hi guys i'm swamp fox mike and this is the first video of a new series the reticle wars
this series of videos will eventually cover moa or minute of angle reticles milliradian reticles
which are called mill or mrad for short and of course bdc or bullet drop compensation reticles
but first we need to understand a few basics about shooting at longer distances to help us understand
when we need these fancy complex reticle systems versus when we can get by with just using a single
point of aim like a red dot so grab a pen and a notepad and put your thinking caps on we're about
to go back to school in this video i'm going to talk about point blank range mindset what bullet
trajectory really is and then i'm going to show you why the battle sight zero is like a video game
cheat code that will help you extend your practical effective range of your rifle
speaking video games i've been playing a new one recently mechwarrior v
now on mechwarrior you pilot a giant 100-ton mechanical robot that stomps around demolishing
cities and shooting exotic weaponry and other giant robots it's super fun and i wish that my
actual rifles could fire perfectly straight at targets a thousand yards away like the lasers
on the mechs do but of course in real life bullets don't fly perfectly straight like that
as soon as a bullet leaves the barrel of any firearm gravity begins to push it down towards
the ground and it begins to fall to earth you know what come on let's head to the shooting range
at close range it doesn't really matter at all when i'm shooting this beretta apx for example
all i need to do is take my three moa green dot and straight to target and make a quality trigger
press and i don't have to worry about gravity's effect on my bullets now gravity is pushing down
on my bullets even at just 13 yards but not enough to make me miss an eight inch diameter plate
that's the basic beginning of everything it's just a point-blank range mindset point-blank
range being the range at which the point of aim and point of impact on target coincide
without you having to make any adjustments to the optic or adjustments to your hold
all i have to do is find my dot put it in the middle of the target make a quality trigger press
and down goes my targets point blank range
so what are the limits of the point blank range mindset well for me i think it's about 50 yards so
i've got a steel target there at 50 yards it's currently 95 degrees ambient here in houston
and i'm only going to do this once performance on demand live or die at 50 yards i'm going to
hold straight on to that white silhouette and we'll see what happens with 10 rounds
dead on
all right let's go see how we did
okay so here we are 50 yards downrange and i've got one two three four five six seven hits in my
little torso target that i spray painted for myself so i don't even
have full accountability here that was holding dead on to the center
and because of the limitations of how good a shot i am and the mechanical accuracy of pistols
from half a football field away i only got seven hits out of 10 in my intended target zone um
is this terrible well if it was a riffle group i would say was terrible but it's
about what i can do with a pistol to get better and shoot further i need to grab a rifle i think
well i want to reach out past 50 yards right so i'm gonna step my game up from a nine millimeter
service pistol i'm gonna go with a 308 remington 700 here that's going to get the job done so let's
say that i keep my exact same mindset being a little bit silly here but but there's a point
to this so i go out to the range i got my target set up at 200 yards i've got my spotting scope and
i've got myself in the prone on the bipod and i just keep my barrel totally level with the ground
in fact i got a bubble level here i'm gonna put my bubble level on my can and oh yeah it's perfect
perfectly level am i going to hit my target at 200 yards no because gravity pushes down on the bullet
the instant it leaves the barrel gravity starts to work on it and the 308 round will experience
about eight inches of total drop at about 170 yards so i'm gonna hit the dirt at 170 yards
and not even make it to a 200 yard target if my barrel is totally straight and level what do i do
you already know the answer right i'm gonna get rid of this bag and i'm gonna go like this and i'm
gonna tilt my barrel up when i tilt my barrel up i'm fighting gravity because of the angle
my bullet beats gravity for a while gravity's still pushing down on it but because of the angle
it climbs to begin with then it reaches an apogee where it's at the top and then gravity takes over
and starts pushing it down again and it goes back down in an arc or what we call a trajectory
when i'm shooting with a point blank range mindset at 100 or 200 yards and i'm just holding
the single point of aim red dot right in the middle of what i want to hit it feels kind of
like my bullet is a laser beam i mean i aim straight on and zap i hit my target right
but physics says i've actually angled my barrel upwards a very small amount to counteract gravity
