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What is your baseline zero a dial adjustable scope?
- Thread starter med358-boise
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memtb
Stokesrjsr
Well-Known Member
I have many turret scopes I use for long range target work such as my Nightforce ATACR and Kahles K25 but for hunting I use a Leupold VX5-HD 3-15x44 with the TLR reticle. It is zeroed at 300 yards then has a dot for 400, 500, 600 yards then a short cross hair at 700 yards and then dots again at 800, 900, and 1,000 yards. I find this to be a superior big game set up. You are probably wondering how to adjust for atmospheric conditions. I simply adjust the power setting to correspond with the 1000 yard dot for the elevation and temperature I plan to hunt at and ignore all the rest. Using a flat enough shooting rifle and it seems to work really well. Mine are 6.6-300 Wby and 30-378 Wby.
Poll fail: doesn't reflect the most common choice, 100 yards.
I sight everything at 100, except my PRS match rifles, which I zero at 200
I sight everything at 100, except my PRS match rifles, which I zero at 200
floyd kittrell
Well-Known Member
All at 100 only !!
yobuck
Well-Known Member
Well one variable would be that bullets never rise once they leave the muzzel.
The decent towards earth is immediate.
Apparently there might be some confusion over the line of site and the line of the bore?
Actually this whole topic is pretty much pointless.
This is or at least used to be a site for those who preferred hunting and shooting at long range.
Sorry if the area in which you live or choose to hunt and shoot dosent offer any long shot opportunities, but that shouldnt change anything as for the long range aspect of the site.
Fact is and has always been that those who shoot and hunt long range will either be dialing a scope, or will be using a reticle that will allow for doing that.
And the user will have the knowledge and ability to to it with either.
As for the zero distance when dialing, it makes absolutely no difference what distance is chosen, as it is simply a place to return the scope dial to after the shooting is over.
What were seeing here at least for the most part are traditional type hunters and shooters who would like to walk on both sides of the street so to speak.
That can be done in some areas at least to some degree when hunting, but it will require guide lines as to what is and what isnt long range,
As well as what all is necessary besides a hunter with a rifle with a scope and a lazer rangefinder, like it or not.
For one thing, there is no way a shooter will know at least for sure wether he hit or missed an animal before it ran off like it hadnt been touched, like many of them do.
So when are we going to be talking about those type things, and not just how we shoot?
What we really have going on here is just a big BS session with no meaningfull information gained by anybody.
Always zero at 100yds. I twirl for elevation greater than 1/2 my target height (allows hold on the target rather than in air above), always hold for wind, as it is so fleeting, target typically longer than its height. Brian Litz of Applied Ballistics....yeah he is a rocket engineer, and reportedly knows a couple things abut ballistics.....recommends 100 yds. Close enough that atmospherics, spin, Coriolis, etc aren't discernible in the results. Also, when traveling, one should always confirm zero. It's more likely that your guide, host, campsite will afford a 100yd target than longer ranges. Many shots are missed/game wounded from longer zeros when an unexpectedly closer shot presents. Always thought those that zero at longer ranges probably don't really grasp the basics, merely think they are being way tacticooler than those 100yd guys.
memtb
Well-Known Member
Assuming that the cartridge being used is a relatively high velocity cartridge, using a bullet of decent BC…… and we're talking about big game hunting, your comment is mostly irrelevant. Unless of course, your definition of big game is a vastly smaller animal than my definition/concept of big game…..a hunter shouldn't miss a close range shot! If the "hunter" misses, he would have missed no matter the zero….. 100 or 300 yards! memtb
Our choice is 200yds/m or greater. Primary reason/thought: if I look at a basic rifle set up (assuming centerfire and velocities greater than 2500fps), the offset of the bore to the scope centerline, then the bullet is still rising or essentially a very flat curve as it passes thru 100yd/m. Do a ballistic calc and see how many yards the system still says you are on "zero". Once we pass the upper arc and the bullet starts a downward path we have removed a minor variable. Impact at 200+/- sets the bullet on exactly one POI. At 100yds I could move +/- several yds and still have "zero"- or a "zero" at multiple ranges (95,96,97..105yds/m). Generally speaking. Of course the platform should be taken into account. A low velocity round could be well within the 100yd/m mark as it starts into its downward path.
The precision of the gun is potentially easier to assess at the closer ranges: a reason to evaluate the 100yd value. Big guns and long distances bring the shooter into play, potentially outweighing the gun itself. Shooting a one hole group with a 6mm is not the same as shooting a one hole group with a .416Barrett.
Point blank ranges are another full topic. We build stacked Point blank range values allowing a hunter/marksman to engage rapidly over distances out past 600m with minimal effort. Most ballistic calculators will determine max point blank and the zero range. We add the 2nd, 3rd, 4th PBR values.
The precision of the gun is potentially easier to assess at the closer ranges: a reason to evaluate the 100yd value. Big guns and long distances bring the shooter into play, potentially outweighing the gun itself. Shooting a one hole group with a 6mm is not the same as shooting a one hole group with a .416Barrett.
Point blank ranges are another full topic. We build stacked Point blank range values allowing a hunter/marksman to engage rapidly over distances out past 600m with minimal effort. Most ballistic calculators will determine max point blank and the zero range. We add the 2nd, 3rd, 4th PBR values.
Allen Lone wolf
Well-Known Member
100yds
Depends on the rifle. Either 100 or 200
RichCoyle
Well-Known Member
If your eyes and brain allowed you to watch a shooter fire a rifle sighted in for 300 yards , you could watch a bullet go up in relation to the ground before it dropped toward the target.
Stokesrjsr
Well-Known Member
What
That would be true only if the line of sight was parallel to the ground. The bullet will rise drone the line of the bore, cross the line of sight, and then fall back to the line of sight at the zero range and then continue below the line of sight.
jfolanddvm
Well-Known Member
Coming late to the party, as we just got back from Africa and I'm just catching up on emails. So, in answer to your question, no matter what distance you zero at, your bullet will never be lower than your scope height at close range. When using a 200 yard zero in a 30 caliber rifle shooting a 200 grain bullet with decent BC at 3000 fps, the bullet first crosses the line of sight at between 30-40 yards and then crosses again at 200 yards. Its highest point in the arc will be somewhere around 150-175 yards, but should not ever be more than 2" high. So anywhere between 5 yards and 240 yards, the bullet should never hit more than 2 inches from point of aim. When zeroing at 100 yards you're just lowering the top of the parabolic curve of the bullet's flight path to closer to the line of sight, so the first time it crosses line of sight will be more like 70 yards and then it crosses again at 100.
When I first started playing with rifles, everything I knew was gleaned from Jack O'Connor or Jim Carmichael in Outdoor Life. Their advice was to zero at 25 yards, which would put you about 1.5 inches high at 100 yds and back on zero about 225 yds. When I first started playing with the long range stuff, I tried setting zero at 100 yards, but after 40 yrs of the old way, my inelastic brain wasn't re-setting it's zero...
So, short answer, I zero at 225-240, hold to 300 and dial most shots over 300 if the animal allows. This did cause me to miss an opportunity on a pretty good waterbuck last week, as we spotted him, ranged him at 365, and as I was dialing, he started walking and then trotting off. The old me would have held a little daylight and squeezed it off, but the new, more precise me watched him trot away as I dialed
