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.

Cool Pugs. I have been to that range but never shot there. They were having one of their centerfire varmint shoots. Great bunch of really friendly guys and gals. Been a number of years ago now. Thought if I ever had to live in that country, I would try to be near Ridgeway.. Thanks for the write up.

Is this predictable for all seasons and light? No clue, but something to think about when you go to do some precision rimfire shooting.

No sir it’s not predictable. Right after a rain or good heavy morning dew when it’s going to be warm/sunny in the 11-2 o’clock frame is when I actually looked forward to a light wind. Sun comes up, starts evaporating the moisture with no wind and bingo you have mirage. Bad juju even @ 100. Ran into that issue last range trip.

In smallbore and high-power silhouette a spotter can make or you. A really good one is constantly updating the shooter on mirage and wind conditions, and hit locations vs shot call locations.

Yes, mirage can really mess with you at 100 yds.

drover

Mirage can make your target appear where it's really not kind of like smoke & mirrors.. same way for the position of the sun. Though the sun position will not affect as drastically as mirage can. But when precision shooting on a bright day and all of a sudden the long cloud covers the Sun funky thing seem to happen..

IME, this "lifting" of the image usually occurs when the target is near the ground on a very flat range, over the berm on a KD range, or has a terrain feature between you and the target that is close to your line of sight where the mirage lifts. There is a PRS venue near me where this is common when shooting over rolling terrain and the target is on the far side of dead space and just above the the near crest in regard to line of sight. Every time guys come off the line thinking the range was wrong or something was wrong with their gun/load/data because they were high.

Sounds like Ridgeway. The valley between the Turkey's at 77 meters and the Rams at 100 meters is about 8' deep. People disappear going to set those targets. Does odd things with wind too.