causing my bullet to travel in a curved trajectory with an apogee in the middle
i'm not using a bubble level every time so i can change that small angle of my rifle barrel to hit
different targets at different distances and every time i aim my rifle differently i create
a slightly different trajectory this has been understood for a really long time for example
here's a diagram on canon trajectories dating back to the year 1628 now aside from barrel
angle trajectory of the bullet is determined by a lot of factors the cartridge you're shooting
a particular loading of that cartridge the length of your barrel ambient temperature altitude above
sea level and even more i mean you can get really technical about this stuff but at a basic level
we can also change how we access or use that trajectory by changing the distance of our zero
zero distance is the distance where our point of aim coincides with the bullet's point of impact
without any elevation or adjustment at all zero adjustment right unless your zero range is exactly
at the top of the bullet's trajectory you actually have two zero intersections one as the bullet is
arcing upwards towards the apogee and a second one after apogee as the bullet is coming back down
if we are clever about it we can use our sight in distance to set up a battle site zero
the battle site zero maximizes our chance to hit a target at a wider range of distances while
avoiding adjustments to our optic or adjusting our point of aim instead of having to adjust my
red dot every time i take a shot at a different distance battle site zero is a cheat code for
marksmanship that puts me back in that point-blank range mindset even at a relatively extended
distance now there are a few different battle sight zeros and which one is best depends on
your priorities for engagement range and allowable bullet deviation from your point of view i'm going
to talk about some alternatives later but the one that is my favorite and the one that swap
fox uses in our bdc reticles is the 50-200 yard zero it works great for your standard ar15 carbine
chambered in 556 nato it's fantastic for red dots iron sights and other single point of aim systems
where you don't have a complex reticle to work with here's how it works okay we're using m193
55-grain ammo here which is usually the cheapest 556 loading and it's allowed at ranges where you
can't use steel core ammo a 16 inch barrel is great but an 18 inch or 20 inch will do fine
as well we zero at 50 yards that's our initial intersection and as a bonus it's relatively easy
to shoot a tight group at 50 yards because we had to tilt our barrel upwards just a bit to achieve
that 50 yard zero the bullet is still climbing but it's also going very very fast and just the blink
of an eye goes from 50 yards to 100 yards and it's going to impact about 1.6 inches high at 100 yards
at 150 yards the bullet is still climbing and hits two inches high then it reaches apogee
and gravity takes over at 200 yards we're back to just one inch high and at 250 yards we'd be
just about a half inch low but by the time we get to 300 yards that 556 round has dropped almost
four and a half inches total okay that was a whole bunch of numbers all at once some guys are saying
who cares about your numbers man but the technical minded guys over here are saying hey wait if
you're still an inch high at 200 yards then it's not really a 200 yard zero what's up with that
everybody stay with me here we can work through this together i swear the other
half of the equation is we need to define what our acceptable level of accuracy is on the real world
when i'm shooting my red dot equiped rifle this sort of retro m4 i'm looking for speed first and
accuracy second that's the honest truth this is not that remington 700 that you saw with a high
magnification scope and a bipod it's a lightweight semi-automatic patrol carbine and i'm looking to
get fast hits using that same point-blank range mindset that you saw me using at the pistol range
that's my mindset for this rifle and i want to hit within an 8-inch circle give or take
so why an 8 inch circle well it's a very common target size in the real world remember those
falling steel plates in the pistol bay 8 inches wide if i'm deer hunting the classic double lung
kill shot takes up an area of about 6 to 8 inches in the deer's rib cage depending on the size of
the animal shout out to thompson target who makes those cool targets for deer hunters you see up
in the corner finally if i'm looking to stop a threat the thoracic cavity of a bad guy is about
eight inches in diameter even the idpa targets that you see me using all the time they have
an a zone that's an 8 inch circle i cut one out so you can see how big it is relative to my own chest
so for the kind of shooting i'm doing with this ar and my liberator 2 red dot
i'm defining a successful engagement as one that hits as fast as possible somewhere in
this a zone eight inch circle with this battle site zero i zero at 50 and i have a single point
