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Getting to know your rifle
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Getting to know your rifle
By Don Lewis
Outdoors Columnist
Friday, May 28, 2004
"I missed two chucks this afternoon," a friend replied as lie handed me his rifle. "Neither shot was over 250 yards, but I simply missed."
"At what yardage is the rifle sighted in." I inquired.
"That may be the problem," he said with a guilty look on his face. "I didn't sight it in this spring. It was right on the money last year, and I figured it hadn't changed."
"Poor thinking," I shot back. "Did you ever have a sticking door in the morning when you knew full well the door had not stuck before. That's moisture at work, and it works on gun stocks the same as it does on front doors or clothes cabinets."
I didn't go into any more detail. When I stuck a collimator in the barrel and checked the scope's crosswire with the crossikire in the collimator, there was no question something was wrong with the sight in. To show him the scope had been subject to some type of change, I fired several shots at the 100-yard target. Both bullets impacted side by side but low and far to the left. Another half dozen shots while adjusting the scope put the rifle on zero at 250 yards.
I'm not sure what happened to his scope, but he did recall, after some thought, that maybe he had loaned the rifle during the fall turkey season. The story has a happy ending. He called several days later to say that he shot two chucks at over 200 yards.
There's a feeling that a rifle should be sighted in with one or two shcts. There are even writers who publish articles on how to do this. It's possible to do, I guess, but I have no fondness for that type of sight in. Sighting in a rifle is more than just getting the bullet to impact on a predetermined spot on the target. Sighting in a rifle is actually getting to know your rifle be in a varmint jig or a big game outfit.
This may raise the hackles on many hunters, but it's almost impossible to learn how to shoot accurately while hunting. Learning how to shoot accurately is learned from shooting from a solid rest (benchrest) at a pre-determined distance, and both varmint and big game rifles should be zeroed at a high at 100-yards and that's doubly true for varmint rigs.
Here's why. No matter how fast a bullet exits the muzzle, gravity begins to pull it down the instant it breaks from the muzzle. Gravity is constant and unrelenting. It is not a respecter of people or things. Any heavier than air object is subject to the pull of gravity, and the speeding bullet is no exception.
Since the bullet travels in a downward path after exiting the muzzle, to get it to reach out farther, we actually tip the muzzle up a few thousandths of an inch. This puts the bullet in a trajectory arc. This can easily be seen when a field-er in baseball throws a ball. To get it to stay in the air long enough to reach its destination, it must be put in an arec Naturally, the harder the ball is thrown, the less the arc of trajectory will be.
In shooting, when the rifle's muzzle is tipped up (this is what takes place when you adjust the rear sight for more elevation) the bullet travels in an elongated arc. To make this a little clearer, there arc two lines we have to contend with - the line of bore and the line of sight. The line of bore is a straight line through the bore to infinity. The line of sight is a straight line through the sights to the target. A bullet can pass through the, line of sight, but never, never through the line of bore. That's against the law of gravity.
A bullet exiting the muzzle of a rifle zeroed. for 250 yards, will pass through the line of sight a few yards in front of tile muzzle. It then travels above the line of sight and come down through at the 250 yard mark.
You might accomplish a sight in with four to six shots, but you haven't learned much about your rifle's trigger, the eye relief to the scope's ocular lens and, more importantly, how to adjust for the recoil. It's almost impossible for a shooter to zero a rifle if he or she is really afraid of recoil. This is why it's so important to use cartridges that aren't shoulder breakers.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/leadertimes/sports/s_196254.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878<P>
By Don Lewis
Outdoors Columnist
Friday, May 28, 2004
"I missed two chucks this afternoon," a friend replied as lie handed me his rifle. "Neither shot was over 250 yards, but I simply missed."
"At what yardage is the rifle sighted in." I inquired.
"That may be the problem," he said with a guilty look on his face. "I didn't sight it in this spring. It was right on the money last year, and I figured it hadn't changed."
"Poor thinking," I shot back. "Did you ever have a sticking door in the morning when you knew full well the door had not stuck before. That's moisture at work, and it works on gun stocks the same as it does on front doors or clothes cabinets."
I didn't go into any more detail. When I stuck a collimator in the barrel and checked the scope's crosswire with the crossikire in the collimator, there was no question something was wrong with the sight in. To show him the scope had been subject to some type of change, I fired several shots at the 100-yard target. Both bullets impacted side by side but low and far to the left. Another half dozen shots while adjusting the scope put the rifle on zero at 250 yards.
I'm not sure what happened to his scope, but he did recall, after some thought, that maybe he had loaned the rifle during the fall turkey season. The story has a happy ending. He called several days later to say that he shot two chucks at over 200 yards.
There's a feeling that a rifle should be sighted in with one or two shcts. There are even writers who publish articles on how to do this. It's possible to do, I guess, but I have no fondness for that type of sight in. Sighting in a rifle is more than just getting the bullet to impact on a predetermined spot on the target. Sighting in a rifle is actually getting to know your rifle be in a varmint jig or a big game outfit.
This may raise the hackles on many hunters, but it's almost impossible to learn how to shoot accurately while hunting. Learning how to shoot accurately is learned from shooting from a solid rest (benchrest) at a pre-determined distance, and both varmint and big game rifles should be zeroed at a high at 100-yards and that's doubly true for varmint rigs.
Here's why. No matter how fast a bullet exits the muzzle, gravity begins to pull it down the instant it breaks from the muzzle. Gravity is constant and unrelenting. It is not a respecter of people or things. Any heavier than air object is subject to the pull of gravity, and the speeding bullet is no exception.
Since the bullet travels in a downward path after exiting the muzzle, to get it to reach out farther, we actually tip the muzzle up a few thousandths of an inch. This puts the bullet in a trajectory arc. This can easily be seen when a field-er in baseball throws a ball. To get it to stay in the air long enough to reach its destination, it must be put in an arec Naturally, the harder the ball is thrown, the less the arc of trajectory will be.
In shooting, when the rifle's muzzle is tipped up (this is what takes place when you adjust the rear sight for more elevation) the bullet travels in an elongated arc. To make this a little clearer, there arc two lines we have to contend with - the line of bore and the line of sight. The line of bore is a straight line through the bore to infinity. The line of sight is a straight line through the sights to the target. A bullet can pass through the, line of sight, but never, never through the line of bore. That's against the law of gravity.
A bullet exiting the muzzle of a rifle zeroed. for 250 yards, will pass through the line of sight a few yards in front of tile muzzle. It then travels above the line of sight and come down through at the 250 yard mark.
You might accomplish a sight in with four to six shots, but you haven't learned much about your rifle's trigger, the eye relief to the scope's ocular lens and, more importantly, how to adjust for the recoil. It's almost impossible for a shooter to zero a rifle if he or she is really afraid of recoil. This is why it's so important to use cartridges that aren't shoulder breakers.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/leadertimes/sports/s_196254.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878<P>
Comments
more like the shooter is no longer up to snuff.
o m
That would have found the problem![;)]
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.