Avoid Canting Your Rifle for Better Accuracy and Higher Scores
Experienced marksmen know they should keep their rifles level when shooting. But they may not understand exactly what happens if they allow their rifle to be canted (tilted left or right), even a few degrees. While the physics are complicated to explain, here’s what you need to know: if you cant your rifle to the left, your shots will impact to the left, and lower, than your point of aim. Likewise, if you cant your rifle to the right, your bullets will impact low and right.
Effects of Rifle Canting
The effects of rifle canting are explained in great detail on the Long Shot Products Ltd. website. There, you’ll find a technical discussion of the Physics of Rifle Canting, plus a page with Sample Targets shot with canted rifles.
Referring to the above illustration, the Long Shot Products article explains: “Notice how the trajectory of the vertical hold stays within the vertical plane, so when the projectile drops, it drops into the line of sight and down to the center of the target. The trajectory of the cant hold does not achieve the same height as the trajectory of the vertical hold and the projectile diverges from the line of sight, thereby missing the target.”
The Long-Shot article makes two other important points. First, cant error increases with distance, and second, cant-induced windage errors are worsened by mounting your scope high above the bore axis:
“This component of cant error becomes more significant at more distant targets due to the increased original included angle between the line of sight axis and the bore axis (more elevation compensation) at the vertical hold.”
“Use of large-diameter objective scopes, mounted high off the barrel, exacerbates the cant error problem. To keep the scope elevation knobs centered for maximum adjustment, precision shooters sometimes use elevation-compensated scope mounting rings or bases. Although this solves the adjustment problem, it greatly exaggerates cant error because the distance between the bore axis and the line of sight axis increases and the included angle between the sight axis and the bore is larger, producing more windage error when canting.”
Test Targets Reveal Cant Errors
The Long Shot Products Ltd. website also displays actual Test Targets showing the effects of canting error. These targets were shot with air rifles and rimfire rifles, but the same effects can and will occur with centerfire rifles. Shown below is a target shot at 50 yards with a Feinwerkbau .22LR match rifle using RWS Match ammo (1012 fps MV). As you can see, canting the rifle 20 degrees to the left produced a huge movement of the point of impact. The shots from the canted rifle impacted 1.81″ Left, and 0.6″ below the point of aim.
CLICK HERE to view more Canted Rifle TARGETS.
Similar Posts:
- TECH TIP: Keep Your Rifle Level for Better Scores
- Avoid Canting Your Rifle to Improve Your Long Range Shooting
- Control Rifle Canting to Improve Long-Range Accuracy
- Shooting Skills — Canting Left or Right Alters Point of Impact
- Improve Your Shooting by Using an Anti-Cant Device
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True enough (you just can’t argue with basic physics!) but if canting is consistent (some folks shoot better with rifle canted) the effect on POI can be compensated for. The key is in consistency, as with many other aspects of our chosen sport.
Many of the best prone shooters in the world cant their rifles, i.e., David Tubb and John Whidden. However, they adjust the position of their sights (scope and irons) to a 12:00 position and use a bubble level on their guns or sights.
In fact, the canting of the rifle into your body in the prone usually gives you a tighter position and a more comfortable grip for trigger control.
Bottom line, it is not the canting of the rifle, but the canting of the sights away from the 12:00 position that can kill you — from the bench or the prone.
Jim Hardy
Articles of this sort usually stop with an explanation and diagram. The target sets this one above the rest.
The title is a bit off. I want HIGHER scores. The article is good.
John
Oops… fixed. Original title was “canting your rifle can lower scores”. Thanks for the correction.
Desmond Burke,a very well known Canadian shooter from the .303 Enfield days, published a book on shooting in which he spends a considerable amount of time on what he coined “Burkes Bulges” , which was the effect of canting the rifle. The use of a post front sight heightened the effects. A very good read.
Roy
you can NOT get the cross hairs into perfect 90 degree alignment. no, not with any tool, device, door edge, etc because there will always be slight variations caused by grip, shouldering, rest, etc factors. decide your most relevant hold and compensate however you like. understand reality and what is a standard deviation.
just looked at the diagram again. this is a 20 degree cant! quite an exaggeration. live with a cant of 2 or 3 degrees. better is not possible.
Sam:
It is done all the time. I believe David Tubb uses a 10 degree cant, and John Whidden uses about a 12 degree cant. With a scope, all you do is rotate the scope in the rings to fit your position such that you have no horizional component when you make vertical adjustments. Takes a little work, but no big deal at all.
Jim Hardy
We make quite a few canted bases for shooters that correct the sight to vertical. They vary from 3* to as much as 15* The average is around 8*
Kind of sad… their High Power rifle results have been ‘coming soon’ for eight years…