Sighting in your Deer Rifle with Two Shots
by CatfishSteve - January 6, 2008
In this piece I'll demonstrate how to sight in your rifle to a hunting zero using only two shots. Many guys spend hours at the range, burning up boxes of ammunition, fiddling with scope knobs, measuring targets, squinting through spotting scopes, raising their blood pressure, turning the air blue and generally just spending a lot of time fooling with the gun just to kill a deer. Now, let me say, I'm not against rifle target practice, but sighting in is not target practice. You should be doing target practice for your deer hunting, not wasting so much time "sighting in." So, today, I'm going to demonstrate a method that you can use with any modern, scoped hunting rifle to go from unkown zero, to impacting three inches high at one hundred yards and thus establish a hunting zero, expending only two rounds of ammunition to get there. That's it. Follow these instruction to the letter and your rifle will be able to hit the vitals of a deer with no questions out to 300 yards, providing of course, that the person behind the trigger can otherwise make the shot. And this method will leave you with most of the box of ammo to practice doing just that, unlike all that click counting and cussing. To pull this off, you must have your scope properly mounted to the gun, it helps if the scope is properly centered and bore-sighted, but that is not completely necessary. The second thing you must know is which way the knobs on your scope move the hairs when you turn them. One knob moves the hairs up and down, the other moves them left and right. Lastly, you must also know what the ballistics are supposed to be for the load you are shooting in your rifle so you will know within a hair of Kentucky windage where your bullet is supposed to impact at 200 and 300 yards, since the only two shots I'm going to fire to "sight in" this weapon are at 25 yards, and then again at 100 yards. One shot at each distance. After that, I'm done, the rifle is sighted in for deer hunting. Time for serious practice then. Here's everything I drag out to the "range" to get this all done (besides the target).
- Rifle with gun vise
- Lead shot bags
- Ear muffs
- Ammo
 Today, I'm putting a scope back on my .50 caliber Ruger muzzeloading rifle. I had to take the scope off for the Nebraska muzzleloader season in 2007 and next week I'm hunting in Iowa where a 4x scope is legal. I go through this every year. This scope was previously sighted in with this weapon, but with different bullets than I'm using today. So, I've remounted the scope and headed out to the range, I know that the bullet impact will be different than what I've had before because putting the scope on and off and switching ammo will definitely throw the zero off. But in two shots, I'll be back dead on.
I begin by simply cinching the rifle down securely in the vise and putting on my earmuffs. To use this method you will have to be able to look through the scope and adjust the knobs without moving the rifle, hence, the heavy lead shot bags for extra stability. So, rifle strapped in the vise and as this is a muzzleloader that was recently completely cleaned, I've fired a punk load in it to foul the barrel just a little bit for shot consistency. Remember, this is a two-shot sight in deal for this hunting rifle, so we want both bullets to fly exactly the same.
The hunting load I'm shooting today in this rifle is 100 gr. of 777 powder pushing a Dead Center 240 gr. saboted .40 caliber bullet. (The bullet ballistics and trajectory of this weapon with this load is very similar to a Win .30-30 150 gr factory load.) The scope is a 4x scope, so we're not trying to shoot the eyes out of fleas or anything here. The target is a black bullseye 8 inches across with a 2 inch orange center. Just trying to hit a deer in the chest at hunting distances, not trying to win medals.
This two shot method will work with any modern hunting weapon of any caliber. It's designed to get you impacting 3-4 inches high at 100 yds. If you look at ballistics tables for any modern hunting weapon of up to .30 caliber just-about-anything, the 3-4 inches high bullet impact at 100 yards is pretty much a standard jumping off point for your holdovers out to 200, 300 and 400 yards. We will not be sighting in at those distances. You will need to look up your gun on a ballistics table so you can practice at those distance. If you show up to the range and practice after sighting your rifle in with this method and reading the tables, your shots will show up right where they are supposed to. Plenty close enough for deer hunting, anyway.
I start by putting the target just 25 yards downrange, return to the weapon, load it, sight dead-center on the bull and carefully fire one shot.. This is where it hit:
At 25 yds I've hit about 1 inch to the left of dead center. At 100 yds, this weapon could be off 4-6 inches to the left. Not good. Your results may vary and will likely be further off. But, the idea behind the method is sound as long as you hit paper at 25 yards.
Now, here's the only tricky part to this whole deal of getting you back to dead zero. You must now, without reloading, re-aim the rifle precisely at the bulls-eye you just fired at and adjust the crosshairs while looking through the scope WITHOUT moving the rifle. It helps to be able to see the bullet hole in the scope. Sometimes I get those big colored sticky-dots old ladies use to put the prices on the junk at yard sales and put them on my bullet holes so I can see them better. But, it's a nice bright day and the muzzleloader is blowing big holes in the paper that I can see at 25 yards in the 4x scope.
Fortunately, I've hit pretty close and won't have that much knob turning to deal with. You could actually come this close on your first shot with a properly bore-sighted weapon. I knew I'd be close in this situation. (What? You think I'm some kind of idiot? Coming out here to show you how to sight in a rifle and not know where the bullet is going from the get go? Get real!! ...it's 15 degrees out and the wind is gusting to about 25 mph out here today. Anyway...)
