Hey guys,
I started out years ago on a CZ .22lr which still has a place in my gun safe but I’ve upgraded to a second hand Remington 700 .308 VLS for about €550 about a year ago and have been updating the platform since. It started off as I said with a VLS stock which although aesthetically nice wasn’t the best for what I had in mind – long range/hunting – as even with the Monte Carlo cheek piece it was difficult to comfortably get behind the scope without the aid of an aftermarket cheek piece which would keep slipping off the stock.


I messed with the idea of a DIY cheek comb or of spending a few hundred on a custom stock job but finally decided on an Accuracy International stock. I bought it for about €500 from another member of Boards.ie on the “for sale/wanted” forum.


Unfortunately it didn’t come with a bipod or a magazine so I fleeced the Harris Bi-Pod from the .22 and managed to track down an AI magazine from the wonderful Mr Eddie Graff of PSE Composites in Kinsale (I could listen to that man talk about firearms for hours!)

Next up was an ASE Utra moderator, bought again through boards.ie, which having threaded the barrel through T W Murrays of Cork slipped on like a glove. Although not whisper quiet, the ASE reduces the noise levels very well to the point that, although I’d never recommend firing weapons without hearing protection, it’s possible to do so with this.


I picked up a 10 MOA picatinny rail from 3rd Eye Tactical and they delivered it by post to the house.

The only issue I now had was the need of a good scope. I was in no rush to purchase as I’d thrown my 4-16x50 mm USMC Mildot Nikko Sterling 1/8th Inch click scope onto it as a stop-gap.

I knew looking at this setup that the scope was limiting the potential so I set about getting a new one. I read loads of articles on different fora and listened to anyone with an opinion on what sort of scope to go for. I realised that the Nikko Sterling’s biggest failing was the relationship between the scope and the adjustment values.

As an example, if I was on the range and fired a shot which missed the target by looking through the scope I could see that I was 1 mil low and 0.3 mil to the right. To calculate my adjustment I would have to work out what 1 mil equaled in inches and then depending on range make the adjustment in 1/8th of an inch clicks at 100 yards. The fact I was shooting in Meters was only an added complication!!!

As such I knew that I wanted an MOA Reticle with MOA adjustments or MRAD Reticle with MRAD adjustments so that I could make adjustments based on what I was seeing happen down range.

The arguments for FFP over SFP, MOA over MRAD are endless and would take up a dozen posts by themselves. But I decided to go for a FFP MRAD scope for a number of reasons.

I was already used to the MRAD system due to my old Nikko Sterling as well as the fact that I use mills for certain aspects of my day job. I find it easier to understand the concepts of its application and find it easy to judge distance with it.

The fact that my brother has an MRAD scope as well was an added advantage as we could both now spot for each other and call second shot adjustments and indicate targets using specific measurements. (“3 mill right of the white rock” rather than “do you see the right rock, well come right of that a bit till you see a bit of long grass, just next to……”)

The reason that I went for First Focal Plane over Second Focal Plane fell from the reasons outlined above too. No matter what magnification I was at in FFP a mil on the reticle equaled a mil on the ground.

In SFP you have to be at the correct magnification (usually the highest) for the correlation between the reticle and the ground to be equal. This means that at low mag and when scanning you can’t use your reticle to judge distance.

Alongside FFP Mil/Mil the other options I wanted on my scope were

• illuminated reticle,
• side parallax adjustment,
• tactical turrets, zero stop,
• < 6 lower magnification,
• > 20 upper magnification,
• and a minimum 50mm objective lens.

I wanted something that had a good reputation as I didn’t have the budget to be field testing kit for people and I also wanted a good warranty.
The kicker was that having spent the money on the rest of the set up I wanted all of this for under €1,000!

People told me I would never get that. But patience is a virtue and I came across the Vortex Viper PST 6-24x50 FFP MRAD. http://www.vortexoptics.com/product/vortex-viper-pst-6-24x50-ffp-riflescope-with-ebr-1-mrad-reticle/reticle

I looked into this option and was actually blown away by the reviews that it was getting. Especially the life time, transferable warranty. If it breaks, they’ll replace it!

I searched around for a good while and came across riflecraft.co.uk. I spoke to a legend of a man named Callum and he hooked me up with the scope. They organised the end user agreement (a license need for exporting certain products from the UK) and took care of everything else. What’s more, I got a 10% discount (thanks to the day job again!) and managed to get a set of Vortex Match Rings and a Vortex Scope Level included all for €944! (Don’t tell the missus!)
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I had to wait for a few weeks for it to come through but when I did I set about putting it on the rifle. The scopes rings are good enough that they don’t need lapping (apparently) because they’re precision machined from one piece of metal. So they just went straight onto the rail. There a dozens of ways of mounting a scope, but with the flat bottom of the vortex and the flat of the picatinny rail I find that the straight edge of a ruler is the easiest way to align the scope to the barrel.

Placing a builder’s level on top of the tactical turrets and balancing the scope level allowed me to ensure that the scope level was aligned to the reticle.

I brought it to the range and got it on paper at 50 meters before zeroing it at 100. Putting all the relevant data into iStelok on my phone meant that I was immediately able to progress to shooting accurately out to 700 meters.

I was using Remington Premier Match 168 gr ammo which was coming in at about €46 a box. Although a great round - a really great round ¬- it was coming in as unjustifiably expensive (thanks again to the missus!) So my next task was to find some more affordable ammunition.

I came across Hornadys new Steel Match Rounds.
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Instead of a brass case they use steel. Everything else – the powder, the primer and the round – is the same as their normal round.

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They state that due to the fact that they use steel they are able to dramatically reduce the price. And at €51.46 for a box of fifty they are 2 ½ times cheaper!

I sourced these from Duffys in galway and by filling out their online shopping form found on http://shoot.ie on Saturday they posted it on Monday and it arrived by courier on Tuesday! Now that’s a good service!

I haven’t shot the ammo yet but I’m hoping to get out to the range on Friday and I’ll let ye know how the ammo preforms.

But until then I just want to say thanks to Callum and all the crew at RifleCraft in the UK, Eddie Graff in Kinsale, Murrays in Cork, Duffys in Galway and all the people on Boards.ie who gave me advice and steered me in the right direction over the last year or so. Thanks a lot and here’s to many more years of happy shooting and tasty venison!

Everypenny.