I totally agree. Start out at 25 yards and move out from there. I have bought bore sighters and they all gather dust on the shelf because you still have to start out at 25 yards and move out from there after using any of them.
I use the bore (imagine that). Rest the rifle, sight through the bore and line it up at a spot 50 to 100 yards away and then adjust the sights/scope to match. Do it right and it will get you on the paper. Hmmm....I wonder if that's why it's called "bore sighting".
What kind of rifle are you talking about here?
If you're intending to sight in a bolt action or other rifle that lends itself to easy bolt removal, the simplest way is to first remove the bolt, take a fired and deprimed rifle case, chamber it fully with your fingertip, place the rifle on sandbags or gun vice or other stable hold, then carefully peer through the flash hole in the fired case at a grid target to compare what you see in your scope to what you can see through your bore itself.
I did this with my Marlin 1894 (the bolt comes out all the way using nothing more than a screwdriver) using this technique and it was so close that my first round fired at 25 yards went dead center where it was aimed, leaving only some correction to take it out for a 100 yard sight-in.
i have had this for years......best one i have used.....i have used it to line up sights on revolvers,1911's,rifles,shotguns....ect.....works with any caliber....
If the design of the gun allows you to remove the bolt and look down the bore, that's how I bore sight. fix gun so it doesn't move on you (vice, etc), center something up in the bore visually, align the scope to that same point. gets very close to fine tune with bullets. can't look down the bore, start with the bullets...
Wonder what the recoil was like on that round. I would SBR that thing for the fun of it, if the action wasn't damaged. And this is why I never use my laser bore sight in the presence of live ammo.
First hopefully nobody was hurt when that happened. If the action wasn't damaged at least a new barrel and it's probably back in business. With a little fabrication that barrel would make an interesting coat rack
There. Now that that's out there, I'm with Allen, the best boresighter is a bullet (again, this is small arms afterall). The second best boresighter is to vice and level the rifle, put a plumb line 10 feet away, and level the reticle with that.
Now you may be saying "That doesn't zero anything, it just makes the horizontal crosshair square to the bore." You're right. But it makes guys feel better, and it DOES solve one major--and common--problem with most scope mounting jobs.
Put a paper target at 25 yards. Put 2 rounds on it. Move the reticle (obviously 16 clicks/inch on most optics) 90% of the way to correct your impacts. Shoot one more to confirm movement.
Put a paper target at 100 yards. Put 2 rounds on it. Move the reticle 75% of the way to correct impacts. Shoot two more. Move the reticle 75% of the way to correct impacts.
Replace target face with a black target with only a white aiming point. Shoot 7 rounds @ 1 round per minute at your aiming point (I'm assuming POI is offset from POA), shooting blind (no spotting scope, no observing impacts on the paper..turn the scope down if needed).
Observe the group of 7 and MEASURE it's center, clean the rifle, and adjust/recheck as needed at that point. From there, it's usually right on to 200 yards and out to develop dope cards. There's not much reason to continue pounding groups at 100 unless that is the purpose of the rifle.