Like say, how to zero a rifle. or apistol. Pistol,(iron sights,normal uses) I prefer to zero at 25m. Yeah, I know all the "reasons" for 37 or 50 or 70 yd zero, but it's nearly all bs, in my book. I might zero a scoped 22pistol, longbarrel, at 45m, or a 44 mag, for hunting.I might zero a scoped Contender or xp100 at 100m, if I bothered to own such toys.
Zero with the practice-match load, really, and dont WORRY about the ccw load being up to 5" high or low(at25m)cause you will never shoot that well in combat, unless it's a braced position ambush, in which case you can always just 'hold off" your aiming point, an appropriate amount for the range.Zeroed at 25m, the .45 ball rd drops 3-4" at 45m, which is very good for aiming at the base of the neck of a competition silohuette.
Zero,ammo test, any "max accuracy" pistol shooting, should be done from sitting braced. Get your back to a pole, car, wall, etc. Sit far enough ahead of your brace that you can get your feet flat on the ground, with your arms straight, and your wrists clamped between your knees. BEWARE the flashgap of a revolver's cylinder. Keep it well forward of your knees, or u WILL get the crap burned out of you, and might even get a bullet frag in your knee, as a .44 Smith once did to me.
Keep everything the same for each shot. Same grip on the gun (both hands, both position and tension) same "lock straight" on the elbows and wrists, Same position and tension with the knees,etc. Uniformity, in every aspect that you can control, is the key to getting tight groups, and thus, accuracy.
Anytime you are zeroing sights, remember your geometry. An angle is 2 rays, joined at one point (which is YOU). One ray (half a line, starting at one point, going straight in one direction, FOREVER) is one half of the angle. One ray is where you are looking, one ray is where your bullets are impacting the target. Move the front or rear sight, as needed, to make those rays become one. Then you are said to be "sighted in". In other words, if you are "shooting high", you need to either lower the rear sight, or raise the front sight, depending upon how your pistol or rifle is set up(to move its sights, for elevation-adjustment) Some are one way, some are the other.
Of course, guns CANT shoot high or low. They can ONLY shoot in line with their barrels. What is wrong is you are LOOKING high or low. When you sight in a gun, you don't change where the bullets are going. You change where you are LOOKING, by moving the sights. You'd have to BEND the barrel to make the bullets go elsewhere.
When you see the gun movingaround,prior to your shot, firing from an unbraced position, that's a GOOD sign. It means that you have a PULSE. Much practice can reduce the size of that "waver circle", and that means you will fire tighter groups. do NOT try to get the sights perfectly aligned, and then force the gun to fire. That results in a flinch, more often than not. Instead, just keep the sights as carefully aligned as possible, and keep buildig the pressure on the trigger (nicely pressing STRAIGHT rearward, with the middle of the pad of your trigger finger, NOT pressing on the side of the frame or the side of the trigger, and not pressing down on the safety with your thumb, either. Indeed, leave the pinky finger not applying pressure to the gun either. All it does is help you flinch worse, it offers almost no recoil control.
When seeking max accuracy, don't try to hold down the gun in recoil. let it lift as high as it is going to. with a LOT of work, you can learn to coincide your trigger break with a certain point in your 'waver circle", at least MOST of the time. You can also learn to MAKE the gun fire at a given point, with fair accuracy, combat acceptable at least, with even more practice. We call it "wishing-off" a shot. When you can just "wish" a hit, and make it happen, very swiftly, 80-90% of the time, you are a master shottist.
One hit in the bullseye means nothing if the other 4 shots of your group are scattered all over the paper. The BE hit was thus just an accident. If you have a tight group, 12" off of the BE, a mere sight change can put the next 5 shots all in the 10 ring. NOTHING can help the guy who is scattering his shots get anything but luck hits.
Zeroing a rifle is done similarly, expecially with iron sights. Set up the sand or dirt or plastic "sawdust' bags, both under the forend and under-behind the pistol grip, so that the rifle just lays there, in line with the target. sit so that you can "hold" the rifle comforably, without moving it on the bags.
