DEALING WITH THE WIND
PART THREE
Dealing with the wind. Part 3 by Chris White
From the point of view of consistent shooting, it is vitally important to have the eye directly behind the rear-sight and that to achieve this we need a good and consistent contact between the cheek and the butt- stock. (Below – this smallbore shooter demonstrates the ‘stock weld’).
The rise from 300 to 1000 yards is around 30 minutes. In old money that is three tenths of an inch (one rifle minute is 100th of an inch on the rear-sight). So if our head is on the stock at 300 yards it will be a third of an inch off it at 1000 yards. With our ‘Up and Down’ adjustable foresight however, we can move the foresight that amount. This means that our elevation setting on the rear-sight will be the same for 1000 yards as it is for 300 yards. To borrow a catch-phrase, “Now that’s magic!”
To fully understand this let’s just think about it for a minute. To increase elevation we need to raise the muzzle of the rifle. Raising the rearsight has that effect since if the rearsight goes up the muzzle must also go up to ensure that the foresight appears in the middle of the rearsight. Surely that is straightforward? But we want to keep our head in the same place so how can we elevate the rifle without raising the rearsight? Simple we lower the foresight. Again that should be straightforward but some shooters seem to have a problem with this. To raise elevation we lower the foresight and that is why Messers Fulton et al. have arranged the graduations on their foresights to increase in value as the sight moves closer to the barrel.
Up and down adjustable foresights for NRA Target Rifle have now been available since the late 80’s. They are currently available from Fultons, HPS, Paramount, Centra and others in the UK and Sinclair (an apparent copy of the Fulton design) in the US. I am prepared to stick my neck out here and say this is the most beneficial single gadget that you can fit to your rifle. These gizmos are generally adjustable in increments of five minutes; the Centra is adjustable to finer increments and pretty much guarantee good contact between cheek and stock if used correctly.
A prototype version of the Centra ‘height- adjustable’ foresight
Different height foresights – the high one gives 35 more MOA elevation than the low one, right.
Now we have grasped that, let’s look at how not to zero the rifle with an up and down foresight. I am not normally into negativity but the reason I am about to describe this is because this is how most people do it!
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