Judging RANGE

[dipper]

Just got round to reading April/ may Field sports.Shows a picture of a pheasant going over the guns.they were asking people how far it was .most put the range at 61 -70 yards it was 43 Yards it shows that most people have not got a clue.The bird in the picture is well in range of a light load in a game gun.A lot of guns seeing this bird will reach for heavy loads in a tight choked gun.Dipper.

[wymberley]

Just got round to reading April/ may Field sports.Shows a picture of a pheasant going over the guns.they were asking people how far it was .most put the range at 61 -70 yards it was 43 Yards it shows that most people have not got a clue.The bird in the picture is well in range of a light load in a game gun.A lot of guns seeing this bird will reach for heavy loads in a tight choked gun.Dipper.

Eley Diary comes in useful here. Pity no one has ever done it for the wood pigeon.

[bornfree]

that just show how high those 80 and 90 yard birds are.

[oldypigeonpopper]

hello, buy a range finder that has elevation as well as height

[neutron619]

Just got round to reading April/ may Field sports.Shows a picture of a pheasant going over the guns.they were asking people how far it was .most put the range at 61 -70 yards it was 43 Yards it shows that most people have not got a clue.The bird in the picture is well in range of a light load in a game gun.A lot of guns seeing this bird will reach for heavy loads in a tight choked gun.Dipper.

 

Didn't see the picture, but remember that most camera lenses have a field of view other than that which the human eye has. Although the photograph will look "normal", changing the FOV can have the effect of distorting the image and therefore distance perception. I believe it works that a wider field of view will make the bird look smaller and therefore further away.

 

People under a 40 yard bird may be much better at knowing that it's 40 yards up than the same people looking at an image of a 40-yard bird taken from the ground.

 

Just for the flip side - I've shot about 100 patterns with a .410 over the last 6 months or so, many of them at 40 yards, so I now have a good idea of the (horizontal) distance. I guess you could put it this way: when i started shooting, I thought 40 yards was a lot further away than it actually is.

Edited June 13, 2017 by neutron619

[dipper]

A bit of a yardstick a over head pigeon at 40 yards its wings will be as wide as your rib with 28 inch barrels. Might give you a general idea. Dipper.

[Walker570]

Similarly I have done a fair bit of pattern and penetration testing on 410s, consequently actually measured the 30, 35 and 40 distances to the back board. The poplar trees in my wood average 75ft to the top(measured when felled)at the moment ...25yrds, if a bird was just skimming the tops of these many shooters would class them as high birds, put them 15yrds higher and they would appear awesome and as good a bird as most of us ever shoot at. Judging distance of an object above in the sky is far more difficult than at ground level. The eyes automatically take in all the reference points out to the object, where there are no reference points in an open sky.

[Guest stevo]

basic rule of thumb , if you have to work out how far it is , and if your cartridge will have enough to drop it at that range . then you shouldn't be raising your gun to it .

[WelshMike]

Rifle shooting is so much easier....if it will take you more then 30 seconds to go and recover it its to far.

[Wingman]

I downloaded an Android app call "auto distance" from a company call potato tree software from the android store. Its free and for a rough guide to distance works very well. I tested it on a known object in my road and it was pretty close about 20 cms out. Works good in the hide for a rough guide to distance.