SSG-3000 20 Moa base or not?

[Discogodfather]

I recently bought an SSG-3000 Sauer rifle and was setting it up with a Steiner Military 3-12x scope. Rings are AD-Recon uni-mount, no angle. I have a site lite and was zeroing for 100 yards.

The scope has 18 mils of elevation adjustment. Out of the box I had 18 mills of upward elevation adjustment. The site lite showed that at the lowest elevation setting the red dot was very low on the calibration target.

After following the Steiner directions to reset zero I was surprised when I burned 6 mils of adjustment to get it to zero at 100 yards. This is a zero stop scope so no downward adjustment is available unless you remove the turret and re-adjust.

I can't find any info on what kind of picatinny base this is on the SSG-3000. No where does it specify if it's a zero angle or 20 moa, etc. Seems if it was 20 moa it would help this issue (I would not need to burn 6 mils).

The 12 mils of elevation are enough to get me out well past 800 yards, but I feel bad burning so much elevation for a lousy 100 yard zero. I shoot 90% of the time at 100/200 yards, very rarely out past 600.

[FMJBT]

Sounds like it may already have a 10moa base. If you have 18 mils of total travel, that typically only leaves half of that (9 mils) for adjustment when zeroed, because the scope reaches zero near its mechanical center rather than the upper edge of it's travel. Since you only had to use 6 mils of the total travel to get a zero, that leaves an extra 3 mils of adjustment room you otherwise wouldn't have if the scope was at it's mechanical center. A 10 moa base would roughly account for those 3 mils of travel.

[Discogodfather]

That makes sense, thanks. I threw up my SB Pm2 to make sure. The SB has 13.5 mils and it zeroed with 9.75 mils left for elevation so this base seems like it is a 10 moa base.

Would be nice to get some explanation of the angle of the base in the specs with such an expensive rifle!