My point is that I have NEVER seen a wind that does not swtch velocity AND dirction at least a little bit.....and a switch from six to six thirty to five thirty is such a small switch that you would NEVER know it. Untill you miss, that is!! I can't imajin a place on earth, short of a wind tunnel, where the winds don't switch velocity AND direction at least a little. And a switch from 5:30 to 6:30 is a little. Strait cross winds are changing direction a bit, also, but you wont see it on target, because it doesn't move the bullit that much. What gets you there is the push and the let up, which I never even brought up in the headwind/tailwind situation.....that will also move your bullet around a bunch if the wind isn't DIRECTLY 6 or 12 oclock!!....kind of a two-fer!!!
You don't need to shoot 10 shot groups, either....take 1 shaot a min, or every 10 min at a 1000 yard target....do it in your 6:00 / 12:00 wind situation. In a perfect world, you are 100% correct. A 6:00 / 12:00 wind would be IDEAL....velocity changes mean nothing...but this world isn't pefect!!
With the strait cross wind, you need to worry about wind velocity almost exclusivly. A head wind/tailwind, on the other hand , demands you pay atention to the wind velocity, but more importantly, the wind direction...because a tiny switch there will mess up your day!!
If you can't read the wind well enough to detect a shift from 6:39-6:00 and then to 5:30 etc you aren't going to hit anything beyond 600yds anyhow.
The quick way to read wind accurately is to use essentially a clock face.
The 12:00hr clock represents how many minutes? One full rotation of the minute hand = 60 mins correct?
How many degrees are in a circle? 360 right?
Divide 360/60 and what do you get?
60, correct?
So using the clock face how many degrees does 5 minutes of wind equate to?
Plug that 30degrees into your shooting solution and pull the trigger.
I make it even simpler figuring a 30 degree wind as 1/3 of the full value wind correction and pull the trigger.
At best all wind corrections in the field are going to be nothing but the best approximation you can come up with because as I explained wind will rarely be consistent over the full flight of the bullet especially if you are dealing with anything other than perfectly flat terrain.
Shoot, learn, repeat. Shoot, learn, repeat.
The best advice I ever got on long range shooting came from the best natural shot I have ever known, "Don't be afraid to miss, until you've missed a lot you won't learn how to make the critical shots when the time comes".
Once you have done a lot of practicing you will "feel it" when the shot is right and know it when it's not.
If the wind is shifting then you are going to have to use all of your down range cues to time the shot for when the wind is where you need it to be for the corrections you have figured and set up for.
Shooting is at least as much of an art as it is a science and it just takes a lot of time and practice to make it as easy as some people make it sound.
