Hold wind, never dial it.

Hold elevation, or dial elevation. Each situation dictates one or the other.

90% of the time I will hold wind. There are some situations where I dial the wind in. If I am shooting a mover past 300 yards, I will dial the wind to neutralize the wind and try to have the same lead going from right to left. If you shoot a mover and do not dial wind, you have to add your wind to your lead in one direction, and subtract your wind from your lead going the other way.

If I'm engaging targets at ELR, I will dial the wind so that I don't have to hold too far from center cross hair.

If the wind is steady or not varying much I'll dial it on a positional stage or on kyl/tyl to hold closer to center of the reticle.

I'm just now really delving into shooting longer, this is what I plan on doing going forward. It's been more than acceptable for my standard up until now.

I’ll also point out what some new to long distance shooting may be unaware of and that is Spin Drift.

I know FiremanJG taught me about it when I was at his range class (highly recommended!) but I had forgotten all about it. Was shooting at a target at 756 yards and all my shots were landing 0.6mils right when there was zero wind. It was that AHA! moment after the third shot stacked up with the other two shots, when I recalled that I had not taken spin drift into my calculations.

I want to shoot on a non windy day at various yardages to mark my Spin Drift at each distance. If I recall correctly, it didn’t show up until I was shooting at the 500 yard target.

Just something to think about for those new to long range shooting. It is something to bring into your calculations with your wind as well!

There is absolutely no way there is .6 mils of spin drift at 750 yards. I ran the numbers, and on a standard round it's 2.6 inches, which is much less than .1 of a mil. Depending on a few factors, I don't account for it until you are out past 1000 yards. Yes, it's there, but it's about 4" at 1K, and I may hold a touch left, but that's it.

Some rifles/bullets do it at not terribly long range, some never do it.

My 7mm-08 starts spin drifting at 600 yards. With a right to left wind, the spin can cancel the wind hold. With a left to right wind, it will make the wind hold larger than what it would be with a different rifle/bullet. It takes a really calm day to learn it. Boiling mirage and not a leaf moving.

Usually hotter than the hubs of hell when there's no wind like that.

Perhaps there was wind I was unaware of....and perhaps I have not learned what my rifle really does with spin drift at particular distances and how much it is in play. My point was more to share something that may need to be considered as distances get further out.


Jason - what kind of spin drift do you see on your 7mm-08 at 600 yards?

Y’all clearly know more about the subject and applications than I do. 👍

.2 Mil at 600 yards

.3 Mil at 800 yards.

Saw a 6.5 Grendel spin drift .3 Mil at 600 to 800 yards. It was shooting SSTs. Go to a more slippery A-Max and it wouldn't do it. Cannalure can (and probably will) cause spin drift, saw it happen.