Rifleman's rule

Okay kiddo, so when you shoot a rifle, there are a lot of things that affect where the bullet goes. Like how far away you are from the target, how windy it is, and how straight the barrel of the rifle is.

One really important thing that helps shooters figure out how much the bullet will drop before it hits the target is called the "rifleman's rule."

To understand this, you first need to know that when you shoot a bullet, it doesn't just go in a straight line to the target. It actually curves downward over time because of something called gravity. That means the farther away the target is, the more the bullet will drop before it gets there.

The rifleman's rule is a way of figuring out exactly how much the bullet will drop over different distances. It works like this:

First, you need to know how fast the bullet is going when it leaves the rifle barrel. That's called the bullet's "muzzle velocity."

Then, you need to know something called the "bullet drop rate." This is a number that tells you how far the bullet will drop in inches for every 100 yards it travels.

Once you know these two things, you can use the rifleman's rule to figure out how much the bullet will drop at any distance.

For example, let's say you're shooting a rifle with a muzzle velocity of 2,500 feet per second (fps), and a bullet drop rate of 10 inches per 100 yards.

If you're shooting at a target that's 400 yards away, you can use the rifleman's rule to figure out that the bullet will drop about 40 inches before it hits the target. That's a lot!

But if you're shooting at a target that's only 100 yards away, the bullet will only drop about 10 inches before it hits the target.

So the rifleman's rule helps you know how much you need to adjust your aim depending on how far away the target is. That way you can hopefully hit it right where you want to!