Wind Doping Basics

The flags show a steady breeze from 8 o'clock. It is less than 10 mph

We all know that wind has an effect on bullet impact. Perhaps we may not know what wind will do at different speeds, different angles, over different terrain, or on different projectiles. The study of wind can be a very daunting education that takes many years. It is one of those things that causes people to say: “The more I learn the less I know.” Early in life I began to realize that I did not know as much as I thought. The more knowledge I gained about a subject the more I was sure that I still had a lot more to learn. Wind doping certainly falls into that category. I have been shooting under outdoor conditions for about 45 years and still get a surprise once in a while.



Wind acts upon every bullet. There is no wind that will allow you to send your bullet happily on its way without something happening. A no-wind condition may allow the passage of a bullet without some displacement but there is no guarantee there either. A little villain by the name of mirage may enter the picture. That will be dealt with later. Becoming aware of the wind’s action on a bullet is step one in learning what to do about it.

Note that this 2 o'clock wind is about to switch, as shown by the flags.

I began my competitive shooting career in small bore. The indoor game was wind-free. When we went outdoors for the 50- and 100-yard matches, concerns about wind entered our minds. If we wanted to excel we had to master the wind. I then became involved in the high power rifle game. The calibers were different and the distances now reached out from 200 to 600 yards, with an occasional 1,000 yard match. Wind magnified its hold on us as the distance increased.

I can remember our team coaches at Camp Perry. They were very savvy Army and Marine riflemen who devoted their careers to reading the wind and relaying what they saw to the shooters on the line. At one of the 600-yard matches our coach had us firing in pairs. He was able to keep five of us on target enough to shoot perfect scores. The sixth person dropped a point that was called low. It was not the fault of the coach. I still marvel at how that coach could make changes of as much as five minutes of windage between shots and still keep us in the 10 ring, or better, for 119 shots over more than an hour. Much of what he did I now know. He was a superb coach.

Only when I entered the sport of benchrest shooting did I begin to really fine-tune my wind doping. It was in my first year of the sport. I was practicing one evening before a match with the late retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Rick Hornbeck. Rick wrote for me when I edited Precision Shooting and was a close shooting buddy of mine. As I was getting ready to fire a shot Rick announced that the wind was going to displace my shot by 1/4 of a bullet at 5 o’clock. For my 222 that would be about 0.054 inch. I thought to myself “OK” and held right on. When I pulled the trigger that bullet dropped right where he told me it would. “Now hold about 1/4 to the left and try again,” Rick remarked. That bullet went right back into the hole with the rest. I became a believer. All I had to do was learn to identify what that wind would do to my bullet. I embarked on a serious study of the wind.

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