[Jeff Higgins]

I've bore sighted at least a couple hundred rifle/scope combinations of the last 40+ years. Not a single one of them ever hit "right on" to the bore sighting apparatus. The old ones simply held a grid up in front of the muzzle, where these cool new ones project a beam. Either one will get you on paper, but neither will definitively zero a rifle.

There are simply too many variables. For example, say we are shooting the .223 - how does the laser bore sighter "know" whether you intend to use 40 grain bullets or 70 grain bullets? How does it "know" if you are shooting a 16" carbine barrel or a 26" heavyweight varmint barrel? Different bullet weights from the same barrel will produce different velocities, markedly different in this example. Different barrel lengths will produce different velocities with the same bullet weights in each. And these are only two of the more obvious nuances affecting point of impact.

Beyond that, there are issues like stock bedding - is the barrel free floated, or is there some pressure applied to it by the tip of the forearm? I have had the same rifle shift its vertical point of impact at 100 yards by over a foot simply by relieving forearm pressure and free floating the barrel in a wood or fiberglass stock. How about barrel time and recoil? All rifles start to move back at the same time the bullet moves forward. A high velocity, light bullet, heavy varmint rifle combination (like my over ten pound bull barreled Ruger #1 in .220 Swift shooting 50 grain bullets at over 4,000 fps) will be less affected than, say, my eight pound Ruger #1 in .458 Winchester Magnum shooting 500 grain bullets at 2,100 fps.

So, yeah - great for getting on paper, but way too many things going on that will vary from rifle to rifle and even load to load in the same rifle to rely on bore sighting as the definitive zero. We simply must shoot the rifle to finish the job and obtain a zero. There is no other way.