It is post Z-Day, headshots are your only chance to stop those ravening hordes of undead, but that nifty AR you picked up when things went South just seems to hit all over the map. You need to zero/sight in your new rifle. If you cannot group, hit the same place consistently every time you shoot, then you can't zero, so don't bother reading further, instead look for info on basic rifle marksmanship. ON to zeroing. There are a couple of ways to do this, and I'll try to keep it vague enough that it is universal and specific enough to be useful. Model specific questions and comments? Try you're owners manual, or talk to someone at your local range, or contact me and I may know the answer if you're shooting a firearm I'm familiar with.



This is old school from back in the day where adjusting your sights involved either eyeglasses or a gunsmith. It is not recommended, but if you are a reliable shot, it is still workable.

Step 1. Head out to the range and pick a distance where you are confident that your firing will be consistent. This consistency is called grouping, if you are not a reliable enough shot to group your rounds, sighting in is pointless, use the rifle as a club to bash zombie heads.

Step 2. Pick a spot and fire a single round, make sure it is safe to head downrange and go check your target. Place a tickmark next to the hole you've made.

Step 3. Adjust your point of aim, if the shot was up and to the right, aim down and left at the next shot. Try the new shooting. Check your placement as in the previous step.

Step 4. Continue in this manner, using the tickmarks to determine which shot is the newest, until you can control where the bullet hits.

Step 5. When you fire from this distance, with this rifle, use the new point of aim. Congratulations your rifle is sighted in, using a loose definition of doing so.

This method of Kentucky windage is much more usefull with pistols, which often don't have adjustable sights, and are used to engage targets at close range, so bullet drop is not often considered. Using the same method with a rifle equipped with modern adjustable sights is referred to as "chasing the bullet" and will get you chewed out by any professional firearms instructor for the very understandable reason is that it relies on your memory instead of a fixed mechanical system, it only applies to a spefic known distance, and depends on a shooter being extremely competent which takes a lot of range time that most people just can't afford.



If you've got a rifle or a pistol with adjustable sights but no scope, then you need to adjust the sights to fit your own shooting style. If you're a 6'6" 300 lbs with big manly hands, webbed fingers and a hunchback, you're gonna get a way different sight picture on a rifle in the exact same position than a 5'6" limp wristed 105 lb sorority girl. Not only will the sight picture be different, one is a lot more fun to watch shoot. Sorry, distracted by the mental picture. What I'm trying to say is having a friend or a professional zero you're firearm is pointless. Each individual needs a weapon adjusted to fit their own biology.

Step 1. Pick a distance that you're gonna be doing most of your shooting from. Then hop on the internet and check out a ballistic profile for the caliber and type of firearm(this is not important for pistols). With ballistic weapons, the bullet travels in an arc. For example, a .223 round fired from an AR-15 is at the exact same height in its trajectory at 25 and 300 yards. If you want to sight in at 300 yards, then zero at a 25 yard target. If you want to zero for a different range, you need to adjust the distance of you're zero target based on the ballistic profile. Sounds like too much work? Zero at the distance you're going for, but if you pick say 500 yards, be prepared to walk the 500 yrds after each shot to check the impact area. If the zero is bad enough, you may not hit the target at all and you will have to pre zero at a shorter range and work it out further. Anyhoo, you've got you're target at a fixed distance, take that first shot.

Step 2. When its safe to do so, go check your target. You've got two things to adjust, windage and elevation. Windage is how far you missed left to right, elevation is up and down. I recommend adjusting each separately but some folks like to adjust for both at once. It uses less ammo but takes a little more skill, for a newbie I say burn through the ammo, at least you'll be right when its done.

