I'm doubting very seriously he has the correct base mrbb. With that model scope, he should be damn near at the bottom of the dial not the top. I will also throw in my 2 cents on that scope. It is way too much scope for that rifle. I now own 4 of them since dad passed and I got his 2 .444's. The old man went through a lever action phase. At one time he had 17 of the things. He still loved them but sold several of his levers. Myself, lever actions are my favorite CF rifles. While I can, and have, shot long range, I tend to get up close and personal with my game. The .444 by nature of it's bullet is by far not a long range rifle by any means. With a 300 grain bullet, which is about as big as you can get before you start sacrificing a lot of case capacity, 220 yards is about the maximum for a big buck in the Ohio area. They got some fairly large bodied whitetails around there like we have here. As a couple of others mentioned, the sectional density just isn't there. Even using the higher BC FTX bullets from hornady you still won't have trustable penetration speeds over 220 yards. Pistol bullets just aren't made for that kind of range. 220 yards and under, the old .444 Marlin is a damn hard rifle to beat. Especially in heavily wooded areas. Variable power is great. I love it. But I think you would have been much better served with a 2.5-7x than that VX3i you got. That 2.5 would have made you really happy in a wooded encounter at 50 yards. 3.5 you will be picking a hair to shoot at.