Reeder Custom Guns - Interesting article on shooting up or downhill

I think it was online at Shooting Times. Personally I never thought much of it as in our area that is typically short distance. But for the concept it is good to understand the ballistic considerations.

Basically, my simplified take is the bullet drops LESS both shooting up and down hill. The basic idea is the trajectory is the distance and drop is based on the horizontal plane, distance from point A to B. Not the actual over distance ground distance. Now shooting a 6.5mm Lighting-bolt the difference between a true horizontal distance of 225 yds. compared to an over ground distance of 300 yds., at a particular grade, is not truly a notable difference, maybe an inch or two. But for a .45-70 Sharps it would be monumental! Ditto for some handgun hunting applications. Even cutting the distance in half it could make a difference to consider.

As close range hunters it's not likely we'd use the info much but it's good to have the understanding. I did shoot downhill at HHC once pegging a hog (the wrong one, but that's another story) at 80 yds. with a .429 GNR wheelgun. The 310 gr. bullet at 1600 fps was sighted at 50 yds. and the angle was not all that steep. I was maybe 20 ft. above the animals at that distance, I'd need a spreadsheet to figure the actual angle. But the bullet hit close enough to my mark to get it done. Actually it was the 4th bullet! I was busy blowing bark into my face from cylinder flash.

But remember, a bullet will not drop as much shooting at either up or down hill. The steepness of the angle aggravates the influence. You may hit higher than you expect.

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"Nearing the
Singleton farm, the Union forces topped the gentle rise and saw ... a line of two hundred dismounted guerrillas standing silently to their horses....Major Johnson was a brave officer.... he calmly dismounted his company.....and formed a twenty-yard line of battle. The guerrillas were astounded. ....John Kroger...said..."the fools are going to fight us on foot." and then added, "God help'em." ....led by a screaming Bill Anderson they charged up the hill at the Union infantry. Johnson's men fired one volley with their single-shot Enfield muskets. That volley, downhill, was high, and only three of the partisans were hit....In the next minute the guerrillas, their terrible revolvers popping, had ridden into the terrified Union infantry, through it, and had scattered their horses. Frank James stated that some of the soldiers were desperately....attempting to reload. In a
few moments, most were dead...The guerrillas roared back into Centralia and rode over Theis'smen....in a little more than an hour the Thirty-Ninth Missouri Infantry had lost 114 men and two officers killed, two men wounded and six men missing."

From "Grey Ghosts of the Confederacy", page 219-220

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means shoot a bit lower than you normally wood. I was told this by Lee Jurras years ago after whining about a missed shot. I went by that advice after that and don't remember missing an uphill or downhill shot since then.

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- No text -

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due to shooting birds out of trees. That bird could be up 60 feet or more in the tree, but if you were almost underneath it then you had to hold like you were shooting at almost arm's length. In other words, the bullet would strike WAY low due to the pellet not having raised to the line of sight. So we had to learn to adjust our hold depending on the angle at which we were shooting and the distance to the target. If we got a more horizontal shot then we'd have to hold differently, of course. I never did pace off the distance at which I'd sighted the old pellet rifle, just learned to estimate "about there" and could do a head shot on a dove as far as I could make it out through the leaves. It's been a while since I limited myself to shooting just one gun, and it shows. I can't just "up and pop 'em" without some cogitation anymore. Those were the days.

--
I'm a peaceful man and prefer the pursuit of peaceful sports. Those involving teams and balls of any sort tend to be deleterious to one's body and promote violence by both spectators and participants.

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I had been feeding the cattle and pulling out of the pasture I happened to look down in this little valley at a stock pond and saw a big old snapping turtle sunning himself in plain sight. I stopped the truck, grabbed my Marlin 32-20 and leaned on the left side of the bed of the pickup, sighting across the bed and down into the pond. I had a clear sight picture and pulled the trigger and the truck went "WAANNNG"! I looked and sure enough, I had shot a nice 30 caliber hole in the right side of the bed. Just about exactly the distance from the top of the front sight to the center of the bore.

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I've managed to avoid that scenario. SO FAR. It really is important to remember where the barrel is in relation to line of sight. Someone else posted about blowing out a windshield by firing a high powered rifle with a brake on it over the hood. That's another experience I'd rather read about than experience first hand!

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resting on the hood of his truck. He told me to go load a cartridge for him so I dumped 18 gr. of 2400 in the .45-70 case and seated a 260 gr. bullet. When he touched it off it scorched all the paint off the hood in front of the rifle. (short barrel - 20") Seems he meant for me to seat the bullet but had neglected to tell me he already had 18 gr. of 2400 in the case. And I didn't look!

Interesting article on shooting up or downhill

Testimony From the War Between the States

Your best bet is to simply shoot for the heart which

I like that.... no numbers or calculations involved

Grew up understanding the principle...

I was reminded of that one day ...

SO FAR...

My Dad was shooting a Rolling Block

I had to buy my Cousin a new Chronograph.

It’s quite obvious in traditional archer