Range Report How to compensate for wind

[The salmon]

I'm new to the hide and am trying to get into long range shooting but I just don't get how to calculate for windage
I've tried ballistic calculators and It gave a good dope but I want to to learn how compensate for it without a ballistics calculator.

So lets say at 400 yds with a 15mph shooting with a 175 smk round with a 19 inch barrel what would I enter in the scope.

And try to keep it simple since I'm 13

Thanks

 

[Hondo64d]

Welcome. It's good to see young folks wanting to join the sport. There's not a method as easy as you are looking for. I suggest you google "wind values". You will find a lot of good info. What I do is make a small dope chart that I attach to my stock with clear packing tape. It has values for elevation and wind in 50m increments based on a 10mph full value wind. With a little mental math, you can quickly figure your wind value for any range if you are decent at estimating wind speed and value. That last part is key. Learning to read the wind is an art in itself. I have looked through my scope recently and observed mirage going L to R close, R to L mid range and L to R at the target. Making a wind call with those sort of conditions that is accurate enough to allow a 1st round hit on the 8" plates I shoot at is quite challenging. There are gadgets that measure wind speed and they are really cool, but they're only an aide, as they don't tell you what the wind is doing down range and it is, as often as not, different down range than where you are shooting from. As in all things, read as much as you can about it and practice even more.

John

 

[Graham]

I want to to learn how compensate for it without a ballistics calculator.

Get Mike Lau's book: The Military and Police Sniper. The British Method, and other old-school stuff, is in there.

 

[OutlawTen5]

Check this out too:

The Field Density Altitude Compensator (FDAC) - ACTS Virginia

 

[hounddawg]

Carlos Hathcock said it's knowing your weapon, accurately judging distance, and adding a swag. "A swag" you say? Yep. Stands for Scientific Wild-Ass Guess. Don't believe me? Read the book.

 

[kraigWY]

Carlos Hathcock said it's knowing your weapon, accurately judging distance, and adding a swag. "A swag" you say? Yep. Stands for Scientific Wild-Ass Guess

^^^^^This^^^^^

 

[Killer Spade 13]

I agree with Carlos, Houndog and Kraig.
One of my favorite old timer's sayings is, "Only a pig can see the wind."
Wind, unless you are in a wind tunnel, is a constantly changing dynamic. As soon as you've developed your wind hold solution it's obsolete.

SWAG, gotta love it.

 

[leadbullet]

how to compensate for wind, i would do it carefully.

 

[Greg Langelius *]

Wind is invisible, but we can judge its characteristics indirectly by observing the "tells' it forces onto the rest of the environment.

Things get blown around, and a patient observer can learn to spot and recognize how this varies, eventually learn to shoot through those conditions, and learn how they impose trends on the bullet's otherwise unaffected performance.

A condition with no wind is, for all intents and purposes, a virtual impossibility. This fact alone can drive a new long range shooter 'round several bends. Learn to bend one's thoughts along with the willow, and wind wisdom emerges.

Books and calculations can reduce error, but this is one of those subjects where experience trumps all the other factors combined.

You cannot calculate a predicted POI for every shot. It may not be possible to do so for any shot below a certain error margin.

 

[pell1203]

There is a really good book that only concentrates on how to read and correct for wind. I highly recommend it! It is:

The Wind Book for Rifle Shooters
Linda K. Miller and Keith A. Cunningham
Published by Paladin Press, Boulder CO, copyright 2006
ISBN 13: 978-1581605327
ISBN-10: 1581605323

Here is a link.

 

[damoncali]

I want to to learn how compensate for it without a ballistics calculator.

The best way to do this is to use a ballistics calculator. Seriously. You need to learn the rifle. The obvious way is to go shooting in the wind. But that can be a slow process because you can't ever be totally sure what was the wind and what wasn't until you are a very good shooter. If your shot hits 5" to the right, you need to know if that makes sense given what you're seeing in the wind. The only way to know that is to either shoot a lot, or cheat a little and use a ballistics calculator to hone your intuition.

So playing with a calculator is a useful thing to do. Run the numbers for lots of different cases - different combinations of bullets, velocities. Observe what happens at what range. Get a feel for the numbers. With that knowledge as a backdrop, your range time will be more productive. You'll know what wind "should" look like, and be better able to diagnose what's going on.

Note that this is not the same as bringing a calculator to the range and using it to get a sight adjustment, which I don't much see the point of. The goal is to learn how the wind behaves intuitively, not to rely on a piece of paper or a computer.

 

[MrSwede]

The Magpul film about long range had an interesting lesson regarding correcting for wind on the fly.
The rest of the film sucked balls, but the stuff about wind actually works good for me.
Either way, there is no substitute for going out and shooting in the wind. I made a habit of going out to my spot and shooting every time there was a storm coming last fall, with winds in the 20-40s. Great fun and man do you learn alot from it.

 

[338RUM runner]

Lesson #1 Don't Pee into it.