How do you know if you made a good hit?

[No Fear in Accuracy]

Hello LR Shooters,

I'm Air and Free Pistol competitor. I always call the shot after firing. You will know where the shot is when you concentrate at the front sight. I cannot say that "call the shot" is 100% perfect of the time. Say, I fired a shot, I knew the shot should be at 9 o'clock and about 5mm high then I looked at the spotting scope, it was pretty close. How do you do it at the game, especially over 1000 yards? Do you call the shot so you will know where the bullet will hit?

 

[Darryl Cassel]

No Fear

The vapor trail of the bullet going out can be seen many times all the way to the target and right into the animal.

You MUST do the longrange sport with a partner to spot your shots for you and you for him.

You can see the bullet impact and the vaport trail with the big eyes we have especially with larger bullets such as the 300 gr 338, the 220 and 240gr 30 cals also. The problem sometimes is if there is deep snow that you are shooting into. It covers up the impact on occasions. We always go ahead or behind 100 yards and fire a sighter round to adjust for the wind and make the final elevation adjustment. Sometimes we go in line but OVER the animal to make this adjustment. After making the final adjustment, the next shot the animal is down. By the way, the deer or elk is not alarmned in any way. Have had them walk up to the spotter bullet hole that was still expelling dust from and stuck their nose in the hole.

A good drop chart is a must for the load you are using. The best bigeyes you can afford is also a must. They should be capable of tripod use and the bigger the better. Hand helds are not always optically good enough for what we do.

Never attempt this sport alone when shooting in excess of 650 Yards. Always have a good partner or two with you.

I believe Len captured the vapor trail on his video.

Hope that helped
Darryl Cassel

[ 11-23-2001: Message edited by: Darryl Cassel ]

 

[p dog shooter]

I have to agree with Darryl even if you spined your target and it dropped you most likely would lose site of it in recoil so having a good spotter along is very important. Your spotter with good eyes can see the bullet impact. They can also help directed yoy to your target after the shot. It never ceases to amaze me how differiant things look when you get down to where you shot at your game.

 

[Dave King]

MikeW

It's not actually a vapor trail as you think, it's the compression wave pushed in front of the bullet.

It's best viewed from directly behind and very close to the bore centerline. It's not something you see directly, it's the distortion of the objects you see THROUGH the compression wave that allow you to follow its' progress.

It looks very much like 'heat shimmer' that's been confined to a small ball that flies downrange at the speed of the projectile.

Every once in a while on shooting and hunting shows on TV it can be seen it you're looking for it.

 

[MikeW]

What causes the vapor trail anyways?
Is it a certain speed?

Thx.

 

[MikeW]

Dave,
Thx. for the explaination. I saw it for the
first time last summer while spoting for my
buddy when we were PD shooting. What amazed me was the arch the bullets were coming into
the target at. It looked like the bullets
were just being lobed in there. We were trying to hit them around 700 yards at the time.