Buck drove me crazy.
As anal as I am about my rifles, his idea of sighting in before deer season was to drive out on the pipeline at our lease, throw a gallon cooking oil can out, back off 60-75 yards, take a rest on his elbows, squint through his cheap scope and touch off a .30-06 round from his immensely popular (and notoriously inaccurate) semi-automatic rifle (he even had see-through mounts on the thing!) and bounce the can about 5 feet.
Smirking, he would pat the stock: “Never goes out of true. Ol’ Faithful.”
He would sack the rifle back in its soft case and grin slyly in my direction while I looked on in disgust.
The heck of it all was out of most of the wanna-be hunters in our small club, Buck rarely missed.
The rest adhered to the theory of more bullets, better luck, and any deer that happened to show itself stood more likelihood of dying of heart failure from dodging a wall of bullets than from lead poisoning.
Buck killed deer, and loved to point out that I spent interminable amounts of time and incredible amounts of ammo sighting in my many rifles each year, while he took only one shot before the season.
The catch was, like most hunters, most of the deer Buck killed were shot well less than 100 yards away.
Admittedly, I like to shoot and sight in my rifles, while most hunters seem to consider it a chore better left to someone else to do, if at all.
We rapidly approach the opening of rifle season for deer, and too many hunters will go into the woods this fall with their rifles either sighted in approximately as well as Buck’s, or not at all.
They’ll pull Ol’ Faithful from the closet, blow the dust off it, spray a coat of WD-40 on it and take it to the woods.
“Hell. Killed two deer with it last year. Ain’t bumped it or nothing. It oughta still be sighted in!”
They don’t consider that even if the rifle has held its zero (if it ever had one to begin with) the shooter could stand a little practice.
Here’s a couple of tricks I use every year to sight in friends’ rifles and save on time and ammo.
First off, equipment is important. I use an H-shaped shooting bag that I filled with cat litter — much lighter than sand. This allows me to gain a steady, solid rest.
If the rifle has been boresighted but never sighted in, it is imperative you fire the first shots at about 25 yards to find out where the bullet is striking on the paper. I once hunted with a good friend who forgot more about rifles than I have learned in a lifetime. Rushed for time, he boresighted a new rifle he just had to hunt with, and brought it to the camp.
I worried the rifle would not be sighted close enough, but he waved me off — probably wouldn’t have that long a shot anyway…
Coming back from the hunt, we had a doe step out in the woods road about 75 yards away. He hadn’t killed a deer in several years, we had a tag and this was what is normally termed a “gimme.”
He sat down in the road and took a rest over his knee while I peered through my scope, excited I was going to get to see a perfect shot on a deer.
At the shot, she squatted, and leaped off the road. We knew from her actions he had missed.
We went out on the pipeline and tacked up a target on a board. I gave him my sandbags to shoot over the hood of my truck. At 75 yards, the bullet struck 14 inches high above point of aim.
So don’t trust boresighting. All it is designed to do is get you on the paper — and sometimes, it doesn’t do a very good job of that, either.
Here’s the trick — and it works better with two people than one.
Take a solid rest at 25 yards placing your crosshairs on the aiming point on the target. Take a deep breath. Let it out. Hold your breath, and squeeze off the shot.
If you are recoil-sensitive, you don’t need all those fancy lead sleds. Simply fold up a towel and drape it over your shoulder as a cushion against recoil.
An old-fashioned ski-vest, one of those that looks like a bullet-proof vest, will work wonders to dissipate recoil, too.
Once the shot is fired, note where the bullet struck on the target in relation to the aiming point.
Here is where the buddy system works well for you. Re-sight the scope, placing the crosshairs again on the aiming point of the target.
Have your buddy stand next to you and hold the rifle firmly in the shooting rest while you make sure it is perfectly aligned with the aiming point.
Then, while he holds the rifle in place, turn the windage and elevation knobs until the crosshairs have moved and intersected with the bullethole.
Remember that you will have to turn the knobs four times as many as at 100 yards. If your scope moves ¼ inche in one click at 100 yards, you will have to turn the knobs 16 clicks to move the bullet 1 inch.
You have now adjusted the scope to aim exactly where the rifle is pointing. Your next shot should be extremely close to point-of-aim if not exactly dead-on.
Called the “one-shot sight-in,” this allows you to move the target out to 100 yards, and be assured the bullet will now strike very close to point-of-aim. You can now adjust the bullet strike of your group to a point to compensate for bullet drop at the range you intend to shoot.
With most of my rifles, I follow the ballistic tables and sight them slightly above point of aim at 100 yards — they strike dead point of aim at 200 yards.
With popular magnum calibers such as the 7mm Remington Magnum, the .300 Winchester Magnum and their counterparts in the short magnums, this is going to be somewhere in the vicinity of 1.5 to 2 inches high at 100 yards, depending on velocity, bullet weight, etc. Most of them will also strike 6 to 8 inches low at 300 yards, still in the kill zone, and about as far as I feel comfortable shooting at a deer-sized target.
There are tons of ballistic calculators on the internet, and almost any caliber/bullet weight/velocity can be found to determine point of aim, but the “one-shot sight-in” will save you time, bullets and lots of frustration when you hunker down behind Ol’ Betsy in excited anticipation of the upcoming season.
Read more guns, shooting and politics on Gordon Hutchinson’s blog at www.theshootist.net and on his website at www.gordonhutchinson.com.
Hutchinson’s newest book, written with Todd Masson, is The Great New Orleans Gun Grab, a searing expose’ of the scandal of gun confiscations in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It is available at www.neworleansgungrab.com.
Hutchinson’s first book, The Quest and the Quarry, is a coming-of-age tale of the youth of a farming family and their hunting of a line of trophy bucks. It is available at www.thequestandthequarry.com.
Both books have been chosen as Books of the Year by the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association, and are available from the publisher by calling (800) 538-4355.