So, look through the rifle, which is secured in the gun vise, and line up the hairs on the bullseye again. Now you can see why you need to know which way the knobs on the scope make the hairs go, because you are going to move the knobs and watch the hairs move until they line up with the bullet hole you've just put in the paper. The crosshairs are now pointed at the bullseye, just like before and the barrel is pointed over somewhere else to the left at the bullet hole. We want to make it so the crosshairs and the barrel are dead center on that bullet hole. That's sighted in. I'm not counting clicks, but that's sighted in.
One of the knobs on your scope moves the vertical hair left and right and the other knob moves the horizontal hair up and down.
You must move each of the two crosshairs in turn by turning the correct knob on the scope until that crosshair is lined up with the bullet hole in the target without allowing the gun to move at all! If the gun moves while you are doing this, it will not work. Sounds simple and works perfectly, but this is easier said than done.
So, I turn the correct knob on my scope without moving the rifle itself and now you can see I've lined up my vertical crosshair with the bullet hole in the target. (It's a little hard to see in the picture through a 4x scope.) I didn't count clicks, I don't care how many clicks. I only want to know what I see. The clicks in even a decent rifle scope are only right about half the time anyway, so don't count them. Just turn the knob until you see the crosshair lines up with the bullet hole in the target as you are looking at it. Repeat this process with the horizontal hair as well, without moving the gun until that hair is also lined up with the bullet hole in the target as you look at the target through the scope. The crosshairs, moved properly will now be centered on the bullet hole from your first shot as you look at the target through the scope.
Now your scope and your rifle barrel are looking right at the same bullet hole and since good rifles and shooters put every shot in the same hole, (I've been on the internet way long enough to know that this is always the case with all of you!) you are now dead sighted in at 25 yds and your next shot will go right from the barrel to exactly where it did last time, except now, the scope is looking in precisely the same spot too, because you've moved the hairs over there, whereas it was looking somewhere else the first time you fired.
 The picture to the left shows I've done that and adjusted the horizontal hair until it's sitting about 0.5 inch low of the bullet hole as I looked through the scope. Again, I've not counted clicks. I've just lined up the hairs dead on to the bullet hole at 25 yards. That's all there is to it, as long as you don't move the rifle while you are turning the scope knobs and moving the crosshairs.
Again, if you read the ballistics charts, or have a good deal of experience, you'll know that .5 inches high at 25 yards pretty much sets you up for a 3-4 inch high impact at 100 yards. Which, with most modern calibers will put you about dead on at 200 yards and something 8-12 inches low at 300 yards. Again, not winning any shooting medals, just trying to hit a basket ball sized spot on the deer that's going into your freezer. This particular muzzle loader and load will be dead on at 150 yards with the scope adjusted on this 1st bullet hole like this. After all, this is a .50 caliber weapon and a 240 gr. bullet and isn't going to shoot as flat as a modern hunting rifle.
So, now, I'll move my target out to 100 yards, line the crosshairs up on the bullseye again (remember, this is a 4x scope, we're not target shooting for score here). Wait for a lull in the wind and fire the rifle again. If I've done things right, I'll get a bullet hole in the 100 yard target 3-4 inches high of dead center on the target.
Here's what the paper target looks like downrange from where I'm shooting from. 100 yds is a long way!
And so I lay back down in the snow one last time, line it up and BOOM!!
The second bullet, as you can see, has hit 3 inches high and a hair to the left. For me, I'm not even going to adjust the weapon anymore. The wind was blowing right to left the whole time I was out shooting and remember, this is 100 yards with a 4 power scope. Your heartbeat alone as you hold the weapon could move the bullet this far to the left at 100 yards. This is dead on for deer hunting with this muzzleloading weapon as far as I'm concerned. I'm done as far as sighting in goes. At this point, if you really want to play with the knobs on your fancy scope and count a couple clicks to fine tune things a bit, I'll not hold it against you. But I think, at this point, you are sighted in. Two shots, done. A deer's chest is as big as a dinner plate. With this weapon you are looking at dead deer out to 200 yds or better if I practice at it. Everyone wants to sit at a bench and count clicks and waste ammo and make-believe this is practicing killing deer. The heck with that. I want to practice killing deer with my rifle, not re-enacting all the Camp Perry matches for the past 5 years.
Two shots,15 minutes and I can get on to something more productive. Like shooting life-sized cardboard deer cut-outs from various shooting positions out to about 250 yards and practicing reloading fast! Much more fun than shooting targets with a rifle in the vise anyway and much more the type of shooting one needs for practice for deer hunting.
The next weekend, over in Iowa, this was the result. One deer standing broadside at about 225 big steps away. No wind at all. From a shooting standpoint, it was a done deal. I took a deep breath and laid the crosshairs atop her back and squeezed because that's what my target practice told me to do. I didn't even have to think about it because I'd seen it a couple dozen times in my scope the week before. I knew she was as good as dead before I even laid down in the snow to line up on her.
 Practicing with your weapon builds confidence. "Sighting-in" usually only builds frustration. I found the bullet hole in this deer right where I expected to find it, 6 inches or so down from the top of her back and about dead center in the ribs, right where they were hitting in my target practice cardboard deer at that distance or thereabouts. I was able to shoot actual practice because I only wasted the time for two shots and two bullets (at $1.50 a piece, plus powder and caps, thank you very much) with sighting in and instead used the time and ammo to do the kind of target practice that actually puts venison on the table. So, try this the next time you have better things to do than sighting in you favorite deer rifle.
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