The Wind Reader

by Harley Ayre

You can shoot your air rifle better in almost any windy situation with a gadget you can make yourself for the princely sum of about a dollar.

What you need is a "wind reader." Making a one for yourself is incredibly simple. Go to an electronics supply store and purchase a small package of heavy duty releasable cable ties that are at least 5-6 inches long. Wrap one around the barrel or the underlever of your air rifle near the muzzle. Mount it so that it sticks out to the opposite side from your scope eye. The cable tie must be tight enough that the "arm" will stay put when placed in a horizontal position, but loose enough that you can rotate it straight up or straight down to slip into a gun case.

Next, fasten a few inches (perhaps half at foot at first) of yarn to the end of the cable tie (it helps to drill a hole in the cable tie before you start). Any color yarn, so long as you can see it easily, will do.

When the wind is calm, the yarn hangs straight down. But as the wind begins to rise, the yarn moves away from the vertical. The stronger the wind, the more the yarn moves away from vertical. Notice this: the wind reader shows both the strength and the direction of the wind. Notice, too, that if the wind is quartering -- coming, for example, from the right and partly behind the shooter -- the only thing the yarn shows from the shooter’s point of view at the controls is the amount of left-right wind that must be compensated for.

Reading the wind reader takes some practice. If you are shooting as close as 10 yards, look at the yarn close to where it attaches to the cable tie. Except under extreme conditions, you’ll see very little deflection in the yard, and therefore you probably can shoot dead-on.

But as the range to the target increases, you need to look further down the yarn, perhaps a couple of inches down at 20 yards. So if the yarn swings out an inch to the left, you might need to hold an inch to the left of the center of the target. At 30 yards, check perhaps 3 inches down the yarn; at 40 yards, 4 inches, and so forth.

Now, here’s the tricky part: you’ll have to figure out for yourself how the deflection of the yarn relates to the deflection of pellets from your gun. If you’re shooting a slow air rifle, you will have to hold off more at any given range than if you were shooting a fast one. To begin calibrating the wind reader for your gun, it’s helpful to mentally divide the yarn into thirds for close, medium and long range.

Once you become accustomed to it, I think you’ll agree that the wind reader is a slick system for shooting better under windy conditions.