"If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Step 1:
Preparation. Buy a non-magnum bolt-action deer rifle larger then .22 caliber and install a scope with a mil-dot reticule and finger-adjustable dials. On non-German scopes the mil-dots are only accurate at the highest power,
so you may want to tape the power dial (duct tape use #857) so it cannot be turned down. Sight the weapon in to hit dead-on at 300 yards.
Step 2:
Measuring Angles. Just as mechanics must be familiar with both English wrenches calibrated in fractions of an inch and metric wrenches calibrated in millimeters, snipers must be familiar with both the English measure of angles, minutes of angle (MOA), which are one sixtieth of a degree, and the metric measure of angles, milliradians (mils), which are one thousandth the distance out to the target. However, unlike automobiles which require either an English or a metric set of wrenches, but not both, the dials on your scope are calibrated in MOA while the reticule measures mils. A mil is about three times bigger than an MOA.
Step 3:
Holdover. If you know the size of some item like a garage door (they are all 84" in both rich and poor neighborhoods), then its apparent size in your scope, measured in mills, is inversely proportional to its distance. For example, a garage door that measures four mils is twice as far away as one that measures eight mills. If you have memorized the information on the card labeled "The Aguilar System for Medium Range Sniping," then you know that the former requires three mils of holdover (hold the third mil-dot down from the crosshairs on the soon-to-be-departed man's belt buckle) while the latter requires holding dead-on. The items we are using are garage doors, storefront doors, cars and vans. This does not mean you will be shooting at doors and vehicles; you will be shooting at soldiers standing nearby. No such men are pictured in the photos because I couldn't find any volunteers when I told them that the job title was "target." You'll just have to imagine that they're there.
Step 4:
Windage. Once you've determined the proper holdover, you also know the windage needed for a 10 mph crosswind. Holdover and windage are printed in adjacent columns on the "The Aguilar System for Medium Range Sniping," chart. Note that holdover is measured in mils while windage is measured in MOA. You will not touch your elevation dial in the field - you just hold on the mil-dots. But you do use your windage dial, which is why it must be finger-adjustable and why the windage column is in MOA. If there is only a five mph wind, halve the adjustment listed for a ten mph wind.
Step 5:
K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid. In combat, you have only one important question to ask yourself: What the hell am I doing here? Just kidding. That's a good question, but I was actually referring to the one important technical question: How do I convert the input data (apparent size of the target, in mils) into the output data (holdover, in mils)? The Aguilar System for Medium Range Sniping converts the input data directly into the output data, with no unnecessary detours. Such "fun facts" as the number of yards out to the target or the number of inches below the aiming point you would have hit had you held dead-on are irrelevant and should be ignored.
The fact that ammunition manufacturers print their data sheets in what is certainly the most useless format conceivable (yards to the target and inches below the bullseye) has contributed to a tremendous amount of confusion in the general public. It's not that the data is wrong, it is just that nothing on your scope measures, or is calibrated in, yards or inches. Scopes measure angles (the apparent size of a target) and have dials calibrated in angles (elevation and windage). Most people who claim to "know all about" mil-dot scopes will demonstrate this knowledge by first figuring out the yardage to the target, then figuring out how many inches below it they would hit if they held dead-on and then how many MOA to hold over the target. Then they have to figure out how many inches to the side they would have missed due to wind at that yardage and, finally, how many MOA to hold into the wind. By the time they've done all those calculations, it's too dark to shoot.
"Mil-dot rangefinding requires a time-consuming mathematical process to use," writes Chuck Taylor, explaining why police snipers are routinely outmaneuvered by civilian snipers in fast-paced urban combat. Source: "All About Tactical Scopes" in Guns and Weapons for Law Enforcement, November, 2008. Write a letter to the editor and complain about this idiot!
By using the Aguilar System for Medium Range Sniping, which considers only angles, you should be able to fire within five seconds of locating the enemy and without taking your eyes off him. This is important because you probably only detected the tiniest hint of movement in the rubble. If you have to look away to operate a laser rangefinder and/or a slide rule, you may not be able to find him again. Also, if you are firing from darkness into light, illuminating your slide rule with a flashlight is a mistake.
A BTR-80 is 76” from the ground to the top of the hull. Note that the adjustment for a 10 mph wind in minutes-of-angle is two more than the holdover in milliradians.
Target
Holdover
Windage
7 Mils
0 Mils
2 MOA
6
½
2½
5
1
3
4
2
4
You have just lured a BTR-80 into ambush. Your two best friends, whom you have known since high school, are sprinting across the street to take up a new fighting position. After they took off running, after it was too late to call
themback, you spotted an enemy soldier hiding behind the BTR. In a matter of seconds, he will shoot your two friends at close range with his AK-47.
Clearly, putting your rifle down to calculate the holdover with a slide rule is absurd. Combat happens a lot faster than that, especially urban combat. It would take at least a minute to do this calculation on a slide rule, which is about 55 seconds longer than your friends have to live.
Also, if you put your rifle down to operate a slide rule, laser rangefinder or calculator, you may not be able to find the target when you take up your rifle again. In this case, that is not a problem because there are not that many burning BTRs on the battlefield, but if you measured a door (the flashcards include pictures of storefront, warehouse and garage doors) then it may take a while (the rest of your friend’s lives) for you to again find the target in your scope.
In cases like this, you must have holdover information memorized. If you have purchased a set of Sniper Flash Cards and studied them relentlessly, then you will know to hold on the second mil-dot; if you have put your faith in a slide rule, then your friends are dead. It is that simple.
In this case, the smoke rising straight up indicates that there is no wind. But, if there were, there is a simple rule for windage: The adjustment for a 10 mph wind in minutes-of-angle is two more than the holdover in milliradians. Match shooters typically only know how to read the wind at 200, 300 and 600 yards; they must make rough guesses at in-between distances.
Here is a video demonstrating how to use a sling to steady a rifle:
