I haven't let anyone mount a scope for me or bore sight a scope for me in many years. There is something to be said about the adage that says "If you want something done right...do it yourself"
I purchased a new (to me) used Savage .204 from a buddy of mine at the beginning of the year. He had purchased it new but had only fired 23 rounds through the barrel. He gave me the 23 empty cartridge cases along with the other 17 factory bullets in the second box and a third full box of 40 grain factory ammo. I didn't want the scope he had on it so I only bought the rifle from him. When Vortex Optics had a special sale on their Veterans VIP sales for Memorial Day (50% off MSRP), I purchased a 6-24X50 Viper HS-T with MOA reticle. The scope included a free 4" sun shade and I also ordered a rail and rings for it at 50% off. They even sent me a free T-shirt.
Yes, you do need to buy a few tools in order to do it yourself, but once you've bought them you can use them forever on your guns, as well as your family and friends guns.
Once the base/s is installed and you know the bottom rings are aligned you can lap the rings to ensure a tight fit...
Once the scope is mounted and all of the screws are torqued I went out to my 100 yard range, and stapled up a lot of white paper with a 1" sharpie mark in the middle. I then removed the bolt and sighted my eyeball through the bore, moving the reticles until I felt that the paper was close to being centered in the scope as well as the bore...
Here is my 2-shot zero. The first shot was low and right. I left the rifle in the rest without moving it, and carefully moved the reticles until they were on the hole made by the first shot. The second shot was at 12 o-clock pretty much where I wanted it to start my load development.
Whether or not you believe there is any merit to barrel "break-in", I decided I would go ahead and do it. Depending upon who you believe, a rifle barrel isn't in its sweet spot until you have fired 100-200 rounds through it anyway. I also wanted to use up the factory ammo so I could use those casings for my reloads. I used the break-in suggested by Savage which is a whole lot of cleaning (about 40 rounds) with many cleaning intervals in between. For me, I am satisfied that it works as I have seen no copper fouling in this rifle at all.
Once I found the powder charge that the barrel liked, I went to work testing different bullet seating depths in order to tighten up the groups. I still need to tinker with it some but I needed to get some ammo loaded up for a prairie dog hunt so these last 2 sub .5 MOA groups had me dialed in enough to start loading... These are 3/4" dots at 100 yards.
Disclaimer - My load of 26.0 grains of RE 10X is actually a little above the max SAAMI load, but I started my load development at a much lower powder charge and worked my way up to this charge and found no signs of pressure, so I know this load is safe in my rifle with the cartridge case, primer and bullet I selected. YMMV - Always start low and work your way up, while looking for signs of pressure.
After loading up about 500 rounds for the new .204 and my .22-250 I was ready to head to South Dakota
I had two back-to-back strings of shooting 9/10 prairie dogs - so I killed 18 out of 20 - all between 250-400 yards with the new rifle. No, I haven't shot 500-1,000 yards with it yet and probably never will, but it works well for what I bought the rifle for so I am happy, and....I had no disappointments because somebody else didn't mount or bore sight the scope for me.
![IMG_1761.jpg IMG_1761.jpg](https://habitat-talk.com/data/attachments/55/55854-d08969d5eecc37597f2c7663f5ba8866.jpg)