Confusing Wind Condition
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Shooting silhouettes yesterday at a range that has been brush-sculpted recently. All the wind flags remained in their traditional locations and were showing a straight headwind with occasional 1/4 value deviations to one side or the other. Tree line on the west side of the course is about 100 meters west of the target banks and when the wind would come from the west, corrections resulted in expected changes in POI. Tree line on the east side is now a solid bank of 50-70 foot tall hardwoods with dense undergrowth and sits about 30 meters east of the ram line. There is a small creek between the turkeys and rams and beyond the rams about 30-40 meters there is a clearing in the tree line to the east. When the wind would switch to the east, sight corrections on rams and turkeys gave paradoxical results: hold left for a left to right wind and the POI would go even farther to the left than before. As the match progressed, it was slowly realized that that new east treeline was causing an eddy at the creek and at the clearing resulting in a strong wind condition near the targets that was not indicated by the wind flags. Early relays on the turkeys and rams suffered. Later relays had at least some benefit but as the range had been mowed a few days earlier there was no knowing how hard the wind would be blowing at the target, nor which way it would be blowing by the time you took the next shot. Lots of head scratching.
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Got a link for a satellite image of the range?
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@orkan Google hasn’t re-photographed the range since the brush was dozed and the 22BPCR rams relocated.