Thread: Missed a shot 150 m shooting straight down a hill . Need opinions.

Looking for opinions on a hunt i just came back from .

I missed a shot on a deer 180m away on a fairly sharp downward slope.

Should i have aimed low because of the slope ?Or at that distance would i be okay aiming dead on target ?

Looking for thoughts on this or tips for downward slope shooting.

For reference , im using a 308 with a 3-9-40 scope .

I was with my son when shooting 4 goats at close to 200 yds, sharply downhill. I told him to hold low on their bodies. For the first shot he actually held halfway down a leg. The shot went over the Goats back ( into a stream throwing up a great splash ). The next three shots were aimed under the goats feet and he nailed three for three, all centre body hits.
Pretty sure his rifle, 270W, is sighted dead on at 200 yds.

If you have a 100m/yard zero then it would cancel out any elevation adjustment. For example if I put in a steep angle into my calculator for that range it gives me no adjustment.
What kind of zero do you have?

I have a 200M Zero , although after today im thinking of changing it to a 100 m zero because it over complicates close range for me personally .

So i should have aimed much lower then ?
I was holding at the base of organs.

If the slope was 45 degrees, your 180m line-of-sight would be 127m true ballistic range (TBR). I don’t know your dope but I’m guessing that will be around 3” high, so the shot should still have connected with something if you were aiming low.

Shooting steeply up or down can be tricky as your shooting position can cause the rifle to jump differently against your shoulder. Were you shooting off the same sort of rest you practice with? That can also have an effect.

I run a 250m zero but then the trajectory of my 7WSM is way flatter than a .308. I’d recommend practicing uphill & downhill shots from awkward positions before changing your zero.

Originally Posted by 30.06king

I was with my son when shooting 4 goats at close to 200 yds, sharply downhill. I told him to hold low on their bodies. For the first shot he actually held halfway down a leg. The shot went over the Goats back ( into a stream throwing up a great splash ). The next three shots were aimed under the goats feet and he nailed three for three, all centre body hits.
Pretty sure his rifle, 270W, is sighted dead on at 200 yds.

Correction. I remember his zero is 250 yds.

Originally Posted by Roy Canty

I have a 200M Zero , although after today im thinking of changing it to a 100 m zero because it over complicates close range for me personally .

So i should have aimed much lower then ?
I was holding at the base of organs.

I would guess your hold should have been lower. I have seen closer shots at less steep angles shoot over the top of deer.
Not easy but the best thing would be duplicating the downhill / uphill angle next time you're on thd hill and trying a shot or two at an inert target where you can see impacts to see where your shots land. Personally I think this will help more than going by ballistics charts in this case.

The comment mentioning TBR (true ballistic range) is pretty much on the money - the bullet drop is only relevant to the actual horizontal distance the bullet travels so on a 180m shot at 45deg down hill the drop needs to be worked out on 127m horizontal distance.

As he said, 50m at that range should not be earth shattering in terms of difference - but the elevation issue creates a couple more things that can throw you out including making an error in the range estimation (estimation error either long or short), shooting position causing you to shoot high as you drop the rifle down against your shoulder, and just missing through being out of position (which we don't like to admit but have all done). Generally on uphill/downhill shots you shoot high and the shot clears over the animal's back, but the out of position factor often means you can't spot where your own shot lands and this is a further complication - hard to fix the error when you don't know what it is.

The other factor is windage is worked out on the full shooting distance, not the TBR (horizontal distance to target as though you were shooting flat). Can end up in the rush using TBR for windage and not allowing enough correction for wind effect on the pill, but usually this doesn't cause a clean miss?

Would have shot maybe 8cm above point of aim or about 2cm higher than normal poi @ 180m flat. Depending on where you aimed, eg high shoulder, you should still have connected. 308 using 150gr @ 2750 fps, sighted in 200m for reference.

spend more time at a shooting range and practice.

Originally Posted by Roy Canty

Looking for opinions on a hunt i just came back from .

I missed a shot on a deer 180m away on a fairly sharp downward slope.

Should i have aimed low because of the slope ?Or at that distance would i be okay aiming dead on target ?

Looking for thoughts on this or tips for downward slope shooting.

For reference , im using a 308 with a 3-9-40 scope .

Probably should consider that sometimes we just plain miss. For no other reason than operator error.

As above maybe you just missed.
Consider also that if steeply above an animal your point of aim needs to be higher on the animal to pass the bullet threw the middle of the vitals as it angles downward threw the body and the reverse is true if steeply above.

you probably just missed
pulled the shot
something between you and the deer got in the way
many other reasons you might have "just missed"

it happens don't eat yourself up over it the deer is now just that bit wiser, so it's learned its lesson as well

check your zero to make sure it wasn't that apart from that you will probably never know

a downward slope will not make you completely miss at 180m so rest assured it's not that.... just chalk it up to experience and move on
we all miss on the odd occasion thats "just hunting"

Cheers for the advice from all .
No doubt it was a bad shot but just wanted to gauge if shooting down hill like that would play into why i missed.

Back to the range i go i think .

Thanks again

Try a few scenarios on a ballistic calculator.

For the 7mm08 30 degrees at 200m give 0.2 mRad (2/3 moa) difference.
At 300m its 0.3 mRad (1 moa).
At 500 m its 0.7 mRad (2 moa).

So, I would only take slope into account from 300m out.
30 degrees is pretty steep and difficult to get into position for.