Dont hold the forend at all, unless the rifle recoils violently. If it does, use a STANDING benchrest, so that your body can more easily move rearward, absorbing some of the recoil-effect.Sometimes, hanging a lead birdshot bag, 25 lbs, over your shoulder, between you and the gun butt, helps with heavy recoil and benchrest shooting, too. PAST sells a shooting vest, with a "bubble" of gel on the front of the shoulder, same reason. Heavy recoil will also pack down the sandbags, necessitating that you "fluff up" the bags frequently, to get the gun back in line with the BE. You have to do this CONSISENTLY, as the gun started out on the bags, or your groups will open up in size. BEWARE firing heavy recoiling longarm loads from the prone position, especially with a "hooked", or steel buttplate, and a non-auto action. You can really bruise yourself, because your body can't "give" with the recoil. Be careful not to have thegun-butt on your collarbone, cause it could get broken, and such an injury immoblizes your arm for months, and you have to let the woman be on top, or you'll break it again. This happened TWICE to a good friend of mine.
ALSO beware having the recoil move you back into a car, tree, etc. that is too close behind you (sitting position) even a 308 auto ,or 20 ga pump (with slugs) can do this enough to hurt a bit, if your flesh gets caught between the gunbutt and something hard. Beware having your eyebrow too close to a scope, with a heavy recoil load. Getting whacked on the brow is a good way to cultivate a serious flinching habit.
Try to pick a day when the mirage and wind, heat and cold are minimal, or arrange to minmize them in some way. Shooting out of the window of a car, bracing your firing arm on the rear of the seat, the bag over the window, with the AC or heat recently active (motor turned off, of course) can help you deal with glare, cold, heat. Changing your direction of fire can sometimes help with the wind or mirage, too. Get out there EARLY in the day, and there's less other shooters on the range, less mirage or wind (usually, in the latter case). Wind NEAR the shooter effects the bullet less than wind near the target, so if you can arrange a 'wind block' of some sort, on either end of your zeroing, put it near you, not near the target.
I'd zero iron sights at 75-200m, depending upon barrel length and load. A scope, you might zero at 100-400m, depending upon the load, barrel length, scope, and intended target. A short range, low velocity load, especially a blunt one, that will slow down quickly, is pointless to zero for at long range. Zeroing a really high velocity, high ballistic coefficient rd at a mere 70-150 m, is just wasting a lot of its potential utility. Enough for one post
Zero with the practice-match load, really, and dont WORRY about the ccw load being up to 5" high or low(at25m)cause you will never shoot that well in combat, unless it's a braced position ambush, in which case you can always just 'hold off" your aiming point, an appropriate amount for the range.Zeroed at 25m, the .45 ball rd drops 3-4" at 45m, which is very good for aiming at the base of the neck of a competition silohuette.
Zero,ammo test, any "max accuracy" pistol shooting, should be done from sitting braced. Get your back to a pole, car, wall, etc. Sit far enough ahead of your brace that you can get your feet flat on the ground, with your arms straight, and your wrists clamped between your knees. BEWARE the flashgap of a revolver's cylinder. Keep it well forward of your knees, or u WILL get the crap burned out of you, and might even get a bullet frag in your knee, as a .44 Smith once did to me.
Keep everything the same for each shot. Same grip on the gun (both hands, both position and tension) same "lock straight" on the elbows and wrists, Same position and tension with the knees,etc. Uniformity, in every aspect that you can control, is the key to getting tight groups, and thus, accuracy.
Anytime you are zeroing sights, remember your geometry. An angle is 2 rays, joined at one point (which is YOU). One ray (half a line, starting at one point, going straight in one direction, FOREVER) is one half of the angle. One ray is where you are looking, one ray is where your bullets are impacting the target. Move the front or rear sight, as needed, to make those rays become one. Then you are said to be "sighted in". In other words, if you are "shooting high", you need to either lower the rear sight, or raise the front sight, depending upon how your pistol or rifle is set up(to move its sights, for elevation-adjustment) Some are one way, some are the other.
Of course, guns CANT shoot high or low. They can ONLY shoot in line with their barrels. What is wrong is you are LOOKING high or low. When you sight in a gun, you don't change where the bullets are going. You change where you are LOOKING, by moving the sights. You'd have to BEND the barrel to make the bullets go elsewhere.
