Well, I shot a little precision rifle match yesterday. Wind was pretty bad but I think my performance was worse. I'm gonna blame it on the wind as it was gusting at our shooting positions over 25mph & no telling how high down in the gully where the targets were. It was not staying steady at all, either. I hit 6 targets of 24, various distances from 200-675yds, one shot each. Just couldn't get into the swing of things.
Only problem blaming the wind is several of the other guys did pretty well.  The results should be out pretty soon with notes on who was shooting what caliber. It will be interesting to see how it turns out. Embarassing thing was geating beat by a .223 AR with some factory steel cased ammo! OUCH, I sucked!
Oh well, I'll do better next time, that is for sure.
Anyone else ever have this kind of day?
Mark Miller
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Everyone has good days and bad days.
Good shooters learn more on bad days than they do on good days, so they have fewer bad days in the long run!
You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live. - John Galt
Could you see where your shots were hitting? Was it wind related or did you have trouble with range estimation?
What bullet were you shooting?
Thanks!
RR
Thanks Bill. Yeah, ill do better next time.
Rick, could occasionally see impact, most of the trouble was windage & my lack of experience dealing with it. All distances were known, load data for elevation has been verified to 300
But i mostly had left right issues. Started trying to read wind using kestrel & data. Finally i just tried kentucky windage.
Was shooting lapua 123 scenars, right at 2600fps. Only thing that may have affected load was it was new brass & my grendel has a long chamber so brass is kind of short at the shoulder until it is fired once. Would that affect it?
Anyway i guess i was crying in my wheaties. Thanks for the encouragement guys!
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11-14-2011, 01:27 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2011, 07:29 PM by LR1955.)
mlmiller1 Wrote:Started trying to read wind using kestrel & data. Finally i just tried kentucky windage.
Was shooting lapua 123 scenars, right at 2600fps. Only thing that may have affected load was it was new brass & my grendel has a long chamber so brass is kind of short at the shoulder until it is fired once. Would that affect it?
Anyway i guess i was crying in my wheaties.
MM:
I can tell a novice when they show up on a field fire range. They bring a small unidirectional anemometer and a page with many columns of very small numbers printed on it. Or they bring their I Phone. Of course they can't read the pages or anemometer because the numbers are too small and even if they could, they have to search for the right number or column and by that time, the wind has changed.
It is funny to watch them when they get into wind conditions that are anything other than under 10 MPH and slow in change of speed and direction. They desperately look between their tiny anemometer and pages of written data, trying to figure out an average or even find the right column. Or they hit the wrong buttons on their I Phone and desperately struggle to get back on track. After five minutes of this, they throw both down and stare down range trying to figure out why the stuff they read or saw on U Tube wasn't working for them. They bring this and their total loss of confidence to their shooting and blast $1.50 a shot rounds of Grendel ammo down range an miss easy targets.
So, you learned some lessons. One should be that even with your 123 Lapua $1.50 a shot ammo, the wind will still push them to the side and enough to miss. Anything at 2600 fps is by today's standards about 150 fps too slow to be considered competitive at those distances due to wind. And no, new brass and a long chamber won't affect the issue.
What is your process for doping winds?
When you were going through these gyrations with your anemometer and data page, where was your attention focused?
How was your firing solution presented using your data page or I Phone? By holds or by adjusting windage?
When doping winds, where should your attention be focused -- on your target and the environment or on your I phone and anemometer?
LR1955
Lr, Im pretty good with numbers so ive got my data sheet with big print but minimized so it only has stuff i need on it. Took wind data off kestrel as i was r.o.ing other shooters. Got my estimated holds off my data before it was my turn. Then when it was my turn, got down on rifle, dialed range, watched grass & limbs best i could through scope, paid attention to where the wind was blowing on me for direction then attempted the shots. Since i was the one r.o.ing, no one helped out by calling direction of misses except one guy that couldnt really tell. I had done all the direction of misses for the others so i guess they thought i didnt need help. Anyway, it was my lack of experience that was the big problem. Sure the grendel doesnt have the speed it needs for 30mph everchanging winds & ranges but with experience, some of that can be overcome.
LR, i know you didnt intend to sound "superior" because you have all this experience but that is the way your response came across. If i were a new shooter completely, a response like yours would be very discouraging. I am new to precision rifle shooting but not to other types of shooting so i will assume somewhere in your post was something of value. Everyone starts new somewhere & if you want to make fun of new guys like me, go ahead but it doesnt grow the sport or help me become a better shooter.. By the way, my ammo does not cost $1.50/shot. Not including brass, i have @.50 per round in my ammo. Not sure how many loadings ill get but even if it is just 2 that will only bump up the cost another .28 cents.
You almost sound as though you dont like grendels, by the way. Kind of odd on a grendel forum.
MLM
Learning to read the wind is something you will be learning until the day you stop shooting. Starting with wind zero, I have shot in conditions that went from 2moa left to 4 moa right. At 600 yards that equates to 36" of drift. I was fortunate in that I had a couple of Highmasters mentoring/coaching me and so they kept me from getting frustrated when I first started and had no clue how to read wind.
