Sighting In

SIGHTING IN

Each Fall as I head up into the hills, I’m amazed at the number of target I see set up in the branches of trees. Not even on the trunks, but in the branches of trees backed by some fine hunting grounds. Yes I’ve prowled the game trails behind many of these spots finding some nice rubs.

I would strongly encourage those sighting in rifles to find a better spot with a nice soft dirt bank behind the targets. I can understand wanting to be accurate, but not and the risk of injuring some innocent hunter or hiker in the area.

With ever increasing costs of everything including ammunition I’ve come up with my own method of sighting in which costs nothing but a few minutes. How effective is it? Well I like to say that my last six shots from my 30-06 have taken six deer. That is true as far as it goes, but unfortunately two of those were collisions with deer on my way to work in Oliver.

Bore sighting works very well with scoped rifles, there are even laser tipped shells that a person can use, centring the cross hairs on the red dot, usually about 25 metres. These will come with directions.
Personally I’ve had excellent results by removing the bolt and sighting down the bore holding the rifle solidly and then looking through the scope. I use a near target to set the horizontal cross hair and a distant target to set the vertical cross hair. This works well enough that I now use either a neck or head shot. This drops the animal immediately and insures a high recovery rate.

I was taught that shot placement should be just behind the front shoulder in the heart and lung area. Experience has show though that a fatal shot in this area can still allow the animal to travel hundreds of metres, which is rough thick country with lots of deer sign can result in one lost buck. Luck better than tracking skills has saved me several nice bucks.

Unfortunately the one that bothers me is the huge one up in Barslow Canyon. The well placed shot at about 20 metres was sure to bring the animal down. It took off though the thick bush and giving it about half and hour to seize up. (Again I was taught to wait a while because spooking it too soon after it lay down would cause it to go much further.) I picked up the trail of huge spots of blood in the snow.

With two hours of light left I was fairly confident, however the tracks continued down to below the snow level and then the blood trail petered out to one tiny drop every 15 metres or so. Hard to keep on the right track in the heavily populated area. Just before dark I did come across it, but it bolted away again. Very surprising as I pick up a piece of rib on the tail about the size of my finger.

The next morning I returned with to hunting partners and a dog. We did not have any luck in recovering the animal. This and two other time where I nearly lost an animal caused me to rethink my shot placement. I’m happy to say I’ve have great results since that time.

Good hunting and I wish you freezers full of venison.