Went To the range This Morning

[Altjaeger]

Nothing special. I just ran out with 3 rifles to check them before heading to West Texas. I decide to take three diffrent than the ones I took to East Texas last weekend. I have never killed anything with what was formerly my wife's Winchester M88 in .308 so that is what I will use. If I kill one early then I will decide whether to continue with it or the Oberndorf Mauser in 8x57 I bought last year and killed a doe with. I am really growing fond of that rifle.

Last is the little Santa Barbara 7x57. Last weekend my buddy kept saying I should bring the 7x57. When I started with him in 1994 he was a young soldier living in the barracks far from his Washington home with no place to store guns. I was newly retired and had never been stationed here. He wanted to hunt but did not know where to start in a new state. I loaned him that rifle 2 years and he loved it (and will probably some day own it). I am really taking it so he can leave his .30-06 locked in his van.

Anyway I still had packing to do. After 3 rounds from each at 50 meters to make sure they were on paper I moved them to 100 meters. Despire 3 cups of coffee and no breakfast they all hit slightly high and in less than 2" with three more rounds each. I called it good and headed home to pack.

[southtexas]

Alt: don't you know that deer are shot at distances measured in YARDS...not meters.:)

How many centimeters high did you sight in at 100meters??

[Altjaeger]

Alt: don't you know that deer are shot at distances measured in YARDS...not meters.:)

How many centimeters high did you sight in at 100meters??

It is in meters because it is a military range.:D

I am about 5 centimeters high at 100 meters.:D

[Bushman]

Being a little metrically challenged, my European scopes are all calibrated in centimeters and it does give me pause at times. Lets see, 1 click equals 1 centimeter or .393700787 inches at 100 meters or 3,937 inches which is 109.36111 yards...:confused:;)

[Bill Gunn]

Here's an easy ( ;) ) way to figure out the "Click" on ANY scope.
You'll find that very few are exactly what they advertise.

It sounds to be to much of a bother, but it's really not that hard, and once you set it up, you can do as many scopes as you wish in a very short time.
This is not so important for a 200 yard deer rifle, but as you get further out, it can mean the difference of a hit or a miss.

Measure out 100 yards EXACTLY with a tape measure.
Place a yard stick vertically against a stable support at the 100 yard mark.
Place the center of the scope exactly at the other end of the 100 yards.

Make a note of the existing scope setting, so you can set it back when your finished.

Move the elevation adjustment dial to the high end of its travel. Now look in the scope, and make sure you are in the area of the scope adjustment that actually moves the cross hairs.

MANY scopes, because of the way their made, the first few (and last few) clicks you can make with the dial are not actually moving the cross hair.
Sometimes it takes 5 to 10 clicks to actually start moving the cross hair.

When you know your where every click moves the cross hair, place the cross hair at the very top of the yardstick.

Holding the gun VERY steady ( a friend to do the clicking helps a lot here) click down exactly 100 clicks.
Read where your scope is looking on the yardstick (repeat this a couple times to be sure).

Most scopes tell you they are 1/2, 1/4 or 1/8 MOA clicks. 1/4 MOA is .262" at 100 yards.

If your scope is looking at say for instance the 29 1/2" mark on the yard stick, your "Clicks" are actually .295.

It don't mean a lot when your shooting "Minute Of Deer", but when you trying to click in your scope using a drop chart or a computer drop program to hit a woodchuck or prairie dog at 700+ yards, it means a bunch more (and it's always nice to know what your scope is doing anyways :) ).

The computer program I use (PCB) asks the value of your scope clicks, and this is the easiest way I could figure to get the correct reading.

http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/13525437/378004785.jpg

[Bushman]

Bill, I can tell that you are way more analytical than most of us on here. Most guys around here just click the scope adjustments, sometimes even in the right direction, until they start getting around the bulls eye. I helped one guy once who shot the upper left hand side of the target, then the right side of the target, then got a bulls eye and never touched the scope adjustments the whole time. Three shot group. Good enough!!! Dad used to shoot a medium size cardboard box. I'm afraid a prairie dog at 700 yards wouldn't have had anything to worry about.

[GF.]

Funny thing..... I'm hyperanalytical about most stuff (just ask Twang & Bowman ;) ) but I got over that with my rifles about 20 years ago - one day at the range, I actually made a scope adjustment when I put a shot just off of perfect. And I mean just off, as in if I had glued a dime to the exact center of the sight-in target, I would probably have centered the edge of it. At 200 yards.

Yup, used to be pretty confident of my rifle and my shooting. :rolleyes:

Of course, since it was getting kinda late, I ran back to the bench, made my adjustment, shot, and ran back out to the target to check while the barrel cooled a touch (I was the only one there, so I could do this all I wanted ;) ). Well, it looked like I had overcorrected, so I ran (and I really do mean ran) back to the rifle, adjusted the scope, shot, ran, checked [WTF?], ran, adjusted, shot, ran, checked] WTF???])... And somewhere about there I realized that I had been turning the adjustment the wrong direction for the last couple of iterations....:rolleyes:

But that was the Incident that cured me of my Very Bad Case of what David Petzal has referred to as One Hole Syndrome :o

After that, I decided maybe I just didn't need to be shooting 1/2 MOA to kill a deer, especially since I shortly afterwards moved away from Colorado, Wyoming, sage flats, and Very Distant Elk, Mule Deer and Pronghorns (without ever firing a shot at any of the above :rolleyes:) to MN and found that 50 yards is really a hell of a long shot on a whitetail in the Big Woods.

This year, I don't really expect to hunt with a rifle anyway, but next time I do, I may just try some of the managed recoil loads for the 7-08, and honestly, if I can get them to hit into 2 MOA right on the bullseye at 50m (which is as far as you can shoot on the nearest range), I'll be perfectly happy with that :D

And the .45/70 wears irons, so minute of clay pigeon at 50 is good enough for my purposes these days (not that I don't generally see better results than that, but I'm not going to be drifting sights back & forth with a mallet if a 3" group appears to be an inch to one side!). The .54 has never budged from Day One - not that I could ever tell, anyway - so I just put one hunting load down range from a kneel to rule out a disaster and practice off-hand with plinking loads after that.

20 years ago, I would have been appalled at such 'sloppy' standards of accuracy, but nowadays, if I see a guy shooting off-hand and hitting clay birds consistently on the berm behind the 50-meter target holders, I figure he probably know what he's up to. It's the guys who bag themselves down on a 100-yard bench and still can't keep their shiny new .300 or .338 Whoopass shooting into a coffee mug that still tick me off.... :rolleyes: