Mirage reading

[harv50]

I was just going over some of last years notes and trying to figure out what the h@ll my notes mean. I had the parallax set for the range I was shooting (1000yd) not mid range to see it best.
but with a left/right steady wind I could watch the 10 ring move mostly horizontal. It seemed to "clear up" best when it would "snap" back to the far left. So I would line up the vertical cross hair to catch the edge of the left snap and the let the shot off. I did the same thing trying to catch the right edge of the bounce (which never really cleared up like the left edge did).
Three 5 shot groups each.
Using the clearer left edge bounce gave a 5.30 agg and the right edge bounce gave a 8 +/- agg.
Group centers were, as expected, much different also ( 5" difference from bull).
As much as I try to understand mirage I'm still lost. Any advice??

 

[M14AMU]

PRAY!!

 

[BoydAllen]

Don't shoot 1000 but I believe the whole setting the scope to mid range applies only to a spotting scope. I shoot a PPC and we have mirage issues as well. particularly at 200 with 36x+ scopes. You have discussed where to hold. When to shoot is another matter. That would depend on flags, with some modification, using mirage as you last flag. I would not want to shoot based solely on mirage. If the mothball is bouncing up and to the left, I aim so that the top edge of my horizontal cross hair touches outside of the mothball at its lowest position and bisect the circle with my vertical cross hair. I shoot when the flags are right.

 

[Dusty Stevens]

Like boyd said if youre shooting at 1000 you need to focus your scope at 1000. And you cant go by the markings on your scopes focus knob cause theyre not right.

 

[Lapua40X]

http://southtexasshooting.org/multimedia/text/mirage.html
Also, take a look at Sherri Gallagher's video on this page:
http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/tag/mirage/

 

[harv50]

Like boyd said if youre shooting at 1000 you need to focus your scope at 1000. And you cant go by the markings on your scopes focus knob cause theyre not right.

Dusty maybe I wasn't clear in my post but I did have it focused for 1000 ,which is between 400 & infinity on my NF, most other scopes I have used had to be at infinity for 1000+.
Basically I was wondering if that "snap back" was showing a truer picture of the target?