At the 22 matches at Beeson range over the weekend I had some questions arise.

Shooting 100 yd group I'd have four real tight shots, then for no seen condition the fifth shot went about 2" high and left.

There were no seen condition to make that shot go another place.
This was a common occurrence over the entire match.

Using Lapua Master L thru my Martini Mk3.

What causes such unwanted flyers?

How can they be predicted and  resolved?

Keith,  Down at the other end of the firing line I was hearing the same story from other"much-better-than-me" shooters at both 100 and 200 yards---decent group/score going then a shot simply falling out or rising up by several inches.  Some of them were guys who normally are found up near the top of the lists. I don't shoot well enough for that pattern to show up clearly.  In my shooting I did see some of it too but I attributed it to operator error and failure to read the conditions correctly.

I suspect that the latter was at play this weekend.  When we have a bunch of good shooters, using different rifles, different brands and lots of, all having the same experience I put it down to an unspotted condition.   

Our winds were light, relative to "normal" etna green conditions at least.  However they were REAL twitchy.  My probe would be showing barely any movement at all--less than half a tick from dead center, yet the directional indicator right next to it and right above it would show a wind shift of 180-plus degrees, and then twitch back the other way--in just a few seconds with barely a twitch of the probe.
 A lot of the change was fluttering between head and tail winds.  My downrange flags made of lightweight nylon webbing would show little speed but a couple benches over either way flags made of even lighter fabric would be fluttering out a third or half way up to horizontal.
 I rather suspect that the guys who had the best scores/groups this weekend were either luckier or better skilled/equipped to read the light puffy conditions that wreak havoc with the 22 rfs.
 I'm considering making some new flags for next year; with 2/3 of the length being the webbing and the tail 1/3 being nylon taffata 

Keith,

That was the "Wind Fairy".  The little spryte had me messed up all weekend.  She even made me take a cartridge out of the wrong box and dropped a '15' on my head to mess up the 200yd single entry target.

The only good targets I had all weekend were the ones I shot when she was down on your end harrassing you!

Corky