When you have to shoot (a rifle) at an animal that is further than your zero, what method do you use to compensate for the shot?

[rootacres]

Let's say your rifle is zerod at 200 yards. You range an elk at 328 yards. What process are you using to compensate for that shot?

I know of a few ways. Not sure what is best practice, correct, wrong, etc... Hunter safety doesn't cover this type of stuff and I have no mentor.

What I did last year was print out the bullet drop for my cartridge, based on my zero range, at increments of 10 yards. After ranging a deer I held the crosshairs where I needed to, to compensate for the drop. I made the shot, hooray. But I only needed to compensate for 2". If I needed to compensate for 12" I don't think I'd have been comfortable holding over.

Here are what I think the options are and my thoughts about them.

Option A: Holdover based on printed out bullet drop/rise. This gets hairy when the drop/rise gets larger.

Option B: Adjust scope turrets based on printed out bullet drop so the crosshair is still POI. The clicks would be calculated ahead of time on the printout. This could get messy if you adjust turrets, then the animal moves, and you need to re-adjust. Math on the fly, in the moment. Also my turrets require a coin to spin. I can't use my fingers.

Option C: A BDC reticle. I actually have a Nikon BDC scope but on a different gun. Never tried to shoot past zero though. In the Nikon app you can plug in your ballistics and whatnot to get a readout for the various dots on the reticle, at all magnifications. Seems like it could work well but the numbers for the BDC dots aren't consistent. Like 200, 223, 245, 289, 301, 347, as you go top to bottom (I made those numbers up).

Option D: Set your rifle up with "maximum point blank range" instead of zeroing at a standard increment.

Are there other options I'm unaware of? Things I'm wrong about? Better ways to do things I've listed? What do you do? I'm all ears!

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I go with option B. That is after I have confirmed my velocity and zeroed my rifle for the given elevation and temperature. After that I use the Hornady ballistic app to create a chart. Upon ranging the animal I am trying to take I will then reference my ballistic chart and dial up the MOA on my Razor HD LHT. It worked great a few days ago with literally your exact example. I have a 200 yd zero and shot my bull at 325yds.

Two things worth noting;
First, vortex among others give you the option of having custom turrets made for your specific rifle and load that can eliminate the need for a dope chart. The only kicker on this is they aren't cheap and for myself there is a huge elevation discrepancy from where I practice to where I hunt. (ie, 700' practice range, 7000' where I took the shot)

Secondly, I use adhesive backed Velcro strips for my dope chart. This way I can have a dope chart for different elevations. I am a right handed shooter, so I put the dope chart upside down on the right side of the rifle stock. This way all I need to do is flip the rifle parallel with the ground while holding it to read my dope chart right side up if that makes sense. The time lost between the dope chart and ballistic turret is very minimal.

 

[Yard Candy]

I go with option B. That is after I have confirmed my velocity and zeroed my rifle for the given elevation and temperature. After that I use the Hornady ballistic app to create a chart. Upon ranging the animal I am trying to take I will then reference my ballistic chart and dial up the MOA on my Razor HD LHT. It worked great a few days ago with literally your exact example. I have a 200 yd zero and shot my bull at 325yds.

Two things worth noting;
First, vortex among others give you the option of having custom turrets made for your specific rifle and load that can eliminate the need for a dope chart. The only kicker on this is they aren't cheap and for myself there is a huge elevation discrepancy from where I practice to where I hunt. (ie, 700' practice range, 7000' where I took the shot)

Secondly, I use adhesive backed Velcro strips for my dope chart. This way I can have a dope chart for different elevations. I am a right handed shooter, so I put the dope chart upside down on the right side of the rifle stock. This way all I need to do is flip the rifle parallel with the ground while holding it to read my dope chart right side up if that makes sense. The time lost between the dope chart and ballistic turret is very minimal.

Really good info - I especially like the velcro idea!

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[Yard Candy]

UPDATE:

Thank you all for the great advice and information! I wanted to share an update on what I ended up doing with my 30-30.

TLR I swapped my scope for a Romeo5 red dot. It's zero'd at 100 yards. I will holdover if I need to adjust in the field.

Long version, for those who like a story...

