Dunce Cap for me

[VTbluegrass]

One of the old cull bucks with a cool rack stepped out at 300 on the logging road. I am zeroed at 100 with the 270 shooting 150s so I came up 3.5 and sent it. He turned on a dime and was gone and I just didn't have a good feeling. So I went down to check and no sign of anything. This was a ranged deer on bait in a road so where he was wasn't a question.
It bothered me the next morning in the blind and at lunch I had to fire a confirmation shot. It was alarmingly low and I sat there for a minute racking my brain and I stared at the CDS dial when it finally hit me and I gave myself the double facepalm.

Turned the wrong way. Haven't shot much this year with the new baby and new job. But that was a new dumb*** move for me.

 

[TucsonFX4]

Much like drinking from the far side of the cup to cure hiccups, now you need to shoot upside down to handle that method of dialing.

 

[MachV]

It happens…..to dumb to be trusted with dials myself=just hold high fur and favor the wind

 

[Bret GRAVELINE Graveline]

There is certainly no shame to be felt here, consider it a learning experience, if one hasn't experienced A avoidable situation such as yours then you have hunted enough, in 53 years of deer hunting I've made plenty of costly mistake, 3 of them were truly wall worthy bucks by anyones definition, 2 of them book bucks for sure, the key is not to make the same mistake twice,

 

[Calvin45]

It happens…..to dumb to be trusted with dials myself=just hold high fur and favor the wind

One of the old cull bucks with a cool rack stepped out at 300 on the logging road. I am zeroed at 100 with the 270 shooting 150s so I came up 3.5 and sent it. He turned on a dime and was gone and I just didn't have a good feeling. So I went down to check and no sign of anything. This was a ranged deer on bait in a road so where he was wasn't a question.
It bothered me the next morning in the blind and at lunch I had to fire a confirmation shot. It was alarmingly low and I sat there for a minute racking my brain and I stared at the CDS dial when it finally hit me and I gave myself the double facepalm.

Turned the wrong way. Haven't shot much this year with the new baby and new job. But that was a new dumb*** move for me.

fellow dunce here…

I'm with MachV on this, I don't touch the scope in the field, just do some of that Kentucky windage stuff…I also have never shot at game beyond 500 yards so there's that, just honestly no need or even opportunity for that where I live, unlike the southern prairie of the province, northern Saskatchewan has trees, lots of em'! Crazy long shots just aren't that likely here.

The nice thing about my .257 weatherly hammer load is it's an honest to goodness 500 yard hold on hair rifle.

BUT….my history of dunce moves is opposite yours…I have shot clean over more deer than I care to admit, mostly in my late teens and early twenties. I grossly underestimated how flat shooting even boring old cartridges like the .308 really do shoot and overestimated how far away things were on several occasions. Don't think I've ever missed low.

 

[VTbluegrass]

Maybe next time…he taunts me.

 

[Calvin45]

Maybe next time…he taunts me.

View attachment 510559View attachment 510560

If he starts sticking his tongue out at the camera you'll know it's deliberate AND PERSONAL!!!

 

[26Reload]

Don't let these guys be soft on you..feeling sad for you.....

YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHOM HAS DONE SUCH A STUPID THING.....

LOL....
As a kid hunting...3 of us shot our rifles at a forked horn standing in a field about 50yds away......
Maybe 20 shots.....and the buck walked away......stupid kids...or buck fever......
Buck was very safe....maybe deaf for a while......

 

[Calvin45]

Don't let these guys be soft on you..feeling sad for you.....

YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHOM HAS DONE SUCH A STUPID THING.....

LOL....
As a kid hunting...3 of us shot our rifles at a forked horn standing in a field about 50yds away......
Maybe 20 shots.....and the buck walked away......stupid kids...or buck fever......
Buck was very safe....maybe deaf for a while......

That reminds me of a coyote that haunts my dreams to this day . And my pesky little sister.

I was 17, and this dang coyote kept showing up near the farm yard, on the hill to the south consistently showing up 350-500 yards away from the house. I shot at it on 4 different evenings with my trusty .270, a savage package gun from early 2000s…missed every time! I was convinced I just sucked at shooting. My sister, 15 at the time, was eager to confirm this suspicion. She said if I didn't shoot the thing it was doomed to starve in the winter. I asked why she'd think that. Her answer:

" it's going to get such bad frostbite on its tongue, from sticking it out at you while you keep missing, that its tongue is going to fall off and it won't be able to eat…."



…until one day I noticed something. The scope was visibly wiggling around! And it gets worse! So was the action itself! Both the action pillars and the scope rings had come loose over time. I tightened everything up to "what felt right", set up a pumpkin on a sawhorse at 350 yards, and sent the first round of my newly tightened up rifle right through it, dead center, blew a huge hole out the back. I think ol' WILEY was watching, cuz wouldn't ya know it, he stopped coming by….

 

[26Reload]

Couldnt eat..no .....

 

[VTbluegrass]

Redemption. Not the same deer but somehow I am apparently a magnet for the cull bucks on the club.

 

[Calvin45]

Redemption. Not the same deer but somehow I am apparently a magnet for the cull bucks on the club.View attachment 511787

Congrats! Meat is meat!!!

 

[memtb]

One of the old cull bucks with a cool rack stepped out at 300 on the logging road. I am zeroed at 100 with the 270 shooting 150s so I came up 3.5 and sent it. He turned on a dime and was gone and I just didn't have a good feeling. So I went down to check and no sign of anything. This was a ranged deer on bait in a road so where he was wasn't a question.
It bothered me the next morning in the blind and at lunch I had to fire a confirmation shot. It was alarmingly low and I sat there for a minute racking my brain and I stared at the CDS dial when it finally hit me and I gave myself the double facepalm.

Turned the wrong way. Haven't shot much this year with the new baby and new job. But that was a new dumb*** move for me.

You're not the first, and I suspect not the last, to have scope dials ruin a shot for them!

As Cousin Murphy and I spend a lot of time together, I try to minimize the multitude of "screwups" that I'm fully capable of making!

I zero at a longer distance, in my case 300 yards and have "hold-under" (for small game) memorized, greatly reducing the times that I will have to "twist the dial"!

I also have my dial set-up with a zero-stop. The dial very rarely gets turned, and there is no way that it can find itself into the second rotation!

Yes, my maximum range is limited…..but, it's still far beyond the range at which I'll shoot at game! memtb

 

[Rosebud]

One of the old cull bucks with a cool rack stepped out at 300 on the logging road. I am zeroed at 100 with the 270 shooting 150s so I came up 3.5 and sent it. He turned on a dime and was gone and I just didn't have a good feeling. So I went down to check and no sign of anything. This was a ranged deer on bait in a road so where he was wasn't a question.
It bothered me the next morning in the blind and at lunch I had to fire a confirmation shot. It was alarmingly low and I sat there for a minute racking my brain and I stared at the CDS dial when it finally hit me and I gave myself the double facepalm.

Turned the wrong way. Haven't shot much this year with the new baby and new job. But that was a new dumb*** move for me.

Why God made Zero Stop!