Doesn't happen all the time but for instance on Thursday I shot a deer at about 25 yards. I was using a Marlin 336, 30-30 with a wide (ghost ring) peep.

I was sitting on a 3-legged stool about 5 yards into the bush in a natural blind overlooking a field. I know the rifle is sighted dead on at 100 yards.

I thought I had the front post centered just above the front leg, half way up but ended up with a spine shot! Clean kill but caused me to wonder. If the deer was much further away would probably been a clean miss over the top.....I have had this happen during flintlock season using express sights on the muzzleloader and on occasion with longer shots with scope sighted rifles.....obviously, a clean miss is better than a bad hit and I want to avoid the latter at all costs. As I said it doesn't happen often but often enough.

Again, these weapons are all sighted in correctly and I suspect it is a form problem but would like some advice...Thanks, Tree

Common, not holding your head down through the scope/sight.
Common when hunting is to lift your head to see the animal.
Stay on the sights/stock weld until after recoil.

It's a TOUGH habit to break, and even worse when shooting uphill or downhill.

^^^^^^ +1

My advice would be to duplicate the shooting scenario and see what happens. Shooting off a bench and shooting freehand off a 3-legged stool can yield radically different results.

Me? I've gotten to where I'm using a rest for about 80% of my shots on deer. I really don't trust my offhand shooting all that much, but I also don't need it all that often anymore. Even then, a rifle can shoot different off a treestand shooting rail than anchored off the side of a tree or . . . it pays to know what really happens.

I don't know the trajectory of a 30-30 but that's what I would check first. Dead on at 100 may be quite a bit different at 25.

Several years ago my 270 was set up for pronghorn at 200 plus. When the shot was taken at 50 it ended up a spine shot. Lesson learned and remembered.

How much higher was the POI from the POA?

When you zeroed your rifle, where did you put the top of the front sight, at 6-o'clock or centered on the bullseye? If you zeroed with a 6-o'clock hold and shot the deer with a center of the bullseye hold your bullet would have hit about 6" high. When I was younger and my eyesight was better than it is today, I always zeroed my peep sight equipped rifles with a 6-o'clock hold at 100 yards so that if I was shooting beyond 100 yards the front sight would cover less of the animal.

A 30-30 with common 150 or 170 grain factory loads should only rise around 0.5" above the bore between the muzzle and a 100 yards target with a 100 yard zero and only around 2" with a 150 yard zero. I zero my 30-30s to be 2" high at 100 yards with whatever load I'm using and I mostly use 170 grain FED/REM/WIN factory loads or, in my more accurate Savage 170, the flex tip Hornady LeverEvolution 160 grain ammo.

Lots of things could cause it but one not mentioned yet is you may not have had the top of your front sight centered in your ghost ring. Easy to have that in a hunting situation with a ghost ring, which is why I don't use them despite the fact that I've been using aperture sights for hunting and competition for 45 years.

Just a question, but did you shoot from your weak side? IOW if you normally shoot right handed, was the deer over to your right forcing you to switch shoulders to the left side to make the shot? If the answer is yes, mebbe unfamiliarity (cheek weld, dominant eye, trigger muscle memory, etc. ) is your answer.

Great suggestions above....

Everyone's different, but when I start losing a shot high with a rifle, it is always because my thumb, which is across the the top of the stock, gets too-active when I'm squeezing the trigger.
By "active", I mean that I occasionally tighten my thumb pressure as I'm squeezing the trigger. That little bit of extra thumb pressure will press down, which raises the barrel a smidge and the shot goes high.

By testing this out at the range, I've found that varying degrees of thumb pressure are all "OK", as long as I keep the SAME pressure throughout the shot.

Good luck!

Plenty of good advice....the load is 150 Sierra Flat Point and 34 G Varget..... I used the brass from two boxes of 170 G Core-Lokts I shot and then re-sighted for the hand loads...the top of the post was centered on the target bullseye at 100 not 6 o'clock when sighted and this from a sand bagged rest.

