What to Know When Field Testing Deer Rifles

Building off our last episode of Buckin’ Out we’re taking our rifles to the range to learn what we need to know about field testing a rifle. There are a few tips that will get us on target and zeroed faster so we know we’re taking a clean shot come hunting season.

When starting to sight in your rifle it’s important to try and eliminate human error when taking your first shots. We opted to rest our rifles on a Champion target rest but even a couple of sandbags would suffice. Heck, some people even clamp their guns down via vice clamps for accuracy testing. Where a clamp or more traditional lead sled takes the most human error out of the equation it also takes the recoil out as well.

Once the rifle is zeroed and ready to take a deer its important to remember to shoot the way you plan on hunting. If you plan on shooting off sticks in a tree stand then shooting every shot off the bench rest doesn’t do you a ton of good. I plan on mixing it up between a tree stand where I’ll shoot off sticks and a more refined hunting hideout where I’ll take my shots from the bench. I decided to shoot both ways and was surprised to find how difficult shooting off the sticks was.