Never to old to learn or Don't be afraid to ask....

For all of my 52 years of shooting I have been an aperture sighted target rifle bench rest type of guy. Up until three years ago I never really used or knew anything about scopes or center fire rifles for that mater. When I ordered my first center fire rifle I did a lot of reading on this forum and searching for the rifle that i expected would duplicate the near one hole accuracy I was experiencing from my old friend of fifty plus years, my 1955 Winchester Model 75T but at longer distances. I have been extremely pleased with my choice which as you probably have read is a Savage Model 12 VLP in 223 after finding it's favored load.
For around three years I have enjoyed this rifles potential and results but have been less than thrilled with my choice of scope which I selected based on name, reputation and price. It is a Nikon Monarch UCC 6.5 X 20 1/8" adjustments @ 100 yards with fine cross hairs and a 1/8" target dot. I have read the instructions for this scope and attempted many times to adjust the parallax and clarity to the point that I can read the type print on a standard 100 yard target. I never felt that the target image was clear at that distance. I decided to use high contrasting colored targets such as bright 2" red bulls on a bright white paper so it would appear sharper. I was struggling seeing 1" targets thus the change to 2" as my eyes are now 66 years old. I was able to group five nearly touching in the 1" red dot but it was getting to difficult and less fum to do so.
Here comes the never to old part.... My 26 year old (as of today well yesterday the 17th.) daughter Jessica loves to be with me and shoot at the private club. She does quite well I might add. I asked her to adjust the parallax after explaining on how to do so. I told her to adjust the clarity to suite her as she was going to shoot at least fifty or more rounds with the VLP. She did both and turned in several very good targets. I was using the Winny 75T at 50 yards on a 2" bright red bull with no lines on it. I had my very first ever four shot group with her spotting and each round went into the exact same hole!! She said "dead center hit", same hole, same hole, same thing. I put up the rifle and looked through the 75X Burris spotter and just had to go retrieve the target. Two pistol shooters held up for the retrival and they were all smiles.
We were just about done for the day with 100 plus .223 and 100 .22LR Lapua Master "L"s having been fired. Jessie spotted some green 12 gauge fired husks on the 100 yard berm, a white golf ball and an unbroken orange clay. I told her I wanted to fire a few from the Savage at them.
I adjusted the piano type stool for height, moved the stock forward to touch the nylon stop bushing on the heavy rest, adjusted the rear Protektor bag, placed one in the chamber, took off the safety and and started to sight the target.
Holly Molly!!! What happened to the scope??? It was clear as anything I have experienced. Jessie had hit the adjustment on the nose and I could see the 12 gage green shot gun husks as clear as they would appear fifteen feet away!! I had Jessie watch with the spotter scope and I was hitting them quickly and easily!! The golf ball exploded within just a few seconds of sighting!! The orange shot gun clay was no challenge at all. I felt like Superman!! The two pistol shooters were pretty impressed and wanted to handle the rifle and check it out. I let them shoot some rounds and they were hitting half dollar sized rocks on the berm off of the rest.
So what I am saying here is that I guess that I was getting complacent with what I thought the scope was capable of producing with ME adjusting it. By allowing another shooter to try their hand at the adjustments it brought the scope to life. As I said, I am not that familiar with scopes but by letting some one else have a hand at it I can now say that I am very pleased with it's performance for what I paid for it. It will do anything I require to meet my expectations for clarity and accuracy at 100 yards on small targets. It is now a whole lot better than I thought it could be for $421 in late 2007.

Pete K.