21 Sep Eye Relief, Comb Height, Scope Adjustments, and Rifle Cheek Pads: What to Know
While an optic like a scope can revolutionize your accuracy with a rifle at significantly extended ranges, sometimes in excess of 1000 yards, there is much more to shooting accurately than zeroing the scope, learning how to hold over a target, and adjusting for wind drift.
Much, more more – like eye relief and comb height. This short post will take a look at both of these aspects of shooting accurately as well as how they can impact the overall shooting experience.
What Is Eye Relief?
We’ll start with eye relief. Eye relief is, in a nutshell, the distance between a shooter’s eye and the ocular lens of the scope – the part you look into.
Eye relief should allow a full field of view and a crisp sight picture that allows for comfortable, accurate vignetting without ocular disturbances (some of which will be explained below).
Improperly setting eye relief means that your eye is either too close to or too far from the ocular lens, which will create visual aberrations that can make it difficult to connect with a target.
What Is Comb Height?
Comb height refers to how high the comb, or top ridge, sits over the rifle stock. Properly adjusting comb height is also critical to accuracy because if height is too high or too low, your sight picture will be obstructed and your shots will either trend high or low. With a scope, improperly adjusted comb height can also create a parallax distortion that will have you shooting over or under the target, depending.
If the Scope Is Too Close…
If eye relief is not properly set and the scope is too close to your eye, you’re going to see only a partial sight picture. One sure-fire way to tell if the scope is too close is to take note of the edges around the ring of the sight picture. If they’re fuzzy, and not crisp and black, your scope is too close to your eye. (The image below shows that the shooter’s eye is too close to the scope, as you can tell from the fuzzy margins of the sight picture.)
Having a scope too close to your eye involves numerous risks. The least offensive of these is that you won’t get the full sight picture you could, which will limit your ability to vignette. More concerningly, if the scope is too close to your eye, recoil could cause it to jump back and hit you in the face when you fire – also not a good situation.
If the Scope Is Too Far…
On the other side of the spectrum, if the eye relief is set improperly so that the scope is too far away from your face, there will be a small sight picture and a lot of black dead space around the sight picture.
Having a scope too far from you is not dangerous in the same sense as having it too close because recoil doesn’t implicate a higher risk of the scope hitting you in the face – but, it also robs you of clarity.
Adjusting Eye Relief
Regardless of whether the scope is too close to or too far from your face, the fix is the same. Loosen the hardware that secures the scope to your rifle’s rail or receiver, slide the scope forward or backward until you have a full, crisp, clear sight picture without fuzzy edges, or without a black margin, and then re-tighten the scope to the rail.
Alternatively, and for minor aberrations in eye relief, you can move your head forward or backwards on the comb of the stock until you have a full, clear sight picture with crisp edges. The one caveat is not to get too close to the scope. You should always maintain a minimum of 2.5” (if not more) as even scopes with short eye relief will require more than this. Besides, you don’t want to get too close for the same reasons mentioned above – the scope could come back and hit you in the face when you fire.
If the Scope Is Too High (or Low)
If the scope is too high, really what it means is that comb height is too low. It is easier and more practical to raise comb height with a rifle cheek pad than it is to fiddle with the settings of the scope.
At any rate, if the scope is too high, usually there will be a black margin at the bottom of the sight picture. If the scope is too low, there will be a black margin on the other end, at the top of the sight picture. In either case you have a problem because it means you are looking through the scope at an angle. This can result in an incomplete sight picture and create a parallax distortion that can result in wide misses.
If the scope is too high, you can raise the comb height to solve that problem. A rifle cheek pad is an instant fix for this. If the scope is too low, you can look into different scope rings or a rail adapter that will raise it a little bit.
Regardless, eye relief and comb height must be set properly in order to shoot accurately through a scope.
How a Rifle Cheek Pad Can Help
While a rifle cheek pad will not necessarily help with adjusting eye relief that is too close or too far, it can provide an instant relief for combs that are not high enough.
If, when you look through your scope, there is a black margin at the top of the sight picture, your comb needs to come up a little bit and a rifle cheek pad may be a perfect, and utilitarian, upgrade.
Investigate These and Other Upgrades
One of our Caparison rifle cheek pads, made with closed cell foam and compatible with a wide range of rifle models, is only one of the upgrades we make accessible to shooters around the country. Take a look through our full catalog of rifle grips, bolt knobs and handles, and other shooting accessories and get some inspiration for your favorite platform today.
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