You taught yourself a valuable lesson-understand your equipment, before using it!
It is leading people to believe that if they buy the scope and rifle that SUPPOSEDLY works for long range, then they can just start flinging lead. The true essence of hunting is fading from sight.
That is the primary reason for me posting this thread. Just because you have a scope with dials (that some might send in to get etched based on the ballistics on the box of ammo), or you buy a fancy range finding ballistic calculating binocular, you need to get out to the range and practice. I thought I was just going to dial it up and fling some lead at the target and have a nice group to take a picture of. I made about 5 different mistakes that I was able to learn from.
1. Know your equipment. I think I will end up with this more than once but from the start I was off when I was ranging 357 meters and thinking it was 357 yards. Nothing in the view indicated meters vs yards and I just didn't realize that I needed to set it up as US or EU to change between yards and meters.
2. Know your MOA and how it relates to clicks. I knew this (I always sight in a rifle at 25 yards first and the clicks are 4 times more at 25 yards than at 100 yards), but when I dialed my scope the first time I just forgot about it.
3. Make sure you turn your scope the correct way. I still don't know how I messed this up not once, not twice, but I think 3 times. Now I am going to use the numbers as much as the U with the arrow to know which way to turn. If I start moving it up it will start with a lower number and go up to a bigger number.
4. Wind makes a big difference at 390 yards. It blows most of the time where I live so I should be able to practice that part of it.
5. Know your equipment. I watched a couple youtube videos on how to setup my binoculars but didn't catch the part about telling the binoculars how many clicks your scope has to move it 1" at 100 yards. I had it set on 1-3 which I thought was the same as the US3 ballistic chart but instead it was saying that my scope was 3 clicks to move 1" at 100 yards. I think I have that solved now.
I was intentionally making it harder on myself by shooting standing and using the ladder as a rest to somewhat mimic real world conditions. Most likely that isn't helping me figure out the equipment part of things as I'm sure some of my issue is poor shooting. I felt pretty good on most of my shots but was not near as steady as if I would have been shooting off a bench or even a backpack resting on a rock or something like that. I need to build a platform to put on my deck that will get me a better place to shoot from if I am going to continue to attempt longer shots. I want to get confident at 400 yards before trying to stretch it any further.
Thanks for the input everyone. I really appreciate it.
Nathan
