Not sure what the real name is, but I have heard it called scope eye. It is the phenomenon that happens to most high powered rifle shooters at least once in their life. It is the result of the eye piece of a scope and the thin skinned boney part of your eyebrow meeting. During this meeting the eye piece always wins; generally leaving the eye brow bleeding profusely like a boxer taking a head butt. While direct pressure usually stops the bleeding, the swelling generally makes for an ugly cut that weeps for days and leaves an identifiable scare.
There are several ways that this happens. The most common way is sighting in your rifle. While laying it on a rest and not having the gun shouldered well, the recoil makes for the meeting of the two. This is very common with the larger calibers like 7mm and 300 magnums. Another way is by not adjusting the eye relief that some scopes are equipped with. This sets the distance from the eye to scope reducing the chance of the two meeting. The final way that I will discuss is the kiss you receive will you are under the influence of buck fever.
Several years ago while on a hunt at TVA’s land between the lakes hunting area, I was fortunate to harvest my deer early the first morning and loaned my rifle to a friend that I was hunting with. I felt that his rifle was under par for the area that we were hunting. He headed into the wood for an afternoon hunt, while I stayed in the truck to catch up on some rest. Several hours passed and I was awakened by a shot. This was before the two way radios that everyone has today. Waiting anxiously, my friend stumbles into the road gasping for air and bleeding from his head. My first thought is that he has shot himself, but I could see that he was smiling. So figured he has shot himself in the head and done some kind of brain damage. As I approached him I could see that the bent over poster gasping for air was from the pack a day cigarette habit and the blood was from a scope kiss. After catching his breath he explained that he had shot a huge deer and dragged it a mile before leaving it and the gun (my gun) to get some help. He had not realized that he had been kissed by the scope. I handed him a handful of paper towels and told him of his appearance. After he wiped most of the blood off, we headed to retrieve his deer and my gun. We found the deer and my gun a few hundred yards from the road and the mile he had dragged it turned out being only a few yards. He showed me where he had fallen asleep next to an over turned tree and was awakened by the deer. After chambering a shell that was forgotten, the deer stayed for a shot that was made while resting on the tree.
Back to my scope kiss; it was the days before muzzle loader season and I needed to shoot my gun to make sure that it was still sighted in. I was running out of daylight so I rested it on a boat cushion on the hood of my truck and fired off a shot and immediately felt a burning sensation on my eye brow. I chalked this kiss up to not shouldering the gun correctly, but the following day I am not sure what happened but the outcome was the same. Now I have two scope kisses to wear forever.
The next time you see a perfect round scar or two on the eyebrow of someone, you will not have to ask the embarrassing question of what happen, but you should anyway.
Take someone hunting, Greg