I got a chance to shoot a card before dinner yesterday with my slug gun. The wind was far from ideal but there was nothing I could do about it. I saw maybe 5 mph every once in a great while....and gusts 15 plus about as often.
My strategy in conditions like these is to avoid the gusts and identify something that is repeatable and able to hold for at least a second or two.
I then set up for that condition and I'm ready to make slight, fast corrections based on what I see.
I'm not able to process 3 flags that are constantly changing....so I break it down to finding 2 that seem to be operating somewhat together. My front flag would not hang with the other two very often..,so I chose the far two flags as the ones to watch closely. If you have read about how I space my flags...then you know I space them so each flag will represent a zone of equal drift. If you space your flags evenly...the flags will not be representing equal influence. So with this system I'm hoping to get things 2/3 correct most times.
Anyway...I identified a condition where the far flags would push the tails out fully at about the 10:30 to 11:00 position. Because of the drastic change in jump that occurs as the wind crosses 12:00....I wanted to avoid anything too close to that position. The condition would usually fully flow out the tails for about 1-2 seconds. A fully extended tail is the only way you can really know what is most currently happening. If the tail is curled or fluttering....the wind has already changed and the tail or vane has not caught up to it yet. Sometimes it will curl and ,although, the vane never really changes direction...you can be sure the wind did temporarily.
A variation of this condition seemed to present itself about every 25-30 seconds on average. The variation was that of wind strength at the time...so I opted to make my wibdage adjustment the one I could quickly change on the fly. If the tails looked flatter...I jumped to the right and fired...if they were what I expected I stayed put. You get the idea. I started at the bottom left and went up in a serpentine pattern.
When I got to the top row...my condition seemed to disappear for good. I had given up on
It an had to take a few blind shots which were still ok but not optimal. Then all at once the condition showed back up for my last couple.
I actually still had a couple minutes left...but was getting a little panicked toward the end.
I'm sure there are a lot of ways to handle that type of wind...but that's how I did it.
Mike
