Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles What's your sight-in range?

Zero at 100, and then in the field in open country, set it to be 3.5 inches high at 100.... then knowing the MV, that tells me where my point blank range will be with the bullet 3.5 inches low...

use a 7 inch window with that formula, and since an antelope is 14 inches from backbone to breastbone, a blacktail and whitetail is 16 inches, and a mule deer is about 18 inches....

Zero at 200 for my centerfire rifles. MPBR out to about 265-285 depending on cartridge.

Zero a couple inches high at 50 yards for my muzzleloader. That's about as far as I care to sight in with irons! And MPBR is probably only 100 yards anyway.

I zero most of them at 200, works real well around here. The elk hunting I've done has been pretty close cover so I just stay with the 200 yard zero.If I were going west and expected more open country I might raise it up a bit, but probably just use the dots.

My old 25-20 Marlin I zero at 50 yards with its receiver sight and use a 6 o'clock hold. Works well for small game and if I take a longer shot at a coyote I can use a center hold.

30/30, 25 yards. Back yard zero.

I was taught a 200yd sight-in, learned Kentucky elevation as a teen, and it stuck with me. I'm a bit more sophisticated with it than how I was taught three decades ago, but the basics are there. Range finders, ballistics programs, good bullets, and clever systems have made it more precise.

I hunt with a 30-06 with scope in high rings, and after running endless loads through ballistics programs I saw patterns emerge. My zero is 255-270 depending on bullet weight, but my plan is to have a MPBR of at least 300yds with a 7" circle. Heavier bullets hit the boundaries of this the most. If I was just hunting deer, or if the shots weren't so commonly 400-600yds where I hunt, it would be a 5" circle.

My preferred hunting load is 3" high at 100 and 3" low at 300, and then the drops go 350: 8", 400: 16", 450: 24", 500: 36", 550: 48", 600: 60". It is a an approximation within a few inches, and I have discovered that faster, lighter bullets also fit this chart within a few inches. It works really well for me, and within my given imposed max, I have just memorized the drops. Still trying to work out a system for windage, but that is another tale.

John Barsness wrote up a piece in a Nosler manual about judging distance using the size of animals in your scope at a certain power and comparing it to a std measurement characteristic, from backline to brisket. Somebody else also mentioned it above. I also use it not for distance, since I have a range finder, but to more precisely estimate holdover. I use the size of the animal to get a concise idea what my Kentucky elevation needs to be.

200 yards.

I'm an inch & 3/4 high at 100 yards with both 7mm RM and 300wby. Then on the range I verify out to 800 yards that my mental calculations match the 7 and the hash marks on the z600 match the 300.

My goal is to not think out to 300......I'm better just shooting if I'm in a hurry.

I have been setting zeros at 3" high at 100 yards for so long I don't really want to change. I have dots and ballistic reticles on a couple of scopes but only fool with them target shooting.

For .243 100gr,.250 Savage 87 gr, .308 150gr, .30-06 180 gr, .308 Norma 180 gr, .338 225 gr I sight at +3" at 100 yds then fire and record actual POI at 200 and 300 yards.

I sight my .250 Savage 100gr and .35 Whelen 225 gr at 3.5" high at 100 yards and shoot for actual POI at 200 and 300 yards.

I haven't settled on how I want to set my zero for for my .375 H&H or 1885 .45-70 yet.

My .223 55 or 60-64gr loads are zeroed 2" high at 100 yards and shot at 50 and 200 to verify POI.

The .30 Carbine is sighted 3" high at 100 but I only check it at 200yds.

With the exception of one mule deer I haven't shot anything past 300 yards in years. The country I usually hunt doesn't lend itself to it.

This

For the most part I calculate MPBR for a 6" diameter circle, determine what the trajectory ishould be at 100 yards, zero at 100 accordingly, then verify at longer ranges -- out to 600 with most cartridges, less with the levers in .30-30, .375 Win, .44 Mag and .45-70.

For the modern cartridges and my most-used hunting loads, that generally translates to a zero point of around 260-290 yards, depending. Some loads go over 300 while the lever cartridges (except my .280 Rem) are under 200.

Sight in? Who bothers with that anymore. They come from the factory already sighted in, no?

Since all my hunting is in Eastern thick woods, I long ago eschewed scopes on deer rifles, except for a couple which have QD optical systems 'just in case'. 100 yard zeros have served me well for many years now, with the scopes zeroed at 200. Varmint rifles zeroed at 200 and drops carefully noted out to 300-350.

It is funny you should ask this. I was thinking about this just the other day. I found a piece I had written about a decade ago, and it was interesting to see how my ideas had changed. It was a journey out of ignorance.

My sighting-in methods had not changed in the first 25 years, and for the first 20 of those years I was doing all my work at formal shooting ranges. I would find the closest target stand (10-25 yards), and get things zeroed to that range and then shoot a few at 50 or 100 and then go hunting. Mind you, even when I was deer hunting with a rifle, I was hunting from stands I had set up for archery. Until a few years ago, I never taken a shot past 50 yards.

First off, I started reloading. I did it, at first, to save money. Remington Greenbox had gone over $8 at Walmart, and I wanted to economize. Then I got my own plot of land, and I put a shooting bench on the front porch. That got me shooting more. Then I added a chronograph and a bore sighter and PointBlank software.

Now I could get on the paper at 100 yards with my first shot. PointBlank had a nice feature that calculated Point Blank Range for you, and I found that no matter what I threw at it, the answer always came back that at an inch or two high at 100 yards, I could be secure in shooting dead-on out to some unthinkable range.

