Shooting with a Scope
If you are new to shooting and have placed a scope on your air gun, you may have noticed that the pellet hits are varying heights in relation to your aiming point at different ranges. There is a reason for this, and perhaps this brief explanation will help you understand what happens when you fire a shot.
Gravity is an amazing thing. It pulls the same on identical objects whether or not they are moving along a horizontal plane. For instance, if you were standing on a perfectly flat surface, and you could aim your air gun in a perfect parallel to the flat surface you were standing on, then a pellet that you fired from your gun would hit the ground at the same time as a pellet you dropped from your hand when you pulled the trigger. The difference would be that the pellet you fired would have traveled in a horizontal trajectory, while the pellet you dropped simply went straight down.....but they arrive at the same time.
When a scope is mounted to an air rifle, the front of the scope is slightly lower than the rear. Thus your line of sight is not level with the bore of the air rifle. Here is a link to a very helpful demonstration that shows you what I am feebly trying to explain in these few paragraphs:
http://www.arld1.com/trajectory.html
Perry Babin has thoughtfully provided several demonstrations to explain some of the concepts involved in shooting. When time allows, take a look at all of his demonstrations to increase your knowledge of air guns and shooting.
If you look closely at the demonstration link I provided, you can see that there are two points where the line-of-sight crosses the trajectory of the pellet as it is fired from the air rifle. If your air rifle is zero'ed in at 30 yards, a common range for many air rifle scopes to be set at, then the points where the pellet's trajectory cross the line-of-sight (LOS) are at 12 and 40 yards. As the example explains, this is a good reference point for air guns that have a moderately high velocity.
Accuracy proponents often label a note card with the amount of hold-over and hold-under they need for a specific range. They tape it to the gun and waterproof it so that they can refer to it under shooting conditions. This allows them to maximize their ability to stay on target during shooting sessions. For a hunter, practice estimating ranges is an excellent tool for improving your take of game in the field. For the target shooter, your scores will go up. But understanding what happens in the relation of the scope to your line of trajectory is a good starting place.
Gravity is an amazing thing. It pulls the same on identical objects whether or not they are moving along a horizontal plane. For instance, if you were standing on a perfectly flat surface, and you could aim your air gun in a perfect parallel to the flat surface you were standing on, then a pellet that you fired from your gun would hit the ground at the same time as a pellet you dropped from your hand when you pulled the trigger. The difference would be that the pellet you fired would have traveled in a horizontal trajectory, while the pellet you dropped simply went straight down.....but they arrive at the same time.
When a scope is mounted to an air rifle, the front of the scope is slightly lower than the rear. Thus your line of sight is not level with the bore of the air rifle. Here is a link to a very helpful demonstration that shows you what I am feebly trying to explain in these few paragraphs:
http://www.arld1.com/trajectory.html
Perry Babin has thoughtfully provided several demonstrations to explain some of the concepts involved in shooting. When time allows, take a look at all of his demonstrations to increase your knowledge of air guns and shooting.
If you look closely at the demonstration link I provided, you can see that there are two points where the line-of-sight crosses the trajectory of the pellet as it is fired from the air rifle. If your air rifle is zero'ed in at 30 yards, a common range for many air rifle scopes to be set at, then the points where the pellet's trajectory cross the line-of-sight (LOS) are at 12 and 40 yards. As the example explains, this is a good reference point for air guns that have a moderately high velocity.
Accuracy proponents often label a note card with the amount of hold-over and hold-under they need for a specific range. They tape it to the gun and waterproof it so that they can refer to it under shooting conditions. This allows them to maximize their ability to stay on target during shooting sessions. For a hunter, practice estimating ranges is an excellent tool for improving your take of game in the field. For the target shooter, your scores will go up. But understanding what happens in the relation of the scope to your line of trajectory is a good starting place.
posted by Randy Mitchell at
7:03 AM
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