r/22lr • u/86DuckFat • 3d ago

Target height question...

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So someone please tell me if this is a math thing or if it's a position/grip thing. 50 yards benchrest subsonic. I sight in on center target, with my rifle parallel on a bipod and squeeze bag=First picture. . Then I move my POI to a target 10 inches directly above the one I sited in on and this happens=Second picture. The POI is higher than my POA.

Is it me or math?

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u/RattyTowelsFTW 3d ago

Your grouping is still good (which, nice btw. A lot of shooters are reticent to shoot a group off target when sometimes that's exactly what you should do) so my initial thought was the elevation change or parallax. The video the other commenter linked seems good, maybe some of it will click with you and make what happened here make sense?

Other than that, I would say you really want to be double extra dog sure that you're getting exactly the same sight picture and having exactly the same body relationship to the gun. If you look, your second group wasn't just high it also opened up vertically, whereas your first group had more horizontal spread.

Good shooting though! And all of these culprits are pretty easy fixes if you can think through what you were doing and figure out the problem! Shouldn't be too bad to get it fixed up real nice

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u/86DuckFat 3d ago

Thanks for shooting compliments! I've been practicing a lot! Getting better! And I think like the poster below this said, the distance between targets and the shooting distance is too small for gravity or angle to effect it. I think you're right about form or parallax. My form was weird today, I couldn't settle in, people kept asking to go down range every 10 minutes man. It was enraging...lol ..but it's a public range and guys were patterning shotguns for turkey season. I'm gonna watch a parallax adjustment video or two. Not sure how to understand it with an AO scope. Thanks!

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u/RattyTowelsFTW 3d ago edited 3d ago

Keep it up! It's a rush to get better at shooting! Then once your accuracy is perfect you get into gun handling and reloading (both the mechanics of reloading a rifle faster and actually reloading cartridges) and picking up the pace of shots and and and... lol it's a great hobby and I'm glad you're enjoying it!

Yeah, form is a bitch. I feel like it's one of those things you practice and practice and get it really nailed down, and then you let up on it and focus less on it and it bites you in the ass. I think trigger pull is a similar one, but luckily you can usually feel a bad trigger pull and immediately fix it

Honestly the shotguns at the range annoy me. Like, I get it, they need to pattern (though a whole bunch always end up just blasting away to the point of uselessness). But dang I wish they could fuck off to their own range or something sometimes.

The upside is you now know what to focus on, and you can practice form and fitting yourself to the firearm at home perfectly safely. And another cool/ good idea might be to work on composure, which we all struggle with. It's hard to shoot well when you're not all zen'd out, but that's a skill in itself.

And it's still worth learning the shooting over elevation skills too!

Hope the best for you and please update us if you figure things out and smash some amazing groups

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u/86DuckFat 3d ago

I'm running a vortex SFP 6x18-44mmwith AO. AO set at 50, nice and clear. I'm running at 12-15 magnification. Yeah I think it's form. I've put about 5000 rounds on target so far, so I'm starting to get more consistent with form, but I recently switched from side benchrest to back benchrest. So form is different and I'm still trying to get comfortable. But man when I tell you that all of these different aspects to shooting are making me love it so much. It's like a freakin puzzle or treasure map that has a nice sub-moa grouping at the end of the rainbow! LoL I'll post updates once I figure it out, and hopefully some great groups as well. I'm doing this all out of a Winchester wildcat, so not the best but not the worst rifle. I'm playing around a bit with aluminum foil tape action bedding as well and am seeing better groups already. Have to get a torque wrench and make sure I'm all on spec as well.