The All Important... Bread Crumb Trail!

By Darrell HollanD

In our formative years while perched atop our parents or grandparents lap, we listened to the story of Hansel and Gretel and how they attempted to find their way home via the bread crumb trail. We’ve all used a similar method to find our way back to camp or where we parked in that mega parking lot late at night.

Finding the car or our way back to camp can take minutes to hours and unless complicated by failing light or wild animals the adventure can be rather uneventful. Time being the only boring factor to contend with.

There is however another bread crumb trail, one that is not told in Fairy Tales and is often kept secret from our peers. It however can be as important, if not more so, than finding our car or our way back to camp. It all depends on how we are hard wired and how serious we take our sport. The long range shooter who has never experienced a full rotational error, either hasn’t shot much, or is telling a “big windy”.

When this calamity strikes, shooter’s go through all sorts of contortions to correct this grievous error. Usually a trip to the range or an impromptu 100 yard target is set up and half a box of shells later, the rifle’s zero is confirmed. A sigh of relief is uttered usually accented with a few adult adjectives and a vow to never miss-dial again. We’ve all been there if we are honest with ourselves.

I know a few of you have pushed your chair away from the monitor and shouted “Not Me”!!!! Why, I count those little hash marks on the turret and “Never “ lose my way. While good in theory, it doesn’t seem to work 100 % of the time! Your viewing angle of the turret, the thread pitch and or number of minutes of angle per revolution can distort our view.

Let’s listen in on a familiar conversation:

Virgil, she looks sorta like three and a half hash marks to me, are you sure it its 4 tick marks? Well now, wait just a minute, if I scrunch my head down real close to the stock I can get four hash marks, but I gotta really bury my face down hard on the comb?

Sound familiar??? You be it does, I’ve heard about every version of the above scenario while teaching students at our long range shooting school. Yeah but those are newbies, anybody worth his salt can tell three and a half hash marks from four.

Okay, would you be willing to shoot an egg off your child’s head at 100 yards after I twisted and turned your windage and elevation knobs multiple revolutions? Didn’t think so!!!!

Here however is a method that is fool proof and in William Tell fashion, provides you with the confidence to make the shot each and every time, allowing your gene pool to continue.

Once the rifle is “ZEROED” and the windage/elevation knobs slipped to “0”, simply turn both dials “clockwise” counting the revolutions and minutes until they bottom out. Using a label marker or metal marking pen, write that number on the top of the knob. See accompanying photo. Do the same with the windage knob.

Using the above method you will NEVER encounter a full revolution error. Anytime you are in doubt, simply turn the dial “clockwise” until it stops and reverse the revolutions/minutes to your initial zero.

This bread crumb trail is easy to remember and fool proof, even at night. Simply remember the total number of minutes and multiply by four if you are using .250 clicks. Feel the click and start counting….

By applying an adhesive sticker or using a metal marking pen (I prefer yellow or white) to our wind-age elevation knob, as shown in the photo, we can always find our way home. The elevation knob requires 3 revolutions and 2 minutes of angle to find my initial zero. The windage knob requires 2 revolutions and 8 minutes to zero. This simple method allows the shooter to find his or her way home should they get lost in a sea of dialing.

Home alone and lonely? Grab the rifle ( a man’s second best friend) turn out the lights, bottom things out and count those clicks., When you’ve reached the “magic number” turn on the lights and check your progress?

Gain confidence and say good-bye to being lost at the dials!

Until next time, remember:

KNOWlEDGE IS POWER!

Most respectfully.Darrell Holland

Holland’s Shooters Supply