Originally Posted by Der Ami
Rubberhead,
When you bought your rifle, did it come with a test target (more than likely a drawing of a heart) with a test group? If so, it should have listed somewhere on the target the make and bullet weight of the ammo used. European ammo is often loaded to different ballistics than American ammo. In my experience, European guns are often regulated with heavy for caliber bullets. You may find it worth your while to find out what ammo was used and duplicate those ballistics with your handloads. If the barrels shoot together with a duplicate of the European ammo over open sights, but not with a scope, you may need to have it reregulated with ammo of your choice. Of course, if the solution you have worked out is satisfactory to you, reregulation may not be worth the cost to you. There is a pretty good chance that you were able to buy the gun because the previous owner was unable to find a load that would shoot both barrels together, with a scope mounted.
Mike

Good question. The short answer is no, I got the gun just as you see without the sling and it in a cardboard box. These guns came from the factory with a leather and canvas case but I didn't get that either.

Here's my working theory based on just a few data points...and the few data points I have are this...every similar gun I know of shoots the over barrel 3" to 4" higher than the under barrel. My theory is that Browning regulated them with the gun in a vise. You see, according to Heym, the recoil of a gun begins to take effect before the bullet leaves the barrel. So, the line-of-sight of a right barrel on a SxS rifle is low and to the left. The recoil from a round fired from the right barrel will pull the gun up and to the right thereby canceling the regulated low-and-left built into that barrel gun when held by a human. The mirror image of that is true for the left barrel. When fired the X shaped pattern will cause the bullets to print in the Center of that X when regulated to whatever distance.

An over-under is very different because the recoil from the Under barrel causes significantly less muzzle jump than the Over barrel and is directed more straight back than the recoil of the Over barrel. This causes the Over barrel to naturally print higher than the Under barrel when the gun is held by a human. But, if you lock it in a vise so the recoil doesn't impact where the bullet prints. So, my theory is that the relative inexperience of Browning with the making of double rifles caused them to think that a gun regulated by very precise bore sighting or shooting it from a vise would reflect real world conditions when, in fact, it does not.