Re: Where to go from here?
First, you're already doing rather well to begin with.
I would go over the rifle to ensure all is as it should be. Fasteners should be properly tight, crown and optics should be functional, and care should be exercised to ensure bore preservation.
Assuming that all is as it should be with the rifle, I would readdress my marksmanship process to ensure that I am covering the basics with due diligence. It never hurts to periodically rerun the initial training process.
No matter what the status of my current marksmanship skills, I insist on treating them as a perishable. Use 'em, or lose 'em.
I believe that every serious marksman should and does engage in skills confirmation. Some call it practice, others call it training, I call it essential.
I don't call it plinking but maybe I should.
Take the shot right, every shot; anything else is a waste of good ammo and bore life. Plinking can be a good thing, as long as the marksman in you stays serious about how and when to release the shot. Anything else is a lot of things, but they all start with 'irresponsible'. You can never call a bullet back.
I do it with a 22 because doing it right demands frequent and significant repetition; and the 22 lends itself to enough economy to make that repetition affordable. It also does not demand great distances.
It does not demand sinking a fortune into a trainer.
The most desireable traits of a trainer are affordabilty and consistency. Pure accuracy is not paramount, all that matters regarding accuracy is that the main variant in a day's performance be the shooter. The rifle, however accurate it may be, needs only to be reliable in that accuracy, and not exquisitely so. The shooter should be the only actual variable.
When and only when it can be conclusively and repeatedly proven that the equipment has become a genuine limitation should an equipment upgrade be seriously considered.
When I reach a plateau, my questions about where to go next always begin with confirming that I myself am not the problem. If I'm at my peak, the system needs some other form of improvement, and not until I am.
It is my honest belief that a good marksman can wring out the ultimate iota of accuracy from any rifle, or tell you what's wrong with it. If I have doubts, they usually trace back to myself, and not the equipment.
A 'cheap' scope is seldom a serious impediment at distances as short as 100yd. There are a few elcheapo brands it will pay to keep at a distance, but I really don't think Vortex is one of them. The only one I will personally avoid by brand is BSA, and I'm sure somebody's going to disagree with me about that.
For my simple needs, the places where a scope falls flat are clarity and parallax. My inexpensive Tasco scopes will usually begin to have trouble reliably resolving a 22 caliber bullet hole at around 200yd. They also tend to fail to reliably compensate parallax correctly at the distances for which they provide the sharpest focus. To improve in these areas usually requires buying a significantly more expensive optic.
If it's not made in America or Europe, it's probably made in China, and probably lots of them from the same factory with the 'Company' name/emblem added just before they get boxed and sent out the door. If you doubt me, read the instructions; they often tend to have the same misspellings. And before we slam Chinese optics on a generic basis, hold on. As time goes by, they get better at it, just like the Japanese once did. These days, the Japanese do their oursourcing to China, but they still put their own nametags on the bozes. I think that means something, and that less and less of it is bad as time goes by.
I have covered the subject of parallax elsewhere on this site, ad nauseam. All I will say here is that I believe parallax is the single least understood and most significant factor in accuracy failure. Accuracy failure; i.e., getting less accuracy out of the equipment than it can reasonably deliver.
Finally, there's that concern about accuracy. It need not become an obsession.
For those who must, Benchrest is a valid occupation.
For the rest of us, there is a convenient word. It is 'adequate'.
If we find frustration to be a frequent companion, I suggest we're doing it wrong. Good enough is good enough.
If you can look at a target and be satisfied to the best of your own comfort level that it can be defeated, and by you, at will; there really isn't anywhere further to go from there. Allow yourself the luxury of reasonable satisfaction, in reasonable doses.
Greg