of aim solution from close range all the way to 200 yards i don't have to worry about holdovers
shifting my point of aim at all i just put the dot right in the middle of what i want to hit
and at 50 yards i'm theoretically perfect at all other ranges i'm imperfect but i don't have to be
perfect and i'm still good enough if my goal is to hit somewhere within the 8 inch circle
then being this high at 100 yards is okay and being this high at 200 yards is still
okay and i'll confess something else to you guys right now in real life the limiting factor in my
accuracy is not the one inch offset at 200 yards the limiting factor is me as a shooter
but i still feel they need to show you guys especially the new shooters out there that even at
the level of shooter i am 200 yards two football fields with one of our red dots is very doable
you know all the numbers in the ballistic calculator are good theoretically but how does it
work out in real life well i've got some targets at 200 yards i got a steel torso that i picked out
it's a little bit bigger than eight inches so i'm not using a magnifier i've just got my three MOA
green liberator 2 here on my basic m4 with the mil-spec trigger and i've got astigmatism i'm 45
years old so i'm not the best red dot shooter ever but let's see you know at 200 yards the math says
we're still a little bit high right does it really matter for the kind of shooting that i'm doing
and the accuracy expectations that i have i've set my accuracy expectation today that all i want to
do is ring this steel at 200 yards with a red dot and no magnifier can i meet my expectations
all right proofs in the pudding let's do this both eyes open
five for five that is the 50 200 battle site zero that is your cheat code
for practical marksmanship ah i just realized when i was at the range i said the liberator 2's
dot is 3 moa when it's actually 2 moa i always forget that because with my eyeballs i honestly
can't tell the difference sorry guys from my last point in this video i want you to understand that
the battle sight zero is a flexible concept the 50/200 battle sight zero i've talked about today
isn't the only one it's just the one that swamp fox prefers there are other trajectories that
we might choose from even if we stick with 556 nato as the caliber we're discussing
for example the us army uses a 25 meter initial zero with a second intersection all the way out
at 300 meters and the us marine corps prefers a 36 yard zero with a second intersection at 300 yards
now if you ever want to start a good army versus marine argument bring this up and it's like those
old beer commercials from the 1980s tastes great less filling tastes great less filling
both branches of service have tuned their battle sites zeros for the exact combination of rifle and
ammunition that they use and also their military requirements for effective range versus accuracy
the army and marine corps battle sight zeros do give you a longer effective range in total but
if you look at the diagram behind me you'll see the price you pay for this is greatly increased
point of impact deviation between the two intersections at 200 yards for example if you
aim accidentally a little bit high you might sail your round right over the target so if
you're a military shooter and you're watching this don't do that for military applications
the military battle size zeros are probably the right way to go i mean the army and marines
have scienced this out and they need as much effective range as they can possibly get with
thousands of standard issue firearms that have red dots or iron sights on them and they are willing
to deal with more point of impact deviation to extend their effective range but as a civilian
i care more about the point of impact deviation at the apogee i'm very aware that i'm legally
responsible for every round fired there is no such thing as a miss in the real world what we
like to call a miss is really an unintentional hit on something you just accidentally shot
something to think about so as a civilian i can shoot with good accountability for each shot with
my point-blank range mindset out to 200 yards and the 5200 battle sight zero accomplishes this with
very little deviation in bullet impact but what if i want to extend my effective range beyond the
limits of what the battle sight zero can do for me and shoot past 200 yards what if i want more
accuracy than just hitting somewhere in an 8 inch circle i mean it can be done but that's when we
need to move beyond the point blank range mindset and we start looking at things like adjusting our
scope turrets or adjusting our point of aim and using radical holdovers and that means the math is
going to get more complicated and what we see when we look through the scopes is going to get more
complicated too are you ready for the challenge? i'll be back soon swamp fox optics is here to help
you understand how all of this stuff works because it's going to help you make the right decision
about which setup is best for you and the kind of shooting that you do i'll see you soon