Do you want to shoot accurately at longer distances, but calculating bullet drop and trajectories makes your brain spin? This free app from the folks at Styrka is the answer you’ve been waiting for.
by the HuntDaily staff
It’s that time of year when hunters who are heading out west learn just what their rifle, scope, and ammo combination are made of…and learn how far they can shoot accurately and ethically. Many hunters have the “human potential” and the quality gear to make those longer shots beyond 200 yards, but calculating bullet trajectories and wind drift is a skill set that has yet to be mastered. Let’s face it, most of us have walked off Heartbreak Mountain at least once, kicking the dirt and muttering, “I didn’t think I had to hold THAT high,” or something along those lines.
The good news is that you don’t have to be THAT hunter again this year.
The folks at Styrka, makers of premium hunting optics, have developed a ballistics drop calculator designed specifically for those hunters looking to take advantage of their long-range shooting potential yet are not comfortable working through ballistic trajectory calculations. This new app, along with practicing shooting basics on the range (breathing, trigger control, shooting from practical field positions) will allow you to make those long shots without mathematical gymnastics or complicated drop charts. If you are already a seasoned pro at long-distance shooting, you’ll also appreciate the simplicity and customizing options offered by this calculator.
The Styrka SH-BDC Ballistics Calculator app works on your smart phone or desktop. With it, you can develop custom Bullet Drop Compensation (BDC) tables based on your individual firearm, ammunition load, and reticle. Once you load your data, all other variables, such as atmospheric conditions and elevation, can be easily factored in to give you precise elevation and windage compensation. In addition to providing beginners with the tools to easily and confidently shoot farther and more accurately, the SH-BDC Ballistics Calculator is free.
The BDC app is available for download through the Apple App Store (iPhone) or Google Play (Android). You can also set up your calculator directly on the Styrka website. You don’t need to have an account to use the app, but creating an account lets you save your data for easy access and quick results any time. Once you enter the app via your phone or desktop you can begin setting your parameters.
Step one is to build your gun in the app’s Gun Safe. It took us less than a minute for each of our bolt action rifles. The Gun Safe allows you to input your various firearms specifications. This covers the brand, caliber, scope height and offset from bore, and scope. The BDC app was specifically designed to work with Styrka S3, S5, and S7 scopes featuring the new SH-BDC hunting reticle. If you don’t have one of these Styrka scopes, no problem. Just select “Other” in the scope menu, and the app gives you a list of parameters to input for your particular scope. All of the specifications you input for each firearm are saved to the app’s cloud storage so you can retrieve the data anywhere.
Step two is to build your ammo load. Again, this was quick and easy for our factory loads. Dropdown menus walk you through the process. You can choose between the self-populating factory ammunition or customize the data based on your own observations and chronograph testing. If you shoot custom loads, all of the relevant data can also be inputted.
Once we had our firearm and ammo data loaded into the Gun Safe, the BDC App was ready to work. On the range, all we had to do was que up our firearm and ammo combo, and then input the target distance. You can also input any environmental data if you want (wind speed/direction, temperature, barometric pressure, elevation, and relative humidity). If you’re not sure of the weather conditions where you are shooting, the app has a built-in feature on the Field page that can retrieve the local weather.
If you want to bypass the steps above and quickly get the results for what the reticle hashes mean for you after choosing your gun and ammo combination, simply press “Quick Results” at the bottom of the Target screen. This is the “easy button,” for lack of a better term. “Quick Results” takes you directly to the results screen without the need for entering any additional data.
And that’s it. After pressing the “Next” button on the Summary screen, you are sent to the Results page, where the BDC app generates the bullet drop and windage compensation, velocity, and energy data in an easy-to-read table format.
If you happen to be using one of Styrka’s riflescopes featuring the SH-BDC reticle, the reticle graphic displays a red dot that shows you the precise hold-over/hold-off point for a particular solution (from data entered in the Target and Field screens). No mathematical calculations are necessary. Simply look at the graphic, aim your rifle accordingly, and fire. For those using a Styrka MIL-dot reticle, the reticle graphic will display a red dot for your holdover, but no windage solution.
The Styrka BDC app, like all of Styrka’s products, are developed from the ground up with the hunter foremost in mind. Whether you are running a Styrka optic on your rifle or another brand rifle scope, the BDC app is a welcome addition to any serious hunter looking to extend their effective shooting range without frying brain cells over ballistic calculations. Go here and check it out for yourself. It’s FREE!
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article copyright © 2016 HuntDaily.com; promoted by Styrka
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