Thread: Wind reading accuracy while hunting

Don't use Beaufort for shooting, it is utterly useless for that.
You can get far without a Kestrel.
Shooters that sink their skill into Kestrels and calculators tend to miss out on practical application.

Start here, relevant to this thread windcalls, their resolution and practical efficiency is explained in episode 352 to 355. Plenty info to get you off to a good start.

https://youtu.be/Pi17Uvq_bXY

Originally Posted by kruza

I use an air rifle, and the pellets notice wind. So i got a cheap hand held wind meter. Went out on windy days mesured the wind and started to take notice of how it felt on my face, how much it blew the rifle,what the grass and trees were doing etc. Once i had a reasonable grasp on that I went to pellet movement in the wind taking careful well aimed shots.
Its improved my windage aimpoint shooting. Theres still a heap of variables but its got me in the ballpark to take an educated shot in wind. Ive bowled a rabbit over in 13km gusting to 20km wind at about 45m. It may have been a lucky shot but I had the confidance to take it and it worked

Gotta be a good 6inch of deflection in that scenario. Well done eh!

I stuffed up the math a bit. When combining errors you: square them, add them, and then take the square root.

Now with a rifle accuracy of 0.30mil (~1moa) and a wind error of 0.32mil (±3km/h, ±0.16mil) at 450m. The combined error is √(0.30² + 0.32²) = 0.44mil. 450m x 0.44mil = 198mm.

Caliber accounts for a lot of wind deflection. 7mm is the sweet spot. Lighter caliber blow easier bigger calibers need a mountain of powder to compete at range with the ballistics of a 7mm. Long sleek heavy pills pushed fast are good at fighting the wind and gravity

My approach is to look at how many inches of defection I have at one meter per second, the kill zone devided by that defection decides if the shot is on.

With my 284 I get 2' of drift in a full value wind at 400 yards, if my kill zone is 12 inches (lungs to base of neck) then I've got 6 inches either side of point of aim, so that's 3ms of error I can live with. If dial for 3ms than I'm good from perfectly still to 6ms (which is a gale), I would always allow an extra ms, three become 4, because there is obviously some wind.

Originally Posted by T.FOYE

Gotta be a good 6inch of deflection in that scenario. Well done eh!

honestly I couldn't tell you.
As an air rifle shooter the distance I shoot is rather small.
I've just gone out to my target range in various strength winds measured the wind speed, then shot targets and remembered the mildot windage at those distances.
Not scientific but true to real world situations.