Thread: Sighting in a rifle on a short range

Originally Posted by Bagheera

Short range sight in seems to have become a lost art since the days of Matt and Bruce Grant. The cigarette packet at the end of the skid isn't so PC nowadays. The sharpshooter was the bible of nz hunting marksmanship.

Good marksmanship for hunting is 80% preparation and 20% performance on the day. Put in your time on paper at the range and hunting will take care of itself.

Ok the best way is to shoot at 200 or 300 till you know where you are hitting (good wine dage and all) then shoot carefully at 25 and RECORD where it hits.

A ballistic app like JBM (online) will give good info without too much tech input or ask here and someone will punch it in quick and good for you.

Numbers you can guess approximately:
Muzzle velocity
Ballistic coefficient
Take the manufacturer's claims and subtract 20fps for every inch less than 24" will be fine.

NUMBERS YOU MUST HAVE SPOT ON:
Centre of barrel to center of scope (well to the nearest 5mm anyway)
A small group. Ideally within 1cm centre to centre at 25m. And fire groups of at least 3.
The exact distance for your short range. The bullet is rising quickly and if its 40m not 25 you can end up way out. Also your sights won't adjust what you expect. Either use a rangefinder or pace out very carefully. For me 50m is 55 paces.

Finally, the main difficulty shooting at 200m and 300m is estimating the range. Most people can't judge better than +/- 50m without a laser, which leads to huge errors in bullet impact.

Well said.