This was also about the time my shoulder gave out and I had to put up my bow for good. Now my rifle was no longer just an afterthought, and what had been unthinkable was now worth trying. A treestand in a 20 MPH wind is no place to try a 200 yards shot, but a ground blind with a sand bag for a rest is.

The short answer to the question is that I sight-in now at 100 yards. I am comfortable shooting out to about 230 yards. There are a few places on the farm where I could get a longer shot, but it would be forcing the issue.

I like most of mine sighted in bout right here.

I've never found it to be a 'bad' thing that the bullet lands where the crosshairs are planted. Looks like many disagree.

High shoulder sight-in ain't never a bad thang.

Yes and no. I think the big epiphany for me was learning about Point Blank Range. If I set the sights so I'm X" high at nnn yards, I don't have to worry about elevation until Y yards. It used to be that I sighted dead-on at 50 and later dead-on at 100, but then PBR came into my life and I realized the implications.

For instance, being dead-on at 50 yards with my rifle at the range really did not make much difference out of a treestand when I was shooting at a deer at 25 yards. However, now that I have taken to shooting at longer distances, I know the arc of the bullet is going to come into play. With a dead-on at 100 yard sight-in, my 30-06 will be 8 inches low at 250 yards. If I sight-in 2" high at 100 yards, I'm less than 4" low at the same distance.

Given that the distance to the far end of the pasture from my ground blind is 230 yards, that means that with a +2"@100 sight-in, my '06 can hit anything in that field without worrying about range. That means no chart taped to my stock, no rangefinder, I just point and shoot. Wherever the deer is, whatever the range, I'll be no more than 2 inches off where the crosshairs were.

I said yes and no. If I sight in dead-on at 50 with that same rig, I'm less than a quarter-inch high at 100 yards, and start falling off the cliff somewhere out beyond 175 yards. If I were to be hunting out of a treestand in deep woods, I'd never know the difference.

Now, let's just say a big buck comes into the field at last light. I wait for him to turn broadside, and when he does, I plug him. I step it off to 200 yards. Am I going to be able to tell that I'm .052" low from where I aimed?


BTW: gnoahhh
On the surface, it seems like sheer idiocy to walk into a sporting goods store the eve of the Opener, buy a rifle and a scope, let the clerk bore-sight the rig and go out and hunt it the next morning, but if you assume the rig was properly bore-sighted, and the deer was close enough it would not make much difference.

If you go based on my latest batch of rifles that I bore-sighted and took to the range, all of them would have been hitting on a pie plate in the middle of the deer's chest at 50 yards from a 15' foot high treestand. I'm not saying it is a good idea, but it isn't all that bad. Anyone who would try this in ignorance, is also capable of attempting a 300 yard offhand shot or emptying a magazine at herd of deer running away.

30-06...........Nos 165 BT .........2900 fps........+ 4.0 @ 100......0 @ 300 yds.... -30 @ 500 yds

30-06...........Hor 190 btsp........2800 fps........+ 4.3 @ 100......0 @300 yds..... -29 @ 500 yds

7mm STW....Nos 160 AB..........3200 fps........+ 3.6 @ 100......0 @ 330 yds .....-20 @ 500 yds

270 Win........Nos 130 BT..........3100 fps........+ 3.4 @ 100.......0 @ 300 yds...... -27 @ 500 yds

264 Win ........Nos 130 AB..........3200 fps........+ 3.7 @ 100......0 @330 yds......-20 @ 500 yds

260 Rem.........Nos 120 BT..........3000 fps........+ 4.0 @ 100......0 @300 yds ...... -28 @ 500 yds

6mm-284 Win..Nos 95 BT...........3200 fps........+ 3.3 @ 100.....0 @ 300 yds...... -27 @ 500 yds

22-243AI.........Hor 60 sp...........3800 fps........+ 2.9 @ 100......0 @ 330 yds...... -20 @ 500 yds

And yes, I did shoot over the top of a critter once. A coyote at 150 yds with the 264.

ETA: I will add a couple for short range work.

Sometimes I run the 260 sans scope with an NECG peep. Zero @ 150 yds

Marlin 1894 in 41 mag with Williams peep: zero @ 75 yds.

Ruger SBH in 41 mag W/ Nikon 2x20: hits five inches low at 130 yds.

200
30 for my bow!

My years working an M40, service, and match rifles, has me now so I keep a base zero for my hunting rifles, and with scopes, I keep a simple chart on the scopes with bullet drop and come-up data confirmed from shooting stable positions across the field out to my max shooting range for the particular hunting rifle.

My large game rifle has a 100-yard base zero with scope and a 50-yard zero on the fixed sights with scope removed. I have basic come-ups and holdovers out to 300-yards. The particular scope is a low power S&B, but it has repeatable knobs with an adjustable base zero indicator. So if I wanted to be zeroed up for say 200, or maybe 250-yards, I can either use holdover above my 100-yard base zero, or I could add clicks on the knob. If I so desired, I could add clicks to my base zero to give me a basic MPBR of some sort to hit a large game kill zone out to my max range. Mostly, however, my shot presentations are inside 200 yards, so I keep the scope turned down and the knobs set on BZ. If I need to shoot far, I normally have time to turn up the power, and make sight corrections.

My varmint, long range rifle also has a base zero, but it is set at 200-yards to mesh with a bullet drop compensating reticle. This rifle shoots fairly flat and at times is used to shoot much farther than my large game rifle. Though it also has a chart with confirmed come-ups, I tend to rely upon using the various aiming points upon the reticle.

All of my other rifles have either open or peep sights, with the exception of one 44 mag handgun, which does have a scope. It also has a chart with holdover corrections. I generally keep hunting shots with this revolver inside 100 yards, but routinely shoot bowling pins out to about 135 yards or so from field positions using holdover corrections.