Nikon BDC targetting ?

[utbrowningman]

I have a Nikon Team Primos 3-9x-40 on my Browning X-Bolt .30-06 and thought of an issue (or maybe it is not) concerning the reticle. Say I have a shot at 300 yards with my scope zeroed at 100 yards. A deer at 300 yards should be sighted on the second ballistic circle. Now if my scope is on 3x or 9x that circle will be located on a different location on the deer. The only constant will be the center crosshairs no matter what magnification is used. Is this an issue? I have not been able to field-test this yet. Perhaps I am overthinking the problem.

 

[Lloyd Smale]

yes what you have it set on will effect the whole picture. You need to set it up at a specific magnification. http://spoton.nikonsportoptics.com/spoton/spoton.html

 

[jmr40]

You are just going to have to go shoot the gun at 300 yards to be certain. Using supplied data should get you close enough to be on paper, but that is about it.

I have one Nikon with the BDC, much prefer the simpler reticle on the Burris or Leupold versions. The circles are just too busy and clutter up the image without being accurate enough. I use the intersection of the circles and crosshairs instead of the center of the circle as my aiming points.

With either type I shoot at various ranges and make notes on where the bullets impact in relation to the marks on the scope.

I leave my scopes on the lowest magnification 99% of the time. On a longer shot I move straight to the highest magnification, which is what I used to zero. That way there is no chance of any such aiming errors due to different magnifications. At closer ranges and lower magnifications slight errors don't show up enough to matter.

 

[Tony k]

What Lloyd said^^^

Get the Nikon spot on software. It's either free or $5, but using it is cheaper than shooting scores of rounds to figure out what each BDC hash mark represents at a given magnification level.

You are totally correct that the drop compensation varies by the level of magnification. The only thing that stays the same is the zero point.

I have a Nikon buckmaster bdc 4.5-14 on my savage 111 .270. I didn;t ever use the bdc features untill I got the software.

 

[Lloyd Smale]

I usualy set it to work on the highest power the scope goes to. I figure if i need to use the animal is out far and i have plenty of time to crank the scope up. If a deer is less then 300 yards you can about use the normal crosshair and ignore the rest anyway. One thing ill add is like the previous poster said. you need to verify where it hits way out there. theres sure no guarantee with there data.

 

[OpticsPlanet]

I like the Nikon BDC reticle and Spot On system. Over the past few years I have been lucky enough to shoot that system on just about every firearm system available. Check out this article I wrote a few months ago on the Nikon Spot On Championship. The circles really do work well:
http://www.opticsblog.com/2013/05/2013-nikon-spot-on-championship.html

Chase B.

 

[sscoyote]

I learned that reticle subtension is ~inversely proportional to magnification the hard way when I tried to zero the old Burris Ballistic Mil-dot reticle at the upper dot at the optic's highest ower and then changed the power way down--missed a called-in coyote at close range couple days later and then started investigating what went wrong. The Nikon Spot-On uses this concept in their ballistics program. It's often quite fun to work with when shooting long distance--sometimes with quite surprising results.

 

[OpticsPlanet]

The suggestions for Spot On are - well, spot on.

Here's a link:
http://spoton.nikonsportoptics.com/spoton/spoton.html

Mark H.