What Went Wrong?

[JDeko]

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I got a SIG ROMEO5 for my birthday and last month when I tried it out whilst it was thin enough to not cause stovepipes on my Saiga 12 the point of impact was WAY low. I thought maybe I mounted it wrong so I got a bore laser and the two dots pretty much matched up in my basement. I figured at the range I'd see a discrepancy but they seemed to match up at 15 yards as well. Yet even still the point of impact is where you see here when I aimed for the center target. I thought maybe it was the ammo but both the RUAG Copper Slugs and plain old Remington field loads hit in the same place. Even after removing the red dot and putting it back it still hit the same place.

Trying the irons between remounting it I hit all towards the center where I was aiming and you can see the group so I don't think I just suck that hard at shooting. I tried a cheek weld, chin weld, bottom of my chin weld and pressing the stock firmly against my cheekbone weld and all hit that same spot.

What is happening? I realize now that maybe that I only saw one dot because the bore laser was outside the portal of the red dot if their that far off each other. Could the sight really be THAT off from the factory? This is so bizarre. I don't want to have to pay the gunsmith to zero it, even I have too much shame for that [plus I mostly have him do stuff since I'm worried about breaking or damaging my guns, don't really think I can break anything zeroing a sight]. So what can I do to figure out what is causing such a disparity at such close ranges especially. God only knows what it'd do at 50 yards...

[DrScaryGuy]

test the sight on something else, make sure it's holding a zero of any kind?
are you sure you had it mounted right?

[ltcnav]

You dont say what range the target is, but if the big hole at the bottom is with the Romeo, it is not that bad. Have you just adjusted the sight, put the firearm in a solid hold/rest, aim thru the sight and move the red dot to the center of your point of impact. Then you are good to go.

[10x25mm]

Your buttstock is not conventional for a Saiga 12. It has little drop at its heel and a pronounced curve in its buttplate.

How does your shoulder feel after shooting it? There is a lot of recoil from most 12 gauge loads, well beyond what would be generated by 7.62x39mm cartridges. 12 gauge shot loads are also a lot slower than 7.62x39mm bullets as well. More residence time in the barrel.

It is possible that the curved protrusion in your buttplate is driving the rear of the shotgun up in your shoulder, and the muzzle down, while the shot charge is still in the barrel. The small drop at heel puts the bore axis below the center of buttplate contact with your shoulder, or very close to it. Both would produce low shot placement, as well as some distress at the top of your shoulder.

The iron sights may have been adjusted to compensate for this, while your Romeo 5 was set for a more conventional recoil movement.

[JDeko]

You dont say what range the target is, but if the big hole at the bottom is with the Romeo, it is not that bad. Have you just adjusted the sight, put the firearm in a solid hold/rest, aim thru the sight and move the red dot to the center of your point of impact. Then you are good to go.

The target was at approximately at 15 yards. I haven't adjusted it at all as I couldn't believe the point of impact would be so off from the factory.

test the sight on something else, make sure it's holding a zero of any kind?
are you sure you had it mounted right?

I removed it and put it back on and it still hit the same place, so I assume it is mounted correctly. Before I tightened the machine screw I made sure it had no yaw to it tilting upward or downward. Aside from my PTR which is getting sent back to have it's reliability issues looked at I actually have nothing else to mount it on/anything with a pic rail.

[luckless]

Did you shoot it off the bench?

[JohnS624]

The target was at approximately at 15 yards. I haven't adjusted it at all as I couldn't believe the point of impact would be so off from the factory.

I don't understand what the factory had to do with it. It didn't come mounted on the gun. Saigas have a low bore axis so a high sight would screw with POA/POI at close range.

[skinl19]

I recently bought a Romeo 5 for my Mossberg 835 turkey gun but have one on an AR as well. The first shot at 20 yards after mounting on the Mossberg was way low of aim. I figure that the Romeo is normally put on something shot at a longer range and in fact, the one on my AR was pretty close to spot on from the factory for 100 yards. All I did on the Mossberg was to adjust the Romeo so point of aim equaled point of impact. I was more concerned about repeatability and not how much adjustment was needed to get it dialed in. So far it has held true and I bagged a turkey with it yesterday.

