This may be hard to explain so bear with me.
I purchased a new Savage rifle 11FCNS in a .260 Remington. I hand loaded 20 rounds with a conservative load and some 120 grain sierra bullets that I already had. I went to the gun range with the intentions of breaking in the barrel and just getting the gun on paper. My normal procedure for sighting in is to center the target while looking down the bore and align the scope. I’ve done this probably 30-40 times and have always had good success with it. I have always been on the paper at 100 yards. I put up 2 targets side by side ( the targets are about 15 inches wide by 18 inches so I have a 30 x 18 total area) aligned everything and began the breaking in procedure. I wasn’t hitting the paper! Not a major concern as my # goal was to get the breaking procedure completed so I could work on what I wanted to reload. I figured I just didn’t get everything lined up just right. I shot a few rounds cleaning in between and then tried aligning everything again, still no luck. I tried shooting at the top middle of the target, bottom middle, middle left edge, right edge, all 4 corners....to make a long story short I ended up holding a foot and half above the target (on my 17th shot) and hit the target about 3 inches from the bottom, I moved the scope up 18 inches (not clicks but inches!) and hit the target still 6 inches low. Moved the scope up another 6 inches and now I was about right height wise, I was about 2 inches to the right but that was easy to correct. Once I was hitting the paper all the scope adjustments were as they should be so I’m pretty sure that is not a problem. By now I’m out of ammo but I just had to check....so I pulled the bolt again and lined the bore up with the target then looked through the scope, the scope is just slightly right of center and about a foot below the target (not the bull’s eye below the whole target). If anyone has ever seen or heard of this, or has any possible explanation please let me know as I am baffled.