Practical wind doping for hunting.

[NickforElk]

I am right at the confident kill at sub 600 yd. in low or directionally favorable wind level of practical hunting shooting. I pass on shots 300+ with anything past a light wind at 90 degrees to my shot, I have shot 8" groups at 1000yds (perfect conditions) in target shooting so I keep the hunting shots conservative for me. The windage is obviously a blind spot in my shooting I would like to correct/mitigate. I'm looking to get confident in moderate wind to 600 (20 mph and less) and push light wind (10 MPH) shooting to 800yds. Do I blue tooth an anemometer to my phones shooting app or go for the Kestrel 5700 and crunch the solution in that devise. My range finder has the incline correction set and I currently use the Kenton dials with both MOA and preloaded yardage. If I have favorable conditions (close to the dial's presets) I range, spin and squeeze. If unfavorable conditions I do a crunch with the zeiss ballistic app on my iphone and turn MOA. I'm 9 for 9 on kills 400-600 yards, first shot on deer/elk sized game but pass shots or get closer in anything faster than the lightest wind. Looking for what methods other are using for practical wind doping for hunting, all insight is appreciated.

 

[mxgsfmdpx]

Learning to shoot in the wind takes time shooting in the wind. Bring a note pad. Learn about shifting and switching winds due to terrain, thermals, water, etc. Even better, be the spotter/caller for other well practiced shooters in windy conditions in varying terrain.

I like a “wind 10 quick chart” and I like hard dope but I’m “old school”. Normally when training I practice memorizing a full 10 MPH 90 degree wind value for that gun and I can quickly adjust based on wind speed and direction with simple math.

 

[mxgsfmdpx]

Also. I’m planning on playing with the Revic on board ballistics once my unit arrives and comparing the on/board wind calls versus hard dope.

 

[NickforElk]

Also. I’m planning on playing with the Revic on board ballistics once my unit arrives and comparing the on/board wind calls versus hard dope.

Just looked up the Revic BR4 range finder with windage. looks super interesting, my first thought is when those louvers are lined up with the wind it would work great but how does it do with an acute wind angle.

 

[mxgsfmdpx]

Just looked up the Revic BR4 range finder with windage. looks super interesting, my first thought is when those louvers are lined up with the wind it would work great but how does it do with an acute wind angle.

I’ll be using the range finding bino unit not the range finder. It doesn’t have an anemometer. You enter a gun profile with the bullet data as a base full value wind like 5 or 10 MPH and it gives you a wind hold correction along with come up dope.

I keep my kestrel in my bino harness so grabbing a wind read if needed takes seconds.

I like base 10 MPH full value because it’s easy to quarter, half, double, triple, etc based on speed and direction. Out to 600ish yards on most my guns I have it memorized anyway but the confirmation in real time from the bino is going to be really nice.

I’ll take some videos of the process when my unit gets here and I’m back from business travel.

 

[BRTreedogs]

Just looked up the Revic BR4 range finder with windage. looks super interesting, my first thought is when those louvers are lined up with the wind it would work great but how does it do with an acute wind angle.

You just use the buttons to swing the arrow the direction you want.
It take a few seconds but not long.

You can set you base wind value at whatever speed you want.

But you can’t play with tables in the app to my knowledge.

 

[TaperPin]

Just watching someone who’s good at wind calls is a lot of fun.

In what I think of as normal western terrain with very few visual clues my wind calls are now often off 50%. My detail vision is probably worse than it’s ever been and family is sucking a lot of field time, but I’d be lying saying error is much less for most of my life. I’ve started basing max wind speed to shoot in at any given distance and still hit a 10” target as a function of accuracy and my wind call error.
200: any speed
250: 20 mph
300: 15
350: 10
400: 8
450: 5
500: 4
550: 3
600: 2

I’ll be experimenting with shooting sighters off to the side of animals like many have talked about - that does sound like it has a lot of potential for wind speeds outside of this list that are otherwise not shootable.

 

[NickforElk]

Just watching someone who’s good at wind calls is a lot of fun.

In what I think of as normal western terrain with very few visual clues my wind calls are now often off 50%. My detail vision is probably worse than it’s ever been and family is sucking a lot of field time, but I’d be lying saying error is much less for most of my life. I’ve started basing max wind speed to shoot in at any given distance and still hit a 10” target as a function of accuracy and my wind call error.
200: any speed
250: 20 mph
300: 15
350: 10
400: 8
450: 5
500: 4
550: 3
600: 2

I’ll be experimenting with shooting sighters off to the side of animals like many have talked about - that does sound like it has a lot of potential for wind speeds outside of this list that are otherwise not shootable.

A sober assessment no doubt

 

[Justin Crossley]

I am right at the confident kill at sub 600 yd. in low or directionally favorable wind level of practical hunting shooting. I pass on shots 300+ with anything past a light wind at 90 degrees to my shot, I have shot 8" groups at 1000yds (perfect conditions) in target shooting so I keep the hunting shots conservative for me. The windage is obviously a blind spot in my shooting I would like to correct/mitigate. I'm looking to get confident in moderate wind to 600 (20 mph and less) and push light wind (10 MPH) shooting to 800yds. Do I blue tooth an anemometer to my phones shooting app or go for the Kestrel 5700 and crunch the solution in that devise. My range finder has the incline correction set and I currently use the Kenton dials with both MOA and preloaded yardage. If I have favorable conditions (close to the dial's presets) I range, spin and squeeze. If unfavorable conditions I do a crunch with the zeiss ballistic app on my iphone and turn MOA. I'm 9 for 9 on kills 400-600 yards, first shot on deer/elk sized game but pass shots or get closer in anything faster than the lightest wind. Looking for what methods other are using for practical wind doping for hunting, all insight is appreciated.

Google rifle wind number, figure out your gun's number and go shoot.

A Kestrel is an excellent tool for learning to read wind speed. I like to make an estimate and then take a reading. That will help you learn the wind speed you can feel at your location. Then you need to shoot in it a lot. That will help you understand how the wind at your location and throughout the bullet's path correlate.

 

[KMC55]

The Accuracy First quick wind table is a great way to make good wind calls in a field environment! You will need to combine a number of data points to get the best estimation of wind speed like, mirage, vegetation movement, exact reading at your position with a kestrel, know the wind direction, etc.... Then apply that to your quick wind table and you can make your judgement based on the size of the vitals in your scope and your estimated wind speed.


For Example

.308 is generally a 4mph gun (each gun is different so make sure to figure this out for yourself) the quick wind table will look something like this. The table is in Meters and Mils.

.308win 4mph. 8mph.12mph.16mph.
100m. 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
200m. 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
300m. 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
400m. 0.4 0.8 1.2 1.6
500m. 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
600m. 0.6 1.2 1.8 2.4
700m. 0.7 1.4 2.1 2.8
*800m. 0.9 1.8 2.7 3.6
*900m. 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0
*1000m. 1.1 2.2 3.3 4.4