Yesterday was the first ever 1,000 yard match at one of my two home ranges (Bayou Rifles). The sky was cloudy, impending rain, temp was cool - 54 +/- and the wind nasty at 10 - 18 mph switching from our 12 O'Clock to 2 O'clock. Truly brutal conditions if you were shooting a .308. Topo-Sniper showed up with his brother-in-law to watch the exhibition
Thank god I decided to bail shooting under these conditions. I currently get humbled enough shooting 600 yards in windy conditions. However, I can report that we have at least 30 truly gifted shooters in the Houston area. They had a large scope set up for watching trace (visible 100% of the time in this particular scope - 100mm objective lens). The wonderful thing about the big scope was you could flollow the trace and lateral drift, it looked like the shooters were throwing a huge curve ball down range. One guy on the first relay shot 197 out of 200 for his first 20 shots, including 7 X (he was shooting 6.5x284 with a 30" barrel and Sierra 142 SKM at roughly 3,000 fps). The match was 60 shots, but I bailed early to get out of the wind.
To show the extent and effect of the wind drift, most shooters were shooting a minimum of 6.0 to 8.0 MOA of wind (60 to 80 inches of lateral drift at 1,000 yards). If you missed a wind shift, you were not going to be on paper. The great majority of teh shooters were shooting open sights, several had AR-15s with 22 inch match barrels, and a few had M1A1 or M14s. I don't care how old you are, just hitting paper under those conditions with open sights is good shooting.
JeffVN
Thank god I decided to bail shooting under these conditions. I currently get humbled enough shooting 600 yards in windy conditions. However, I can report that we have at least 30 truly gifted shooters in the Houston area. They had a large scope set up for watching trace (visible 100% of the time in this particular scope - 100mm objective lens). The wonderful thing about the big scope was you could flollow the trace and lateral drift, it looked like the shooters were throwing a huge curve ball down range. One guy on the first relay shot 197 out of 200 for his first 20 shots, including 7 X (he was shooting 6.5x284 with a 30" barrel and Sierra 142 SKM at roughly 3,000 fps). The match was 60 shots, but I bailed early to get out of the wind.
To show the extent and effect of the wind drift, most shooters were shooting a minimum of 6.0 to 8.0 MOA of wind (60 to 80 inches of lateral drift at 1,000 yards). If you missed a wind shift, you were not going to be on paper. The great majority of teh shooters were shooting open sights, several had AR-15s with 22 inch match barrels, and a few had M1A1 or M14s. I don't care how old you are, just hitting paper under those conditions with open sights is good shooting.
JeffVN