How to Properly Sight in Your Hunting Rifle

[Music] rabble arranged it so please bear with gunfire here in the background as I stand here today deer hunting season is coming up fairly soon and so many people are contacting me on the subject of deer hunting well we already have a presentation on my top five guns for deer hunting and we have a presentation on my top five tips for successful deer hunting it's a top five list because I only know five things about deer hunting but many people have had inquiries about how to 0 how to site in a rifle for deer hunting so here we are but this subject comes with four disclaimers and yotz the first one being that although today I'm talking about deer hunting the things I'm discussing will also have applications in many different types of shooting so even if you don't hunt deer there's probably going to be some useful information today secondly all the one using the word you and I might say you should do this or you would be better off to do that nothing I say today should be inferred as a tutorial I am in no way attempting to tell you what you should do I'm only explaining what I do and why third everything I'm doing today is going to be from the point of view of I've gotten a rifle that I've either never fired before or it's been banged round and I think the sights are significantly out of alignment or I've just put new sights on it or I've just put a new scope on it or any one of the myriad of other things that could put me in the position where really don't know where the rifle is going to hit and we're starting from scratch and forth all I'm doing today is demonstrating the techniques that I use to zero my rifles for deer hunting I am not in any way attempting to tell you what you should do and nothing I say today should be inferred as a recommendation so that having been said let's get started I'm going to start with a demonstration of something I consider to be one of the most crucial aspects of zeroing a rifle for deer hunting I'm going to use my Marlin model 1894 s and I'll shoot offhand from 60 yards and I'm going to shoot five shots at the target on your left then five shots at the target on your right [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] this exercise was intended to illustrate a point it actually Illustrated two points for both of these targets the aiming point was the same right here at the bottom of the red but we can see that our point of impacts are very different back the target on the left I didn't even hit it the difference here is that I'm using two different types of ammunition I shot at the target on the left with Remington green and white box 44 Magnum 180 grain soft play I shot the target on your right with federal American Eagle 44 magnum 240 Grand Simon jacketed hollow-point and the point to be made here is that different types of ammunition have different points of impact some people when they zero their deer hunting rifle will use some less expensive type of ammunition for zeroing and practice because the type of ammo you use for deer hunting can be quite expensive sometimes but what we see here is that it's absolutely crucial that you zero your deer hunting rifle with the ammunition you intend to use while hunting now the second point this exercise shows us is that you look at the target on your right my point of aim was the bottom of the red and I've got one shot pretty close to the center but that's just the flyer that's me the group is about eight inches high now that is me shooting sixty yards off and still not a particularly impressive group but it does show me that at that distance this ammunition is about eight inches high there's a school of thought that with relatively low velocity firearms like 44 Magnum rivals that you should hit about two inches high at 50 therefore at a hundred that will have dropped back to where your point of aim and point of impact is the same therefore from zero out to even 150 your point of aim and point of impact should never vary all that much and that idea does have merit but hitting about eight inches high at 60 yards that's too far off for me now that seems like an easy fix just adjust the sights however the sights on that particular rifle are already adjusted as low as they will go for the task of deer hunting under the conditions which I'm going to hunt this ammunition is not going to work in that rifle so point to is you've got to find an ammo that works for your rifle now when I mentioned that thing about some people will say have the rifle hit a little bit high at 50 so it's on at 100 that really brings us to the first point and zeroing your deer hunting rifle is asking yourself the question at what distances do you really expect to shoot a deer for some people that might be 3 or 400 yards for others 30 or 40 yards is the norm now when I go hunting in a few weeks it will be an area that looks a lot like where I'm standing right now big trees grass some underbrush some which is fairly tall and there's a couple of spots with a potential for a 300 yard shot but in the last few years I've shot deer at distances like 20 yards a couple of 25 at 30 at 40 at 50 yards one at 95 and one at 200 yards so realistically most likely a hundred yards shot or less but I do want to know where my rifle hits at 200 yards and that's going to be part of my zeroing process the sights on this Ruger PC carbine are adjusted with the use of two allen screws loosen this one and then adjust elevation by sliding the sight back and forth on this inclined ramp both the sight and the ramp are marked so you can keep track of how far you've moved it when you get it to the desired place tighten the screw again for adjusting for windage you loosen another allen screw but in this case it's not marked when you move the sight back and forth you just have to be able to keep track of how far you've moved it a very common type of iron sight is what you see on this Marlin model 1894 s and sights similar to it are on a lot of Winchester rifles and the way this sight adjusts for elevation is that the base of it is for all intent and purpose a leaf spring and you pull up on the rear sight Minh just for elevation by sliding this notched ramp back and forth sights like this can be very easy to adjust for elevation however the ramp doesn't have that many notches in it and there are notorious for when you're shooting at a target you're hitting low you go up one notch and you're hitting high or vice versa also to adjust this for windage a lot of these will have a set screw right here but the majority of them don't the rear sight has just dovetailed into the barrel and held in place with friction and you adjust for windage by hitting it back and forth that's why sometimes