[JDeko]

Did you shoot it off the bench?

I shot it from the shoulder but as you can see I had a tight group and when i took it off and used my iron sights I hit within the small center target.

I don't understand what the factory had to do with it. It didn't come mounted on the gun. Saigas have a low bore axis so a high sight would screw with POA/POI at close range.

I thought it would come from the factory pointing straight ahead so if it were say 3 inches above the barrel of your gun it would hit 3 inches high at any point [barring bullet drop] so that you would have a neutral point to zero it from. I could be wrong but I doubt if I shot a slug with the dot on the bullseye then reeled the target in and shoved the barrel in the hole the dot would be back on the bullseye.

I recently bought a Romeo 5 for my Mossberg 835 turkey gun but have one on an AR as well. The first shot at 20 yards after mounting on the Mossberg was way low of aim. I figure that the Romeo is normally put on something shot at a longer range and in fact, the one on my AR was pretty close to spot on from the factory for 100 yards. All I did on the Mossberg was to adjust the Romeo so point of aim equaled point of impact. I was more concerned about repeatability and not how much adjustment was needed to get it dialed in. So far it has held true and I bagged a turkey with it yesterday.

Ah, so the default setting is "5.56 at 100 yards"... I guess I'll just have to crank it until its somewhat parallel to the bore.

[DrScaryGuy]

I thought it would come from the factory pointing straight ahead so if it were say 3 inches above the barrel of your gun it would hit 3 inches high at any point [barring bullet drop] so that you would have a neutral point to zero it from. I could be wrong but I doubt if I shot a slug with the dot on the bullseye then reeled the target in and shoved the barrel in the hole the dot would be back on the bullseye.

Ah, so the default setting is "5.56 at 100 yards"... I guess I'll just have to crank it until its somewhat parallel to the bore.

it may be. I was counting on your laser boresighting to have been a little better.... but I think we've all made that mistake before - which is why yesterday I "boresighted" my new AR's BUIS by removing the upper and setting it on a table, pulling the bolt out, looking directly through the barrel at a point ~100 yards away, and aligning my sights to that point - and I did all that INSTEAD OF trying to use my laser bore sighter at the 10 yards or so I could work out in the basement. If I'm not on paper with it when I go shooting at the range, I'll be very close, and I'll adjust from there.

If that's what the issue really was, you're looking at an issue of "hold over". As skinl19 pointed out - the optic sits considerably higher than the bore, which will be true for rifles/shotguns/pistols. Scopes/rifles are often "sighted in at 100 yards" but it's not always the case - it's up to the shooter to do the mental math and say "okay, scope sits 4 inches high and is on-point at 100 yards, but i'm shooting at 50 yards right now, so I'm going to need to aim about 2 inches high to hit on target." There are other methods, and the 5.56 rd is a great example because the trajectory makes it great for people who want to sight in at 50/200 - the bullet is still going upward when it crosses the line of sight at 50 yards, peaks at around 150 yards, and then starts dropping again (rapidly) until it crosses the line of sight again at 200 yards. A lot of people are doing 50/200 for 5.56 because it's a very reasonable to expect that no matter where you shoot between 0-250 yards, you're not going to me more than a couple inches high or low.
Scopes may or may not be set to a certain distance with a particular rifle in mind, but it's still on the user to verify that it's set up for THEIR gun, and to do the math on it whenever they're not shooting at the exact distance under the same controlled conditions.

If you ever take Trek/MDFI carbine basics, you'll see that at the beginning of the class, almost everybody is shooting 3-4 inches low at 10 yards until Trek yells at everybody to work with their holdover and try to HIT the center of the target, not just put the red dot on it. After that, everybody starts aiming a couple inches high to compensate for the fact that their rifles are shooting at only 10-20% the distance they're sighted for.