Sight a .308 dead-on at 100 yards and your bullet is about 3.8 inches low at 200 and nearly 14 inches low at 300. Sight the same rifle in at 200 and it is about 1.9 inches high at 100 and 8 inches low at 300. The 200-yard numbers come straight off Hornady's published table for its 150 gr American Whitetail TIPPED load; the 100-yard numbers are our arithmetic on that same table. Together they settle most of the argument about where to zero a deer rifle before you ever reach the range.
Rifle openers are close: Texas on November 7, with the big Midwest and Northeast openers stacked behind it. Here is what the ammo makers' tables actually show, and the one kind of rifle where the common advice runs backwards.
The number that matters: how far you can hold dead-on
A deer's heart-lung area is roughly an 8-inch circle. The useful question is not "where does it hit at 300" but "how far can I put the crosshair on the middle of the chest and stay inside that circle?" Shooters call that point-blank range.
Hornady publishes trajectory on a 200-yard zero, so we did the re-zero ourselves. Changing your zero simply rotates the line of sight around the muzzle, so a 100-yard table can be calculated from the 200-yard one without guessing at bullet drag. The table below is our calculation from Hornady's published data, assuming Hornady's listed 1.5-inch sight height and the velocities from its 24-inch test barrel.
| Load (Hornady data) | Zero | 100 yd | 200 yd | 300 yd | Stays within ±4 in to |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 308 Win 150 gr SST, 2,810 fps | 100 | 0 | -3.8 | -13.7 | ~203 yd |
| 200 | +1.9 | 0 | -8.0 | ~261 yd | |
| 6.5 Creedmoor 129 gr SST, 2,810 fps | 100 | 0 | -3.6 | -13.0 | ~207 yd |
| 200 | +1.8 | 0 | -7.6 | ~263 yd | |
| 350 Legend 170 gr InterLock, 2,200 fps | 100 | 0 | -9.0 | -32.9 | ~162 yd |
| 200 | +4.5 | 0 | -19.4 | (over +4 at 100) |
Sources: Hornady's tables for the 308 Win 150 gr SST, 6.5 Creedmoor 129 gr SST and 350 Legend 170 gr InterLock (20-inch test barrel for the 350 Legend). Figures between the published 100-yard points are interpolated.
Why the 200-yard zero wins for most bottleneck cartridges
With a 100-yard zero, the bullet crosses your line of sight once on the way up, peaks almost immediately, and then spends the rest of its flight falling away from the crosshair. You are wasting the arc. A 200-yard zero lets the bullet climb about two inches above the line of sight and come back down through it, so the same flight path covers more ground inside that 8-inch circle.
For a .308 or 6.5 Creedmoor, that is roughly 55 to 60 extra yards of hold-dead-on range for the price of being under two inches high at 100. Two inches high on a broadside deer at 100 yards still hits the lungs. Nobody needs to think about it.
The common objection is a fair one: most Eastern and Southern deer are shot close, so why not zero where you shoot? Because a 100-yard zero does not buy you anything at 100 yards that a 200-yard zero takes away. It only costs you at the distance where misses tend to happen, the long crossing shot down a sendero or pipeline you did not plan for.
Where the common advice is wrong: straight-wall cartridges
Look at the 350 Legend rows again. A 200-yard zero puts it 4.5 inches high at 100 yards, already outside the circle on the close shot. Straight-wall cartridges like the 350 Legend, 360 Buckhammer and 450 Bushmaster run slow and arc hard, so the trick that helps a Creedmoor hurts them.
For those, a zero somewhere around 150 yards is the better compromise; on our math it keeps the 350 Legend within the circle to about 190 yards without going over at 100. If you hunt a straight-wall state, our straight-wall rules and cartridge guide covers which rounds are legal where.
How to actually do it on a 100-yard range
You do not need a 200-yard range to get a 200-yard zero. You need your ammo maker's table.
1. Get on paper at 25 or 50. Then move to 100.
2. Shoot from a rest that does not move. A bipod like the Linkogear HB-C02 on a shooting mat beats a rolled-up jacket on a truck hood. Use a target with a clear aiming point; EZ2C rifle targets have a grid that makes counting clicks easy.
3. Set the group high by the maker's 100-yard number. For the 308 load above, that is 1.9 inches high. For whatever you shoot, it is the 100-yard figure in the box maker's 200-yard-zero table.
4. Confirm farther if you can. Hornady's numbers come from a 24-inch test barrel. A 20- or 22-inch hunting barrel shoots slower, which makes the bullet drop more at 300. A chronograph tells you your real speed; then you can plug it into the maker's ballistic calculator instead of trusting the box.
5. Use the same ammo you will hunt with. Different bullet weights shift point of impact. Our deer bullet guide can help you pick one and stick with it.
Wear hearing protection that lets you hear range commands; Decibullz percussive filter plugs are one option. If you are setting up a rifle for a new hunter this month, our youth season setup guide covers the gun and the stand.
We have not shot these loads at the range for this piece. Every number above traces to the manufacturer's own published table or to our clearly labeled arithmetic on it. Plenty of good hunters will keep zeroing at 100, and in thick woods where every shot is inside 150 yards, it hardly matters. What the tables show is how much range that choice gives up, so you can make it on purpose.