
Serious shotgunners take great pains to duplicate placing their cheek in an exact spot every time if they do not, their shot string will not fly where they intend it to fly shot after shot.


To properly see through such a scope means you’ll have to lift your cheek slightly up off the stock, and that makes a proper “cheek weld”-the place where the cheek and stock meet-impossible. The solution is to employ larger objective lenses on the scope, which, in turn, means higher rings are required with which to mount the scope on the rifle-but that places the eye well above the center of the bore. At the same time, hunters continue to demand maximum light transmission through these optics when used on the cusp of daylight. Over the past two decades, the quality of affordable riflescopes has improved by leaps and bounds. The classic stock style by far is the most popular, yet most do not properly fit the vast majority of shooters for one basic reason: They do not take into account riflescopes. Now take a quick look at the stocks offered by today’s most popular production hunting rifle manufacturers. But if you have ever tried to mount a scope on a Model 94, you quickly realize it is difficult shoot simply because the stock design allows only a small part of your face to make contact with the stock. One example is the iconic lever action Winchester 94, designed to be used with open sights and wearing a rifle stock that mirrored the design of many earlier rifles. Black powder cartridge rifles were similarly designed, and they morphed into smokeless powder cartridge rifles. The earliest flintlock and percussion rifles had lots of drop in the comb to facilitate proper use of iron sights. The evolution of the modern hunting rifle itself is one reason.