If you don't have flags, limbs and grass movement and mirage are all important to watch. But, use them all. Don't get fixated on just one of them for your decision.
And practice, practice, practice. It's amazing how lucky you will get.
Stay safe.
Rick
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mlmiller1 Wrote:Lr, Im pretty good with numbers so ive got my data sheet with big print but minimized so it only has stuff i need on it. Took wind data off kestrel as i was r.o.ing other shooters. Got my estimated holds off my data before it was my turn. Then when it was my turn, got down on rifle, dialed range, watched grass & limbs best i could through scope, paid attention to where the wind was blowing on me for direction then attempted the shots. Since i was the one r.o.ing, no one helped out by calling direction of misses except one guy that couldnt really tell. I had done all the direction of misses for the others so i guess they thought i didnt need help. Anyway, it was my lack of experience that was the big problem. Sure the grendel doesnt have the speed it needs for 30mph everchanging winds & ranges but with experience, some of that can be overcome.
LR, i know you didnt intend to sound "superior" because you have all this experience but that is the way your response came across. If i were a new shooter completely, a response like yours would be very discouraging. I am new to precision rifle shooting but not to other types of shooting so i will assume somewhere in your post was something of value. Everyone starts new somewhere & if you want to make fun of new guys like me, go ahead but it doesnt grow the sport or help me become a better shooter.. By the way, my ammo does not cost $1.50/shot. Not including brass, i have @.50 per round in my ammo. Not sure how many loadings ill get but even if it is just 2 that will only bump up the cost another .28 cents.
You almost sound as though you dont like grendels, by the way. Kind of odd on a grendel forum.
MLM
MM:
Not a problem.
Run a search on the forum and you will find a number of decent comments made about doping wind.
Bottom line is to have a strategy or plan that you have tested enough to have some trust it will work. From your comments it seems like you don't have a strategy or don't have one that you trust. You see, having a strategy means not only the process but actions you take if / when something doesn't work. Such as missing without knowing where the shots went and not knowing what to do about it.
In high winds, any cartridge going that slow will give you problems. No matter how high a bullet manufacturer claims their ballistic coefficient to be. It will teach you to dope winds but the price will be high and in extremes like you were, even the best wind dopers would have big problems if they were firing a cartridge that only gave them 2600.
Good luck!
LR1955
In my gun with a 20 inch barrel I've seen an increase of less than 10 fps with new brass compared to fired brass, so it shouldn't be much of a factor. The calculator says going from 2600 to 2610, it will shoot less than an inch high and drift only about 0.1 inch less at 600 yards in a 10mph wind.
Shooting in those kinds of wind conditions is going to be a challenge for just about any caliber.
Usually the guys you see winning are the guys that have been doing it the longest. They just build up the experience base to shoot under all kinds of conditions.
Do you keep a log book when shooting? It really helps if you can flip back through your book and find when you last shot under similar wind, range, temperature, humidity, altitude conditions etc, etc.
You can see what dope worked before, even if it was just practice. Get a good load and stick with it so you can get the feel of what the bullet is going to do under all circumstances.
LR's comments about having a strategy is a good one.
If you can't see where your hits are going, one technique is to sacrifice a shot and aim very low so that you know you are going to impact the ground in front of the target. Your chances of spotting the splash are much greater then, and at least you'll have a data point.
You might think that will make you look really bad but don't worry about what the other guys are doing. If you learn something and get a data point under those conditions, that's something you can take home. Write it down in your book.
I think most of us let fear of what other shooters think of us get in the way of learning sometimes. On a day like that, they are going to be a lot more concerned about where they are hitting, than where you are.
If the rules let you use a compensator that will help you self spot. Otherwise, zooming the scope out to give you a wider field of view may let you observe the splash better.
You'll have to accept that there is going to be a learning curve for that type of shooting and you won't be competitive for awhile.
What's more important is that you learn from each match or practice session, and get better with each. That way, your skill level will eventually move you up into the competitive level if you stick with it.
In bad conditions that you've never shot in before you might be better off to shoot to educate yourself rather than to win. Otherwise you end up losing anyway and don't learn anything that will help the next time.
Sorry if I'm telling you stuff you already know.
I bet you'll do better next time. Good luck.
RR
Thanks Rick,
Those are all great ideas! I never thought about dropping one intentionally into the dirt to see how much drift I was getting. Several of the targets were in grass so that wouldn't have worked just anywhere but there were places with dirt available. File that one in the "mental tool box". The log book is a good idea as well. This experience was worth the time & money just so I know what to practice. You know, it is hard to want to go to the range for precision rifle practice when the wind is blowing 20+mph but it looks like I need to do just that.
LR, that post was much more useful than the one you deleted. I found several valuable ideas in it. Thank you very much!
Now I can move forward with tools to help me improve.
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