So if there's something I learned....

[Tim K]

Gun, bipod, ammo, sling, range finder or binoculars, shooting sticks (no tripods allowed) if you have them, rear bag and lunch.

[C Ward]

You can set the gun up at the house . Flop down prone behind the rifle with your eye's closed . Build your position until your comfortable then open your eye's . There should be no issues with eye relief or scope shadow , if there is adjust the cheek piece height and eye relief until its right . Your position should be comfortable enough to be in for extended periods of time , if your not comfortable your not going to shoot well .

To get the bipod loaded build your position and then without moving the gun lift your body and roll forward into the gun about 1/2 inch or so . You don't need a huge amount of pressure on the legs just enough so the rifle recoils in a straight line and returns on target . NPA plays a big part in this , if you NPA is off the rifle won't recoil straight . This is important because its critical to see where the bullet went and the shooter has the best seat in the house to see this .

Parallax issues will be minimized with the rifle set up properly because you will have consistent cheek weld which puts your eye in the same place every time .

Pretty much all you'll need for Raton is the stuff you bring to the PD match , the new guy's always get cut some slack and if you need to borrow something the guy's on your squad will loan it to you . Pretty much all the questions and info can be found at the threads for the Sporting Rifle Match on here and SH , there are links to the match website in both threads .

[islandermyk]

Here's another valuable lesson I learned today.

Tim K you are dead on right with just inputting the DA into the BP and forgetting everything else (temp, altitude, baro, etc..)...

I was dead nuts on from 200, 300, 400, 500, and even out to a 1K.

[islandermyk]

3 out of 5 shots. I was holding 1 mil to the left. Winds were swinging around 5-10 mph right to left.

[Great-Kazoo]

3 out of 5 shots. I was holding 1 mil to the left. Winds were swinging around 5-10 mph right to left.

So you're saying if you didn't have a cold you would have done better, or worse?

[islandermyk]

So you're saying if you didn't have a cold you would have done better, or worse?

Good call on that one... I was definitely dragging ass out there... I won't be surprised trying to repeat this when I'm feeling better and would result being worse
Yep, good thing Spleify had some of those hand wipes that were going around. I sure had a bad habit of touching things

[islandermyk]

Here's another thing I neglected to add in.

Wind calling.

from a hundred yards to three hundred with a .308 shooting 175 gr SMK's it flies from 0 adjustment/hold to .2 of a mil at the most in no wind to 5 mph.
300 yards and out to 500 yards with the same wind conditions .2 mils or some times a little more.
1000 yards... ppphhhpt... 10 mph winds that die down and run back up. I'm holding .6 mils and went up to 2.0 mils.

I can see mirage swinging left and right but I feel wind blowing from behind me in a different angle. Do I need to pay attention to the wind behind me as well???

[Tim K]

At longer ranges, the wind at your position may be wildly different from what the bullet is experiencing. Take your best guess on the first shot, then let the bullet's impact give you feedback. Measure the distance between where you held and where it hit, and look up the full value drift for that range. Determine the wind value from there and try holding that the next shot.

First round hits at long ranges or small targets are very difficult unless someone has already told you what the wind is doing.

[C Ward]

The short answer is yes . All the wind matters and needs to taken into account . The bullet is the best indicator of the " effective wind " and this is why the absolute necessity of spotting the impact of the shot . More often then not there will be multiple bands of wind between you and the target that all have different affects on bullet flight .

More than once there has been a full 10 mph 90 degree wind at the shooting position and the wind down range cancelled it out and the right wind call was hold center .

[islandermyk]

F*cken sh*t! I wish I paid more attention to the winds that were blowing right on us. I should've been shooting with just my socks on

I was really focusing on the winds up ahead... I even tried experimenting a little powering down my scope to see mirage/wind blowing in the middle of the 1k range.
I can't remember for the death of me where or how hard the wind was blowing on us when I had to hold 2.0 mils at the 1k target... and when it went down to .5 to 1.0 mils in windage....Aaauugghh!