- That's a mystery to me guys, maybe someday I'll figure it out, let me know what you think, have you ever had something
crazy like this happen? (firearm shooting) (guitar music) (guitar music) (guitar music fades) You know, viewers of
this channel often ask me how they should sight in their rifle, how high they should
be at a hundred yards, or, at what specific distance
they should be dead on? Well, it's highly variable, depending on where you hunt, how you hunt, how far you like to shoot, and what your bullet
is capable of reaching. So, instead of me giving
you an absolute number, I think I want to teach
you how to zero your rifle for your most effective range, and for me that's always the maximum point blank range system. Hey, I want to thank
our patreons as always, you guys really make it
possible for us to stay at this. There's a lot of fun things to do out here beside make videos, but as long as I've got your
moral support, by golly, I'm going to hang in there. So I invite the rest of you
to subscribe to the channel if you like what we're doing here, and consider joining
our Patreon community, just go to Patreon.com/RonSpomerOutdoors and we'll open the door and
let you in, appreciate it. Now, how to zero that rifle. As I mentioned earlier, it depends on how fast
your bullet is going, you do not want to zero your .30-30 the same you zero your .300 Win Mag. I have here at .25-06 that
I've been working with, we're going to demonstrate
with this rifle, but that doesn't mean you have to zero the way I do on this rifle. We're going to teach the maximum point blank range
system for zeroing your rifle, because that gives you
the maximum opportunity to make a quick shot and hit your target, out to roughly 300 yards with most modern bottleneck cartridges. And some of them will even
extend that to 350 yards, maybe even a little bit farther. So, here's a quick basic description. Think of shooting down a pipe, and you want to keep your
bullet inside of that pipe when you shoot dead center. So let's use a pipe, the diameter of the vital
zone of our target, a deer. So a deer's chest is roughly
16 to 18 inches, top to bottom, the vitals inside of there
are probably 12 inches or 10 inches. So, we're going to use a six inch target, aim for the dead center, and adjust our scope, so that at any peak, the
bullet is not going to exceed that top of that six
inch target, makes sense? Now if you're a precision shooter and you insist on hitting this every time, it's not going to work for you. We're talking deer hunting here. So this'll apply to elk,
deer, pronghorn, even coyotes. You might want to step down
to a four inch target on that, but just figure the vital
zone of your target, and use that to figure all
the rest of this stuff out. Here's the idea then, we've got this maximum point blank range of a six inch target. And I did the numbers on
the ballistics calculator for the bullet I'm shooting. This particular bullet
is a 92 grain hammer, all copper hollow-point bullet. And I am driving it 3,550 feet per second from this single shot rifle. That's really fast, so
it shoots really flat. It tells me to zero it a 292 yards. Now you're going to say, "Wait a minute, I don't have a range where I can zero anything
at 292 yards, I got a 100." Yeah, that's what most of us have, but this chart also tells
you how high to set it at a 100 yards, to get that 292 yard zero. So what happens is, of course, your barrel is tilted up a little bit in relation to your scope. So the scope sits a little
bit canted like this, the barrels are like
that, so when you shoot, your bullet goes through
the line of sight, at about 30 to 40 yards. And then it's flying a little bit higher, not because the bullet has extra energy it's just because you've
angled your gun that way. The whole time that bullet is falling, but since you've angled it up, it's going to get out there quite a ways before it falls. So that's what we're doing, we're going to sight
in high at a 100 yards, it's going to still be climbing, and it's going to be up there at 175 yards and that's about where it's going to peak, three inches high. Remember six inch target,
dead center, three inches up. So, first thing I'm going to do here, is shoot it at a 100, now I've been shooting
and working up loads here, so I'm pretty close to on, I think I just need to
dial down a little bit. So we're going to tweak it here, so that I'm 2.14 inches high. That's what my chart
told me at a 100 yards. Let's see if we can get there, somewhere in that two inch
range should do the trick. Let's see how high we are, I think I'm a little
higher than I needed to be on this deal. Well, I'm slowing my heartbeat here. I'll tell you, I am going to aim for the junction at the bottom of the triangle, rather than the center of this target. And then we'll measure up from there. (firearm shooting) Oh, there we are. Looks like I am about an inch up. That's kinda crazy, because the other night when I was shooting out to 300 yards, I was still above my point of aim. So I thought I must be setting really high on my elevation at a 100. So either, this thing is going a lot faster
than my chronograph told me or my bullet has a higher
BC than it's telling me, or the cold barrel shoots
to a different place than the warm barrel, and that's something else
we need to watch for. So, much as I hate to
waste my expensive bullets, I think I'm going to try one more just to make sure, we are
really shooting as high as it says we are. I thought it would be higher than that. Here we go. I want to be two inches
up, before I start dialing. Well, wait a minute. Now, if I'm talking about a cold barrel, maybe I ought to wait for
that barrel to cool down eh? This is a single shot rifle, it's kind of silly to
zero with a hot barrel and go hunting, and
when you see your deer, you take one shot, it
shoots higher or lower someplace different. So, let's switch this
off for a little bit, let that barrel completely
cool, then we'll shoot again. All right, that feels pretty
