southpaw26888

I missed a nice buck on Sunday at 118 yards. I shot over the top of his back and he bounded off. I took my firebolt to our farm to check and make sure the scope hadn't moved. I stepped back to 80 yards and was shooting 2 pioneer powder sticks and 250 grain T/C Shockwave.I fired 2 shots the first shot was perfect height but about 3 inches to the right, the second shot was about 1/2 inch from the first but also to the right.

Here in Indiana today, we had cross winds of between 15-20 mph. My question is whether the wind could have that much of an effect on the bullet at that yardage. I don't want to change anything because I previously was 2 inches high at 50 yards which is what I wanted.

Any thoughts on this.

Thanks in advance.

cayugad

too bad about missing the buck. And I take it you were holding dead on the shoulder at the 118 yards. I see no reason why it would have missed. Granted wind can play havoc on a bullet, especially gusts of wind. I would have guessed that you would have shot to the off wind side if anything... Stumped me, (but that's not hard to do) it will be interesting to see some of the posts from the distance shooters. I personally have never ran into that.

southpaw26888

Thanks for the quick response, do you know what a 15-20 mph wind would do to a .250 grain bullet at 80 yards. I don't want to change my scope if the shots today off 3 inches to the right were wind related. I guess I am trying to determine if it was wind today or if my scope has moved since before season.

I know what the problem was with the buck.... If my knees would've stopped knocking, I would've been fine.

sabotloader

southpaw26888

I am at school right now so I can not run the calculations - but let me tell you the biggest factor in distance shooting is x-winds... they can play havoc with a ML bullet. The higher the BC of the bullet and the less time the bullet is in flight - the less of a problem x-winds are. A 10 mile an hour x-wind has a far greater effect than drop when shooting over a long range. I was once told the thing that ML hunters most often do not account for is X-winds. I enjoy shooting distances andI am always trying to get better at it but trying to compute x-wind into the distance is really a chore.

In your case depending on some other varibles 2-3 inches right with a 15-20mph x-wind is not out of reason. I can run the ballistics tonight if you would be interested but I would have to make some assumptions - BC, velocity - temperature.

A.D.D. BOY

Should of seen me shooting at my first deer ever, i had a single shot .410. I shot and i was shaking so bad my uncle had to hold me up as we walked down the gully with one arm and reload the gun with the other i was high on adrenaline. Didnt even touch the doe.

lemoyne

A cording to my chart a 20 mile an hour wind at 90 degrees will only move a 250 side ways less than 1.25inchs at 100yd.Lee



Range
Velocity
Energy
Moment
Elev
Wind
Lead
Slope
Time

(yards)
(ft/sec)
(ft-lbs)
(lb-sec)
(moa)
(moa)
(moa)
(in/yd)
(sec)

0
1802.4
1803.3
2.00
---
---
---
---
0.000

100
1730.8
1662.8
1.92
-0.00
1.16
0.0
-0.041
0.170

200
1661.3
1531.9
1.84
-4.83
2.35
0.0
-0.162
0.347

southpaw26888

I guess that is better news then I thought. I may have been off, but wind might have had something to do with my results checking the rifle yesterday. I will go back out today and try and shoot with the wind behind me or right in my face and see if it is still on target.

Thanks for your help.

sabotloader

southpaw26888

Ok, I ran the ballsitics this evening - had to make a couple of assumptions. One you were using a scope - which makes no difference in windage numbers and that you were shooting level again no difference in windage. Not sure of your altitude so I plugged in a 1000 ft. Plugged in a kill zone of plus or minus 4" @ 100 yards. That calulated out to holding dead on out to 127 & 158 yds.

I also left the range increments in 50 yard increments - I probably should have run 25 yard increments for a ML

The other big assumption was velocity from my own ballistics I assumed somewhere around 1800 feet per second with 100 grains of t7 pellets.

here are the results....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v130/sabotloader/tcsw20MPH.gif

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v130/sabotloader/tcsw15MPH.gif

If you notice in the wind deflection column 15/20 winds can be a real problem for a ML - all comes down to time in flight & bullet weight.

Hope these come up for you...

Good luck - let me know if I can help out with anything else...

mike

southpaw26888

Thanks for looking that up. I can basically attribute 1/2 of the 3 inch off target to wind and the rest to me.

I will work on my portion.

Thanks again,,,

bigcountry

According to my quickload and Sierra infinity software which I find deadnuts on for my long range shooting, a 250gr bullet with BC of .18 kicking out the muzzle at 1600fps will have 4" wind drift ( 15MPH crosswind) at80 yards and 5.3" drift with 20mph crosswind.

With just about any bullet with BC less than .3, wind is a killer. Bullet wieght does not matter, only how fast you can get from A to B which of course can be contributed mostly to BC and how fast you can get it out of the muzzle.