Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Mirage at 100 yards

Folks,

Erich Mietenenkorte, one of the top smallbore rifle silhouette shooters in the country, shared this diagram he did of a test on the range at Ridgway PA this summer right before the Lapua Super Shoot. I always considered mirage something that the long distance shooters worried about but this certainly makes it clear to me that having a spotter to call where the bullet lands is very helpful even in smallbore at 100 meters. It's clearly not a big deal over a normal hour range session, assuming you're sighted in when you start, but it does a play factor when shooting matches that start at 0900 and don't finish until 1600.

- The smallbore range at Ridgway (no e!) faces southwest - By summer the rams are in the shade from the trees about 1600.
- The range is all dirt a consistent color
- July temps in the 70's to start and 80's to finish and clear weather
- The rifle was clamped into a rest, under the shade for the whole test
- Scope was Leupold 25X (with sunshade)
- The ram target (for you non-marksman that don't shoot silhouette are 6 1/2" x 5 1/4" and shot at 100 meters (offhand)
- He started at 0700 with the crosshairs on the ram bull and recorded the new position of the cross-hairs as the schedule on the right side dictated.

By 1000 if you're getting a good hold on the center of the animal you're likely missing high (or maybe not with my wobble! ) . Is this predictable for all seasons and light? No clue, but something to think about when you go to do some precision rimfire shooting.




Here's an overhead of the range in the upper right behind the clubhouse but I included their other ranges out to 1000 yards just because it's such an awesome place to shoot.