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

Presuming you're zeroed for the horizontal distance or TBR then I've found that I need to aim higher on the animal so that the bullet passes through the vitals rather than skimming the underbelly. I had this problem a number of times. I've since focused on the exit point for downhill shots and aimed through the animal for that. Often that means a high shoulder shot which helps to drop the animal plus it goes out the bottom opposite side lung.

I have my 308 sighted in for 180m which means for bush stalking it hits zero at 30m which is my usual distance for the bush, then 100m it's 2 inches or so high and bang on at 180m. Most of the time I'm either up close and personal or 150-250 away.

So not always practical, but if you have a miss like that, It can really help to pick a rock etc, and shoot as near the same shot as possible. Will tell you if it was a ballistic issue or a mistake on your part, or a rifle/scope problem.

What you are talking about is called angle cosine shooting. Its something we used to learn about when I was doing maritime security. Neil also covers it on the Nortrack Precision course. Of course if you don't practice it you quickly forget it, or at least I have. A lot of rangefinders can be set to give you the "true" distance to the target, which removes the need for memorising formulas and so on.

Here's Major Plaster's article on it, although there might be better techniques out there now.

https://majorjohnplaster.com/wp-cont...d-Downhill.pdf

Lots to think about , thank you all .

Regardless of 100m or 200m zero, a shoulder shot at 180m should connect. I presume just a stuff up on shooters behalf if all else is setup correct. Easy to do when shooting a steep angle, we all have those days.

I played around with shooting down hill at steep angles a few years ago with my 260, at the time the rifle was zeroed at 125 metres. A target was set at 400 metres steeply down hill from me at line of sight, but was only 180 metres on the level. Result, a 2" four shot group at 7 1/2" below point of aim. Some 5 years later, I was shooting at a hind at 350 metres at a similar angle, so held over her shoulders by about 4", a clean miss!! she looked over her shoulder to see what the noise was in the rocks behind her and then she left! I had changed the zero on that rifle to 250 metres so was shooting well high. As someone once said "Hair not Air", no truer words could be said.

If you want a good visual explanation of shooting on steep angles and how it works on trajectory then jump to 6min on the vid in the link below.

https://youtu.be/ztvJxTuXCck?si=vmdz1EC2Sf2gU6Km

Thanks for this .

It's a shit, and it's hard to practice. Most ranges are flat so dealing with incline/decline is not something most people really have to think about until they're out there.

I used to squirrels with an air rifle a lot. Small 6 inch long animals. 90% shots were steep upwards in trees.

I learned that a 30 meter shot had a 20 meter flat trajectory.

The same principle applies steep downhill.

I once read an article on this about shooting mountain game at long ranges.

The thumb rule was to hold a bit low if the angle was steep upwards or down.

Bullet may have struck a twig or a leaf?

See if you can set the shot up again but this time with a paper target. See where it hits? Or at least a dirt bank