Good Fun - shooting in a gale wind

[Ian M]

Friend and I shot long a couple of days ago in a hell of a wind. Forgot my wind meter so had to wing it. 12.5 MOA of right wind at 700 for an oblique, ten o'clock wind. Well over twenty mph. Interesting thing was that we got some excellent accuracy. Setup a good shooting bench but it was just too windy to fire from it. Stood a couple of pieces of plywood on the wind-side of the truck and shot prone on the other side, no wind on the shooter. One 3-shot group at 500 went inside 3 inches. 700 yard accuracy was easily minute of deer lungs. Shooting Hornady A-Max 168's in the .308, 200 Accubond in an Ultramag and 220 factory Power Points in a .325 M-70 rifle (not my GAP tack-driver).
Guess what I want to say is that shooting in lousy conditions is doable and the best practice we can get for hunting. Makes you work harder, wind was so strong I could not pickup any swirls or trace. Wonder if high wind can effect our ability to see that. We can almost always see swirls from that firing position, fired thousands of rounds there over the years.
No paper targets so I zeroed the new .325 WSM on a mark on a big rock at 200 yards, then fudge-factored a couple of shots to get a 500 yard zero. Hit a 6x9 inch steel plate twice at 500 yards with the out of the box .325 and factory ammo - might just be a shooter. Put a Leupy 3-9 MK4 MRT on this rig and the little scope worked great.
Get out there and pull the trigger - that is the secret.

 

[Mysticplayer]

Wow, that would be a windy day. Nice shooting. If I can get a few spotters to adjust, I find any constant condition shootable. As long as it stays the same, you can adjust for just about anything.

What I hate are the variable conditions where winds start and stop, change directions. I guess you would call that swirling conditions. That really needs work.

Starting to do some cast shooting with a 308. Any distance is like shooting twice/three times as far with jacketed stuff. moderate BC bullets at slow velocities. Talk about having to dope well.

Will be a good teacher for me. Best part is I can do this with little cost, recoil and be close to home. Let's see if this practise leads to better shooting with the cannons.

Any chance of coming further west for a visit?

Jerry