At Hill People Gear, we have absolutely no aspirations to become "snipers" or anything close. That requires a level of dedication and training that would, frankly, preclude a lot of other stuff that we care about more. However, we do believe in being proficient with the tools that we carry and use, so we try to avail ourselves of opportunities to become better shooters.
Recently, we learned that some of the esoteric things that snipers worry about actually can have some bearing on practical, hunting range rifle shots. Did you ever go confirm zero on your rifle only to find out it wasn't sighted in quite as well as you thought? It happens all the time and you usually pass it off with something like "well, I guess my scope shifted". In reality, it is probably a change in environmental factors from the last time that you sighted in that has moved your point of impact. Most of the time, the shift is small enough that it won't make any difference to a humane shot on a big game animal. Sometimes, the shift is larger though.
This stuff doesn't have to be a mystery. Using the cheat card below, you can walk through all of the major environmental factors to sanity check whether or not your next shot is going to hit close enough to where you expect it to for a humane kill, or whatever your goal for the shot is. We didn't do anything but compile existing data into card format, but we thought the result might be handy for others as well. If you've got questions about how to use this data card, go find yourself a qualified instructor or mentor -- something we won't pretend to be!