much cooled down to me. We'll try another shot. I'm going to have to load some more ammo, at the rate I'm going here. (Ron exhales) (firearm shooting) Now that one's up about another, half to three quarter of an inch. So it might be, a real cold barrel issue and it might be a dirty barrel. But the windage is perfect as
it always is with this rifle, they just are almost always dead on unless the wind is blowing. I mean that is really sweet. I'm a little bit concerned about the up and down going on here. So, if we're going to compromise that first bullet's an inch up, the second one is probably
inch and three quarters, so we're getting pretty
close to that two inches up If we split the difference, in the middle. If I give her two clicks up, that should put it up a half inch more. All right. It's not dead cold, but it's
not exactly hot either so, I think we'll be good. (firearm shooting) Looks like it went into the second hole. Oh my, this rifle shoots I tell ya. I'm left scratching my head guys, about that first shot, whether I should come back in 15 minutes to a really cold barrel. But you know, I'm not
going to miss my deer with that setting right there. All right guys, as you can
see, that is not a bad group. First shot, second shot, third shot. Now those two suggests
that I'm just right, 'cause we're up from
aiming point right here, we're up one, two, and
just a smidgen more. And my trajectory chart
calls for 2.14 inches up. I think I can trust this now, but I'm a little concerned about that first shot being a little bit low. I'll work on that later, but this is all part of
working with your rifle and learning how it shoots. You can't get it all done
necessarily in a few shots. You can get on target, you can determine what's your accuracy is, but you've got cold barrel
issues, dirty barrel issues, there's just a lot to work with over time. Guys this was the target I shot last week, 200 yard shot, and two 300 yard shots. As you can see, they're
striking pretty high, I aimed right here, so I hit one, two, a little more than two inches high at 200. But the 300 yard shots were even higher. There's a little bit of
wind deflection on this one. Let's slide over to that
200 yard target now. (firearm shooting) Yeah, it's straight up once again. But this is the process
of zeroing your rifle, now what you can see is that, if I have a deer anywhere
out to 200 yards, I'm going to hit it anywhere
from two to three inches high. Now that might sound
crazy like, "Oh my gosh, you're three inches high?" Well, wait a minute, you're talking about a 10
inch vital zone on a deer. So if you're aiming at his
heart, you hit three inches high, you still got him, It's in the vital zone. You just don't want to
go, five inches high, or six inches high that's crazy. Some guys will zero really too high. So, at 300 yards, this should be dead on to maybe an inch low, and at 340 yards, I'm supposed to be three
inches under my line of sight. I'm good for 300 yards straight on hold, I don't have to calculate, I don't have to do any kind
of manipulating of the scope. Just get on my target and make my shot. Okay, 300 yard target is up there. Now I've got a big lens is trained on it, at 120 frames a second to get slo-mo we might pick up a bullet trace going in. Let's just see how high we hit at 300. Now this is the same
target, that has holes in it from that 200 yard shooting, and last week's 300 yards shooting. So, let's see where I'm going to aim here. Yeah, it's getting kinda and hard to see. I'm going to have to go for
the center orange triangle. Here we go. (firearm shooting) Well, let's go see what happened. I got to ask for your help
on this one everybody. 300 yard shot, I was aiming here, so I hit up one, two,
three, four inches high? Three and a half inches high at 300 yards. This is crazy. I took a peek at the bullet
trace out of that other camera. And from the looks of that, I think I do have some
powder in the bullet, that's sort of a self-propelled missile. That thing was laying down some smoke. It must be extreme moisture in the air, we had some rain the other
day, and it's really damp. But, that is crazy what that
bullet does at 300 yards. How man? 200 yards it was just
where it's supposed to be, and 300 is higher. That's a mystery to me guys, maybe someday I'll figure it out, let me know what you think, have you ever had something
crazy like this happen? 'Cause that bullet's just like
it's got afterburners in it. And I don't know what's going on, but, boy that sure gives me some range. That's the system guys, now,
if you've got a slower bullet, like a .30-30, and it drops more, you're not going to be able to reach the maximum point blank
range of 300 yards. You'll probably be lucky to get 250. You've just got to know
the BC of your bullet, the muzzle velocity that you're
getting when you shoot it. And then run it through those
ballistics calculators online, those will give you the numbers. Then go out to the range
like this and double check. This one's suggesting that it shoots actually higher than predicted, but, this is the real
world, stuff happens, some of it, I can't even explain. You just need to know
where your gun shoots, if you don't have a chronograph, to get your absolute muzzle velocity, use the information on the
ammo box that's provided, but take it with a grain of salt, I've seen those be off by as
much as a 100 feet per second, one way or another. Or look at your reloading manuals, and assume that you're getting roughly what they predict
you're going to get, but then just test it on the range. And if it's not doing
exactly what it says, perhaps you're getting more
velocity than you thought, perhaps less. But definitely, try that
maximum point blank range system because it's the hunter's best friend. Hey, Ron Spomer here. I thank you for watching, invite you to subscribe to the channel, and until next time, hunt
honest and shoot straight. (guitar music) (guitar music) (guitar music) (guitar music) (guitar music fades)
