Have you ever turned the turret the wrong way, causing you to miss every single animal? That was my situation last night and I must say, it was a miserable experience... but I learned from it. Haste and indecision were a factor as I was going from (practice) chickens to (start) rams. Okay, I'll admit, I lost some sleep over it. I hope it never happens again.

Don't lose any sleep, girl. Just blame your spotter and move on....works for Mallory

Kitty

At least you turned your turrets !

I was competing in a national match last month and went from turkeys to rams and never even dialled up

Nerves and haste get the better of us all

One will learn more from hard mistakes than easy successes

Problem is....... once you have learned from that mistake you arn't going to do it right from then on. Many make that mistake more than once.

There are those who have done that and those who will do that. Welcome to the club.

I once turned my turret one whole rotation the wrong way = about 18 minutes and it took me a whole match to work out what was going wrong........well I certainly learned a lesson from that experience

Been there done that, gave away my T shirt long ago. Nothing worth loosing sleep over, just laugh it off, blame the spotter and have fun!
Innocent

Here's a foolproof method I use so I don't go the wrong way on the turrets on my 1/4 moa Leupolds. Rarely will you need to go past 9 or 10 on the dials to get from Chickens to Rams. Even my HP gun I only use the 10 setting on Rams. Put a piece of tape from '0' and cover the 10, 11,12 numbers. Now this becomes "No Man's Land". Regardless if your at chickens or rams NEVER turn the turret into the tape area....NEVER.
ppkny

Great tutelage, everyone! If I do it again, it won't be for lack of tips and tricks.
Also, I discovered tiny little lines (these old eyes need to put on the bifocals to see them) at the bottom of the turret, 2 on one side, a line in between, and 1 on the other. I believe that's a tip-off as well, but I'm not sure. My Leopold scope instruction booklet doesn't comment on that part of the components.
Oh, and I could blame my spotter... if I had one. We in W. MD are bare bones and an occasional shout out from the peanut gallery; "that one was in front, Chere" (or something similar) is about all I''ll get as far as a (naked eye) spotter

All my animal/distance elevation settings are within 2/3-3/4 of a turn from the chicken/pigs (which on my scope are so close I sometimes don't reset), and I reset "from near to far" always, for consistency on the mechanical stuff inside. I back down to chickens, and then click back upwards. Tape and marked distances help too.

Chere wrote:Oh, and I could blame my spotter... if I had one. We in W. MD are bare bones and an occasional shout out from the peanut gallery; "that one was in front, Chere" (or something similar) is about all I''ll get as far as a (naked eye) spotter

That beats our peanut gallery who are expert miss spotters, in good natured fun. "Ya missed that turkey, too... And that one." Ummm, yeah, that much, even I can tell. Or "Did you load blanks in that magazine, I'm not seeing any hits?"

No I haven't done what you did but, a few weeks ago I showed up with some new ammo and proceeded to see how my old ammo's settings compared to the new ammo. I shot high over the back of the ram swinger which confused the heck out of me.

Eventually, I realized the ram was a pig swinger, and I got back on track.

I like the tape thing ppkny, I rarely make that mistake but it's a surefire way to avoid it.

Chere wrote:.... Also, I discovered tiny little lines (these old eyes need to put on the bifocals to see them) at the bottom of the turret, 2 on one side, a line in between, and 1 on the other. I believe that's a tip-off as well, but I'm not sure. My Leopold scope instruction booklet doesn't comment on that part of the components.

That's the turns counter,-- tells you how many full turns you've made from the bottom limit. Being a turn off can make things even more interesting than usual.

The vertical line in the center is the index line for the numbers on the turret; the horizontal lines mark a full turn and are staggered on the sides so that we can see them more clearly.

Shouldn't that read "I lost some "sheep" over it ? Ha Ha. That's just like forgetting to set the sights to correct after practiceing (shooting chickens with the rams setting) I note the number of turns from bottom with the scale on the stationary part of the adjustment knob, usually 3 or 4 and write them as 3-0,3-2,3-4.5,3.9 and take note as I'm setting the scope for the distance I'll be shooting. Helps for shoot offs or none standard starting positions we can't all start on chickens or it would be called IHMSA rifle. Steve