Not a Long-gunner

I've always said that between Tara and I, we make a really good all-around shooter; she's a natural with her rifle and works hard with her handgun, I'm exactly the opposite.

Pistol shooting pretty much comes easy to me.  That's not to say that I'm an incredible shot or that I can shoot a match-head off at 50 yards (I can't), but pistols are just more comfortable for me.  I understand and handle them easily.

Rifles, on the other hand, take a lot more work for me. I'm okay with rifles, but feel like I don't know enough about them to be very comfortable.  Maybe I should clarify, scoped rifles. Give me open sights and I can hold my own out to 100 yds. I did fairly well in the two 1,000 yd matches I shot (192/200 and 188/200) with borrowed rifles, but I kind of feel like I was cheating.  I was using someone else's gun each time that had already been zeroed in - all I had to do was take into account the wind and press the trigger, maybe make a small altitude adjustment.

This sounds silly, but I'm comfortable shooting at 1,000 yds with their rifles, but I'm not at all comfortable shooting at any closer distances.  Why?  Because I've really only ever shot long distances and I don't know how to make the adjustment to shorter ones.

My husband and I have two Remington 700s, one in .223 and one in .308 and we rarely shoot them.  Now, I know the .308 will go out 1,000 yds (with the right glass, which I cannot afford right now), but we're not looking for long-range type stuff.  We want to be able to hunt with them and I really have no idea how to get them zeroed in.  I know there's a bunch of formulas out there for how to zero for different distances and stuff.  The problem is that my eyes cross and my mind goes blank whenever anyone tries to explain it to me. 

And then you have to factor in the glass, which is a whole other learning curve.  So many different types of scopes and reticles.  MOA, WTH?  It gives me a headache to try and figure it out.

I know to zero Tara's long-range gun in, we zero at 76 meters and we'll be on at 1,000 yards.  I understand the flight path of the bullet and "get" that part.  But to figure out how to do my own rifles for much closer distances?  Not a clue.

Luckily, I have an old shooting buddy, Z,  who can do this stuff in his sleep and has agreed to go out with us tonight and bring his lead sled. I figure I'm not very good at this zeroing in business so if I can take the human error out of it by using the lead sled, we'll be a step ahead.  Plus, Z is a damn genius with this stuff, so maybe I'll learn something.

But, probably what's going to happen is that my eyes are going to cross and my mind is going to go blank. Hopefully it will make sense to hubby.

Wish us luck.  Maybe, some day, in a million years or so I will be able to talk intelligently about shooting with a scope at different ranges.