Thread: Shooting at Medium Range

Greetings All,
Thank you for all your replies, they have been most helpful. To summarise some ranged and dialed for everything, partly to develop a sound technique for long range shooting. Most used a hunting zero that gave them a point blank range somewhere past 200 metres and ranged and dialed beyond that. Some ranged for the closer shots to check that it actually was inside their point blank range. Only 257weatherby mentioned using an auxiliary aiming point (top of the bottom duplex post) as a secondary zero. 257weatherby also limited himself to 400 yards and that only when absolutely necessary.
So what does this mean for an old duffer with an aim of being technically capable of taking some medium range shots, say out to 300 or at the very most 400 metres. First I will stick with my 200m zero. This means that the various marks on my reticle are as follows: Cross wire 200m. First dot 280m. Second dot 365m. Top of lower duplex post 450m. I also mentioned bracketing as a rough estimate of range. Using a depth of a deer's body of 400mm if the body fills the distance between the crosswire and the top of the duplex post than the range is less than 200m and the cross wire can be used. Obviously deer do not all have a body depth of exactly 400mm but this should tell me when I need to reach for the rangefinder. This data has been calculated from the Leupold data and the Hodgdon trajectory ballistic calculator. Over the winter actual results will be checked on the range. Thank you all for your input.
Regards Grandpamac.