Introduction to Field Target

19. Wind
Ballistics can do a pretty good job of predicting the trajectory of a pellet. Good guns
shoot at pretty much a consistent speed. Pellets can vary in weight but most are pretty
consistent. The scope height is not going to change. Thus, the major things that can affect
a pellet’s trajectory are “under control.”
One thing we cannot control is the wind. Ballistics programs can predict what will
happen to a pellet with a given wind. The usual first instinct is to get a wind speed meter
to measure the wind – unfortunately, the wind is not a constant in terms of velocity,
position, or direction. Meters really only work well when the wind is at a constant
velocity, the same along the entire pellet path, and from a constant direction.
Since we have to deal with this, let’s look at what clues are available. A tell-tale on your
gun (piece of yarn, for instance) will tell you what is happening at your gun to some
extent. I find the feel of the wind on my face and the sound are good clues. If I can feel a
breeze at all, I know there is about a 1 mph wind and I can judge whether it is from the
left or right.
Other clues are the leaves, grass, and other movable things affected by the wind. The
advantage of these is that they are located along the entire shooting path so that you can
get clues as to the wind at the target and in between. Another clue is to hold up the reset
string – if you sight along the string you can see if it is bowed to the left or right. It is
difficult to “calibrate” the string but at least you have a clue as to the average wind
direction along the entire pellet path.
Nothing works better than practicing shooting in windy conditions to learn what is going
to happen to a pellet. You will always have cases where you guess wrong, but the more
you shoot in varying conditions, the better your shooting will be. I force myself to shoot
in windy conditions when many would deem it too windy to shoot well. When you have
to hold-off a couple of inches at 50 yards to get a pellet in the kill zone, you will learn
how to shoot well in most conditions.
When it is windy, shoot more shots at 30 to 55 yards. There are some wind effects at 30
or fewer yards, but unless the wind is “strong”, the effects are going to be far more
noticeable at 50 yards than at 30.
When you “don’t have much of a clue” about the wind, one approach is to aim to the side
of the kill zone. If you are pretty sure the wind is from the left but not much else, you can
aim at the left edge of the kill zone and hope for the best.
You will tend to over-estimate the wind. The wind down at ground level where you are
shooting is far slower than what is happening up in the tree-tops. You may hear lots of
wind noise (and maybe the wind is 15 mph at tree-top level); down where you are
shooting, I would doubt that the wind is likely to be more than 5 mph! Only by doing lots
of shooting will you know what is really happening. Even then, some times it is really
just a guess as winds in a tunnel of brush and trees might be one direction where you are
sitting and the opposite direction at the other end where the target is located.
34