Canted Rifle
How many of us jumped on the struggle bus at this month's Florida Multigun Match on Area 51 with the canted rifle?
At the December Florida Multigun Match, the stage @ Area 51 required us to shoot through at least one slanted port to finish the course of fire. On the 2nd V-Tac, I chose ports 1 and 4 to shoot through requiring two different adjustments to my aim point. Luckily we were only shooting to 125 yards but the concept is the same from 0 to infinity once you start canting a rifle (or any gun).
If we break it down to why we need to change our aiming points there are a few points. First, we zero our rifle with the rifle vertical and based on how we mount rifle scopes we have our scope off-set of the bore in one direction. The moment we tilt the gun that relationship changes mechanically. We automatically lose our elevation so we have to aim high to adjust for bullet drop. Then we have to account for mechanical offset from the scope on the vertical axis as we tilt the rifle.
To adjust our aim my trick is to aim
higher on the target and hold towards the direction of the way the ejection port is pointed. Ejection port (right or up - right, left or down - left). I also never hold off the target on my first few rounds but if I don’t get an impact I will then favor higher and further the direction of the port. Then if no hits, put the reticle right in the middle of the target and squeeze a round or two off. I never want to not hit the target without holding dead on at least one round. The chart below will help us visualize where you should be aiming.
So, if we use the handy chart above we should hold to the direction of the ejection port. A lot of shooters use the ejection port as their reference. I tend to think more about which way the magazine is pointing and hold to that side but it’s only because we usually only have to turn rifles not the other guns in 3-Gun. I think using the magazine is more intuitive for me but feel free to use which ever way makes you more confident on the gun.
On Area 51 this weekend, the hold over and offset wasn’t that much as it wasn’t that far (distance) or small of targets, but it was enough to miss if you weren’t favoring the correct side of the target. Also, if you weren’t careful you could have been resting your barrel* on the barricade or not getting squared up in the scope for a center hold.
I’m sure we will do this again so print out of copy of this diagram and keep it in your 3-Gun rifle dope book or in your shooting bag.
Shine
*On ports or any other barricade we want to make sure that our barrel isn’t resting on any part of the barricade. We only want our hand guard touching the port. Sometimes barricades are tight and since we tend to hang a bunch of stuff off our rifles we should make sure when we set up rifles that you leave a little gap up front to at least be able to get the front of the rifle in to the port to lock it in. We can see in the barricade picture above that only the hand guard is touching the port. This is an issue we see a lot with newer shooters and it’s simple to fix to help you make those long distance rifle hits.
