Video Transcript
When people hear Nightforce, there's a lot of folks out there who immediately think $3,000 scopes. Something so expensive, it's gonna cost twice as much as the gun, they'll never be able to afford one. Well, a couple years ago, I was shopping around on Nightforce and I found the SHV line. This is a line of optics that they make that are a bit cheaper, quite a bit cheaper than some of their other scopes. And this one right here is just over $1,000. This is the SHV 4-14. So it's a low magnification scope with a mill base reticle, first focal plane. So it's perfect for a gun like this. It's 18 inch 5.56 SPR, where I want a bit more magnification than your average 1-8 or 1-10. But I don't need something tiny, as I'm not doing a bunch of running and gunning with this particular rifle. So going down to 4x is perfectly fine for those closer range engagements.
So I've got one right here. Let's see what's in the box. You're going to have a standard, and not something that I would personally use. A little cover setup. So, it's just going to wrap around the front, and then using tension with the rubber attached to the rear, and stay on. Good for transport, but obviously not practical. It's not like Butler Creek Caps or anything like that. A manual, of course. The scope, definitely need that. And an Allen key. This is going to be important for adjusting the turrets. And, of course, these are actually super handy. Just clip it onto your kit, onto your plate carrier chest rig or something. Just a little lens cleaner. I've got these on all my different equipment, at least one of these somewhere.
So there's the scope right there. You'll see that it does not come with a throw lever. Again, they're keeping this optic cost effective. That's probably one reason they don't have Butler Creek covers on here. They don't have a throw lever on here. They're just keeping this very straightforward. It's going to go on a gun and you're just going to immediately start training with it. At least that's the hope. But I need to put this in a scope mount. I won't put this one, this particular one, as we'll talk about this one. I recommend something like the Reptila. If you are buying this and you're on a budget, I recommend you get a good scope mount, but you don't have to go like all the way to the top with something crazy. The Reptila mounts are really good. There's other scope mounts that are similar in that price range. That will be good, but I wouldn't take this scope and drop it in a $90 mount. This is still an expensive piece of equipment. It's a good piece of equipment. You don't want to cause issues down range, and then you start to second guess the scope or maybe your rifle or the ammo, when in reality it was your mount all along and you just had no idea. So definitely spend a little bit of money on a mount so that you can trust the setup as a whole.
When you are on the range and you are zeroing the rifle, you're going to be doing all of your clicky clicks to center up your shots on the target. And when it comes time to re-zero or level the turrets, you're going to take the Allen key that's included or use one from your equipment. You're going to loosen both sides of the turret itself while holding the turret securely so it doesn't move around. You don't want it coming un-zeroed off of the point that you're on right now. Once you've loosened them a little bit, you're then going to pull straight up. I like to get behind it so that I can see just how much I'm moving it side to side because I don't want this moving around while it's loosened. I want to keep the mark, which is currently .4 mils. I want to keep that line centered with the cap turret as I'm pulling it straight up. So I'm going to watch it perfectly straight, and then it's going to pop like a cork in a cartoon.
Now I can take this and I'm just going to turn it to zero and drop it back on. Now when you get a new 4-14 scope you will see when you're zeroing it that the cap itself is not all the way down to the bottom specifically the elevation cap but it's going to be somewhere in the middle at like 3 or 4 which means 30 or 40 mils in elevation. So what you probably want to do as you're zeroing is you want to reset this turret all the way down to zero so as you are dialing up you can go to 1, 2, 3 and 4. If you want to leave some space down below for speed drop usually about 1.5 mils or so you may not want to push the turret all the way down to the bottom. So I'm going to do that on this guy. I'm going to give myself a little bit of space because I'm a speed drop guy. I like that for rapid target engagement. I'm going to push the turret down again trying to keep that zero straight down the center and I'm not going to go down all the way. I'm going to come up a little bit.
Now I can go down. It's like four mils or so, but that's okay. As long as I remember, hey, to be at zero, especially if I'm dialing up a lot, I'm going to see the zero and the one. And that's where I'm like, my zero is going to be flat. Then I can dial up to my heart's content. I can get all the way up to, you know, 30 plus looks like 30 mils or 20, 20 something mills. And then I can come down. That's quite a far shot, especially with this gun. And then as long as I come back down to that zero, the rifle will be zeroed again. And when I want to speed drop, which on this particular rifle, it's probably 1.6. I'm just going to 1.6 down. And now I have speed drop on this rifle for rapid target engagement. If you want to learn more about speed drop, there's some great videos on YouTube where you can learn about it. If it's something that you want to get into when you're done, always return the cap to zero.
The windage turret is going to be loosened with a flathead screwdriver. So again, trying to hold the turret as firmly as possible without it moving. My entire turret will come off and now I can reset it to zero. Again, make sure it doesn't move while you tighten it. We should be good. Good tactile clicks. In reality, you're probably not going to be using this turret a whole lot. So I recommend capping it. That's why that force includes the cap because you're primarily just going to be dialing on targets. The elevation, diopter adjustment, just like on any good scope. So I highly recommend getting that set up to your eyeball as well as possible.
And the change of the magnification is very easy. It's not like some scopes where you've got to put a whole lot of muscle into it. If you are interested in getting a throw lever, I'm sure there's tons of aftermarket 3D printed options that will fit on here. Pretty much all of those. You can literally tighten it and get it around any type of scope.
So you can definitely get that. But for this scope, I wouldn't even use one. I'm going to be probably on 14x-10x at all times with this and then run an offset red dot if I want to shoot up close. I'm probably not even going to be dialing back a whole lot unless I absolutely need to. So keeping it on like 12X at all times, especially if you have a dot, and I'll be good to go with the scope. There's a battery compartment on this side. The reticle is illuminated. So you're just going to turn this all the way until it stops moving, which is never.
You're going to hold it in place, loosen, and 2032 is going to go in there, and you have simple brightness elevation or adjustment, I should say. And the reticle illumination is just going to be the horizontal crosshair and the vertical crosshair. It does not include the entire Mil XT tree. So it's only going to be your center and horizontal crosshair. There's parallax adjustment, and each distance is indicated with text. So you can get an idea of what your parallax is set to. And that is the night force SHV four to 14 first focal plane scope. And I recommend the one with the Mil XT reticle. If you have any other questions about this particular product and its compatibility with mounts and other products on the market, go ahead and email us at team@trex-arms.com.