« Reply #10 on: January 26, 2009, 12:48:12 PM »
I agree with daved for critters, every velocity and pellet combination has a sweet spot, and Chairgun is a heckuva good start on finding it. The beauty is finding the optimum zero for a given kill zone, so that your trajectory stays in the zone for the longest possible time. I do that with anything i plan to carry for critters in the field. Chairgun shows nicely how there are really two zero points with the kill zone strategy, the near and far points where the trajectory intersects the exact center of the zone. It is a cool way to account for range estimation errors, within reason.
This usually puts me somewhere between 27-33 yards for optimum zero, depending on the combination of pellet and gun. It really seemed to work on ground squirrels.
For fixed range target, I zero right at that range. I have the Diana 24 set dead on at 10m because that's mostly what I shoot with it. I back off to 20m now and then just to keep it honest and know what it will do, but it is not the most convenient range for me to shoot,at the moment.
Never shot FT but you would really have to know your gear.
I guess there would also be the "yard gun" tactic, zeroing to a known reference point like the pine tree. In tank gunnery (old school)we were taught to makea "range card", with landmarks of known ranges marked on the map, to facilitate rapid adjustment for anything that popped up on the battlefield.

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