Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting Long range newby scope adj question

I'm new to the long range shooting and have a question about adjusting your scope for distance. using made up figures for ease of figuring. say I am shooting 500 yards and the scope needs adjusting for a 10" drop to hit the target. The scope has a .25 click @100 yards. How many clicks would I have to turn the turret to hit the target? Would it be 10" x 4 clicks per inch 40 times 5 for the distance for a total of 200 clicks? This MOA and MIL stuff confuses me.

Thanks!

since nobody here is willing to be patient, I will chime in here. first thing is first, if your drop is in inches as opposed to MOA you need to first divide by the distance per 100 yds, so at 500 yds, your drop is 10 inches, divided by 5 (for 500) so your drop is now a nominal 2 MOA. this works for all distances, if your shot were 1200 yds and your drop was something crazy like 260 inches, you divide the 260 inches by 12 (again for the 1200 yds, the result would be 21 and 1/3. so once you have converted to MOA then MULTIPLY by how many tactile clicks on your particular scope make up one inch. so for .25 inch clicks, you multiply by 4 making your 10 inch at 500 Yd adjustment 2 moa, then consequently 8 clicks (because 2 times 4 is 8) i hope you follow, and i will revisit this later on

1/4 @ 100
1/2 @ 200
3/4 @ 300
1" @ 400
1 1/4" @ 500 and so on
500 yds 10" adj is 6 or 7 clicks
6 gets you 9" and 7 gets you 10.5"

If you are going to shoot long range, you don't want to mess with "clicks". Use inches, or minutes, or mils. Clicks adds confusion and unnecessary numbers. If you don't have a scope that has elevation graduations in whole numbers, get one. Most do. Then figure your drop by whole numbers plus quarter fractions, (6-1/4 for instance), using the method above. The distance divided by 100 gives you a number that matches the figures on the scope. It is calibrated to adjust (usually) in inches per hundred yards. Dial the scope to that figure and shoot.
Remember, MOA and MIL is an angle measurement. Some get confused bey thinking that MILs are metric. They are not, it is just base 10. It is equivalent to one yard at 1000yds, nothing more. A minute of angle is just that. A circle is divided into 360 parts (degrees like a compass). One minute is 1.047 inches at 100yds, so it is close enough for most uses to use 1 per hundred.
As RugerDude said, your example is 2moa, so turn your scope up to 2 and shoot. You probably will not be spot on, but most drops need to be tweaked a bit for each rifle and shooter.
Don't think too much or be intimidated. Read a lot on here and SnipersHide, you will learn a lot. Don't post there until you have read everything you can there, you need to have a clue before asking, so you are not just going over something that has been done to death.
It's actually pretty simple to get started. It's the getting good that's tough.

You mean 1 1/4" @ 500

there are lots of programs available for creating an elevation chart. jbm is but one of them.
even if you dont have access to a chronagraph for measuring your velocity you can still fudge your way thru it.
fact is since many chronagraph units lie about velocity you might be fudging anyway.
so just pick a number you think is close to your velocity and enter the information.
if your actual shooting requires adding more elevation than the chart your velocity input was too high and you need to back off on the number. if it required less adjustment to reach the target your velocity input number was low.
within a few tries you can create an elevation chart that will be right for that gun and load.
as for clicks vs minits remember that one quarter minit click is one quarter of a minit.
its just that simple.
50 years ago there werent any scopes with the turrets available today.
fact is there werent many scopes period.
at least usefull for this kind of stuff.
so about everybody counted clicks since there were few alternatives.
now for the record, not many were dumb enough to count off say 80 clicks.
one rev of the dial might mean 50 and a rev and a half ment 75.
we could get the other 5 by only removing one glove.
sort of the same as adding a minit and a quarter.
so it went pretty well even though many today sneer at the idea of counting clicks.

Im glad this was brought up as I'm also a long range noob. It's nice to have a good group of members who are always willing to help out. Thanks guys! Im going to bookmark this thread.

Cory

Forget inches and clicks. Way too much math and mental masturbation.

Operate in moa, or mils depending on your elevation turret calibration.

Go here to generate your trajectory table in either moa or mils, and it will make everything much simpler.

http://www.jbmballistics.com/cgi-bin/jbmtraj_simp-5.1.cgi

Thanks everyone I am learning as we go. My scope is in MOA but the reticle is Mil dots. I'm not sure it's that big a deal at this stage in the game for me. I can only shoot out to 850 yards at the range we will be shooting at.

You can learn a ton from an app like this, and it's extremely useful for making corrections, too.

its much easier to learn by shooting at rocks on a mountainside. its also easier if you have a spotter calling your shots.
ne fl isnt well known for having mountainsides and its against
the law to shoot at those trash mountains.
just remember one very important thing.
if it was hard to do most of us experts couldnt do it.

Jordan- What app is that?

+1

Remove inches and clicks from your vocabulary entirely when you pick up your rifle.

Ballistic AE

It's great and costs about 15 bucks for your Iphone

Thanks!!

FWIW, I just checked and it's now $20. Just thought I'd pass that along.

Yup. It uses JBM, and is WELL worth the money. I've been using it for a few years, now, and it's paid for itself several times over. Tons of useful features.

A few more...













[img]http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/y397/The_Jerbel/Ballistics/null-5.png[/img]

That last one looks fun. And $20 is cheaper than a chrono.

PB was giving me a hard time on my phone, resulting in a dupe picture. Fixed now.

Yeah, velocity truing works well. It may not be a chrono, but it often works better than a chrono, since it's based on real-world trajectory results.

I included the pic 3rd from the bottom to illustrate that the app includes constant updates to the bullet library, including a list of bullets that have a Litz measured BC.