Curious about which size aiming dot or square that you prefer for sighting in a scoped rifle.

At whatever range you choose to sight in your rifle, do you prefer to be able to Quarter the aiming point on the target?

or do you subscribe to the aim small miss small idea and just barely have the aiming point visible(an aiming point so small that you cant quarter it with the reticle?

For a hunting rifle, I'm assuming? I like a 3/4" or 1" dot.... Anything smaller and It just goes away anyway:

I like the bright orange stick-on dots; I like to quarter them with the reticle. For deer rifle scopes the 1 1/2" dots at 100 yards, and 3" dots at 200 yards work well for me.

With a crosshair reticle I prefer an X as an aiming mark, ideally with each leg of the X tapering towards the centre. I personally find it a great deal easier and more precise to hold on the centre of an X than to hold on the corner of a square, for example. FWIW Most of my scopes are comparatively low in magnification too.

I downloaded this some years ago - I can't recall where it came from now:



More often than not though I simply draw the aiming mark, more or less crudely, with a texta, especially on ranges which insist on you using the targets they supply:

I don't remember who (maybe Sam Olsen?), but somebody on the fire turned me on to these a while back. Great targets!

http://precisionplustargets.com/hiviztargets2.htm

David

Works for me. I use a 1" red square turned so the points are on the top and bottom and quarter it at 100 yards. I verify at longer ranges with bullseye targets.

Orange dots against a black background work great. I use the 1" size at 100 yards; the 3" at 300;the 6" at 400-600 etc.

The targets like Canazes posted are great, too. Important thing is to hold small enough to minimize drift,canting, and reduce wiggle.Some scopes have thinner reticles than others. Suit aiming points to the reticle and force yourself to "hold small".

Lots of styles work. But if you are holding against something too big you may tend to move around in it too much.

I used to use a paper plate with a 2" diamond of black tape in the middle. Lately I've been shooting at just the paper plate and have little trouble keeping my shots centered appropriate to distance...

My late brother worked up a series of targets based on open black squares similar to the aiming point on a BR target, but in various sizes to accomodate different scooe magnifications and reticles. The open center allows you to quarter it easily. The smaller the square, the more that fit on a standard sheet of paper. He also added thin, horizontal lines to show elevarion in inches; +1, +2, etc. I run off copies at Staples as needed. These are good for sighting in and accuracy testing, but I use round bullseyes for practice.

I like an orange bull that is perfectly subtended by the crosshairs. If I can see orange, I know I'm off.

I can't tell you what size it is because it varies depending upon how thick the crosshairs of your scope are.

I always give the scope a couple inches of elevation so that the aiming point doesn't get obliterated.

That's my problem. I move around too much when shooting...

I prefer diamond shaped points of aim. As well as some commercial targets I often use square blue post-it note taped to white paper. Rotate post-it note 90 degrees so it forms a diamond. Select post-it note and paper size based upon range and magnification.

As I work in an office all the paper I could want comes out of the recycling system.

Blue gives ample contrast against white and all shots are easy to spot, this is a nice frugal solution.

I like the Leupold style, 4 squares and reticle centers nicely in there. I print them on 8.5x11" paper and don't use black for the squares as I like to see the holes. For shooting groups a round MOA target simulates the blue bull at 1000 yds at any distances, 4" at 400 yards etc.

Your targets sound a lot like mine. My squares are 2.5"x2.5" with a one inch white square in the center. With a rifle that shoots really tiny groups I can get up to five groups on the target. My .223 Kimber is about the only one I have that can do it. I get 500 printed up at a time.
Paul B.

I always grab a few labels when I'm in the P.O,and just draw a black ring about an inch in diameter on it. I line mine up at 100 yards,because most of my scopes have the paralax fixed for that distance.I don't line mine up a little high like some folks.My Dad always liked his lined up a little to the left because he claimed right handed shooters pull a little to the right. The way I look at it is if you line one up dead center then a slight tilt of your gun while hunting won't amount to anything..

A barn door wouldn't work for lots of folks!

I'm another who just makes an X on a paper plate with a felt pen.

For up close, I use a sharpie, and make a fine X (rimfire at 30 yards)

If shooting farther that 100 yards, just use a bigger felt pen.
I've got one that's 1/2" wide. Works great for distance, and handguns.

Been doing this for over 20 years.


Virgil B.

Just a little bigger than what the reticle covers. No squaring up the target, which makes me conscious of the wiggles along with trying to be too exact and tense. See a small portion of the aiming point and let it go.

With Deer season approaching the range has been busy and most were trying way to hard to be perfect. Some took over a minute to get one shot off.

I like about a 2 moa aimpoint. With a scope around 10-12X I find it easy to bisect and get centered on, but still see my reference after a few holes get shot in it.

Felt pen most of the time,




2" masking tape works pretty good,




Holding corners on a JCP logo,




3" shoot-n-see,

When I head to the range there are usually at least 4-5 rifles along, with various size scopes, so one size target does not fit all. I first started making my own with a Magic Marker, eventually settling on an “X” much like danoz’s, but then the owner of the Precision Plains target Canazes9 mentioned sent me some of his, and I ended up preferring the diamond-shaped target with an open space in the middle.

