Holy cow! These things drop like rocks!
Is this why a lot of people will sight in for 200yds and go from there?
Holy cow! These things drop like rocks!
Is this why a lot of people will sight in for 200yds and go from there?
Holy cow! These things drop like rocks!
Is this why a lot of people will sight in for 200yds and go from there?
For the PC, I use the free PointBlank software. It has a lot of options beyond the external ballistics calculations and you can print out the drop tables from it.
ER asked the question: "Is this why a lot of people will sight in for 200yds and go from there?"
Before the days of easily-adjusted external turrets, folks sighted in their big game rifles for a maximum point-blank range (PBR), based on the information you provided in the OP, along with a specific sight height. Let's say you're hunting deer and want to keep your bullets no more than 4" above or below line of sight, meaning where you aim with your scope. You feed the data into a ballistics calculator that will tell you what range to zero at, or how high to sight in at 100 yards.
These days, folks are a bit too obsessed with hitting the "X" every time. I hardly ever hit the exact spot I'm aiming at, when I'm shooting with a big game rifle. The exception is when I am shooting AT the zero range, which is almost never 100 yards, or an even increment of yardage. I suppose I could buy a scope that lets me zero at 100 and then adjust on it for different yardages, but I can't begin to think of why I'd do that. It won't improve my group sizes; it will only move them to where I was aiming. It also won't improve my on-game shooting, since I'm already dialed in perfectly for that. All a scope like that would do is complicate the process unnecessarily.
Now, for long-range competition, or for shooting much smaller targets, at known (lasered) distances, an adjustable scope might be just the thing. Such were not readily available back when I was shooting ground squirrels out in California, but that didn't prevent us from sending a goodly number of them to that big dog-town in the sky. A 4" maximum PBR, combined with knowing your load and how to use Kentucky windage, made for a lot of fun shooting. Some might say these fancy new scopes take all the fun out of it.