mirage
Mirage - does it really matter in 3 Gun? This weekend at the 5th Saturday match, I spoke with Nick Sprague our Florida Multigun PRS/Gong Match expert about mirage and the impact that it has on long range shooting. In our 5th Saturday match we sometimes put targets way out to 600+ yards and get to engage them with our bolt guns and ARs.
Nick made a solid first round hit at 625 yards at around 1:30 in the afternoon on a balmy 90+ deg. day. I was sitting behind my binos spotting for him and I could see something shimmering out across the range so we spoke about what he looks for when shooting in a mirage.
Mirage isn’t just the fancy hotel casino in Las Vegas but rather an optical illusion that tricks us to see in this case a target where it isn’t. Most of know mirage from driving down the road on a hot summers day and watching the shimmer come off the pavement in front of us. At 60 miles an hour it doesn’t mean that much to us but on a shooting range mirage can be both helpful and hurtful.
Mirage makes the image of the target “move” or “dance”. I’ve seen the 600 yard target at Manatee shift over time while watching it through my scope on a hot day. Now the target isn’t actually moving but the image is as the light refracts back to us. Most of the time the image isn’t so distorted that we can’t hit it on our large 3 Gun targets but I have seen certain cases where it caused some misses as the image was shifting high and everyone in our squad missed at least one target high. They were shooting where the image was not where it started.
So how do we find mirage? Start by looking through a good piece of glass. The best way is a rifle scope or spotting scope that you can focus for different yardages. I like to focus half way between the target and myself and watch the wavy lines as they move. Nick says at his PRS and gong matches at Manatee he uses his rifle scope to find the mirage as they spend much more time in the prone position looking through their scope in their string of fire. He watches the boils and wiggles to determine which way the mirage is moving.
So now that we can see the mirage how to we use it? Well, Nick uses that mirage to help with wind calls. At our range on the 600 yard range, it can be difficult to see the wind without flags but the mirage is pretty constant here in Florida so if you can see the mirage you can read the wind. With practice and good stable glass you can see which way it’s “running” to at least get a guess on the wind call direction and possibly a wind value all by focusing on the mirage.
I asked Nick about the worst mirage he remembers at a 3 Gun match and it was at a now defunct 3 Gun Nation match 4+ years ago in Georgia. I remember shooting that match with him and sitting out in a field and really not even being able to see the targets let alone hit them as the mirage was so bad. Because we were in an open field we had no reference to where our impacts were landing. Luckily most of the time our range you can see the dirt or other indicators splash when we shoot. Nick’s most important reminder is that when you see that splash “Move your aim and adjust!” Adjusting from your miss for your next shot and you will make a lot more 2nd round impacts at distance no matter what the mirage is doing.
https://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2017/02/mirage-is-your-friend-great-article-on-reading-mirage/
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