Shooting down hill

[Tower75]

Hello chaps and chapettes

Here's a question. Shooting down hill, I've never done it and I can't seem to get the "workings" of it sorted in my head.

So, lets say you have a rifle that is zeroed for 600 metres/yards/whatever, ok? On a level ground your rifle shoots PoI at 600.

Now, if your on top of a hill, and your target is 600 metres away but at the bottom of the hill, how do you adjust for that? I assume that if you're aiming at something down an incline then your bullet would fall short of the target at 600 yards, so would you need to aim higher, say, set your sights for 7, or 800?

Appreciate that it would depend on angle etc, but just a rough idea of it would be appreciated.

Regards
T

[Ovenpaa]

Drop your sights to shoot down hill, so at 600m horizontal metres but shooting down hill you would set your sights at say 570m, the exact distance is based on the angle. Now the interesting thing is shooting up hill where you also reduce the distance by the same amount for the angle.

Put in different words a bullet hits higher when shooting up or down hill than for a horizontal shot.

EDIT - some math to explain it http://www.loadammo.com/Topics/April04.htm

[Christel]

Yes, for both aim lower.

[spud]

allowing for using moa for your drops . you would take off a certain ammount for a 600 yard drop whether you are shooting up or down hill

the value you remove from your 600 drops depends as you say on angle od attack this is a cosine formula which i can elaborate on if you like

gets very technical from now on if you want me to go further

[kennyc]

my way, shoot , adjust ,shoot again


as demonstrated by Duff Eyed Doyle

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9Xyralu ... ature=plcp[/youtube]

[Cruinneas]

This topic comes up every now and then with newbies, and i've found this answer (given elsewhere) to be the simplest, and easieest to explain and understand.

When shooting up or down hill, true, gravity accelerates your round straight down. It is the horizontal distance that you must consider when shooting and not the up/down hill distance.

As for where to aim, that's another point entirely. Suppose you are shooting on a hill such as this, the classic 3, 4, 5 triangle studied in school.



For our case, suppose the triangle represents 300yards, 400yards, and 500 yards.

If you are at the top and your target at the bottom is 500 yards walking distance down the hill from you.

However, that's not the distance you want to setup in the reticle. You have to use your scope as if the target is 400yards away. Since the horizontal distance is always less whether shooting uphill or downhill, you always aim low.

[Tower75]

Thanks for the answer, people

This topic comes up every now and then with newbies

Charming...

[Ovenpaa]

I ended up spending 45 minutes reading about this and the math behind it can be quite complex, so better to use tables assuming you have some means of measuring the angle from FP to target.

[spud]

Thanks for the answer, people

This topic comes up every now and then with newbies

Charming...

actually he has only 3 posts so he is the noob

[Cruinneas]

Relax. :G

It was a simple comment with no disrespect intended.

I have been asked about it before by newcomers to shooting hence the post. More to the point was it (the post) useful or was my use of the word "newbie" distracting from the rest of the post?