Step 3. Adjust the elevation. Take a look at your front sight, most adjustable sights are threaded, screw it in a little and your shot travels higher, screw it out and it travels lower. Small changes have a big effect, a quarter turn is equivalent to an inch or two at long range on some rifles, so take it slow at first, and check it with a single shot to the target. Some rifles have a bearing that must be depressed prior to turning it. Be gentle, if you bend the front sight post, it will be hard to get it back perfectly perpendicular. Most pistols and some rifles don't adjust for elevation, the front sight is fixed, don't mess with it. If you feel you absolutely have to, you can file the post to shorten it. YOU CAN"T UNFILE THE POST AFTERWORD. Take too many strokes and you've ruined the site, I don't recommend doing something like this unless you are already seriously competent, and in that case you don't need to read my stuff anyway. Occasionaly on some rifles the rear site can be adjusted up and down. Usually this is for fine adjustments to be made in the field, with a little elevation knob that you set to different distances, after a single known distance is sighted in with the front sight. Handy feature to have, but don't rely solely on the rear sight if the front is adjustable as well, use it only as intended, to adjust for distance on an allready zeroed rifle.

Step 4. Adjust Windage at the rear sight. Screw the rear sight to the left, the bullet goes left and the converse as well. Keep in mind slight adjustment equals big change, go slow and check often with single shots to the target. Instead of screwing in, some rear sights are in a groove on the top of the weapon that provides a tight fit, but are held in place by friction. Take a wooden dowel to protect the finish, place against the sight and tap with a hammer. Do this until the sight is in the correct place. Do not get overeager and bang up the sight. Not all rear sights are adjustable, don't try to drive a sight that is riveted in place. Once again there is a fix available if the sights aren't adjustable, bend the front sight post to the right or left, bend it right, the bullet travels left, and the converse. DON'T DO THIS, just cause you can doesn't mean you should. I only include this and the front sight filing option on this page so you won't see it somewhere else and think its a good idea. If you're a firearms whiz, sure go ahead, but you don't need my recommendation anyway, for the average guy this is not a smart move.




This will probably make a lot of people unhappy but I'd like to talk real quick about optics in general. I've got to admit I'm not a big fan so it may seem a little biased. If anything is factually inaccurate than jump in and correct me, I admit I'm not a scope expert because of my dislike. When you mount optics on a firearm you've got some advantages and disadvantages.

Disadvantage 1. It can make you dependent, if you switch to a firearm with no scope you've lost some of your iron sight skills. You can compensate with lots of training, but its something you have to compensate for.
Disadvantage 2. Most mountings aren't real sturdy, drop the rifle, or jump to the ground while holding it and you may not be properly sighted anymore. You can spend a lot of money for a better system, but I don't have that kind of cash.
Disadvantage 3. Looking through a scope impairs peripheral vision and can hurt situational awareness, can be trained out of you to a point, but its there.

Advantage Only. You can shoot stuff that is really far away.

In some scenarios the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, it depends on your tactical philosophy, how far out do you plan to engage the zeds?

All my anti scope propaganda aside, if you've got one, zero it. Use the same shoot and compare method you used for iron sights, and adjust the scope up and down, left to right based on the owners manual. About the only usefull thing I can add involves what I call the "can you shoot me now" bars.

On military surplus scopes there is often a little rangefinder doohickey that is a series of numbers underneath a series of vertical lines that look like the signal bars found on a cell phone. View a standing enemy through the scope and pick which bar is roughly the same height. The number underneath either corresponds to a present number on an elevation dial, or stands for hundreds of meters(almost all of them are metric). Its basic geometry.The bars are based on the average height of a male in the military. But most of the cheap scopes out there are either Russian or Chinese surplus. The Russian stuff is good to go, but the Chinese did the math differently. Instead of estimating a 5'10 enemy for the formula like the Soviets, they estimated 5'4". I'm betting you can make a pretty good guess why, and it revolves around using militaries for oppression of citizenry rather than repelling foreign invaders, but thats kind of off on a tangent. Anyhoo, just remember the " Can You Kill Me Now bars on a Chinese manufactured scope should be measuring about to the zombie's shoulder not the top of his head


*Sorry folks running out of time and patience. If you'd like to add pictures, additional info please feel free, or just check back in a few weeks and I'll eventually get to it. Anybody who feels qualified to talk some more about scopes/lasers/red dot sights and any of the hi tech stuff out there please do so cause most of my training was a few years ago and may be kind of dated. Anyone who's a big fan of ballistics wanna give a rundown of projectile arches and parallax etc please post, I understand it but I'm not sure if I could explain it clearly enough not to confuse someone else.*