And that is exactly why the question was posted. Shooting at distance is not as simple as cranking in elevation clicks, holding steady and showing good follow through. When given a known acurate rifle lots of folks believe that these skills are all that are needed to compete or kill successfully at relatively long ranges. Now take that coyote standing out there at bragging distance. Say beyond 300 yards. Are you sure that you want to take that shot without the controlled field experience you gain from the relatively controled experience of shooting from the bench?
Now as to the controls that Michael L. refers to. Special attention was taken with the loaded cases, they were kept cool and even down right cold to the touch (not too cold) until the match so the cases/powder/bullets were of very constant temperatures through the entire shoot. Scratch the varying pressure due to changing heat as it relates to powder theory. The rifle was not kept cool but it was kept out of the sun and felt cool to the touch (Saturday was not a hot day, at least relative to what we can easily find in Arizona) before each string. Thats why this thread started with several rifle/equipement disclaimers. The scope repeatability question is troublesome. The scope is a B&L Elite 4200 36x Target scope. I have not had this scope long enough to claim vast experience with it, but from what I can tell to this date it has shown remarkable repeatability. When establishing the origional scope settings and at each pre-shoot sight in it was run through all settings repeatedly, in both a random and progressive manner. The settings were even tested to see if direction of adjustment would effect the quality of the final settings. At this point I can tell no differance. Time will tell on this issue.
As far as establishing a "0" aat fairly short distance and having them hold true from there on out. Well this did not work. After finding a solid "0" at 200 meters the predetermined number of adjustment clicks were fed into the scope. Unusable results occured and a return to pre-determined settings had to be used to re-establish a workable "0". Actual field time shooting at distance will be a must for establishing scope settings at distance.
Interesting to note though. If I were shooting at a coyote standing out at the 540yd mark he would have been holed on each and every shot. The bullets were out of a very small balloon but would have made for a very bad day for a standing coyote.