With either, the size of the aiming point doesn’t really matter, as long as you can see it around the reticle. It can be pretty big and still provide precise aiming with a fine reticle, because any sort of crosshair reticle can be centered precisely with the help of the horizontal and vertical reference points, so works with a variety of reticles and magnifications.

I also prefer the blue color of the targets, as bullet holes can be seen better than on black. At least one study found orange tends to dance around for many people, especially in bright light. Dunno if that happens with me, but I do prefer blue, the reason the big Magic Marker I carry in my range bag for drawing occasional aiming points is blue.

But I do also use other targets, mostly because companies keep sending them to me to try out, and it would be ill-mannered and unprofessional not to. Plus they’re free!

That bright orange is too close to the same brightness as a white background for me, despite the color contrast. The next time I run off some copies of mine, I'll have to try to crank out some blue ones.

I also like the various splatter targets for practice and the pasters they provide make good targets themselves. The self-adhesive ones work great when the backer board is getting too shot up to hold staples.

I'm one of them. On a bright sunny day flourescent orange goes fuzzy and seemes to move around for my eyes.

At 100 yds, if I am not using mountain plains blue diamonds, then I am using homemade targets (4ea 1" black squares, arranged two on two and separated by 1" of white. Line up the cross hairs on a corner of a square and you can hold pretty tight. Plus you get 4 targets/page which I use for load development. I am not a big fan of orange, or dots of any size.

For years I have made my own. I use 1" red/orange flagging tape on white computer paper. Mostly I hold on the lower right hand corner with the cross hairs aligned along the bottom and right side. The bullet holes show up well on the white paper background and on the tape. Few of my guns are quarter inchers so any "floating" due to the colour of the tape is of little concern.

Within the next couple of weeks I have to have a cataract removed from my right (sighting) eye. I noticed that my group sizes have been increasing for the last few months and I attribute this to the cataract. It has also been affecting my reading. I hate the thought of having an operation on my eye but there isn't any alternative.

Jim

I make my own as well. I'm a minimalist. This is the template for my CF targets. I get 500 printed at Staples on fluorescent green paper. The fluoro-green works in dull, foggy conditions as well as sunny. It is not fatiguing to stare at and is easily located.

The thin outer cirle is 5.5 inches in diameter. The black dot is 3 inches. I use these for scopes and iron sights.



The only thing that I've done to them over the years was remove the area at the bottom where I used to record load data. I also made the outer circle thinner and narrowed the iron sight block at the bottom of the circle..

I modded them because I found that I was saving the group and not the whole sheet. I cut out a small square with the info written beside the holes.

These were my older ones.

Interesting. That big black circle would be too big for my liking... Hard to be precise with that set-up. But hey, if it works for you...

The only time I can't clearly see the orange dot:

This is a hunting target, not for paper punching. I originally designed them for iron sights.

To be able to put the crosshairs in the same spot time after time, I added the two rectangles, but living creatures don't have lines or dots on them. The cost in CDN dollars for 1000 copies, including paper is $93 0r 0.093 a sheet. USD cost is about 0.072 a sheet.

Well if you're trying to use a little snow as an excuse for that 7:00 flyer, we ain't buyin' it!

For shooting with a .22 target rifle I make 1½" black bullesyes with ½" white centers, on white paper stock. The tiny white centers are just right for quartering with the fine crosshairs in my old school Fecker and Unertl scopes at 50 yards. Aim small, hit small. Zooming the image 200% in the copier makes a good target for both aperture sight and scope use at 100 yards with centerfires. I like the stark contrast of Xerox black on white for all my targets. Orange bullseyes on a white background tend to float away on me too.

Heck, one time I was forced to re-sight in a rifle out in the middle of nowhere with a Reese's candy bar wrapper tacked to a tree. Worked, and saved my hunting trip.

I use various styles, like one-inch white diamonds with either a 1/8 or 1/4 center ring. Depends on final scope power, whether a dot or FCH center, etc etc. I had a graphics program where I could experiment with all sorts of fancy textures, it seems like everything boils down to, the simpler the better.
Globe sights get round blacks with enough white for no distortion.
The target needs to be big enough to be visible -- and small enough to tell you whether you've actually centered it or not.
The color does not have to be black. Even a darkish gray works, or subdued reds, or mild blue.
One thing about orange targets that many don't know. Scopes and all eyeglasses have a prismatic effect to a certain degree, intense colors shine through the glass in a different spot from other intense colors. That's why we have a hard time seeing blue and red together.
This is called chromatic error. If you look for it, it can be really easy to see, especially with "cheaper" or older glass where the chemistry to pour optically-good (not perfect) glass was not well-understood.
So the deal is, we can SEE the fluorescent target really well, but we can't REALLY see it where it actually is.
I have found that orange dot targets don't mix well with black and white target backers at all. The focus is wrong, or maybe it's too narrow in the spectrum. But for me, they just float right off the target.
That is why the moderate blue of the targets John B. likes makes John happy.