Bullet impacting high when shooting at an incline?
 

I am looking for information regarding the flight of a bullet when it shot in an incline. I was shooting my CVA Optima today, and trying a different load since I was having some accuracy issues with my previous load. I was shooting 2 Triple 7 pellets and 300 gr. Hornady SSTs. I started at 50 yards, and was hitting about 2” high but grouping good left to right, so I left it there and went to 75 yards. I shot again grouping good left to right, but was about an inch higher than I was at 50 yards. I then tried it at 50 and again, good left to right, but now about 3-4 inches high. The sportsman club where I shoot has yardage out to 100 yards, but it is only flat out to about 50 yards, and then it starts into an incline. I am not sure of the degree, but I it isn’t overly steep, but enough to tell the ground is sloping in an upward direction.

Could this be causing my bullets to be impacting high at the 75 and 100 yard ranges? I was thinking and it was also suggested to me to sight it at 50 yards about 2” high and then I should be close to right on at 100, because of the bullet dropping at the father yardages, but for some reason it seems the opposite is happening. I was thinking that because the targets at 75 and 100 yards are inclined compared to the 50 yard targets, that the this would be causing it to impact higher than it actually would be if I was shooting these same yardages but on flat ground.

Does this make sense to anyone? Also can anyone give me suggestions on where to sight it in at 50 yards, that would get me closer to right on at 100 yards, because this range with incline is the only place I have access to that actually goes out to 100 yards?

JD - I believe your problem is not a problem at all. This is assuming you are shooting a scoped rifle. If you can envision this: your line of sight (scope) is looking at the bullseye at 50 yds. If you sight in to impact the target 2" high and your scope is 1 1/2" above centerline of bore (avg) your barrel is pointing relatively high. It is probably so high that the bullet is not coming down far enough to impact at point of aim at 100 yds.
I suggest you sight in to be 1" LOW at 50 yds. Then try shooting at 100. From there you can adjust your scope to be on at 100 and shoud be close at 50.

This should help answer the first part of your question



Actually, at 50 yards I am most often around 2.5" - 2.75" high and at 100 I run about 2 3/4" high

Maybe I have a 100 grain ballistic sheet that might help..

I found one...



This sheet shows the trajectory using a 6" Point Blank Range system... So at a 100 yards it will not be zero... I use this to stretch my range.

Here is a ballistic calculation for your bullet. The muzzle velocity was guessed at because i really know nothing about the energy of your 2 pellets.












If the velocity is anywhere close to actual, one can see that a little over 3/4" high at 50 yard will result in a near 100 yard zero.

Ron - is that a chart you can get on line or is it your own program? That is pretty nice. (I meant to tell you that a couple times.) Looks like my advise to have it sighted in about 1" low at 50 would have been darn close (only .21" off) and all without the value of those modern ballistic programs. I guess the experience from us old guys is still relatively accurate - if you can put up with our rambling on and on and on and.....

Bronko, go to the link below and play around with that one. It's simple and versatile, and you don't have to download anything to your computer. When I've compared the results to my real world trajectory studies it was spot on.

http://www.handloads.com/calc/