A user earlier in this thread shared with me that the FT-LB of energy on the ammo box will be different than what my rifle produces, because the box stats were shot with a 24" barrel, and my barrel is 20". So to start this venture I determined at what distance I drop down to 1,000 FT-LB, as I wouldn't want to take a shot past that range. That distance is ~215 yds.

With a max range of 215 yards there's no need IMO to be dialing turrets, checking an app, or doing a bunch of "precision shooting" activities before taking a shot on a deer. The drop isn't that drastic. So I had the thought of taking a completely different path and using my red dot instead of a scope. This would also solve my issue of having difficulty seeing the black scope reticle at first/last light, since obviously the red dot is illuminated.

I slapped on the Romeo5 and went to the range.

My range allows for shooting at 25, 50, 100, and 200. Based on my load and my rifle's info, I wrote down the expected rise/drop at those distances from the Hornady app. Those numbers were:

25 yds | -0.38"
50 yds | +0.25"
100 yds | zero
200 yds | -7.69"

This is all self explanatory. I started at 25 yds, got it to about the suggested drop. Then did 50 and 100. This was all on Remington target ammo. Once I had it dialed in I switched to the Hornady ammo and popped some groups at 50 and 100 and fine-tuned the sight. Everything was on point. Last, I shot a group at 200 and boy was I giddy. My grouping was right about at -7" (For the 200 yd grouping ignore the flyer to the left. I twitched on that shot and knew it was gonna be off as soon as I pulled the trigger.). I would have shot more groupings but I didn't have a lot of the Hornady ammo and it's out of stock at all my local stores.

I'm impressed with the groupings, especially at 200 yds since the Romeo5 has a 2MOA dot.

Now that I've verified the rise/drop from the Hornady app at 25, 50, 100, and 200 yds, I will print out the full trajectory from 0-210, in increments of 10 yds, and slap it on the side of my stock. When I range a deer I'll quickly reference the table and holdover as needed.

My next rifle will be a longer range rifle. Not sure what I want but it needs to have straight casings (my state only allows rifles with straight casings on public land). When I get that rifle I'll probably go with one of the scopes recommended where the turrets are customized to your load/rifle.

I'm open to suggestions on straight casing calibers for whitetail.

Thanks again everyone for the tips and information!

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[lyle_destroys]

I just want to say that I really appreciate you trying to learn how to do this correctly and asking questions. Too many guys guess yardage and holdover and it's not ethical in my opinion.

 

[Yard Candy]

I just want to say that I really appreciate you trying to learn how to do this correctly and asking questions. Too many guys guess yardage and holdover and it's not ethical in my opinion.

Thank you. I will never guess. I will never take a shot on an animal at a distance that I have not shot with that rifle.

Without ethics, we aren't hunting. We're killing.

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[pyle762]

Don't feel like you need to go blow a fortune & for god's sake, don't get bitten by Magnumitis.
My suggestion would be to hop over to Wally World & grab whatevers on sale right now in a common caller. .243, 6.5, .270, 7-08, .308
slap on your CDS, spend as much time as you can at the range & go kill some deers.

THIS.....there are so many cheap, accurate rifles out there now days. They all work. Ruger Americans, Savages, Marlins (whatever they call their bolt guns), etc. These are all rifles you can buy new for less then $500 and are all accurate rifles to kill deer at the distance you need. Ammo is tough to come by right now. Look on the shelves and see what's in stock and get a rifle. You can't find a box of 6.5 Creedmoor anywhere but there are lots of .243 sitting around. Just remember when it comes to rifle calibers, they all work. No need to get hung up on which one.

 

[Mojave]

Wow this is one of those Pandora’s box of questions.

 

[Stinky Coyote]

see if you can find the old best of the west videos somewhere, it would be one of the closest things you could do at home to a weekend paid tutorial at a long distance shooting set up...good resource to understand where we started and where we are today, but your basic two methods will be dial up the scope or there will be hold points in the scope reticle...there's varying measures, murica and metric etc. now to really muddy things but those videos would really help get you up to speed in a hurry, maybe they're online somewhere? back in my day it was like a 2 or 3 dvd set haha