OK, so you’ve got the right rifle, scope and bullet. You’ve added a good, solid rest. Now you’re looking at a deer through the scope at 500 yards, and the crosshairs won’t sit still.
That’s par for the course, said proven long-distance shooter Joe Poole.
“If you’re trying to hold the crosshair steady, you have to pace it and pull the trigger between breaths,” Poole said. “If you sit there and try to hold the gun still it will bobble.”
And that’s not the only challenge: Magnification even increases the perceived movement of crosshairs, so even a pounding heart can make crosshairs dance around like a lindy hopper on ecstasy.
Range shooting is difficult enough, but the adrenaline of hunting situations exacerbates the inherent problems.
So Poole doesn’t even try to hold the crosshairs steady. In fact, he doesn’t really work to hold the rifle still.
“Once I decide to take a shot, I hold my breath and pull the trigger,” he said.
Well, it’s not quite that fast. But it’s pretty close.
“I raise the gun from the bottom to the top, and when the crosshair is on target I squeeze the trigger,” Poole said.
He said the movement isn’t jerky, but easy and smooth.
“If you’re raising the gun with a slight movement, it’s not going to have all that movement,” Poole explained.
Of course, considerations have to be made for any wind that blows.
Poole said he will wait until the wind lays, but that doesn’t mean it’s not blowing downrange.
And forget about shooting a deer that is moving.
“At that distance, any walking at all, and you’ve got to lead him 3 or 4 feet,” Poole said. “That’s too much to figure.”
So he instinctively makes the adjustment to the proper mil-dot in his scope, waits until the deer is standing still and squeezes the trigger.
“The whole thing is a mind game,” he said. “You really have to go off of instinct.”
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