I gave the only answer I could come up with: “Hell, I don’t have a clue.”

I knew exactly what had happened when I felt the shift in the wind, and I knew I had been extremely lucky. Wind is the great variable, and sometimes it defies figuring. In the space of 100 yards a strong wind did a 90-degree shift, undoubtedly channeled by the terrain.

If I’d had time to study the grass and sagebrush maybe I could have figured it out, but it wasn’t a long shot. At the muzzle the wind was in my face, so I played it straight--and I was dead wrong. I hit the antelope in the hips but through the spine and was fortunate to anchor him. The entrance was about 10 inches left of my aiming point.

Any good ballistic program will tell you the precise wind drift for any bullet at any velocity. My QuickTarget program tells me that, if the wind was 30 mph, and if the distance was 250 yards, I had about 11 inches of wind drift to contend with. But on that flat where the pronghorn lay the wind was stronger than 30 mph. The distance was a bit more, too--but at exactly what point did the wind change and start to work on the bullet?

We have great technological advances such as laser rangefinders and now laser rangefinders within riflescopes. Very soon we will have computer chips that will automatically adjust the hold for distance, and I suppose there will be on-board weather systems that will measure the wind (and angle, and elevation and barometric pressure) and adjust for that as well.

But when all is said and done, reading the wind will remain one of the great mysteries in field riflery. There are no range flags out there, and all any computer program can give you is a constant. Wind is not constant, especially in varied terrain. Regardless of the equipment you are using, you must try to read it throughout the bullet’s path, and no device can do this for you.

This means that, even if the wind seems constant, in a strong wind there is some point where you have a no-shot situation. On that day, at just 250 yards, I was in a no-shot situation. I just didn’t realize it because I judged a “negative value” wind and was dead wrong.

If the antelope had been standing with his head to the left, I’d have missed him clean, but as he stood, if the bullet had landed even slightly differently we would’ve had a wounded animal on our hands.

Would I take the shot again? At that distance, yes. You have to read the wind as well as you can and understand that it presents variables that no technology will ever be able to overcome.

Sometimes you’ll read the wind right, and sometimes you’ll read it wrong, but on game there must be a cutoff point. And that point is a whole lot closer in the wind than it is on a calm day.