but back in the day it was held to be the benchmark to which all other triggers aspired. It adjusts to your needs - challenging in a spring rifle and doesn’t wear like my BSA (that ended up dislocating a gunsmith’s thumb due to the wear and tear on the trigger mechanism).
The HW77 is heavy but manageable for an adult. The only downside to repeated reloading is the bruise that develops on my thigh from bracing against the butt and the fact that the rifle needs to be taken out of the bags after each shot, making benchrest consistency a challenge.
The Scope
March scopes are proudly made in Japan. Specialist subcontractors
produce specific parts and these are hand assembled at the Deon Optical Design Corporation. This devotion to detail takes its costs in the manufacturing process and one engineer at the Deon factory can only assemble two scopes a day. This is no high volume assembly line!
Dialed in for ultra close shooting. With the zoom set at 20 power, the parallax adjusted down to 10 metres (laser confirmed) with no issues. Closer in was possible too.
possible through other methods of manufacture. But the offset is of course, a considerably more costly manufacturing process. Whilst it looks heavy, the March is shorter and lighter than comparable scopes on the market. The 2.5 – 25 is no longer than the 1980s version 6x air rifle scope that sat on the HW77 when I bought it and yet it has a greater magnification and the same range of parallax adjustment. This model is from March’s hunting line - something easy to forget when you are hunched over a benchrest target.
The other pleasant surprise occurred when I took the windage and elevation caps off. I expected, given the hunting reticle, standard turrets with left and right arrows and not much else. But the March packs a punch by having a target/tactical turrets that can be set for different ranges or bullet weights and returned to as required. The erector-tubes themselves are smaller and lighter than other brands’ erector turrets. A lighter turret means less inertia and internal impact during recoil which leads to less incremental damage to the erector tube and components.
Deon Optical Design Corporation proudly boasts that there is no plastic is used in the construction of the March. The scope body, for example, is machined from a single piece of aluminium bar stock and all the lenses are glued in. This makes for a structurally solid piece of equipment that is much stronger than
It appears that a lot of research has gone into minimising the potential damage that a poorly placed or designed erector-tube can potentially cause to the March’s internal parts. This also includes heat-treating key internal parts to reduce friction and galling during use – as unseen damage can occur as a result of the sudden stop at the end of the recoil pulse for cartridge rifles. For spring rifles a different recoil pulse occurs that starts the moment the trigger sear is broken and stops only after the piston hits the end of the cylinder. This complex recoil pulse has broken many a cheap scope.
Too much target and tactical shooting over the years has made me a reticle snob. I now crave mildots and hash marks to measure wind deflection and elevation changes.
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