I do recall shooting it at 50 yards from sitting which is my usual position in the woods. The results were spot on. So I'm trying to figure what it is in the way of bad form. Don't usually use that stool but was using it bow hunting and seeing deer so figured why not. Was writing this at the same time as old crab so didn't see his post, again plenty of good advice to contemplate.

Buck fever? I've seen it many times before, but usually on elk. Losing shots high seems typical in my experience. When I shoot offhand, my shots tend to hit higher, but I'm talking one-to-two MOA, not 20-30 MOA. Seems like "muffed shot due to total form breakdown because of shot on game animal" explains it best.

Yeah, that's probably the biggest factor.

I can't answer the question as to why, but had a similar experience on elk a number of years ago. 150-200 yard shot, uphill angle and broadside. Had a steady rest prone shooting over a log for support. Crosshairs centered on lower half of chest intentionally holding a bit low. Elk dropped at the shot and never moved. Autopsy showed the bullet impacted in the upper shoulder blade and stopped in the spine. I've always wondered about that shot - impacted a good 12" above POA with a rock steady rest. If I hadn't hit the spine, I would have lost him...

Form at the bench vs form in the field could be it.
Lighting differences can corrupt iron sight alignment.
Relaxing just as the shot breaks can do it.

Exactly! This is it. You need to “follow through”

AFTER the recoil

I think it is likely to be an operator issue - lapse of form or buck fever, call it what you will.

What you could try is replicating the shot on paper: sit on your stool, shooting from the same position and under the same lighting conditions, at 25 yards, and see where the bullets are impacting.

FWIW I do see a difference in POI when shooting offhand compared with rested. You'll also see a difference in POI with changing light if your front sight is shiny (which is why I make sure mine are a uniform matt black). However these don't usually make anywhere near the difference in POI you observed. I have a .30-30 with a ghost ring peep and I would expect to hit near enough to on the button at 25 yards when the rifle's zeroed, whether offhand or from some other position. Any deviation from that would be down to me.

I will agree with other posters. Improper shooting techniques. Not following through or possibly flinching. I use open and peep sights for hunting and have never experienced the problem you describe.

Amazing expertise in the replies...I have it narrowed to what you said "lapse of form andr buck fever"...I think I know what to work on, Thanks

My guess is flinching / yanking on the trigger instead of a slow squeeze.

Could it be that you're subconsciously aiming higher than you think? The spine is a bit lower on most animals than it often seems, especially critters with big withers.
Up or downhill shots conplicate this even further, and so does front sight posts that are relatively large, and cover up more of an animal than crosshairs.

In my case I shoot BR with a 1 1/2OZ trigger. I have to be real conscious of this when hunting. I've shot high a few times because of my trigger control. Old Crab also pointed out another reason for it.

One other consideration is a clean or fouled bore. If it was a clean bore the 336 usually shoots high first shot.

you are jerking the trigger instead of squeezing it.. I taught target shooting in the military and that was the reason for 99% of overshooting..

Thats my thoughts. Jerking trigger, closing eyes and buck fever... Just a guess though, as I've seen buddies with buck fever and they do these things...

I don't know why for sure but most marginal hits I've seen were high not low. I always counsel kids that they are not shooting a BB gun or a .22 rimfire and they should hold where they wish to hit which is the lower 1/3 of the chest cavity. Our rifles are sighted in for 200 yds. and therefore a little high on most shots. I've seen misses that I'm sure were caused by compensating for drop where the bullet was probably a little over POA. One kid using a .270 told me he held steady right on top of the back of a large buck. The deer was about 60 yards away.

If I had to guess it’s your upper body rocking back a tiny bit more off the stool than it does off the bench

I have about a dozen predator hunting dvds and 99% of the misses are hitting over [high] the back of the predators .
My guess is buck fever type thing , it's easy to forget all the things you know you should do when it's time to make the shot .
I take a breath concentrate and squeeze the trigger all in a couple of seconds making sure I don't shoot over after watching the videos I have . They're a good reminder for me .
Good luck !

Jerking the trigger usually causes shots to go right/low or left/low depending on whether shooting right or left handed.

