Proper Zeroing

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I think I figured out why I missed the other day.

 I went to the local range and decided to just zero Peach at 25 yards for now. I can't see taking much more than a 50 yard shot in the woods I've been hiking, and my missed "perfect shot" made me question my outdoor "close enough to 50 yard, don't take too many shots" zeroing day. I set the scope to 5x and set up for my first three shots.

 Here's my second and third shot. (I jerked the trigger on the first shot and hit waaaaay outside the circle.)
pew pew

 As you can see, my shots were about an inch or so down and left from my aim point 9the center of the 1 inch orange circle). Which explains why the squirrel leapt so high and far when my round hit an inch lower and left from his head. I must have scared the nuts out of him.

 So I clicked in some correction and tried a second group on target 2. I felt like I was wandering a bit, and the shot grouping reflected that.

 Some improvement, but not a great grouping. A few more clicks and I shot at target 3. This grouping I felt really good about. 

 But I couldn't see the third shot at first. But the RSO (Range Safety Officer) came over and pointed out that while the top hole was perfectly round, indicating a single round going through, the bottom hole was slightly oval, which means I hit the second hole just about exactly.

 I felt pretty good about this grouping and thought about calling it a day, but then I thought I'd try zooming up to 9x and trying a couple shots.
Look! In the upper right of this pic! It's the wayward 1st shot from target 1!

 Targets 4 &5 were blurry as I lined the shots up. Familiarly blurry. Like they could have just as easily been a smudgy gray brown squirrel sitting on a tree stump blurry. Shot placement was... meh, okay I guess. Grouping was pretty loose. Yeah, I had definitely earned the miss the other day.

 I dialed the scope back down to 5x and took aim at target 6. Maybe I was just flubbing the 9x shots.
Nope.

 A few more clicks and I decided to aim for the body silhouette. Three for the body, center mass, after three for the head.

 I jerked the second head shot and felt like I drifted to the right a little on the other two, but felt pretty good about the three center mass shots.

 Yeah, this rifle is now properly zeroed.

 Targets 1-6 are 1 inch orange circles.

 The inner orange circle here is about the size of a penny.
A penny for your shots

 I'd say I'm ready to do more than just scare the next squirrel.

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