Certain calibers such as the 300 Winchester Magnum are often called flat shooting.
What does that mean and why would a hunter care that the caliber is flat shooting when selecting a rifle to go hunting with?
asked Feb 27, 2019 at 15:17
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Related outdoors.stackexchange.com/questions/21713/…– Charlie BrumbaughFeb 27, 2019 at 23:16
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1 Answer
Bullets follow a parabolic arc as seen below,
As you can see the yellow line is a bullet fired from a longer barrel which results in a higher velocity and thus less drop over distance. In this case the yellow line is a flatter shooting rifle.
Cartridges that are regarded as flatter shooting have one or both of two things going for them, they are traveling at a much higher velocity to start with and or have a better ballistic coefficient resulting in less drag.
See for example 6.5 Creedmore vs. 308 Winchester.
(source: gunwerks.com)
The reason that this matters is that with a flatter shooting cartridge you don't have to get the range to the animal as accurately because the bullet is dropping less. This leads to the concept of point-blank-range as fully explained here
answered Feb 27, 2019 at 15:17
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4..is it common in american ballistic charts to use meters AND inches in one graph? Feb 28, 2019 at 10:32
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@FlyingThunder what concerns me more is the first chart doesn’t start at zero, the bullet leaves the barrel at -2.5 inches.– Notts90Feb 28, 2019 at 12:54
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3@Notts90 No it's that the barrel is 2.5 inches below the sights. Feb 28, 2019 at 15:10
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@FlyingThunder I am assuming that Wikipedia got that chart from the US military and that probably explains the meters and inches. Normally no, its inches and yards Mar 2, 2019 at 16:22