So, we've been working on a new private shooting range that will take us out to a mile. Had the inaugural run on Saturday and everything went great. We started at 600 yards and backed up to 1000 with only a couple of misses on the steel. My best group, measured comparatively by MOA, was at 800 yards and it went 3.3 inches. Pretty good by my standards. There were 3 shooters, each running 2 rifles, and a good time was had by all. One of our regulars couldn't make it Saturday, and since the weather was so nice, we decided to do a repeat on Sunday so he could get in on the action. He started at 600 and immediately had issues getting on the target. Once he finally got on, his group was fine. In the interest of saving time the rest of us were planning to hold off until we hit 1000, so none of the rest of us shot. Backed up to 700 and the same thing happened again - DOPE was way off and it took several spotter rounds before he ever hit steel. This guy is an experienced shooter and had lots of DOPE on his rifle, but of course none for this particular location. One of the other guys decided to shoot at 700 just to verify, and he also had issues. So now we all start shooting and it looked like a bunch of first timers had taken over the range. Not one of us could get first round hits anywhere near the bull. We spent the rest of the afternoon struggling to put together some decent groups at 800, 900 and 1000 yards. The only variable that changed much from Saturday to Sunday was the wind direction. Saturday was 4 - 5 mph coming in between 11:00 and 1:00 (almost straight into us), and Sunday was 3 - 4 mph from 7:00 to 6:00 (almost straight from behind). How such a light wind could play so much hell with our shooting is beyond be. Or maybe it was the 2 old settler graves that we were shooting over that caused all of our woes?

Maybe someone moved your targets Saturday night.

Sounds like you have a good range going. So, as a shooter, when someone says they were "way off", what does that mean? How much is way off? Right left, low/high by .1 mils or 2.0 mils?

The worst wind to shoot in is a variable head or tail wind. The wind is NEVER dead on. And when you do the math on how much variation a bullet will drift between a 1 o'clock wind and an 11 o'clock wind, it's A LOT compared to a full value wind. Also, if there is any terrain features that can cause up drafts or down drafts, that can effect your DOPE. There are several places I have shot that you have to adjust your dope for the wind direction due to up/down drafts.

I figure it's something odd like up/down drafts. The range runs parallel to a big corn field that has a huge stand of green corn in it. Every now and then when the wind would shift just right you could feel a slight drop in temperature as it blew across the corn. I'm guessing that was it, but I sure as heck don't know how to calculate for that.

BTW - I wasn't kidding about the settler's graves. There really are two of them from the 1800's.

you may be off target but how was your grouping ?

if you had taken 3 shots, did all 3 hit in the same general area ? (that's all that matters)

the rest you can compensate/re-calculate

Groupings were fine once we got on target. It was just something odd going on that was throwing everyone's calculations off. Shooting a couple of 24 inch gongs and about half of the first shots completely missed. It didn't help that the berm was fresh dirt and it had rained Friday so there wasn't much dust to mark a miss. Several times we couldn't figure out where we were missing, and had to stop shooting and drive up to the berm to see the fresh bullet holes in the dirt and figure out which way to adjust. Really odd that we had none of that on Saturday and whole bunch of it on Sunday. I'm still leaning towards the upset ghost theory.

many weird things can happen......



when you enter the Twilight Zone.

Head wind, tail wind, terrain features.

Welcome to long range shooting.

And good form helps spot the splash, and make a quick correction. I know very well wet berms, and no dust. Sometimes I see trace and/or the bullet in flight.

I don’t question your ghost theory

I have experienced them on my place
As do most of my friends when I invited them out for hog hunt

I don’t tell them anything weird going on
But they all come back and said “ there is something up there in that canyon”

Get to know your ghosts .... keep us updated