Ron Spomer tells you how to sight in your scoped rifle when you don’t have access to a long range. (You may sometimes need a buddy to help you, I think — Ron does.) And I have to tell you
Here’s my take on this.
A vast preponderance of shots are made at what I’d call short range: less than 150 yards. And if you do most of your hunting in any kind of woodland, it’s likely to be less than that — think 50 yards. So if you’re doing this kind of shooting, then a 30- or 50-yard zero makes a lot more sense. (Frankly, if you’re shooting at about 50 yards or less, I seriously question whether you need a scope at all.)
I think the longest shot I ever took back in South Africa was a measured (by pacing off) 325 yards, and I have to tell you, had I been more experienced a hunter back then, I probably would have backed off and not taken it.
Now? If I were to go hunting at all (which is highly unlikely), I’d set my limit at 100 yards, and probably less than that. I’d use a low-power scope (maximum 5x) if indeed I used a scope at all — and I’m pretty sure a red-dot scope would do the trick, instead of a crosshair or mil-dot reticle.
Remember that most of the time, you’re shooting at a side plate-sized target, and as such, a 3-MOA sighting group would be more than adequate.
Leave the sub-1″ stuff to the target professionals, and let’s not even begin to talk about the ultra-long distance 1,000 yard shooting. That’s sniper-grade accuracy, and 99% of all riflemen aren’t snipers or even close to being snipers. Hell, at my very best I wasn’t a sniper, mostly because of my crappy eyes. But I was quite a competent hunter.
Know your limitations.
For the situation you’re describing Kim you might consider a LPVO (low power variable optic) scope in the 1 to 6 or the 1 to 10 power range. At 1X you have, in essence, a Red Dot good for quick acquisition from 0 to 50 yards or so and if you need more precision in placeing your shot ,crank it up to the max power. I participate in AR matches in which we engage targets from 20 to 300 yards and every competitor uses some form of an LPVO to adjust to the changing distances.
The trade-off in choosing only a red dot or an LPVO scope is in weight and using a red dot at 100 yards the dot can cover too much area for precision shot placement.
I believe that you’re right.
I worked with a guy who wanted a Barret 50bmg rifle. Here in New England a 400 yard or longer range is rare. I asked him where are you going to shoot this and pointed out the limitations in this area. It’s going to be a $5000-8000 wall hanger.
My rifle shooting skills have a lot of room for improvement so I’m going up to Sig later this month to start their rifle classes. Their pistol classes are very good but I digress.
Ryan Cleckner, a sniper with 75th Rangers had a very good observation about hunting versus long range shooting. Even though he can reliably hit targets at 400 or more yards, that’s about a half mile more he has to walk to get the animal and drag it back plus the distance to get back to his camp or truck. In a hunting situation he limits himself to 300 yards or less. It’s not that he can’t hike the distance and carry the animal back, its more about developing better skills as a hunter and get closer to the quarry. That makes sense to me. On long range shooting, that’s a different story.
Ok, they’re just laughing too much and sighting in per normal (or mostly normal). Not sure what the big deal is. If you got a lead sled, then it ought to be way easy. I thought it was gonna be all ballistics stuff like sight in 2 inches high at 25 yds to be dead on at 200 yds, or some such mess. I seem to recall that with the 22LR it was dead on at 25 and dead on again at 100, but I could be mistaken. One guy I knew who was in the service talked about mini-silhouette targets where the point of aim was way low as a way to simulate long range shooting.
As for shooting close up, as a former archery hunter I can attest that you can get really close to game – I’ve taken shots at 10 – 15 yards back in the day.
Hunting in MN can be a huge variety of environments, going from wide-open corn fields, to swamps, to thick brush, and heavy woods. I zeroed my .30-06’s for 100 yards, figuring I can put a round into a deer’s vitals without holding over or under anywhere from 50 yards to 150 yards. The longest shot I ever took from a stand in northern MN was a measured 125 yards; I held on with no correction and got a perfect heart/lungs shot. I’ve got 3x-9x variable scopes on those bolt guns and usually just left them at about 4x for a wider field of view.
I haven’t been hunting here in Wyoming, but other than going into pine woods, all of the shots out in the sagebrush deserts are going to be longer range. My eyesight is now lousy enough that I don’t even bother, since I can’t discern the difference between a deer and a boulder at more than 300 yards. Binoculars and spotting scopes would help, but I’d never take a shot these days at more than 200 yards anyway.
Sighting in my .22’s (all Ruger 10/22) I use a “see-through” scope mount, which is kind of a double-decker sort of thing. It leaves the iron sights available for use while raising the scope up above that line-of-sight. I sight the scopes in at 50 yards, and have tried them from 25 to 50 yards without needing to change point-of-aim much. They’re otherwise straight out-of-the-box rifles but still amazingly accurate; at 50 yards I can decide which side of a 1″ stick-on target I want to hit on a calm day. If a squirrel was closer than 25 yards I’d just use the iron sights.
But truth to tell, I’d rather eat a feed-lot finished cow than a deer, elk, or antelope these days.
As to your last comment –
I haven’t hunted in decades, but most of the guys I work with are big hunters (actually big go out to camp, drink, BBQ, drink, tell lies, drink some more, and occasionally shoot at an animal). To a man, every single one has the animal butchered and all the meat ground up either into hamburger (deer-burger) or sausage (link or pan, or both). No one eats a deer steak anymore. For the sausage, they mix it 50-50 with fatty pork butt too, just for flavor.
Aim small, miss small.
Yea, sub MOA is for pros or the hardcore shooter. But any decent rifle is capable of 2-3 MOA accuracy, and at 100 yard ranges, that’s easily inside a dinnerplate. Military rifles, believe it or not, generally spec at 4-5 MOA acceptable accuracy, sometimes more. Historically, civilian rifles were generally far more accurate than the military; for most soldiers, the military values reliability over precision. It has to go bang every time, without fail, and if the accuracy specs get loosed a bit to do so, so be it.
So take careful aim, try to hit a PRECISE target, and let the rifle do the rest. Aim small, miss small. Zero carefully, and focus when sighting in. There, conditions are under your control, and you should aim for precision. That way, when in the field, when conditions are NOT always under your control, you can still make an accurate, if not necessarily a sub-moa, shot.
I recently grudgingly admitted that my front line social purpose AR was too heavy, so I built and installed a shorter, lighter upper. Then, zero the LPVO, a Burris RT-6. It has this reticle (I like simple)–
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https://www.burrisoptics.com/reticles/ballistic-5x
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I prefer the 50/200 yard zero for an AR, so that is where I zeroed the center dot. Obviously, point of impact close in will be low. Turns out that the 300 yard cross bar is perfect for 25 yards, + or -.
The US Army had us zero our M-14 at 250 meters. If you put the data for a 7.62 NATO (Win .308) into a ballistics calculator with that zero, you’ll find an impact elevation variation from -1.5 at muzzle (sight height over bore) to a max of 3.7″ at 125-150 yds, to dead on at 250 yds, to needing a 14″ holdover at 375 yds.
For a man sized target, that’s aim center mass out to 300 yds and a neck hold out to 400 yds and still get a center mass hit.
On my last qualification with a new M-14, not that shot out thing I had in basic, I put down 87 out of 90 pop-up silhouettes ranging at random from 50 to 350 meters from prone with iron sights using standard issue 150 gr NATO ammo.
If you’re like me now with old fuzzy eyes, a light 1-4x variable scope should make up for age on all but the smallest game targets.
Save that big scope precision shooting stuff for quart bottle sized prairie dogs at hundreds of yards.