Are you shooting downhill? I’d put a target in the same spot, duplicate the shot, see where you are hitting

I went through a weird phase of shooting high I think it developed from shotgun shooting and the forward push of breaking the action of an OU. In the past I would shoot ten times more shotgun rounds than center fire, sometimes close to 2,000 a year compared to 2-400 center fire. So the habit got ingrained. I also had another weird thing which I call the Scarface technique where you push the rifle forward on each shot like you are trying to intimidate the target.

All these things are akin to a flinch and the same remedies will help alleviate them: dry fire, shoot a rim fire, practice, use hunting positions instead of the bags, shoot and shoot more.

Breath, trigger, follow through. If it were only that easy when you are excited.

Shooting at an elevated (up hill) target aim lower. Shooting from a elevated position aim higher. I few years ago, I missed a nice bull elk that was well above my shooting position by not taking this advice. Some range finders compensate for the shooting angle and adjust the yardage of target accordingly. In my case my old eyes don't work well with iron sights, peep or otherwise, so it would be doubtful whether I could determine if I was aiming higher, lower on target.

Why am I shooting high on game?
Drugs and guns don`t mix!!

YEP !!!!

Sorry, incorrect... shooting higher or lower you must hold low.

That's not it.

https://www.sierrabullets.com/exterior-ballistics/3-3-effects-of-shooting-uphill-or-downhill/

https://www.sierrabullets.com/exterior-ballistics/inclined-fire/

It isn't a matter of "aim low". It is a matter of the trajectory of the bullet being a product of the distance traveled on the horizontal plane. So a shot up or a shot down is going to travel less on the horizontal plane than it travels in actual distance. Think of a leg of a right triangle as opposed to its hypotenuse. The "drop" of a bullet depends on the horizontal leg of the triangle, not its hypotenuse.

Buck Fever.....It can happen to anyone!

So how do you compensate for the lesser horizontal distance if not by aiming lower?

If you're sighted in for 100 yards, and the horizontal distance your bullet will travel is 100 yards, will you aim lower?

No. Sighted for X yards, rangefinder w/o angle compensation reads X yards, horizontal distance less than X yards, so aim lower.

Best solution to your mathematical equation is buy a range finder with angle comp. It makes life much simpler

I'm describing the principle here, not the particular method of solution.

Mathman, you are correct, and I should have been more specific in my response. Trajectory of course does make a difference. I guess I just assumed that the OP was aware of his trajectory and how distance to target would be affected. Was just trying to say that angle of elevation can affect POI as well, but did a poor job.

While you are not saying anything truly incorrect, you are trying to hide behind a wordy explanation.

You need to aim lower for both uphill and down shots, period.

That's the principle? Aim lower? Not "Use the horizontal distance to determine drop", but "aim lower"? You can do better than that.

I can't believe you have me, a former university math teacher, thinking you're being pedantic. I provided two links with extensive discussions of the situation.

I know a clean or fouled bore was mentioned earlier but have you repeatedly tested your rifle's cold bore POI? At the ranges you are talking I wouldn't think it would make much difference but I had a rifle that would regularly throw its cold bore 2-3" above where the rifle was sighted in at (2.5-3" @ 100). Missed a few deer and spined a few others at 150-175 yards before I spent more time on paper and figured out that my cold bore was impacting 5" high sometimes. That barrel is no longer on that gun.

Mathman knows its all about cosine and easy trig. When shooting uphill or downhill (makes no difference), the distance you use for your drop chart is going to be the horizontal leg of the triangle. When you use cosine, that is a function of the adjacent leg over the hypotenuse. If one doesnt know that, hed be much better served with a range finder that has angle comp. They arent that expensive.

Back to the OP. Shooter Error. Recreate the shot and practice it. Pay attention to poi and repeatability.

150 gr 30/30 is 1/2” low at 25 when zeroed at 100

I tend to shoot high if I miss. It's psychological. A lot of my shooting is with open iron sights .. handguns, muzzleloaders, sometimes .22s. All of these have substantially arc-ed trajectories. I have a built in guestimator of distance and hold-over that is just instinctive. That instinct betrays me when I switch to flatter shooting centerfire rifles.

