Reading Wind - long range shooting

[AirborneEScouter]

What are you guys doing to effectively adjust your dope? I was shooting 500-900 yards this weekend using rudimentary techniques to gauge distance and wind as I left my rangefinder at home and don't have a kestrel. Found an app online that measures distance from plot points using gps which got my drop figured out within +/- a couple tenths of a mil but the wind was all over the place and I really felt the effect once I shot at 900. My rangefinder has angle compensation so next time I remember to bring it with me I shouldn't have any issues with elevation. 500 and 700 yards weren't bad, but I was shooting from a knob into a canyon and the wind was shifty and I think deeper into the canyon was a little more protected from the gusts up top. Had first round hits at 500 and 700 but took me about a couple dozen to get on target at 900.

Do kestrels help in determining wind direction or just speed? Not that I can't figure it out with some baby powder or a couple straws of grass, just curious. And are the high end kestrels really worth it? I have a ballistics app on my phone and I have a chronograph to get the initial data - I also feel like I could get away with using info from my weather app to plug in humidity and pressure, so I'm weighing whether to drop several hundred on a high end kestrel or just ~$100 with the basics

This was my first time shooting long distance and really helped me understand setting a personal max distance for hunting

 

[jolemons]

Im a beginner myself, so take advice with a grain of salt. I like to put a large sheet of cardboard behind my target. This allows me to accurately track my misses so that i can gauge moa for various wind speeds.

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[Journeyman]

Kestrel isn't going to make you a better wind caller, and I use one of the 5700 Elites with Link. It just spits out answers for you but that doesn't mean you've actually learned anything.

Here's a rudimentary technique for you to try out until you decide whether to get a Kestrel.

I would use your current solver and work it backwards. Mind you this is for reasonable ranges inside of 600 yards or so depending on conditions and I'm not saying this is how to shoot an animal. Just a good way to calibrate your brain to read the conditions.

Go to a given distance, say 500 yards. Shoot and adjust your wind hold until you get a center hit. Now go into your solver and adjust the wind up a mph at a time until it matches the hold it took you to hit center. Now observe the conditions, look at how the wind effects the grass and look at the mirage. You'll quickly tune your brain into being able to have a pretty good guess as to wind speed.

On my match rifle if it were to take .5 mils of wind and the wind was coming from 9 oclock then I can go back into my solver and I can see that a 7 mph wind from 9 oclock.

Good job on getting out there and starting to put in the work. Remember this is a journey, there isn't a simple answer for anything (other than put more bullets down range).

 

[AirborneEScouter]

It is absolute work! But fun. I'll probably still pick up a cheaper kestrel just to get the wind speed nailed down, but you're right on reading wind, my final dope was significantly different than my ballistics app suggested it should be (even if I was wrong on my app by 10 mph).

 

[Wrench]

Learn to watch around you when measuring with your kestrel. Notice how the grass moves, the airborne particles, the mirage. Pay attention and take notes. Now learn to look at a few points between you and your target and compare that point to your experience.

Now it's just math and luck. One thing I have learned is to error on the side of less correction.

 

[deerkiller]

doesn't it matter quite a bit if the say, 900 yards you're gonna shoot is rolling prairie of canyon terrain ? I'm not technically a long range shooter but used to shoot prairie dogs ALOT in MT and WY where the winds swirls and puffs back and forth and can change direction and intensity a bunch in 900 yards - I 've watched many an elk or mulie buck across canyons and seen what kind of crazy tricks the wind seems to do in that scenario too - these extended ranges seem pretty darn tricky and unpredictable to me

 

[Jardo]

Kestrel isn't going to make you a better wind caller, and I use one of the 5700 Elites with Link. It just spits out answers for you but that doesn't mean you've actually learned anything.

Here's a rudimentary technique for you to try out until you decide whether to get a Kestrel.

I would use your current solver and work it backwards. Mind you this is for reasonable ranges inside of 600 yards or so depending on conditions and I'm not saying this is how to shoot an animal. Just a good way to calibrate your brain to read the conditions.

Go to a given distance, say 500 yards. Shoot and adjust your wind hold until you get a center hit. Now go into your solver and adjust the wind up a mph at a time until it matches the hold it took you to hit center. Now observe the conditions, look at how the wind effects the grass and look at the mirage. You'll quickly tune your brain into being able to have a pretty good guess as to wind speed.

On my match rifle if it were to take .5 mils of wind and the wind was coming from 9 oclock then I can go back into my solver and I can see that a 7 mph wind from 9 oclock.

Good job on getting out there and starting to put in the work. Remember this is a journey, there isn't a simple answer for anything (other than put more bullets down range).

Great advice. This is awesome. Thank you


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[Wrench]

doesn't it matter quite a bit if the say, 900 yards you're gonna shoot is rolling prairie of canyon terrain ? I'm not technically a long range shooter but used to shoot prairie dogs ALOT in MT and WY where the winds swirls and puffs back and forth and can change direction and intensity a bunch in 900 yards - I 've watched many an elk or mulie buck across canyons and seen what kind of crazy tricks the wind seems to do in that scenario too - these extended ranges seem pretty darn tricky and unpredictable to me

Exactly what I'm talking about. You can see a dust devil because it's obvious. You need to learn what it looks like when it's less obvious. The signs are still there. When you look down and your annometer says 12mph, pay attention to what's going on.

