Mark a straight line in the woods?
- Thread starter Slowbalt
- Start date
OK, maybe not a transit and laser -- but OP may require at least one or two other people if you're going by Mark 1 Mod 0 eyeball and not something as primitive as a compass and chains.
He's got to lay out his line before clearing the first tree or bush if he doesn't have line-of-sight. How do you do this with a phone or GPS?
Lewis and Clark surveyed the west with chains. The photos below are the US-Canadian border. Imagine surveying that with a ball of string and a compass.
I still think the lasers, and string lines are more than enough.
The OP is only going 300y and there’s a hill…that I presume is higher than the brush….
If this was miles in a jungles deep canopy, I could see mapping, GPS, or otherwise complicating it.
Okay, so main reason that I’m following is that we may need to do this same thing, but over varying terrain and elevations and out past a mile. Including water holes and other obstacles. Not everbody has unlimited time and resources to just go crashing about, hoping to get it right by the time they go broke.
I’m well aware that people have been doing this since man started claiming land as theirs. Simplest methods, that work most efficiently, at lowest cost are within our grasp today, so any information is good information.
I’m well aware that people have been doing this since man started claiming land as theirs. Simplest methods, that work most efficiently, at lowest cost are within our grasp today, so any information is good information.
Exactly, find a surveyor who likes to shoot and barter.
Great idea , those guys are a dime a dozen .
OP , Like I posted above . All you need is a roll of flagging tape and a rough direction to head . 3 poines on line will not lie , you can not go too far astray or you will not be able to line them up visually . This is as simple as it gets in the survey world . You can have as little as 25 feet between flags in the bush and can stretch that distance out in the clearer areas . You can take a piece of flagging and hold it vertical to use as your plumb bob, once you have all 3 flags in line put the one in your hands on the closest branch/tree/etc. and jump ahead as far as possible while still keeping two flags visible behind you . You can tweak the flags/line as you clear later .
I can understand the need to throw some technology at your situation lash, you explained it well
And there have been some great recommendations
But the OP is only going 300 yards from his deck to a hill.
Seems he can cut a narrow path to the hill knocking down a few trees along the way, look back and if he still sees his cabin, widen his way back
Now, I come from an area with very few trees so maybe I don't understand why it is so hard for him.
Be nice if he would show up to his party and help steer the conversation
A picture of the target hill from his deck would be worth a thousand words.
Yeah I live in a tropical jungle here in La. Some places you can't see 10 ft in the summer. This is the only time of year you can do any clearing with anything less than a D7. The leaves are off the trees and you can kinda see what you're running over.
I see
Sounds like complete opposite from where I'm at in Neb, and it's endless sea of grass, we have so few trees, we name em!
Look around the want ads in your area for people that do land clearing. We hired a guy that had a skid steer with a mulching machine attachment and he cleared WAAAY more than that in a very very short time.
He would have your range cleared of brush before lunch.
I think you might want to re-examine that 10 foot plan. Well, I guess it depends on what you are shooting.
I have a 300 yard lane in my yard and the problem I had for a while there was the branches above the ground. Often I shoot a 22LR out to my last plate and my bullets would get up in the tree limbs above the lane.
If you are going through the trouble to clear it, do enough to make it slightly wider. The trees and stuff along the sides of the lane will still grow and depending on the tree and whatever they will eventually form a canopy.
Serious question - how high up were .22 bullets hitting tree limbs when shooting a target at 300 yards? Are you with your rifle and the target at about the same elevation?
Did some quick AB ballistic math. 40gr bullet @ 1050fps. Didn't mess with height offsets or anything. Zeroed @ 50 yards.
@ 300 yards drop in inches is 165.4". So 13'9.4".
Edit: Upon further searching closer to 58.5".
Last edited:
Is that the way the math works?
I mean, I understand if you aim at a target at fifty yards and shoot it dead center that it is zeroed for 50 yards. I think the way those charts work is that a drop of 165.4 means that still shooting at 50 yards zero, the bullet would theoretically drop that much further. I am not sure that math holds once you re-zero for 300 yards, tiling the barrel up. I could certainly be wrong. I don't know the answer, so I am not really debating with you. I am just trying to figure this out in my head without the math skills to figure this out or any real work plausible testing.
Honestly I don't know the exact answer to your question of how high. My shooting lane is not perfectly flat though. My shooting position is on a small hill that slopes slightly down as you go towards the target and then back up again. Basically it's like a very small valley.
Where the 300 yard target is probably a little higher than the shooting position. The hill on that side continues up for maybe 100-200 yards beyond the target so I am shooting into a natural berm (sort of).
I don't have any way to measure exactly what the elevation difference is but it's there for sure. From the shooting position to the absolute low spot might be 20 feet down before it starts to go back up. That's just a guess though.
Similar threads
