SmallCaliberCentral

I did some shooting today and my best load that was shooting dime sized five shot groups before wouldnt do any better than around an inch today, the wind was blowing pretty good around 20-25 mph from left to right, the 32 grain v-max must get blown around pretty easy . I still had fun though.

I was going to post something about this last week and didn't. I was shooting ground hogs last Saturday and here in NJ we had some pretty stiff wind. It was a day I could go out with the kids so we went anyway. I shot two, one at 190 yards and one at under 100, didn't range this one. Anyway, I was surprized at how well the bullet did bucking the wind. The wind was swirling in the fields and honestly I don't know how hard. I know I would not be out in a boat in winds like this. I had one miss, my fault, and two hits. I am shooting the Berger 35's at around 3675. I am switching to the Sierra BK 39's for no other reason than I want more "Red Mist". I hope they buck the wind as well.

I actually just picked up a box of 39 grain blitzkings this afternoon, along with a pound of RL 10x. After reading over the old posts on here I figure I would be dumb if i didnt try this bullet, powder combo. by the way i measured my groups today and one was .745 and all the others were in the .8s and .9s I quess thats not to bad for a windy day.

As you probably know, some of the ballistics calculators will let you put in wind assumptions, and it is interesting to see the calculated wind drift on different cartridges. For fun, compare the wind drift on the .204 with a ballistic coefficient of say, .275 and 39 grain bullet and muzzle velocity of 3900, with the .240 Weatherby, ballistic coefficient of say .400 and muzzle velocity of 3300 fps. The difference in wind drift in a 10 mph crosswind at 400 yards is significant.

A good one is on Hornady.com, under "ballistics calculator".

You will note if you experiment a bit, that the speed of the bullet, and the ballistic coefficient of the bullet, that are the most important factors to reduce wind drift.

We have a lot of wind here in southern Idaho in the spring, and that is the reason that for much of my longrange rockchuck shooting, I have gone to 240 Weatherby and 25-06. A 6.5 would be interesting as well, because the ballistic coefficient on some of the heavier match bullets is very high.