Before I go further; I have to say most people who are not target shooters, will not find the following information very useful. If you hunt deer or other mid to large size game at ranges of no more than 50 or 60 yards, then you need not bother to read on. It won’t really matter if you shoot with the barrel level or at a cant because you are going to aim dead on and don’t care if the bullet lands two to five inches from where you aimed. The 8 to 10 inch circle that is the vital zone of a deer is big enough to take care of such variations in where the bullet will hit. Not using a cant/tilt can make a difference at 100 yards on a deer, but it seems most forum members don’t shoot at that range with their muzzle loaders and fixed sights.
Right off the bat there are two problems that come to mind that arise when using a cant, though both are related.
The first problem has to do with using adjustable sights, though we don't use them with muzzle loaders as much as modern shooters. When adjustable sights are properly mounted at Top Dead Center on the barrel and the rifle is held level, the adjustments show up as bullet hits moved straight up and down for elevation and straight side to side for windage. So it is fairly easy to dial in your groups to the center of the target AND figure out what an adjustment will do to change your shot/group location before you fire. However, when using a cant ”“ the adjustments for elevation go up and down at the ANGLE of your cant. So for example when you want to move the group higher for longer range, what happens is the groups not only go up, but also sideways a little ”“ which means it also introduces a windage change or side to side change of the group hitting the target. For a right hand shooter with a left leaning cant or tilt, that means his groups go up towards the left at the angle of his cant/tilt. That is bad enough, but what is REALLY hard to figure is how windage adjustments are going to show up in how the groups move. This windage adjustments move the groups perpendicular to the angle of your cant/tilt. They will still move side to side, but adjustment to the left will also mean the groups move down a little bit to the left and adjustments to the right mean the group goes up a little bit towards the right. This means you get some elevation difference when you just want to go from side to side. IOW, that cant or tilt makes using adjustable sights A LOT more difficult to figure out how the groups should move before you adjust elevation or windage.
Because modern High Power shooters fire at different ranges, one hugely important thing they do in practice with adjustable sights is move their sights left or right and up or down a click at a time for every range they fire and then they record how far the bullet strike moves on the target at that range. So they move the sights one click, fire and record, then two clicks fire and record, three clicks fire and record, etc. up to four to six clicks for windage and elevation. They have to do that so they will know ahead of time how much the bullet strike will move for each click or change in adjustment at each range. Even the most precise sights will NOT move the strike of the bullet exactly the same amount per click or change of elevation or windage. Muzzleloading shooters who shoot with Vernier Tang Sights will also do this for the ranges they compete. IF you shoot with a cant/tilt, then it becomes absolutely necessary you do this procedure with adjustable sights because the groups move with BOTH an elevation and windage difference per each click of either windage or elevation.
The second problem comes when you use NON Adjustable sights like most of us use on traditional muzzleloaders. When we try to estimate in our minds how much we have to hold high/low or left right at different ranges or for different light or wind conditions to hit the center of the target, we use what is commonly called “Kentucky Windage and Elevation.” This just means we are estimating how much we have to hold left/right or up and down from our normal sight picture. For example, when the wind starts blowing from the left to the right, we know we have to align the sight to the left of where we normally do, so the bullet hits the center of the target. The harder the wind blows and the further distance to the target, the more we have to align the sight to the left when we shoot so the bullet hits the center of the target. That is difficult enough to estimate how far to the left you have to hold for that wind blowing, but ALSO we cannot forget that most guns don’t shoot “laser straight” and things get interesting when shooting 75/100 yards or more. At those ranges and beyond and depending on the individual barrel, sights and shooter; the strike of the bullet will start moving to the left or right when there is no wind blowing. This is because the sights can never be perfectly aligned with the bore as they are on top of the barrel. So let’s say you know that your rifle shoots an inch to the right at 75 yards and an inch and a half or two inches at 100 yards from your 50 yard groups. So with nonadjustable sights, you have to hold a bit to the left for those ranges even where there is no wind blowing. When the wind blows and depending on how hard the wind blows from the left, you have to hold the sights even further to the left to get the bullet to hit in the center of the target. This is difficult enough to do when we hold the barrel level and only have to think about the shots moving left/right. BUT when you shoot with a cant/tilt, that has an elevation change that goes along with a windage change, it makes it much harder to estimate where you have to hold so the shot will hit the center of the target. It can quickly become mind boggling trying to estimate where you have hold off your normal sight picture for wind conditions and different distances. Most ML shooters don’t bother using a different hold for elevation because they don’t shoot at distances far enough. So I will only say that it is more difficult to figure out where to aim when using a cant/tilt when you go beyond 100 yards.
Gus
