Below is a zoomed in view showing how the 700 Remington crosses the line of sight at 80 and 100 yards while the

AR 15 crosses the line of sight at 100 and 125 yards.

Below is a chart showing an AR 15 sighted in at 75 yards compared to a 700 Remington sighted in at 100 yards. I use the 75 yard sight in range on my scoped AR 15s.  The bullet path crosses the line of sight at 75 and 170 yards and is less than 1 inch high or low from 35 to 195 yards. The bullet is less than 4 inches low at 250 yards.

     I’ve been reading a lot of posts lately about bullet trajectories and stating that a bullet never rises.  They usually make the statement that if you shoot a bullet and drop a bullet then both bullets will hit the ground at the same time.  The fact is that if you hold a rifle with the barrel parallel to the earth and hold another bullet at the same height as the barrel then fire the rifle and drop the bullet at the same time, both bullets will hit the ground at the same time. 

     But the statement about a bullet never rising is not true.  As you can see in the charts above, if your rifle is sighted in at 100 yards and you shoot at a target 100 yards away, the bullet will start to rise relative to the line of sight and usually will also be rising relative to the earth.  The bullet will continue to rise until it reaches about 70 yards then will start to fall relative to the line of sight and relative to the earth and will continue to fall until it intersects the line of sight again at 100 yards then continue to fall until it hits the earth. 

     That being said, a bullet never rises relative to the bore line no matter what distance the rifle is sighted in at, it immediately starts to drop, relative to the bore line, but not relative to the line of sight or relative to the earth.

                                                        Facts 

• If the rifle is properly sighted in then…

1. The bullet will rise relative to the line of sight before falling.
2. The bullet may rise relative to the earth before falling.
3. The bullet never rises relative to the bore line but falls immediately.
4. The dropped bullet will hit the ground before the fired bullet does.

     If anyone wants to argue this point then fire your gun straight up in the air and tell me the bullet didn't rise before falling.

Just for everones information: The sight height for an AR 15 A2 is 2.6 inches, this seems to be very hard info to find on the internet for some reason.

                                 Comments or Questions