What you might expect to see through your scope with mirage and no wind.
You will often hear experienced mirage shooters claim that you ‘shoot the mirage and not the flags’. Stay with this idea if you can!
Psychologically and practically this is a difficult thing to do for some reasons listed below.
1.We train using flags to indicate the speed and direction of the wind and rely on our wind-flags to tell us what is happening between rifle and target. The operative word here is ‘rely’. Most of us were brought up to use wind-flags so it’s difficult not to.
2.Seeing mirage is not always easy. Mirage is often described as a ‘wind you can see’. We are looking for waves of air changing and shifting the sight picture through the lens of our optics. If this is observed through a high-power scope it will also allow the shooter to estimate the speed and direction.
3.The indications the wind flags provide will continue to have some relevance. Balancing this with mirage is difficult. Which will have the greatest effect on our bullet?
So if it is not easy, just how do we shoot the mirage? One great US shooter who is no longer on the scene, made an excellent observation for shooting in any conditions – sighters! Where possible, use your sighters to assess the mirage not just the wind-flags. Sighters, sighters and more sighters. This enables you to be sure of what the conditions are out there. Obviously,
42 Target Shooter
What you might expect to see through your scope with mirage and 5-10mph wind
at the same time, balancing all these sighters with the time restrictions of the match, as you could end up with a target full of sighters!! The restriction on air rifle is also something to consider as most rifles will provide fifty to sixty good shots from the air cylinder.
What does mirage look like through your scope? In the worst possible case it can look like shooting through fast-moving water and even the rings on your target may not be visible – let alone your shot-holes!
Often, in the UK, light mirage is almost invisible and can only be seen by re-focussing your scope to partway down range – so that the target is out of focus.
As we shoot at shorter ranges, have a look at a video on You Tube shot by our friend Andy Dubreuil who is a 22 rimfire benchrest shooter and current UK champion. Go to http://youtu. be/SGBz0H4zX-U In this video you can see can see the affect of mirage through the scope. This film is well worth watching as it shows some very interesting things.
The first thing it shows is that nothing is moving – it just looks as if it is. This is the real issue with mirage. The sight picture is providing information about the centre of the target being where it actually isn’t - an optical illusion down to refracted or ‘bent’ light creating the displaced image of the target. The reason why the bullet will hit the target in the wrong place.
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