Posted on 08/21/2019 5:27:59 AM PDT by w1n1
A Top-flight Shooter And Hunter Details How To Get Great Groups - KaBOOM…“$*@@!%&, $^&*@@!*^%#” came the expletive from the bench two down from mine. As the sound of his shot reverberated from the steel roof at the rifle range, I looked over at the shooter and saw him turn away from the spotting scope and jump up to start turning the adjustment turrets on his 3×9 Leupold scope. He had taken on what seems to be a daunting task to many shooters: zeroing, or “sighting in,” their hunting rifle.
It had started some 45 minutes prior when the gentleman arrived at the range and asked me to hold up shooting for a few minutes while he put up some targets at 100 yards. I opened the action of my Winchester Model 70 Long Range Hunter in .300 Winchester Magnum and waited while he went downrange. He placed four Redfield sight-in targets in a square on one of the backstops on the 100-yard line and returned to the benches where we agreed to commence shooting.
I fired the last shot of a three-shot group into one of my targets set at the 300-yard line. I was developing long-range loads and starting each group from a cold, clean barrel, which allowed ample time to observe the goings on next door. The shooting to my left continued as the wind started picking up, a common occurrence on ranges that are long (600 yards) and the morning sun starts heating things up. Fairly quickly my wind flags set at 100, 200, and 300 yards were all flying at different angles, making the process of load development even more difficult.
IT ISN'T ROCKET SCIENCE, if you know the particulars, but it is a bit of a science. There are a multitude of factors that must line up, sort of like the wind, the moon, and the sun thing. Fortunately in modern firearms virtually all of the issues of less-than-stalwart barrels, scopes that move after every shot, triggers that were much like dragging a concrete block across pavement, and factory ammunition that was sometimes a crapshoot are memories from the past.
The average modern hunting rifle with a decent (read, moderately priced) scope is capable of shooting three-shot, 100-yard groups of 1½ inches, which is all you need for 95 percent of big game hunting. A 1½-inch group at 100 yards equates to a 3-inch group at 200 yards, and a 4½-inch group at 300 yards — plenty of accuracy to hit the heart-lung area of North American big game animals, with a little margin for error at 300 yards. Read the rest of sighting in a rifle.
shoot the paper, adjust turrets to the bullet hole.
lather rinse repeat
His recommendations are pretty similar to the method I figured out on my own. 1, Remove bolt and bore sight on target at 25 yards. 2. Fire one round. Make any necessary adjustments to align everything in the vertical dimension. The fired round should be an inch and a half low if the bore is in alignment with the barrel, if this is the case when you move to 100 yards it will still be a bit low. If it is dead on you will shoot a bit high at 100 yards. 3. Move to 100 yards and adjust appropriately in both dimensions but you should be less than an inch off horizontal and a couple inches off vertical, at most. Move the crosshairs to the hole, the scope doesn’t change where the rifle shoots. Fire one three shot group before moving and one three shot group afterwards. That should be it, seven rounds.
Gave a sack of the projectiles to another FReeper to mess around with.
“Yeah - once I can put a bullet through the same hole at 20 yards I know I'm good at 200 yards to hit the silhouette. (I'm taking into account a bit of bragging.)
1) never begin your sighting in session at 100 yards. Start at 25, move to 50, then to 100. And know your load’s holdovers (hold unders, really) at 25 and 50 for a 100 yd zero.
B) aiming the crosshairs at the fired bullet only works if you own a lead sled. If you’re shooting off of a bag rest, you need to estimate the number of clicks and shoot at the bull again.
iii) don’t zero with cheap ‘target’ ammo then expect your premium hunting ammo to match zero. After you rough-in your zero with range loads, spend the money and fine tune your zero with your preferred hunting load.
“1) never begin your sighting in session at 100 yards. “
Depends.
It’s not hard to boresight at 100. I can screw on a new barrel, change scopes and be zeroed in 3-4 shots.
Ping
I read a thing once that said buy three or so different brands of premium hunting ammo. Shoot several three shot groups with each. Pick the one that gun shoots best and stick with it. Makes sense but I load my own hunting ammo. I worked up a load that pretty consistently shoots one inch groups in my Remington .270 pump, which it really shouldn’t be able to do. Barnes copper solids, I don’t remember the powder offhand because I haven’t done any hunting in the last few years.
Still have not messed with them.
You are an exception to the rule. Just like you cannot shoot a round then adjust your crosshairs to fall on the hole if you don’t have a rigid rifle bench rest, you cannot boresight a rifle and scope at 100 yds without a rigid bench rest.
Your average ‘once per year deer hunter Joe’ will at best improvise a rest from his range bag, and it’s impossible to look through the bore, then hold the rifle steady while you move your eye up to the scope and fiddle with the turrets.
The idiot is talking sighting in and load development in the same breath, but the two obviously are incompatible.
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