MOA Quick method

[HighDesertHunter]

Thank you Form for sharing your MIL based methods. I appreciate anyone willing to share things that work for them (and in this case lots of people) in the field.

MK5 HD vs NX8 . . Thoughts?

Correction factors: Rule of thumbs to get close first, and then how to get your actual correction factor for your gun specifically. Standard base (average gun)= 100- 0 200- .5 300- 1 400- 2 500- 3 600- 4 So what happens when you have a combo that shoots faster than 2800’ish fps or slower...

rokslide.com

I am pretty invested in MOA from a scope ($$$), experience, and hunting party perspective. The group I hunt with talks MOA and when sighting shots we speak MOA. So as much as I understand the simplicity of a base 10 angle angle system, I have some inertia that keeps me thinking MOA. If I was starting fresh I would go MIL, alas I am not starting fresh.

Having said that, the post above got me thinking about MOA methods for wind gap and elevation. Because, basically it is just about a method that you can quickly resolve a shooting solution. Quicker than an app ore returning to your compensated range finder as the target is changing distances.

MOA wind gap method. Looking at shooting solutions, you can do a method similar to the one Form outlines but with MOA. The method I will be trying this fall is to find a full cross wind speed value that gives you 1 MOA at 400 yards. MOA folks think clearly in terms of 4s and clicks (1/4MOA). So with a 100 yard zero that would put your 100 yard full wind correction at 1/4 MOA, 200 1/2 MOA, 300 3/4 MOA... and so on. My current primary hunting rifle is a 9mph full cross wind 1 MOA gun at 400 yards.

So my wind correction is one click per hundred yards with a 9mph base speed.

Elevation, the MIL method doesn't work great for my rifle and DA (11,000' elevations). So for now I am sticking with my range card attached to the side of my range finder. The table I use is very simple with one addition of the delta in clicks between and range and the next further 50 yard increment. That way when I dial, I know how many clicks to get it to the next 50 yards .

I am basically sending this post to 1. thank Form to getting the community thinking, and 2. see if anyone has used a similar wind gap method for MOA based systems.

 

[westonadkins]

Sounds similar to what is discussed here. Meat of it starts about 10 minutes in.

Spotify Embed

I haven't used it as I switched over to mils, so no personal experience with the method.


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[Zork]

My 308 with 165s lines up very neatly out to 600. At 8 mph, the wind hold is 1/2 the yardage in hundreds. So at 400 yards, its a 2 moa hold. I can adjust off that pretty quickly in my head.

When I've tried to figure this out with higher bc, faster cartridges I haven't been able to get things to line up neatly but it's working for me for now with the 308 and a lower bc 6.5 round.

 

[Chris in TN]

The rifle I have hunted with for the last several years worked out to about 1moa of l/r wind correction for a 10mph crosswind at 275 yards and a 2moa correction for ~525 yards in a 10mph wind.

Of course there's also a vertical component to that but it's pretty negligible. And those are round numbers. I can remember 275 easier than I can remember whatever precise number the app told me. And I can't shoot well enough (or read wind well enough) to prove they're right anyway.

The rifle (6.5cm/147eldm@2610) I've set up for my kids to use this fall (and I will likely hunt with some too), a 10mph 90 degree wind will require 1moa of correction, in theory, at 200 yards, and 2moa at 400 yards. The problem with it, is that I live in the southeast, and we don't have a ton of wind this time of year. Twice in the last two weeks I have noted a midday breeze, stopped work, threw the rifle in the SxS and told the oldest kid to stop school, put on some shoes, and by the time we got to the range (we have a 500 yard range on our property) it was down to a mild fishtailing breeze. We have some flags up and when one flag is slightly right and the other is slightly left....ehh, just send it. No wind education today. The only thing I've been able to teach her is how deceptive wind can be. We shoot at 440 yards a lot when we shoot midday because that distance puts us in a shaded gap in a treeline. I've been able to teach her how a very light breeze will often feel like much more, there in that gap, where a higher volume of air is being forced through the gap, but if she'll ignore it and look at mirage and flags out at 100-300-400 yards, the actual wind velocity is usually way lower.

But that rule of thumb - 10mph equals 1moa at 275 and 2moa at 525 - has worked thus far for my main hunting rifle. I expect it to work for the 6.5cm at the 200/400 figures but that is admittedly still yet to be proven.

Also - if a faster elevation hold is desired, it is very easy to use a MPBR zero (I've heard and rejected the arguments against it, no need to repeat them, I won't change what has worked for 30 years and 98% of my hunting scenarios) and simply use white nail polish to make a mark on your elevation turret that corresponds to 300, 400, 500, 600 yards, and maybe also remember the range at which you hit one full turn. You can easily remove such marks with acetone and repaint them for different elevations if you only travel once per year. Or remember to dial one click less per 100 yards at higher elevation and longer ranges (ie, dial one click less at 400, two clicks less at 500, three clicks less at 600, if you've moved from near sea level to near 10000'). I'd rather just repaint the turret. Or commit your values to memory. Or, yes, tape them to the inside of a scope cover, or tape them to the scope tube, or your stock, or the lock screen of your phone, or, better yet, all of the above. Those things all worked when people used to do them. They're not perfect but they work perfectly fine for midrange shots and I see them as no worse (or better) than the speed hacks people do with .mil reticles.

I personally do not desire to shoot game animals beyond 500, tops. I understand that others do. No problem there. The above-described speed shortcuts have served me well in practice out to 750 yards in the past, with my .280ai. I rarely *hunt* in wind - if I want to shoot in windy conditions I have to do it in the spring, for the most part. But I can claim three very fast and very precise field shots at 387 to 451 yards on a doe whitetail, a cow elk, and a bull elk. When I shoot past 750 I don't mess with fast hacks, I just try to have my environmental info already in my phone ballistics app already and honestly practice putting range/wind in as fast as I can. Frankly I suck at wind. It's hard to live in the east and get good at shooting in the wind unless you can drop everything and drive to a wide open range often. We have one of those, a good one, about 20 minutes away, but it's rare for me to be able to just run over there when it's windy and our range at home is fairly sheltered so there's generally less wind to practice in. YMMV, this works for me.

 

[Chris in TN]

The table I use is very simple with one addition of the delta in clicks between and range and the next further 50 yard increment. That way when I dial, I know how many clicks to get it to the next 50 yards .

Also another FWIW - most loads will allow you to spitball a rough average correction of something at mid-ranges (300-600ish) of maybe a MOA every 30-40 yards. If you shoot then the animals moves and stops at another range it's easy enough to do 'one moa per 40' math and hold that in the reticle.

The cow I shot at 387, dad shot one with my rifle, dialed to 275, his cow dropped and the herd took off running. They stopped a few seconds later to look back but dad had moved off the rifle and I was on it. I called 'cow on the left' to the guide (yes, I went on a guided cow hunt, and it was a blast) and he called back '387' and I held 2moa with my reticle because I thought they were about to run. Nailed her, probably within 10 seconds of dad's shot. Two cow elk shot in 10 seconds. I'm not always that fast but it just worked out really well that morning and we doubled on cows.