these sights are affectionately called mallet whack sights also the barrel most of the time does not have any notches or any point of reference so when you hit it one way or the other it's very hard to tell how far you moved it and it can be an arduous task to adjust sights like this so now that we've looked at a few different types of sites let's put up some targets and try to zero some rifles I said that today's demonstration would be from the stand point that I'm using a rifle that I've either never fired or put new sights on or for some reason I really don't know where it's going to hit well a couple of days ago I purchased this winchester model 88 in caliber 308 Winchester from the electronic superstore in Lincoln City Oregon it has iron sights and a scope and it's a used rifle I have no idea if the previous owners zero the iron sights or zeroed the scope and if so at what distances did he fire and what type of ammunition used in fact I only used the word he generically so this rifle fits bill perfectly of something that I don't really know where it's going to hit now I have it loaded with Remington green and yellow box 308 Winchester 150 grain pointed soft point let's set up a target and see where it hits now several times in today's presentation I'll say something is a crucial point this is one of them when firing a rifle that I really don't know where it's going to hit I want to start with a big target at a fairly close distance if you start out shooting at a hundred yards you might miss the target completely then you have no feedback so I'm going to shoot this shoot and see target from 25 yards so I've taken the scope off the rifle and will zero the iron sights first and because we're testing the rifle not me I'll shoot from a stable platform removing as much of me from the equation as possible we also want to make a level shot so I put the target at the right height for me shooting from this table now to conserve ammunition some people will say to shoot one shot I'm going to always shoot at least two so right now I'll shoot two shots at our target at 25 yards let's see what kind of results we get and let's take a look at the target so we see two shots in a fairly good group pretty close to the center and that tells us two things first yes this rifle will shoot accurately with the ammunition I'm using and secondly it would appear that yes the previous owner did zero the iron sights but when we're shooting at 25 yards were just wanting to make sure we're close enough to the center that we can stay on paper when we shoot at distances more commensurate with the distances at which we expect to shoot deer like one or two hundred yards obviously we can so now let's go to the hundred yard range and we'll make whatever adjustments we need based on the data we get there now I've got a bigger target setup and I'll shoot this one from a bench rest at a hundred yards and let's see what kind of results we get [Applause] [Applause] now here's a three-shot group if you can call it that two shots nearly touching each other one that's high I'm gonna say the one that's high is the flyer and the two nearly touching each other or the group and it tells us a few things first for windage were good but for elevation we're about four inches too high and here's another of those crucial points when it comes to adjusting iron sights you have to move the rear sight in the direction that you want the strike of the round to go we're too high we want the strike of the round to go lower we have to make the rear sight lower so I'll paste up these shot holes and then we'll adjust our sights here's a close-up of the rear sight assembly of this rifle now and adjusted in sights you have to first make sure your rifle is unloaded and pointed in a safe direction the rear sight on this rifle folds down that gets it out of the way when you put a scope on it and allows it to be adjusted more easily the assemblies dovetailed into the barrel but the site itself is attached to the assembly with two screws and you can see a mark on the sight that's adjacent to some marks on the assembly so when you move the sight up or down you can keep track of how far it's moved in this case we're hitting too high we want the strike of our round to go down so we have to move our rear sight down I'll loosen the two screws move the sight down tighten them again so I've adjusted the sights on the rifle moving the rear sight down about a millimeter and I've changed targets I found that I was having a little bit of difficulty seeing the black sight against the black target so I'm going to use a white target now I'll shoot from the bench rest at 100 yards and let's see if we've moved the strike of that round down closer to the center so I've got the three shot group covered with the orange pasties and we can see now the group is just a little bit low so I'll move the rear sight up again and fire one more group off the bench at a hundred yards now I want to take a moment to point out that I am well aware that making you sit through this is tedious zeroing your rifle can be a tedious process however I have seen what were billed as instructional videos on how to zero a rifle that were three to sometimes one minute long and I think there just isn't very much good instruction going on when you're talking about a subject this complex and trying to fit that all into a one-minute video sometimes tedium is a byproduct of putting out useful information now I've got my group covered with the black pasties and I'm going to say that's pretty well centered so now what I'll do is put up a target at 200 yards and see how much drop I'm getting however with this caliber in this particular ammunition in that particular barrel length I don't expect it to be much but what I'm not going to do is make you sit through that tedious process let's move on to zeroing the scope so I put the scope back on the rifle however before I did that I marked that iron sight with some pink insta-dry nail polish so if that rear sight gets knocked out of alignment I'll be able to see that it moved but now that the scope is back on the zeroing process starts over again with shooting a fairly large target from 25 yards so pretty good for elevation not so good for windage and this illustrates why we start at 25 if I tried to shoot this target at a hundred yards I may very well have missed the paper entirely but now this brings us to the complicated portion of today's presentation where we have to adjust the scope in many ways adjusting a scope can be easy but in some ways it can be complex now of course the first step is make sure your rifle is unloaded pointed in a safe direction the second step is to understand that not all scopes work the same way now