On 10 May 2025, Douglas Barrels’ Pro-Staff Shooter John Armstrong took the top spot in the Boulder Rifle and Pistol Club BRPC Nevada King of Extreme Long Range (ELR) Shooting Championship held in Las Vegas, Nevada.  When shooting distances out beyond one mile (1,760 yards), teamwork and great equipment are absolutely crucial.  However, there is much more to ELR shooting than just the equipment.  Douglas Barrels Pro-Staff Shooters John and Scott Armstrong know this all too well.

The King of ELR format had shooters engaging ten targets at distances of 720, 880, 960, 1,100, 1,220, 1,287, 1,451, 1,522, 1,664 and 1,782 yards.  Each shooter took five shots at each distance with no sighters in a four minute time block.  The qualifier portion of the match took place in the morning where shooters were challenged at the closer distances from 720 yards out to 1,220 yards on targets that were one minute of angel (MOA) at each distance.  One MOA at 100 yards is roughly one inch and at 400 yards one MOA is roughly four inches.  That made the target at 720 yards roughly 7.25 inches by 7.25 inches and the target at 1,100 yards roughly 11 inches by 11 inches.  The target sizes were sized this way at all ten distances throughout the course of fire.

For the first relay of the day, the wind was light and consistent.  However, as the match progressed through the other four distances, the wind started to gust and was what is referred to as a “fishtailing wind”.  A fishtailing wind is a wind that comes directly at or from behind the shooter with direction changes from left to right just like the tail of a swimming fish.  This is one of the most difficult shooting conditions an ELR shooter will face.  Any slight changes in wind speed or direction can carry a bullet feet off target if changes are not caught and accounted for before each shot.

In these types of conditions, teamwork between the shooter and their spotter becomes critical.  A shooter can and will watch for wind changes through the rifle scope, but that can be difficult and any movement away from the scope will most likely cause the shooter to miss a subtle change in wind direction or speed that can cause the next shot to fly off target.  With a shooter so intently focused on loading the rifle, making scope adjustments, aiming the rifle and executing a good shot, their hands are already full.  This is where the spotter comes into play in ELR shooting.  The spotter’s job is to watch, read and call out aiming adjustments for the shooter.  The spotter also watches the trace of the bullet in route to the target and calls out impacts as either hits or misses that will then inform the shooter to make sighting adjustments for the subsequent shots.

Both the shooter and the spotter are using all available sources of information available to identify subtle or sometimes drastic changes in wind speed and direction.  Tools can be as simple as watching a flag, grass, leaves, paper or dust blowing or can be technical wizardry in the form of phone aps and hand-held or fixed weather stations.  No matter the tool, the information has to be gathered, deciphered and turned into a usable aiming adjustment a shooter can use and allocate to the next shot.  Doing so will improve the chances the shooter will score a hit based on the information gleaned and the firing solution that resulted from it.

One of the best tools for reading wind is provided free of charge by Mother Nature, a phenomenon called “Mirage”.  Mirage looks like flowing water but is actually temperature variations in layers of air that can be seen rippling across the ground.  You may have seen this effect while looking at a flat road surface on a sunny day.  The below picture shows the heat from lamps changing the temperature of air layers as it rises creating a visual tool that is affected by wind currents that can be seen and used to determine changes in wind direction and speed.

Mirage can look like water boiling if the wind is calm or can look like a river flowing if the wind is moving the air layers.  The spotter will focus on the mirage, never leaving the glass, and will communicate any noticed changes to the shooter in the form of aiming adjustments.

There is constant communication between the spotter and the shooter right up to the point that the trigger is pulled and the bullet is sent on its way to the target.  This allows the shooter to load the rifle, make aiming adjustments and execute the shot without worry of missing a wind change.

During the King of ELR event, John and Scott used this system of watching, calculating and communicating wind changes to make split second changes to firing solutions that went unnoticed or were misread by other teams.  This level of precise teamwork allowed them to earn their way to the top of the podium and win the BRPC Nevada King of ELR Championship for the 2024-2025 season.