adjustable parallax on the objective.

I need to try shooting it somewhere else and see if I have the same problem. Maybe that backstop/target/lighting is just fucking with my eye.

My RAR compact threaded will outshoot my buddy's 77/22 and his custom heavy barreled 10/22.

I took it back out today and I brought one of those Caldwell "the rock jr" rests with the small bag & vertical screw adjustment. The wooden rests the range provides aren't the best and I was zeroing a couple other guns so I wanted a good rest.I didn't take any pics but I was shooting 5 round groups (with CCI standard velocity) from 1/4" to 3/8" they basically looked the same as the group from my post on 7/31. Since this is my primary small game hunting rifle I did take some 1" target stickers out there and and did 1 shot on them to simulate a headshot for a squirrel. I bullseye'd 4 out of 5, and the fifth was still in the circle, so they would have all been clean kills.

I got the other rifles on paper at 25y and needed to take them to 100y so I took the Ruger along and after finding my POA I was able to drop 5 out of 5 shots into the 3" target stickers every time, consistently 3 out of 5 were in the 1.5" center circle, and occasionally 4 out of 5 were in the 1.5" center circle. Often 2 shots were touching each other. I don't know what to really expect out of a .22 for groups at 100y but it's probably a stretch that I would try to shoot a squirrel at that range, but the gun could probably do it cleanly. Something bigger like a rabbit, coon, or possum would be no problem.

The one weird thing about it though is despite using Nikon's Spot On app for BDC references and ballistics, that didn't translate to my gun at all. I have it set for the right scope, I have it set for the right ammo, I have the zero set for 25 yards, I have the scope height set at 1.5" (which is dead on center of bore to center of tube), and I have the magnification slider set to the same as the scopes marking. According to Spot On at 6x (which is what I was shooting at for some reason instead of 9x) I should be using the 3rd circle below the crosshair to hit at 102 yards. That resulted in shooting very high, and I found the 2nd circle to be my actual POA. I have to drop the magnification slider to 4x for the 2nd circle to become the recommended POA by the app (and I highly doubt the markings are off and it was at 4x as I was shooting my AR with a 3x PA prism and the magnification difference was pretty noticeable), or I have to manually enter a velocity of almost 1300fps at 6x (and there is no way standard velocity is going that fast...) The ballistic table showed a -8.81" drop at 100 yards (with the 25 yard zero) and when I used the 3rd circle the group I shot was ~8" above my POA, which really confuses me. I haven't checked the backstop with a LRF to see if it's actually 100/50/25 yards, so I think I'll do that but I doubt that's the issue.