When you see the gun movingaround,prior to your shot, firing from an unbraced position, that's a GOOD sign. It means that you have a PULSE.
Much practice can reduce the size of that "waver circle", and that means you will fire tighter groups. do NOT try to get the sights perfectly aligned, and then force the gun to fire. That results in a flinch, more often than not. Instead, just keep the sights as carefully aligned as possible, and keep buildig the pressure on the trigger (nicely pressing STRAIGHT rearward, with the middle of the pad of your trigger finger, NOT pressing on the side of the frame or the side of the trigger, and not pressing down on the safety with your thumb, either. Indeed, leave the pinky finger not applying pressure to the gun either. All it does is help you flinch worse, it offers almost no recoil control.When seeking max accuracy, don't try to hold down the gun in recoil. let it lift as high as it is going to. with a LOT of work, you can learn to coincide your trigger break with a certain point in your 'waver circle", at least MOST of the time. You can also learn to MAKE the gun fire at a given point, with fair accuracy, combat acceptable at least, with even more practice. We call it "wishing-off" a shot. When you can just "wish" a hit, and make it happen, very swiftly, 80-90% of the time, you are a master shottist.
One hit in the bullseye means nothing if the other 4 shots of your group are scattered all over the paper. The BE hit was thus just an accident. If you have a tight group, 12" off of the BE, a mere sight change can put the next 5 shots all in the 10 ring. NOTHING can help the guy who is scattering his shots get anything but luck hits.
Zeroing a rifle is done similarly, expecially with iron sights. Set up the sand or dirt or plastic "sawdust' bags, both under the forend and under-behind the pistol grip, so that the rifle just lays there, in line with the target. sit so that you can "hold" the rifle comforably, without moving it on the bags.
Dont hold the forend at all, unless the rifle recoils violently. If it does, use a STANDING benchrest, so that your body can more easily move rearward, absorbing some of the recoil-effect.Sometimes, hanging a lead birdshot bag, 25 lbs, over your shoulder, between you and the gun butt, helps with heavy recoil and benchrest shooting, too. PAST sells a shooting vest, with a "bubble" of gel on the front of the shoulder, same reason. Heavy recoil will also pack down the sandbags, necessitating that you "fluff up" the bags frequently, to get the gun back in line with the BE. You have to do this CONSISENTLY, as the gun started out on the bags, or your groups will open up in size. BEWARE firing heavy recoiling longarm loads from the prone position, especially with a "hooked", or steel buttplate, and a non-auto action. You can really bruise yourself, because your body can't "give" with the recoil. Be careful not to have thegun-butt on your collarbone, cause it could get broken, and such an injury immoblizes your arm for months, and you have to let the woman be on top, or you'll break it again.
This happened TWICE to a good friend of mine.ALSO beware having the recoil move you back into a car, tree, etc. that is too close behind you (sitting position) even a 308 auto ,or 20 ga pump (with slugs) can do this enough to hurt a bit, if your flesh gets caught between the gunbutt and something hard. Beware having your eyebrow too close to a scope, with a heavy recoil load. Getting whacked on the brow is a good way to cultivate a serious flinching habit.
Try to pick a day when the mirage and wind, heat and cold are minimal, or arrange to minmize them in some way. Shooting out of the window of a car, bracing your firing arm on the rear of the seat, the bag over the window, with the AC or heat recently active (motor turned off, of course) can help you deal with glare, cold, heat. Changing your direction of fire can sometimes help with the wind or mirage, too. Get out there EARLY in the day, and there's less other shooters on the range, less mirage or wind (usually, in the latter case). Wind NEAR the shooter effects the bullet less than wind near the target, so if you can arrange a 'wind block' of some sort, on either end of your zeroing, put it near you, not near the target.
I'd zero iron sights at 75-200m, depending upon barrel length and load. A scope, you might zero at 100-400m, depending upon the load, barrel length, scope, and intended target. A short range, low velocity load, especially a blunt one, that will slow down quickly, is pointless to zero for at long range. Zeroing a really high velocity, high ballistic coefficient rd at a mere 70-150 m, is just wasting a lot of its potential utility. Enough for one post
