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DEALING WITH THE WIND PART 4


Understanding Groups Dealing with


the wind. Part 4 by Chris White


Experience will ultimately teach us that the best wind evaluation tool which we have available is our rifle. Whatever we perceive the wind to be, it’s where the shot ends up on the target that is important.


All experienced Target Rifle shooters will understand that there is a vertical spread in their shots and most will plot a corrected elevation so that they can centralise that vertical spread on the middle of the V bull. There is a tendency however, to forget the fact that there is also a horizontal spread,


leading to the expectation amongst even international level


A ten-shot group of Eley Club from the author’s Anschutz almost fits into the bull


shooters (as well as international level coaches) that if they read the wind accurately and fire a straight shot it will land on the vertical centre line of the V bull.


Whilst this may happen, it will not necessarily happen. We need to appreciate that the rifle, shooter, ammunition combination will produce a ‘group’. If this is not recognised by the shooter, then confusion will reign and error chasing - instead of solid wind reading - will prevail.


So let’s look at what most smallbore club instructors will teach. It goes something like this:


“You cannot put all your shots through one hole. Fire a number of shots at the same target and you will produce a group. This group will be roughly round. At this stage it doesn’t matter where the shots go because we can adjust the rifle sights to make them go where we want. Concentrate on learning to shoot and the better you get at it the smaller the group will get. Ideally we want you to be able to shoot a group of ten shots which will fit inside the bullseye.”


So, before we come to wind reading, we need to hammer this out. We also need to understand how to make the best of our sighters, since they are our ‘get out jail free’ cards as far as calibrating our perception of the wind effect is concerned. Here we come to a point where there is an obvious divergence between the practice of small bore rifle shooting and that of fullbore Target Rifle.


The shooter is a significant component in the determination of group size.


I was taught, when I learnt to shoot, that not every shot goes through the same hole. If we fire a number of shots what we end up with is a ‘group’. Indeed benchrest shooters are continually striving to attain the elusive ‘one-hole group. Theoretically possible but probably practically impossible.


This is a message that, over the years, I have heard countless smallbore club instructors trying to hammer home to their charges. It is also a message that generations of military small arms instructors have tried to instil in their recruits.


Target Rifle shooters, I suspect, who have not come into the game via either of these two routes may be considerably more shaky in their understanding of the concept and in its importance to them.


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