Kestrel Pocket Thermo Wind Meter

Once you start shooting much beyond 200 yards, the name of the game is not how well you can shoot or how accurate your rifle is; it's how well you can dope the wind. Varmint hunters and long-range target shooters know all too well the esoteric science of wind doping. Target shooters have it relatively easy because they can position little wind flags downrange to detect any wind shifts between their bench and the target. Varmint hunters make do with holding "two dogs into the wind" and hoping for the best.

Enter now the Kestrel Pocket Thermo Wind Meter, a handy, little battery-powered device that measures wind speed. Armed with this knowledge of the wind speed and direction, it is then a matter of knowing your rifle's ballistics and making the necessary compensation, either by holding off the target -- mil dots are a tremendous help here -- or by dialing the correction into your scope.

Either way, knowing that you are dealing with, say, a crosswind of 9 mph and that the ballistic coefficient of your Sierra 50 gr. Blitz will cause it to drift 11.7" at 300 yards, you can then make your adjustments.

Ah, but not so fast. You are assuming a perfect crosswind. The Kestrel can tell you if the wind is coming from a quartering angle, which will lessen the billowing effect of that 9 mph gust. Say the breeze is coming from 60[degrees] off your muzzle -- that's less than a full crosswind. You will then have to compensate less in your hold-off, which is another way of saying that doping the wind is more art than science.

The Kestrel Pocket Thermo Wind Meter also measures temperature and calculates the wind chill. The wind measuring can be read in terms of actual wind speed, maximum gust of wind speed since the unit has been turned on and average wind speed, gusts and lulls combined.

The Kestrel device, which weighs a scant 1.5 ozs. and fits in a shirt pocket, is a shortcut to being an expert in reading the wind. Half the battle is knowing what the wind speed is; the other half is knowing what to do about it. The former you can buy for $119, the latter with a few years of competition experience.