Cross Country Cow Elk Road Trip with the Maven RS.3 – Part 2
Andy Husek 12.29.20
The results are in and I am ready to head out west for my cow elk hunt! In the last article, I talked about my cross-country road trip to pursue cow elk in New Mexico. A late-season freezer filling mission, I believe I called it, to load up on delicious organic meat in a year where opportunities have been tough to come by!
I just completed my latest range session with the Maven RS.3 5-30x50mm First Focal Plane and Weatherby Mark V Back Country TI, and I am more than stoked with the results.
I am holding very tight sub MOA groups, and have all of my “dope” calculated and ready to go for any shot that is within my comfort zone out in New Mexico. I can’t stress how important it is to “true” your rifle at distance. Just because your ballistic calculator app tells you that your 200 grain Hornady ELDX bullet is going to drop 2.5 minutes at 300 yards doesn’t mean you should believe it! Now don’t get me wrong, it can get you to a VERY close ballpark, but until you get out there and go through the “truing” process you can’t be 100% certain. It may be right on, but it also may vary by .25 or .5 minutes, which is a big deal as you start to push out at distance.
SO much has to do with current factors from day-to-day; temperature, elevation, wind, etc. That is why you need to spend an appropriate amount of time behind your glass getting yourself – not just the rifle – tuned in so that you can perform when a shot presents itself.
You owe that to every animal you are pursuing.
The more I use the scope, precision and quality have started to show themselves in tiny nuances.
How many times have you gone to dial in a scope and you are 2 minutes high at 100 yards? 8 clicks down and you are zeroed on a ¼ MOA per click dial at 100 yards, right? Definitely not always the case – sometimes it’s 6, sometimes it’s 10, but not with the RS.3. You can see in the picture below I took of my target while zeroing. I made one adjustment from the shot that impacted to the lower right of the bullseye and after that the remaining impacts are a 4-shot group! I moved the zero 1 minute up and ½ a minute left and you can see from the photo that the scope dialed perfectly.
This type of performance breeds confidence, and there is no doubt in my mind I’ll have any issues with my setup. In order to perform at your best, you have to have absolute confidence in your equipment.
Another thing that I thought was really cool was the ability to customize your very own scope!
If you go to the site and click on “Custom Builder” at the top of the page, you can walk through and custom build your own RS.1, RS.3, or RS.4 or any of their B Series binos or S Series spotters. I went through the process and built my own RS.3 with all green accents and I must say, I think it looks pretty sharp! You can even get custom engraving done on the objective up to 30 characters. Check back in for the rest of the follow up pieces – in the next article I am going to get into the weeds and nerd out on all of the tech specs of the RS.3. as I make my final preparations for my hunt later this month.
Purchasing lower quality optics increases the opportunities for error as mentioned in Part 1 of this series. The old saying has never rang so true, with optics, you get 100% what you pay for! So, if you are looking to add a premium piece of glass to your collection, you should take a hard look at the RS Series from Maven.
You can check out the RS.3 and all of their other products at www.mavenbuilt.com.
