Shooter $9.95 Even though it comes up second on the list, we might as well start with the highest priced paid app. It’s a whopping ten bucks. I know, half of what you pay for parking at a baseball game, but it is paid and as with most things in the Android Marketplace, you get what you pay for. I can’t imagine that there would be any variables that you would want to include in your calculations that aren’t in Shooter. Some things I don’t even understand and I hope to do some research and experimentation to see how much of an effect they have in long range shooting. Can you dial in all of your parameters on Shooter and take an 856 yard shot based on the calculations? I don’t know, but I do hope to test it at some point. If you want to nerd out on ballistics in the meantime, this is your app. What makes this app different from all the others is that it not only has advanced features, it can also connect to the internal GPS of the phone to get atmospheric conditions, based on national weather service numbers, as well as being able to connect to a Kestrel weather station to get atmospheric and wind conditions live. You can store as many rifles and bullets as you want. The only caveat, of course, is that the muzzle velocity you enter on the ammo is for a specific measured rifle, or at least barrel length, but due to variances in width, you really can’t count on a standard barrel length to shoot the same velocity in every rifle. Please note that many of these features can be disabled by putting the app in Simple Mode. This is done from the start screen by pushing your settings button. You can also control distance units and whether your GPS inputs values by default. The first thing you will be asked to do in Shooter is enter the details for a specific rifle and scope combination. You enter the rifle name, the twist rate and direction. On this Savage Axis I had to guess that it is a right hand twist as it was not on their website. If you have the rifle in your possession, of course, you can just look down the bore. Direction of spin is needed for “spin drift” calculation which you’ll encounter later. The elevation adjustment on most sporting scopes is MOA, or minutes of angle. Each click generally represents 1/4MOA which just happens to be ¼” at 100 yards. The sight height you get from measuring from the middle of the bore to the middle of the scope front lens. Keep in mind that not all scopes are mounted directly above the barrel. Some are mounted at an angle or to the side for various reasons. Sight offset, as used here, is the amount the sight sits to the left or right of the bore axis or centerline. Distance to the right is a positive value, to the left is negative. The first oddball, but extremely useful, option you encounter is at the bottom of this screen. If you have a lot of experience with your scope and you know that the clicks are not 1/4MOA, you can input the actual value here. For my data tests, I used the .30-06 Savage Axis that we saw all the way back in the out of the box MOA article. Next you are going to be asked to pick a bullet to test. You can manually enter your data or pick from the bullet library. This can be a little bit confusing if you’re used to just buying factory ammo. This first field is bullet diameter. For all of the thirty caliber cartridges this is .308. If you don’t know what your bullet diameter is, check the Wikipedia page for the caliber and it will tell you. From there it will ask you a manufacturer. With Hornady, the bullet is printed on the box. Federal generally has a manufacturer and bullet listed. Winchester also does this. Each bullet has a name. For this I used the Hornady 150 grain GMX bullet. The bullets where you see “Litz” in parenthesis are based on actual test data by Bryan Litz, author of Applied Ballistics for Long Range Shooting, and one of the developers of Shooter. Once you pick from the bullet library, the app will fill in the fields for that bullet. The only one missing for the Hornady 150 grain GMX bullet was length, which I guessed at as 1 inch. I didn’t pull a bullet to measure and the data wasn’t on the Hornady website or on the box. Muzzle velocity (MV) is preferably something you measure with a chronograph if you want your results to be valid. I plugged in the listed velocity for Superformance. The MV Variation field is for those who rigorously test velocity with one or more chronographs using the ammunition at varying temperatures. This would be the average spread based on temperature and percentage error. The Powder Temp field would be the temperature of the powder at base velocity. Zero atmosphere refers to the atmospheric conditions when you zeroed your rifle, like barometric pressure, altitude, temperature and humidity. If you zero at sea level and then go on a hunt at 10,000 feet, for example, the air will be thinner and exert less aerodynamic drag on the bullet which will change the trajectory and point of impact. By including the atmospheric conditions in your model, Shooter will automatically compensate for different conditions. Drag Models are based on bullet shape. Most manufacturers give G1 as their ballistic coefficient (BC) or G7 for boat tail bullets. The BC of the bullet can also be auto-filled by the bullet library. Minimum velocity refers to the BC of a particular bullet at different velocities. As the bullet slows on long shots, the BC changes. Shooter allows the input of these different BCs, however, if you only have one BC to enter, just use zero. And if you entered the bullet from the library, the minimum velocities are automatically entered for you. Next in your ammo profile are the fields at which you zeroed the rifle. They include the range, the height above or below the point of aim where the round impacted, and the offset, or how far to the right or left of the point of aim that the bullet hit. For example, you may have zeroed at 100 yards with the round hitting 1” low and ½” to the right of your point of aim. The target screen starts out with the distance for which you are making your calculations. It can solve for one distance or give you a chart and graph for the entire range of the cartridge. Look angle is your position relative to the target. On your Android phone this can be measured by the application itself. Move speed and move angle are for moving targets, so if the target is moving 3mph perpendicular to your rifle, it would be 3 and 90 degrees. The left button, “Settings,” on your phone will bring up this sub-menu. Each of the options allows the phone to bring in data for you. Point your phone at the target to get the look angle and azimuth. The distance calculator is an easy converter for using your scope to estimate distance. Spin drift takes into effect the centrifugal force of the spinning bullet, like a gyroscope effect. The Coriolis Effect is from the spinning of the earth and can affect long shots. The earth is spinning at roughly 1,000 miles per hour and even though you don’t feel it, the bullet does. These features can be disabled by putting the application in simple mode. When you solve for one distance value this is the screen you get. This is really a nice feature since you have live input from your GPS or Kestrel and you can alter the data with finger clicks. Taking a quick reading from your rangefinder with a given bullet and rifle and you’ll have the MOA or MILS value to get right on target quickly. The depth of the app is hidden entirely. If you don’t want to rely on computer gadgets out in the field when taking 600 yard shots on wild boar with your Sharps .45-70 black powder rifle, you can always spit out a complete chart to your intended distance. This can then be emailed to your regular computer so you can print it out and take your own personal range card with you. In the field or at the range, a course graph doesn’t help much, but one nice feature of Shooter is that you can compare two trajectories to each other on this graph screen. You click your settings button and it asks you what bullet to compare it to. You can even compare caliber to caliber and load to load. Nice feature. I just wish you could email the graph like you can the chart.