Wind is always going to be a wild card, but you can get to be able to work it with some practice.

 

[Ndbowhunter]

I think the obvious lesson here is to get some primers popped.. preferably with a cartridge and platform that allows the shooter the ability to spot misses and hits. It won’t but a few cases until you can break wind holds down into 5mph brackets and then 3 and then 2 and so on. Experience says a wind meter is the most important tool here. And feedback on good trigger presses.

Generally speaking unless ur backstopping shots with terrain that will allow 1 mil miss and still show impact signature, shooting at any range without good dope is basically wasting bullets.

FYI humidity is generally speaking not a factor.

But good input data is important. Something that reads station pressure is really important. That said inside of 600 unless temps change by 40 degrees or elevation in the thousands u’ll Be okay to run fairly generic inputs into ur ballistic app and get hits

 

[AirborneEScouter]

This is great stuff. Love the advice on generally less correction needed as that's what I've discovered but I'm sure it's all circumstantial. Western Kansas never seems to be dead calm so I'll get plenty of chances to play with the wind.

 

[Journeyman]

This is great stuff. Love the advice on generally less correction needed as that's what I've discovered but I'm sure it's all circumstantial. Western Kansas never seems to be dead calm so I'll get plenty of chances to play with the wind.

FYI I don’t agree with that statement at all. There’s a reason why most new long range shooters continually miss targets on the downwind side, it’s because they under-judge their wind hold.

Go to any long range/precision rifle match and by the end of the day you’ll typically see a trough form in the dirt on the downwind side of damn near every target that has a berm behind it.

I think the confusion comes in when a shooter holds their wind meter up and gets a read of 10 miles an hour and they have it setup to give a correction based off a wind direction of 9 oclock but if the wind is at 10:30 then the correction will not be correct. What the wind is doing at the shooter does not always match what is happening down range which is why it’s so important to learn to read the conditions through your optics.

 

[HellsCanyon]

Experience is key here. Wind flows like water...

Remember on windy days in canyon country how we as hunters never take lunch or naps on the ridge tops? You get down 10-20 yards and the winds often die down (and your glassing opportunities diminish as well ). That’s always something to remember.

Also, wind coming from below or above in the form of morning and nighttime thermals have just as much effect on bullet drop as a full value wind does on horizontal movement.

Here’s a few pics from a data book I have. Good references for shooters of all experiences.

Mike


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[maverick2]

Mike -- nice info!

 

[Bryan8541]

Only way i have ever read/called wind is through a spotting and reading the mirage. We had old fixed 20x spotting scopes. Much easier to call with newer better scopes. Like stated, wind can change multiple times over 900 yds or so. Practice and putting lots of rounds downrange.

 

[AirborneEScouter]

This is great stuff!

 

[tdot]

No matter how expensive your wind meter, it is only good to the length of your arm. After that it is learning to read the wind from observations of your physical surroundings and terrain.

I live and breath reading the wind as a sailor and kiter. On the water you can watch the wind move and swirl, shift and change. It is super fun and helps to show how fluid and liquid wind can be. Another way to watch it is in fields of long grass. It becomes exponentially harder to read across canyons and in the mountains. But thats where the fun comes in.

A kestrel gets you to 1 yard, experience gets you the rest of the way.

 

[Shotshill]

The Beaufort scale is the definitive fir reading wind:
Spent many years of reading wind as a sailor...
It works:

 

[Lionhound1975]

I use a Kestrel 5700 and a Leupold RF but the Kestrel will only tell you the wind where you are at, not across the valley where your target is. For data i use the Applied Ballsitics ap. Another thing that has helped alot when my son and i shoot at the local range (400-1100 yards) is that our rifle scope and spotting scope have the same reticle (Horus 59) so calling a windage or elevation correction greatly improves a second shot impact. Seeing exactly how many mil or MOA off your initial wind call was also helps for your dope book that what looked to you like a 7 mph is more like 15 mph.

By playing around with your Kestrel you can get practice seeing what grass looks like at 7 mph, 14 mph etc. That will help when you look through your optics at what the grass next to your target is doing, but obviously what the wind is doing between you and the target 900 yards away is sometimes anyone's guess.

 

[Northwinds308]

It is absolute work! But fun. I'll probably still pick up a cheaper kestrel just to get the wind speed nailed down, but you're right on reading wind, my final dope was significantly different than my ballistics app suggested it should be (even if I was wrong on my app by 10 mph).

Remember Kestrels only measure at you. Often shooting across draws and other topography means the wind is different at various ranges and it's very hard to read.

I just use a cheap one and run either my cell phone or my 701 with Applied Ballistics for my actual firing solution. The expensive Kestrels with AB are worth it if you're going to be shooting a lot and can't/won't/don't want to use your phone, but you can get the same software for $40 for your phone. If you're just recreational shooting that's as much as you need, maybe a little more. Only guys I know with them are snipers who can't use their phones and competitive shooters who don't want to.