The precision shooter's baseline: never more than scope height from your line of sight inside 100, clean DOPE beyond it.
The 100 yard zero is a different philosophy from the battlesight zeros. Instead of weaving the bullet through your line of sight twice to stretch a center hold, it puts the single useful crossing at 100 and accepts drop beyond it — because you are going to dial or hold that drop with a graduated reticle anyway.
Its quiet advantage inside 100: the bullet never rises above your line of sight at all. Everything between muzzle and zero is below your crosshair by at most the height of your mount. For varmint shooters taking small precise targets at known short distances, that predictability beats a battlesight arc.
It is also the convention almost all published DOPE, ballistic apps and match courses assume. If you are logging drops in a data book or shooting known-distance stages, a 100 yard zero keeps your numbers speaking the same language as everyone else's.
Bullet path relative to line of sight, 5.56 NATO / .223 Rem, 55gr at 2900 fps, 100 yard zero, standard atmosphere. Plus is above your aim point.
| DISTANCE | BULLET PATH | HOLD (MOA) |
|---|---|---|
| 25 yds | −1.4″ | 5.5 UP |
| 50 yds | −0.6″ | 1.1 UP |
| 100 yds | 0″ | — zero |
| 150 yds | −1.3″ | 0.8 UP |
| 200 yds | −5.3″ | 2.5 UP |
| 250 yds | −12.9″ | 4.9 UP |
| 300 yds | −25.5″ | 8.1 UP |
This zero gives you nothing for free past 100 — drop arrives immediately and grows fast (see the table). With a plain red dot and no way to hold precisely, a 36 or 50 yard zero serves a general-purpose carbine better.
Usually not. A dot gives you no precise way to hold the drop that starts immediately past 100, so you give up the flat midrange a 36 or 50 yard zero would buy you and get little back. The 100 shines with magnification and a reticle or turrets.
Yes — that is the founding use case of our target generator. It prints an offset aim point at your paper distance: put your group on the offset mark at 25 yards and your rifle is zeroed for 100. The Customize This Target button above opens the generator pre-filled with this load.
Different muzzle velocities and ballistic coefficients mean different arcs — they can cross your sight line at different points even from the same rifle. Zero for the load you actually shoot, and print a separate target per load if you run several; the generator stores each as a saved setup.