Can you explain this a little more? I don't get how my rifle or ammo have a certain accuracy. Is that to say no matter what the shooter does he will never be able to improve upon a certain accuracy because the rifle and ammo wont allow it?
Now that i'm typing that out, it kinda makes sense. I mean, I've found plenty of guns to be more accurate than others. And ammo certainly makes a difference. But if MOA is all about angles, what does this have to do with the quality of the ammo? What does ammo have to do with angles?
Glad to see that you found Obtunded's "cone coming from the barrel" a useful image (that's how I picture it too, though for some reason I always think "ice cream cone" rather than "beam of light light a flashlight", hmmm, I wonder what that says about me? ;-)
What I meant by "..has a certain accuracy" is that, given a certain level of accuracy by a particular rifle+ammo combo, what that means is that your bullets will come from the rifle in a cone, they won't all go on exactly the same path. More accurate means that the cone is smaller/tighter/narrower - which is to say, the *angle* of the cone is smaller.
If the angle of the cone is 1MOA, then we say your rifle is "shooting 1 MOA". If you then get some crappy ammo that doesn't shoot as well, that same rifle won't be as accurate - perhaps it'll "shoot 3 MOA", that is to say, the cone will be three times as big as the tight cone with your good ammo.
If your rifle is shooting 3MOA, that means that if you shoot a bunch of shots at 100 yards, they'll form a group that will be round (typically), and will tend to form with a diameter of 3 inches.
If you shoot the exact same 3MOA rifle at 400 yards, the angle of this cone has not changed - but since the target is four times as far away, the circle formed by the cone intersecting your target will be four times as large in diameter, which is to say, about 12".
This is what I meant by "thinking about angles", and then figuring that the size of the group, or the amount of movement that a sight change makes, is proportional to the size of the angle, and also the distance to the target.
If I shoot and miss something by 2 inches at 200 yards I click my scope (1/4 moa) 8 clicks to adjust right?
If I miss by 10 inches at 1000 yards does that mean i click it 32 clicks? Does the scope even allow for that many clicks?
Good examples.
If you miss something by 2" at 200 yards, that is an angle of 1 MOA. So you would need to move your scope 1 MOA, which is 4 clicks (on most scopes, and in your example).
If you miss by 10" at 1000 yards, that is an angle of 1 MOA. So a four-click change will move you 10" at 1000 yards.
The amount of adjustment a scope has will vary depending on the model, but it is pretty common to have at least 30 MOA of adjustment in both windage and elevation (which would be 120 quarter-minute clicks).
But the 4 clicks = 1 moa does help. Breaking things down into its simplest form explains a lot. Thanks.
While quarter minute clicks are by far the most common thing you'll see, keep in mind that what you're really interested in is how many *minutes* you are dealing with (don't get to thinking of a "click" as a base unit! ;-).
The reason that a minute of angle is a practical unit in shooting is that (in round figures) it is the angle formed by "one inch per hundred yards". An inch is a fairly useful unit for measuring distances across a target face, and hundreds-of-yards is a useful unit for measuring distances to the target.