what's most typical is that a scope will have two caps on it one on the top one on the side covering two dials that adjust for elevation and windage commonly the one on the top is for elevation and one on the right is for windage in this case we see our elevations okay I have to adjust for windage so I'll take off the cap on the right hand side exposing that dial these dials are typically marked this one's marked with the letter L and an arrow if you turn the dial with the L arrow you will move the strike of the round to the left it's also very common that as you turn the dial you will hear or feel clicks each click a measured amount of adjustment and it's common that a scope is marked with something that will tell you how much each click is this particular scope isn't marked in any such way now different scopes will adjust in different ways but the most common is that each click is a quarter minute of angle a minute of angle is one inch at 100 yards two inches of 200 three inches at 300 so if each click is a quarter minute of angle that means it takes 4 clicks to move the strike of your round one inch if your targets a hundred yards away that same four clicks will move the strike of your round three inches if the target is three hundred yards away but in this case we're shooting only 25 yards therefore that same four clicks will only move the strike of your round a quarter inch at 25 yards it takes 16 clicks to move that strike of that round one inch if you're only shooting 25 yards in this case I'm about four inches off that means I'd have to adjust this 64 clicks to the left but since this scope isn't marked and I don't know for sure that each click will be a quarter minute of angle I'm not going to make such a big adjustment I'm gonna start by putting 16 clicks left and see how much that moves the strike of our round [Applause] so it looks like sixteen clicks was a better choice than 64 based on these results I'll adjust sixteen more clicks and then shoot two more shots at twenty five see what kind of results we get and that should get us close enough to move to a hundred so now that we're pretty close at twenty-five I'll shoot from the bench rest at a hundred and make any fine-tune adjustments based on the data we get at that distance also using the scope I won't have to worry about the black side against the black target [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] and we see that just because we're on at 25 does not mean that we're on at 100 so I'll adjust back to the right and shoot a few more shots [Applause] [Applause] and now we see that I'm just about where I want to be however I'm still just a little bit high so I'm going to go down a couple more clicks and shoot one worker but I won't make you sit through that so now that I have the rifle zero the last step in the process is to shoot from a distance that I think realistically represents the distance at which I'll shoot a deer using the shooting stance or position that I expect to use at a target that represents what I expect to shoot at now this is my mule deer cut out and some people will see it and criticize that it's too big well according to the sources I read and the deer I've seen in the field from the bottom of the chest to the top of the back mule deer is typically 18 inches from the front of the chest to the back of the deer a mule deer can be four and a half to six feet long this target is 18 inches high and four feet long it is a good representation of the size of the mule here and I'm going to shoot it from 75 yards I'm 75 yards from the deer target when I go hunting although I might take some shots farther than that most likely the shots I take will be at 75 or less and shooting the deer target is different than a conventional target because there's no well-defined round bullseye on the deer target now when I go hunting for the most part I'll be still hunting it so the stance I use will most likely be offhand and in doing so I have to remember to shoot as fast as I can get a good hit on the deer as they say you have to take the time in a hurry and there's no replacement for shot placement so let's see how well I can do on this deer target try that again I'm finding that I really don't care for the way this lever action on this model 88 is designed and one more shot let's take a look at the target I fired five shots and I've got the shot holes covered with the orange pasties now you'll see that most of these hits are a little farther back on the deer than they really should be I should be a little closer to the shoulder but that's just a matter of my aiming point now three of these are good hits the fourth one was a little low but that still would have been okay this one that hit the leg I knew the instant I pulled the trigger that one was going to be off so altogether not too bad but this tells me that if I'm going to use this rifle for opening day I need to do this drill a few more times now a couple more things to add first some people will say that they would like to have seen the shooting at 200 yards I left that out in the interest of brevity and because even if you're using the same caliber of rifle that I'm using you're probably using it in different environmental conditions a different model of rifle different barrel lengths that's a different type of ammunition so however much drop I get might not be representative of how much drop you get and remember that nothing I said or did today should be inferred as any kind of tutorial or recommendation I'm only demonstrating how izm I arrived oh I will make a recommendation when it comes to the use of nail polish I like pink because it's easy to see you might prefer a different color but I would advise to avoid colors like bronze or burnt orange sometimes people will see that on your rifle and they'll give you grief about having rust on your rifle well giving you grief is bad enough the worst part is is when my rifle is sitting over here and I'm over here not paying attention and someone decides to be helpful and clean the rust off my rifle so all that having been said if you've sat through this entire presentation thank you for your attention and as always don't try this at home on what you call a professional and thanks for watching the zero in your deer rifle video [Music]

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 245,377

Rating: 4.9622555 out of 5

Keywords: paul harrell, paul harrell hunting, paul harrell rifle, paul harrell sight in rifle, how to sight in a rifle, how to sight in your hunting rifle, deer hunting rifle, hunting rifle, hunting, deer hunting, elk hunting, sighting in your rifle

Id: h0qHOHlMwGc

Length: 26min 41sec (1601 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 14 2019