Have you ever shot a 10" (25.4 cm) target at 500 yards (457.2 m)?
Me either.
Last week, the wife and I took a 12 hour drive to meet some friends for the weekend.
I know that 12 hours for a weekend sounds a bit much, but we think it was well worth it.
These are friends that we've met on-line over the last few years. They are from all over the States and share some of our interests: eating, politics, religion, shooting.
At least one of our friends is a competitive shooter and coach.
Friday morning we got together about 8 AM and had a range safety clinic and shooting instruction. This took about four hours and dealt with several things including determining wind direction and speed. We talked about scopes being either MOA (Minutes of Arc in degrees) and Mil Dot (in radians) and which is better. It turns out that neither is better, MOA scopes are just easier to figure.
The range was in a long pasture in the bottom of a shallow valley on a ranch somewhere in the rolling hills of Texas. It was a beautiful, warm day. There was a breeze.
We were all shooting from the prone position so we had shooting mats or blankets to lay on. Everyone had bipods on their rifles and back bags under their rifle butt for stability.
The range was declared hot and everyone started firing at their target.
Did I mention that it was breezy?
Only one guy consistently hit the target. He was the guy that worked at the ranch.
We knew that the breeze was coming from the left and adjusted for that. We'd get close to the targets, adjust, then be completely off on the other side of the target.
When it was all said and done, we realized that there was an additional cross wind that we hadn't accounted for. About 400 yards out there was a right to left wind that appeared to be stronger than the left to right one.
I fired off about 25 rounds. The wife fired off about 10. The only way we would have gotten a deer at this distance would be if we had scared him to death.
One of the instructors also told me that I probably need better optics too. The scope that I have is the generic one that came with the rifle.
I plan on rectifying that before I go hunting. Rifle season is just around the corner.