Tom

Probably jerking the trigger but a friend of mine could always hit cans offhand with his 30-30. One day he decides to see how well it groups at a hundred yards cause he thinks he has the most accurate Model 94 in the world. His first group was about 5 inches, second even worse. He was torqueing down the fore arm into a bag and it was changing point of impact each shot. When he moved the front bag back under the action he started shooting two inch groups. He actually shot a three inch group offhanded. They were never intended to be bench rest guns.

Me the OP. All great posts for incomparable advice...my 336s are short range tools and I have no need to worry about trajectory out to 50 yards or so when my carbine is zeroed for 100.

Here in PA. I put myself in situations , when armed with a 30-30, where you can't see clearly enough, much past 50 or 60 yards, to make a clean shot. Kinda like dark timber so a 100 yard zero is practical for my purposes with this rifle/cartridge combination. Not that the weapon is not capable of much longer shots.

I have shot the weapon twice since posting. At 50 yards from a sitting position which is my usual venue in the woods (back to a tree. etc.) Trying to put together all the advice I gained plus my own observations. I shot very well so I would blame my high hits on a combination of buck fever, poor shooting form like jerking the trigger and not following through, etc....Thanks-a-million all...Tree

You are shooting high with your setup for only three reasons, either

You aren’t sighted in with the proper MPBR

Or

You are focusing on centering the front blade instead of letting it happen

Or

Trigger pull


Thats it

Now if you are shooting 170gr off hand there is a recoil -vs- bullet speed and exit from the barrel problem shooting offhand


I wouldn’t agree a 30-30 is a “short range tool”

read it right....I said MY 336s are short range tools (My as in mine).... you can shoot yours at whatever range you want and in the second paragraph above- "not that the weapon is not capable of much longer shots"

Also with a peep, you look THROUGH not at the rear aperture and the eye pretty much naturally centers the front post on target...this is why they call my particular set up "ghost ring" sights because the rear ring blurs out as you center the front post.

Treemutt,

Many folks don’t understand the natural concept of peeps and they concentrate on centering what is natural and it will change the impact.

“Short range” is a personal and subjective term.

I’m not fighting today, I’m waiting on a Boar hog to show up or the asteroid to hit, whichever comes first.

So you treemutt, have a wonderful Sunday.

To expand on SD post: The bullet drop is due to gravity, which operates along the horizontal distance. This will be less than the hypotenuse of the triangle, when the target is either higher or lower than the shooter, so a lower hold for either is correct if needed.

Which is why some rangefinders have the compensation feature which converts sight distance to gravity distance, so to speak. (mine don't.)

A hold on the lower third of the body will generally compensate out the small difference to make a good kill at "normal" ranges, so I ignore it, but I am conscious of it. Time in flight (for comparible bullet weights) is far more important.

YMMV with very long hypotenuse distances, and/or extreme angles.

It becomes far more important in archery where much slower projectile flight time gives gravity a longer time to act over the course of the flight. Or, translating into bullet speeds, a 150 gr bullet from a 30-30 will have more drop at any given range than from a 300 Mag. Identical bullet weights, but because the 300M spends less time in flight, its bullet will drop less.
.

Assuming you were looking through it and not over it. Looking over it would account for such a high hit at only 25 yards. Easy to do with a ghost ring. Much less likely with a standard disc aperture.

Did the same thing 3 years ago, I had a 25 yard shot at a buck and shot right over him. I think my problem

was I had the Sights 3" high at a for Elk. Next time I hunt der I will have my scope set at 1.5" to 1.75" hope fully that will help.

3" high at what distance? Do you have a clue about the trajectory before your sight in distance?

He has no clue mathman. Probably drinking a little too much tonight to make any sense.. Also, the op admitted that it was entirely his fault for missing/messing the shot up. He said he went out and tried shots at a target set up at 50 yards and shot quite well. This post was on the previous page (6). He admitted probably a little "buck fever" and jerking the trigger. Seems like a cool dude to admit the problem was entirely his fault. I have buddies that will never admit they had buck fever and always blame everything else like the "scope was bumped, round didn't fire, ammo was faulty, safety was locked on, trigger didn't work", etc. etc...

Hold on to that forearm, too, all the way through the shot.