Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Shooting downhill...ish?

Well the Vermont opener is a week away and I've been working on blinds.

My strategy is to hunt "Benoit style" in the mornings and stand sit in the evenings.

All set on the Benoit style rifle and technique.

Now my dilemma is shooting downhill from a stand position. By downhill I don't mean really steep, just sloping noticeably away from where my stand is in a prominent corner. It's a hay pasture on a hillside. I figure from where I sit to where the deer will present itself I have perhaps a 30 foot drop over 200 yards. This is based on last year's ....missed..... shot.

My rifle is a .30-06 zero'd at 200 yds. Factory ammo.

I've read a bunch of times when shooting downhill, or uphill for that matter, you need to aim a smidge high. Not completely confident in that theory. But I did miss last year on a nice buck (duh!)

Any tips appreciated!

Thanks

No, you do not aim high when shooting either uphill or downhill. The actual distance will always be shorter. This is called cosine, if you know anything about trig. You can draw your shooting scenario on a piece of paper and use a triangle to represent the angle you are shooting. The horizontal leg of your triangle is going to be your adjusted shooting distance, the hypotenuse is going to be the actual straight line to the critter. Most good laser range finders will have a setting that gives that adjusted yardage, vs the actual straight line distance to the target. This is something every hunter needs to understand, when shooting further out at a critter, when they are at an extreme uphill or downhill position. However, if the distance is short, or the angle shallow, it's not really much of a concern.

The scenario ("30 foot drop over 200 yards") you depict is absolutely nothing. A, roughly, 1 yard difference at 200 yards, which will not affect any rifles zero at that distance. The miss, was completely operator error, not error in zero at that distance. If you are zeroed at 200 yards and your shot was 200 yards, it should have been exactly where you intended. If you missed, you pulled that shot.

Thanks BSA:

In a stroke of genius this evening, I figgered out that I should just set out a target right at the anticipated location of the deer, then from the stand location launch a few rounds and see where they land. Adjust accordingly, if at all. There's still a few days before the opener. Adapt, improvise, overcome. right?

You won't see any difference in POI at that range and angle--as BSA already stated....

What does that figure up as, 5% slope?

Negligible.

30' foot drop over 200 yards is nothing to be concerned with.

Do the math. It's only about a 2.9 degree angle.. That is nothing. Works out to 199.75 yards.

Exactly.

I did the math. That's how I came up w 5%.

Do the trig. It doesn't work out to a percentage. It's about the angle. Do you understand what sin, cosine, and tangent are? We are not talking about the grade of a damn road. We are discussing shooting "angle"...

Yeah I get it.

I had almost that exact same scenario with my 200 yard range on my place. Zeroed all my rifles there and they seemed to work just fine everywhere else. Uphill or downhill angles don't affect zero appreciably until you get steeper than about 20 degrees.

How about if I want to shoot fish down in a well?😁

Thanks everyone. I'm going to run with this info!

In my experience aim low shooting up hill

And downhill. But like has been stated it has a minor affect using high power rifles unless very steep or at distances greater than the 200 yds originally asked about.

22's at steep angles and using slow bullets like subsonics it can show up. When bows were slower I remember we always practiced some from a treestand because of that very thing.

Makes sense 👍

Not to get nerdy, but it's simply due to gravity. When shooting across a level plane gravity is able to pull on the projectile (whatever that may be) at a 90 degree angle. Gravity is pulling on it at maximum force. When shooting at an angle gravity looses some of it's ability to pull at the same amount. The slower something is, or the more it drops normally (22 subsonic, slower bows) the greater it shows up shooting high, when shooting at angles using the same sight hold.

The greater the angle the less gravity has an effect on the flight path.