Leupold cds and elevation

jvanhoy

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Going on my first western rifle hunt in 2 weeks for mule deer. I’ll first off admit I’m more of a archery guy so this longer range shooting is all new to me. Here in VA your lucky to get 100 yard shot in the places I hunt. For this hunt I upgraded scopes and got a 4x12 cds for my 30-06. I plan on limiting myself to 300 yards since this is all new. I shot a few weeks ago with the dial that comes on the scope and was happy with the groups. I’m zeroed at 100 and it was 7 clicks for 200 and 18 for 300. 165 grain Hornady sst. I ordered my custom dial for the elevation in CO I will be hunting. 8000ft 40deg. Here in VA I’m at 2000ft. When I put my dial on today I checked to see if the clicks were close and it’s only 5 clicks for the 200 mark and 13 for 300. Does the elevation make that much of a difference? Thanks
 
Seem's everyone from back east coming out here to hunt think they are going to have exceptionally long range shots. I have lived in Central Oregon for 33 years now and I did take one shot at 300+ yds, just to say I did. But other than that one, never! My shot's have always been something around 200 yds max to far below that. Unless you are being atacked by an upset rather larger preditor, there is never a shot you have to take! I recall a group of deer some years ago in a canyon across the road from me. Spotted them several hundred yds off and simply started walking toward them. Any movement and I stopped and stood still, hunting in a T shirt! Got to somewhere around 100yds before they simply walked off. It's how you hunt that makes the difference. You can either hunt or you can't. You get your rifle zeroed for MPBR, max point blank range, at an 8" target and live with it and you'll do fine. The idea of the deer disappearing in the closing minutes of light or on the other side of a canyon is simply to justify taking a shot that wasn't needed to be taken in the first place. Sometimes the animal wins, get over it!
 
Back to the OPS question, use a ballistic app and see how the elevation change affects POI.

Did leupold set the CDS based on data or your confirmed drops? Five clicks difference at 300 is a lot and I’d be a little suspect.
 
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Back to the OPS question, use a ballistic app and see how the elevation change affects POI.

Did leupold set the CDS based on data or your confirmed drops? Five clicks difference at 300 is a lot and I’d be a little suspect.
Off the data I sent in from bullet and chronograph. Thanks for the reply. I’ll get to CO with a full day to scout I may try to shoot my gun to confirm.
 
The farther the shot the more it matters. My suggestion is to run your numbers through a ballistic calculator with the anticipated elevation and use those numbers with the standard dial that comes with the scope. Hornady has a good one on their website.
 
According to calculations my drop decreases .5MOA at @500yds and 2MOA @1000yds going from 3500’ elevation to 12,000’ elevation. Your numbers seem excessive. Something appears to be incorrect.

Plug your info into a ballistic calculator and how much difference you get when you change elevation.
 
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According to this the custom dial should be dead on. The 18 clicks would be on for 350 yards. Like I said this is all new to me so I’m sure that was my mistake. The elevation made very little difference. Thanks for the help and suggestion for the calculator.
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Going on my first western rifle hunt in 2 weeks for mule deer. I’ll first off admit I’m more of a archery guy so this longer range shooting is all new to me. Here in VA your lucky to get 100 yard shot in the places I hunt. For this hunt I upgraded scopes and got a 4x12 cds for my 30-06. I plan on limiting myself to 300 yards since this is all new. I shot a few weeks ago with the dial that comes on the scope and was happy with the groups. I’m zeroed at 100 and it was 7 clicks for 200 and 18 for 300. 165 grain Hornady sst. I ordered my custom dial for the elevation in CO I will be hunting. 8000ft 40deg. Here in VA I’m at 2000ft. When I put my dial on today I checked to see if the clicks were close and it’s only 5 clicks for the 200 mark and 13 for 300. Does the elevation make that much of a difference? Thanks
A little late since you have the custom dial, but I'd say zero at 200 (or 250) and forget about dialing for any of the shots you're willing to take. My 7 mag and 270 are both zeroed at 250 and I dead hold out to 300. Maxes out 2.7" high at 150, 3.2" low at 300 per Federal's chart, and I've confirmed those numbers are pretty spot on by shooting. Last thing you want is a deer starting to get spooked at 200 and you can't take a shot without dialing.
 
According to this the custom dial should be dead on. The 18 clicks would be on for 350 yards. Like I said this is all new to me so I’m sure that was my mistake. The elevation made very little difference. Thanks for the help and suggestion for the calculator.
View attachment 244612
I’m still a little concerned that your actual experience in the field has you dialing 5 clicks more than the calculator says you should. You need to figure out what’s going on here.

As mentioned by 4ohSick, there’s no need to dial for distances out to 300yds. You should almost be able to just look and know that it’s close enough to simply point and shoot. It pains me to see someone range an animal well under 300yds, then dial and hope that during the process the animal doesn’t get away. Just the other day I saw a guy range an animal that was looking right at him and at risk of escaping. Range turned out to be 240yds. Then he dialed. I thought “are you serious? I’d only HAVE to dial 3 clicks, and without dialing I’d only be 2” low. Just SHOOOOOT”. Certainly there are some low velocity cartridges out there that would be exceptions, but for most centerfire rifle cartridges there is no reason to zero closer than 200yds, and very little reason to be dialing closer than 300yds. Somehow I can still find ways to screw up, but ranging and dialing inside 300yds would just give me even more ways to screw up.

You still need to figure out why you were dialing 18 clicks to be on target at 300yds. Was your 100yd zero wrong? Was the range wrong?(closer to 350yds than 300yds) Is your scope mounted at a different height than the calculator was set up for? Something is amiss.
 
Thanks for the advice but I think the only thing amiss was just me. It was the first time I’ve ever shot 300. I was shooting off sticks and not sandbags. The whole where to zero just comes down to personal preference. I want to be zeroed at 100 because here in VA that’s about the max for the woods I hunt. I bought this scope because I like the idea of dialing vs possibly shooting 2 inches low off the bat and maybe pulling my shot and being way low. Just comes down to personal preference. I definitely plan on shooting when I get to CO Friday just to make sure but I feel good about it.
 
Thanks for the advice but I think the only thing amiss was just me. It was the first time I’ve ever shot 300. I was shooting off sticks and not sandbags. The whole where to zero just comes down to personal preference. I want to be zeroed at 100 because here in VA that’s about the max for the woods I hunt. I bought this scope because I like the idea of dialing vs possibly shooting 2 inches low off the bat and maybe pulling my shot and being way low. Just comes down to personal preference. I definitely plan on shooting when I get to CO Friday just to make sure but I feel good about it.
Do you have a good place to shoot out here?
 
Thread #4,289 fueling my disdain for CDS dials.
I think it’s handy if you’re only going to use one load. The best way to do it is to test the ranges you want marked on your dial and send the ranges and actual clicks to Leupold. Then nothing can be wrong.

I’m still not a big fan of dialing for anything under 300yds.
 
I think as long as you verify where it hits with the actual dial installed you’ll be fine.
Thanks again. Just to clarify since I hadn’t updated I’ve already verified here and it’s definitely good to go. I just want to shoot when I get there mainly to verify scope is still on after plane ride.
 
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