Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles 6.8 Ballistic puzzle

Me and my son shooting our AR at the range. same everything. I held the handguarg and rested my hand on the rest. Dead center bout an inch high at 50 yds. He rested the rifle on the rest bout 3 inches high 3 inches right.
at first I thought it was the sight but when I noticed how he was letting the rest hold the handguard I told him to do it my way.
Dead center bout an inch high. So how the rifle is held/rested does affect POI.

Yep and I was shooting left handed as well, as I cannot get turned around far enough in that stand to fire the rifle from my normal side.

I did not read the replies.

I never trust computed data. ONLY trust it how far you've shot it on paper. You owe that to the game, so you don't screw it up like this one.

As to impacts vs rests, again years of shooting will show that positions and tensions on rifles affect impact. Same but actually more so with handguns for us at least.
So if we shoot off bipod, we zero off bipods. If we pull the bipod off(weight) I rezero...

We shoot them left and right handed, and a few times from loose to snug to see if and how impact changes.

With all that said I've done the same once, with a 6/6.8. Perfect rest, chip shot , about 120 or so, everything good, gun was floated and shot very well. Never found deer or blood. Or nipped limb or anything. Did a LOT of looking, no way I should have missed. Went and shot the gun at a feed bag, hit a dime size target very next shot out of the gun. What can I say, I figure I somehow missed. Maybe you didnt' screw the deer up, maybe you just missed for whatever reason.

FWIW for us though, 100 yard zero with an AR to a 160 yard shot would never lead us to aim at the spine like you did. Too much chance of going over, or hitting over the spine, that shot would have been half up the side of the deer for us, and I suspect you'd also have had a dead one.

But get out there and shoot. Thats the ONLY way.

Agreed, and want to add to that - some guys seem to think the spine of a deer is a lot higher than it really is; what seems like a "spine shot" to some is really just hair, skin, and maybe a little meat at the top of the back. jimmyp that's not necessarily directed at you, you might be an expert on deer anatomy for all I know, I've just seen some guys make that mistake in the past.

I was about 4 inches down his shoulder (I thought) at least that is where I was aiming.

4 inches down is about where the CNS spinal cord is, if not even a hair further. Have to remember you have layer of hide and hair, tissue, the full depth of the backstraps, and then the center of the spine. I never attempt to aim for impact more than 1/3 of the way up.

YMMV. I'd rather burn em low, than make nasty burger high to get infected possibly later.

well it was a bad shot one way or the other, I have not had good luck with that 6.8spc, killed a big doe with it and she was right on top of me so naturally I shot lower down into her shoulder than I wanted. Not much time to hunt left this year, so I will be carrying my 257 roberts, with 117 grain hornady's over H4350 it does a good job from near to far.

If you put the shot from the 257 in the same place as the 6.8 you'll have the same. IMHO.

Obviously the point there is know the gun.

When we started out years ago, we didn't really realize that. Now we know. Heck the zeros for our 300/221 sub/suppressed start at 25 and are different every 25 yards out to 200 yards with the 194s. Some are close enough, but still they are different come ups or downs.

Most of the time you make your own luck.

Wishing you the best of good luck!