What is dope in shooting

Better yet, print it in a readable size that can be taped directly to your rifle for quick reference in the field or on the range. My Mossberg Patriot in. For the Aoudad, I referred to the card, saw the point of impact was actually two inches above zero which I had set-up at yards using a Maximum Point Blank Range formula and held accordingly.

Both animals were hit perfectly. Knowing where the bullet is going to impact at extended ranges is just one piece of the accuracy puzzle, albeit a very important run.

While the Dope Card gives you that information, actually hitting mid- and long-range targets requires plenty of range time. Only through practice will hunters be able to ethically take those shots at distant game, but with a Dope Card, the knowledge and confidence to make the shot will be close at hand. We use cookies to help provide you with the best possible online experience.

By using this site, you agree that we may store and access cookies on your device. Pushing it out beyond yards though will widen the gap and velocity differences will begin to manifest themselves. This is where the databook comes in handy. Technology has made it very easy to calculate an accurate ballistic chart and little is needed to true it up to reality. The databook helps you record some of that information as you true up your ballistic chart so you can reference it later.

Across the top of every databook page are boxes for the location, date, what rifle, and scope is being used. For the most part you can fill these boxes out before you fire a shot because the information is going to be the same regardless of distance. Outside of that, there are boxes for the environmental factors, although I only fill in one box with the density altitude, the range to the target, as well as for light, and wind conditions. As you fill out the target section with called hits and your elevation settings you have to be super accurate here.

This is also where shooting at as small a target as possible is going to help. Note that difference in your log book, make the correction needed to get a hit, and log what the new elevation setting is. Again, thanks to modern technology we can generally get pretty accurate, trued ballistic data after one or two trips to the range.

After our trip to the range where we logged some differences between the calculated chart and reality, we need to revisit the ballistic computer. It's an angular rather than linear measurement, and it's particularly useful because it works seamlessly with the inch system common in the U.

To start with, one MOA measures 1. Let's just call it an inch. At yards it's double that. At yards, it's seven times that. And so forth. While it's not exactly the same as an inch, it's close enough for practical purposes: At 1, yards 10 MOA measures That puts it less than one-half inch away from perfect correlation with the inch system, and if you can shoot well enough to tell a half-inch difference at 1, yards, you need to quit reading this article and go start winning championships.

Where MOA comes in really useful is in adjusting for hold at long range. For instance, shooters can either use a scope with a reticle that provides a one-MOA grid to hold over and off for drop and wind drift, or they can dial corrections into an MOA-marked target turret that adjusts the internal crosshairs, and then hold right on.

Dialing in MOA is much simpler than in inches. Consider this: While each click on your scope equals roughly 0. And suppose your drop chart calls for So The great beauty of the MOA system is that, as a tiny slice of the degree sphere in which you stand in the middle, an MOA is an MOA whether at yards or at yards. Like MOA, the milling system is based on an angular measurement rather than a linear measurement.

Military shooters claim that it's superior to the MOA system. Perhaps it is superior for mechanical rangefinding, and I'll admit that's an area where I'm weak; I typically use a laser rangefinder to determine distance. Basically, the mil system is used in much the same fashion as the MOA system, the main differences being that the mils don't play as nice with the inches and yards that most Americans are accustomed to, and elevation and windage adjustment turrets on the scope are marked in mils and tenth-mils.

Many, even most, of the best long-range shooters keep a logbook in which they record conditions, shot distances and results every time they practice or compete, and those records can prove a valuable resource for later shoots. This refers to atmospheric pressure, and we're dancing with advanced ballistics here, but in essence air density — and thus the amount of friction it exerts on a projectile — is strongly affected by temperature and altitude.

And as we learned above, air density has a dramatic effect on velocity, which in turn affects how much bullet drop we have to compensate for. Experienced shooters can make a pretty effective guess at temperature, and anybody with a topo map can determine altitude.

Plugging those basic numbers into your ballistic calculator will get you close, but to get it just right you'll need to use a hand-held weather station such as one of the outstanding units by Kestrel.

At this point your rifle and ammo are tuned for real long-range work. The advancement of non-toxic shot has brought the gauge back to the duck blind. Save big this week on your next favorite piece of outdoor gear. The process of fine-tuning long-range dope involves tweaking the muzzle velocity and bullet BC that the shooter has put into his or her ballistic calculator. Bill Buckley.

Competitive Rifle Shooting. John B. Rifle Scopes. Want more hunting and fishing stories?