I was plinking for fun a while back and of course the usual "hey man, try to hit that...." competitions come up. It was a steel gong at about 100 yards but I was never able to hit it because I couldnt find a good hold point. Does anyone have any good diagrams about 38 and 357 and where a 25 yard zero may get you at distance? For example, setting the rear sights on an m16 to 8/3 and BZO'ing at 36 yards for a 300 yard zero, and how it crosses the point of aim twice. Or is the short distance fired out of a 4-6" barrel negligible anyways...

Try the Hornady Ballistic Calculator online; it's very easy to use. For a 158 grain .38 caliber bullet with a ballistic coefficient of 0.20 (about right for SWC's or JHP's), a .38 Special with a muzzle velocity of 850 ft/sec will be 14.6 inches low at 100 yards if your zero is at 25 yards. For a .357 Magnum at 1200 ft/sec, the drop at 100 yards will only be 5.9 inches. This is assuming a sight height of 1.5 inches above the bore.

You can get ballistic coefficients for your bullets from the manufacturers website or from reloading manuals. You can then play around with the calculator to see the effects of all the variables on trajectory.

I had the range to myself once and was goofing around shooting 100 yards with a target load out of a .38 snubby.

I started low and worked my way up so I would know where the bullets were going. I ended up holding at 70 degrees plus and was dropping them like the long bomb into the end zone. Didn't hit much but it was kind of fun.