Sight in without using up all your ammo

I’m at the Outdoor Writers Association of America conference until the middle of the week, so I’m running some of the shows that earned awards at the conference. Today’s show got first place in the Gear and Technical Writing category.

One of my young friends did his 4-H presentation on how to sight in a scoped rifle the other night. He did a good job explaining how the windage and elevation adjustments on his scope move the crosshairs a quarter inch per click at a hundred yards. He also did great telling us how he made those adjustments, took another shot, made more adjustments, and repeated the process several times. He showed his final target, which had a clean little hole dead-center in the bullseye, and I was pretty impressed with his determination.

But after the meeting, I told him how I sight in my rifles now. I learned the one-shot sighting in method from a guy I know who hunts large African game with a .458, and he really isn’t interested in shooting it more times than is completely necessary. I admit I thought he was pulling my leg, but then the guy who owns one of my favorite gun shops told me he uses the same method for sighting in.

I don’t shoot anything anywhere near a .458, but with ammo as hard to get as it’s been lately, I thought the one-shot sight-in sounded like a good idea.

To do it right, you need either a pretty good gun vise or a bunch of sand bags. Lock the rifle into the vise or prop it in the sandbags so it absolutely cannot move. Fire it at your target without moving the gun, then all you have to do is adjust the scope so the crosshairs fall directly on the hole you just punched in the paper.

That’s all there is to it, as long as you don’t move the rifle even a little bit between the time you fire it and when you’re done adjusting the scope. If you want to check to see if it’s on target, just move the vise or the sandbags so you’re aiming at the bull, and fire another round.

If you did it right, you should knock the center right out of the bull.

Then you can use the rest of your ammo to just have some fun shooting.