I like shooting at clays with .22 rifles. Watching them break when hit is fun — and being able to shoot out the center cleanly without breaking the rim is more so. But with open sights it’s only easy up close, at 25-50 yards. Hearing much about the accuracy reputation of Marlin 60 but unable to achieve it, I put a 2-7x scope on mine. It’s a centerfire scope with parallax set at 100 yards.
It’s a pretty simple, entirely non-tactical optic with a duplex reticle. I zeroed it at 50 yards.
Yesterday, the clays were set up all the way out to 140 yards. I ended up guessing the holdover, but it turned out to be correct when checked in a ballistic calculator.
This sight picture works for 125 to 140 yards. At 100, the clay should be centered at the top of the thick part of the duplex reticle. From 50 yard zero, 100 yard drop with CCI Mini-mags is about 6 inches (6MOA), and at 140 it is nearly 17 inches (12MOA). The angular size of the clay at that range is a trifle under 3MOA, well within Marlin 60’s group size. And, as expected, once the correct sight picture was figured out, I was able to hit with every shot. Thank you, Appleseed instructors!
At 140, did you have any Kentucky windage to deal with?
A good open sight setup, with good eyes, should do very well at 100 yards. A peep sight will help a lot with less-than-good eyes, as the smaller aperture will negate a lot of lens error and increase depth of field. A scope’s reticle features, even with a relatively simple reticle as you say, can be very useful.
Joe; I believe it was all “Tennessee elevation”.
Looks like you have been teaching the Swiss S4G style with the elevated rear arm and the support arm below. Or did she do that intuitively?
Shooting clays out of the air, especially pickups against guys with shotguns, is REALLY fun!