Shooting Skills
Range-Finding the Old Fashioned Way
By I J Larivers
H
unters? Hell, even golfers use laser range finders
these days. This technology can be stand-alone,
or incorporated into a telescopic sight. The most
common type sends out a narrow laser beam at a specific
target, and then measures the time it takes for the pulse to
bounce back, calculating the distance using the speed of
light, 299 792 458 m/s. It is not good for ultra-precise work,
but whether an antelope is at 250 or 300 yards is reliably
determined.
Like GPS navigation, this kind of technology is
becoming so everyday and affordable that a lot of folks
either never learned how to do it the good old fashioned way,
or are forgetting the finer points of doing so. Laser range
finders are still too costly for some, and secondly they are
electronic which means they rely on batteries. A good friend
of mine, a civil engineer, once commented that batteries
were the curse of technology and he was right. Because
laser range finders depend on ambient clarity to produce the
most accurate results, fog, rain and dust will all negatively
impact on their performance. I am not a technophobe. Or not
an obsessive-compulsive one, anyway. If laser range finding
technology is within your budget, by all means acquire it
and use it. Just don’t become so dependent on it that you
cannot function without it. I wouldn’t fly with a pilot whose
radio navigation skills were a backup to his GPS - it has to
be the other way around. For when the aliens and zombies
knock out all the satellites.
The accurate estimation of the distance to a target is a
cornerstone of accurate shot placement. Especially at the
farther distances where the curve of the bullet’s trajectory,
or its drop, becomes more pronounced and even small
distances can significantly affect the point of the bullet’s
impact or cause a miss altogether. I used to do (a very little)
Bisley Target Rifle shooting, and a .30 calibre bullet will
drop alarmingly between, say, 600 and 700 yards. No one
is going to hunt at these ranges, but it is a good illustration
of the point.
But first, let’s establish the maximum point blank range.
Point-blank range is defined as the distance between the
rifle’s muzzle and the target where the bullet is expected
to hit the target without the shooter having to adjust the
rifle’s elevation. Point blank range is extremely variable,
depending on the firearm, calibre, and target. Those calibres
with a flatter trajectory will have greater maximum point
blank ranges, and larger targets - e.g. acceptable vital areas
on game - will also cause this effect.
And it’s a given that your rifle will have been properly
zeroed before - and sometimes during - a hunt. You have to
do this yourself - an acquaintance from my shooting club oft
has someone else zero his rifles before a hunt, and then he
wonders why he can’t hit anything properly when he gets to
African Hunter Vol. 19 No. 3
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A Nikon 4-12x laser range finding telescopic sight
the bush. The zero, of course, will vary with bullet weight,
powder and charge, and between different firearms - so if
you’re an experimenter you will be doing a lot of zeroing.
Modern shooting programs like ShootingLabTM can save
you a lot of work.
Assuming that you are familiar with the graduations
on your sight or telescopic sight and know what effect they
have at a given distance (usually 100 yards) you can bring
your zero onto the paper. It’s common to start at 25 yards
and then fine-tune the zero to your expected shooting range,
or, say, 100 yards.
Sandbag the rifle solidly on a shooting bench, and
bore-sight it so that looking through the bore with the bolt
removed it points to an aiming area on the target. Now
adjust your sights or scope to the same point, move the
target to 100m, replace the bolt and fire a round. Your shot is
probably going to be close to where you want it, and usually
a little high. Carry on adjusting and firing until you have the
desired result.
Many shooters are tempted to zero their rifles at