I attended the IBS National shooting matches last week. The first 2 days we shot the railgun class. I decided to shoot my regular rifle to get in a little practice. I shot fair the first day at 100 yards. On Tuesday we shot the same class at 200 yds. I started to adjust my scope up a little for 200 yds. I use a Leupold 45X that has the turrets removed and the internals frozen to eliminate POA shifts. I use an external scope adjusting setup. I loosened the locking screw and looked down range. The mirage was bad already. I decided not to adjust the scope and aim at the aiming square and see where the bullets impacted. You can always see the aiming square, but not always the target rings. The first 2 went into the middle of the bullseye. I decided to leave well enough alone. The first group was good and they got real nasty after that. I finished early on the 5th group and it was huge. I tried different bullets, powder, and and charge weights. Of course I had forgotten to tighten the lock on my scope and being a dumb ass I kept shooting without finding the problem until after that last target. I swung my rifle around looking at the other peoples targets. Then I decided to shoot on the bottom of my target to see where I was at with my scope locked. I put 5 down real quick in a good group. I was happy with myself until I looked over at Jim. He had this shit eating grin on his face. Jim said" Butch, if you have anymore rounds loaded you might as well shoot them on my target like the others you put on it". I looked back through my scope and sure enough I shot on his target instead of mine. Needless to say I was a little embarressed. Jim was a pleasure to shoot with over the week and he is a writer that can damn sure shoot.
Butch

I've never met Jim Carmichael but have read all of his books, I remember one of his chapters on accuracy starts out with a little poem. "Eye of toad and wing of bat, let the bullet land where the crosshairs are at".

He is a pretty fair at stock making and checkering and is a very knowledgable gun writer. I really enjoyed reading about his lion hunting in Africa when he was young and "invincible".

JC 's "Book of the Rifle" is a tour de force, even if a bit outdated these days. Great book!
- mike

Butch- Bad habit to get into---crossfiring.

If you think crossfiring is easy at 200 yards benchrest, you ought to try 1,000 yards prone! There are those that have and those that will....and those that will again! Young friend of mine shot in a match a couple of years ago beside Norm Crawford (past National LR Champion) and crossfired on Norm's target 4 or 5 times in a 20 shot match. Norm, in true champion's fashion, never said a thing, but my young friend was so embarassed that he never came back. Sad. Like Carmichael and Crawford, good shooters just plod on regardless.