air gun miss

[Phantom 631]

Hi Tony trying to establish the situation at hand buddy

 

If he has a 177 zerod at 30 yards then it will be accurate crosshairs between 16-45 yds and if he is shooting within these ranges it can be either him or the scope but everyone just seems to be blaming him

 

I agree he should not be shooting live quarry until compitant with said rifle

 

Atb rob

 

Hey Rob,

 

I wasn't trying to offend anyone and certainly not you buddy , I should have read the OP more closely I think

Perhaps I should have waited till the morning before making my reply

 

Okay, right....

Your using a 410 in .22 (good rifle, with a good scope) and your OP stated you were missing birds.

Your post gives the impression that you are a fairly inexperianced shooter, so my first advice stands, do lots and lots of paper punching You need to be putting 8 or nine shots all into the centre of your target. The centre should ideally be one inch or less in diameter. When you can do this consistently then you will be ready for live quarry

 

Each time you go out with your gun you need to place a marker at your chosen zero point (30 yards) and shoot a few rounds at that to ensure your scope is still zeroed at that point as there are a number of things that can knoc it off zero by a click or three these include taking it out of the slip, being knocked while in the car during transit a sligh knock against your body when taking the gun to the care etc...

So always check zero when you get to your destination.

 

Range finding is a skill that as a new hunter you may not be able to master straight away! Took me forever and if I don't do it daily I quickly find I have to relearn it Its frustrating when you first start, but again, the Practice, practice, practice rule will work wonders and you will master it. The easyest way to do it I suppose is either pace out your choosen range and note how many paces it takes to cover thirty yards, or measure your pace and do the math! A very handy tip that I picked up from another member here, was take a piece of string measureing 30 yards. Peg it out at your shooting spot and place the other end at your zero spot

I wont do int the difficulties of Range Finding at night, because its a whole world harder to do it at night.

 

Once you learn about the trajectory of the pellet you will see that if your quarry is further away than your zero, you will have to compensate for the different distances by holding the crosshair of your scope above where you want to place your pellet (this is where mildots can really make it easier). If for example your zeroed at 30 yards, and your quarry is at 40 yards, you may have to place the crosshair 2mildots over, so the second mildot down would be on the target where you want the pellet to land this is known as "Hold Over".

The same goes the other way to some extent, if it is close than your chosen range, you would need to use "Hold Under"

 

As Rob mentioned earlier; download Ghairgun Pro (its free from Hawke optics) and play around with that. It will teach you all about trajectory and give you information like Aim Points for your particular gun/scope combination making things so much easier, you can also ask it to optimise your trajectory and it will give you the best zero point for your gun/scope combo. This in effect will give you a zero point that gives you the flattest trajectory so your pellet never leaves the 1 inch killozone. Then you are almost gaurenteed a kill with everything in your optimised range without having to worry about hold over/hold under.

When shooting into trees (this is what I initially thought you were asking when I read from your OP) at an angle above 45 degrees, gravity has a different effect on your pellet, so you will need to understand how this works and how to use HOLD UNDER tocompensate for it. Most new shooters will use Hold Over and miss. Others will aim dead on and then wonder why their pellet flew over the top of the birds head

 

Hope that little lot helps you more than my first reply? I'd had way too much last night to make propper sense of what I was reading

 

oh by the way :welcomeani: to the forum.

 

Phantom

 

 

Now wheres my beer? :11: