12-05-2013, 01:30 PM
Nimrod Wrote:This is very important when figuring bullet drop especially when shooting or hunting in mountain country. I am looking for advice, techniques, and or equipment to help estimate/determine the angle I am shooting at. Currently I am just estimating, but that is not good enough anymore. What do you guys do?
Nimrod:
Why aren't your estimations 'good enough' anymore?
Most likely, there is a fix that won't cost you a huge sum of money.
My experiences.
When you really need a laser range finder, it is normally snowing and raining, the lenses get covered with crap and fog, and you find the batteries are dead. Seems like a person never needs one when it is nice and sunny outside.
Let me suggest you use a ballistics program and see under what angle and distances you really need to come up or down or risk missing your entire target. Then find hand held laser range finders that work on 20 X 20 inch targets past about 500 yards under field conditions (background, obscurants, poor rests, use with gloves, battery life, etc.). You may find that the conditions would have to be extreme before you missed due to not taking off enough elevation or holding low enough.
I have tried to find terrain that allows for this type of training but even in rugged desert terrain, couldn't. You would either have to tie the shooter to an object to keep him from tumbling down a cliff or there were too many obstructions for uphill shots. The only firing points I could find meant shots well past 600 meters where wind and range estimation had a greater effect on hit or miss than slant angle. I looked for this type of terrain and couldn't find it so figured that under most conditions, all the gizmo's were unnecessary and to just hold at the bottom of the kill zone.
If you think you need to take off elevation for a shot due to slant angle, hold bottom of kill zone. If you want to try it, you need 3 dimensional targets that are full size.
LR1955