Range finding reticles practical?

[JeeperCreeper]

I'm looking for a new hunting scope for a Winchester XPR in .30-06 and not sure if I should place priority on a specific type of reticle for long range shooting and hunting. I haven't taken long shots past 200 yards in a few years. But for the future, I'd like to start practicing.

I have an idea of how the MilDot system works. I also see that many new scopes, like Nikon and Vortex, have their BDC reticles with apps for "quick and dirty" adjustments. I also know people can range find on some of these reticles similar to a MilDot or MOA system.

Are these BDC reticles any good for use while hunting? Does anyone use a reticle to range estimate while hunting?

 

[Varminterror]

BDC reticles - including the Zeiss version - are worthless to me. They take too much effort to make work, or tie my hands into pretending I have a fixed power scope. If you ALWAYS keep a piece of paper outlining your subtensions with you, and ALWAYS keep smart phone on hand, and ALWAYS have lots of time to develop your ranging solution, then the variant spacing can be an advantage, but overall, you have to do a LOT more work because one part of your tape measure reads millimeters, one part reads inches, and one part reads feet... Screw that noise.

I regularly use milling reticles for both ranging & hold over. Regularly graduated reticles are worth their weight in gold for me.

When ranging or holding over with a milling reticle, it pays to use a First Focal Plane model.

 

[RussellC]

BDC reticles - including the Zeiss version - are worthless to me. They take too much effort to make work, or tie my hands into pretending I have a fixed power scope. If you ALWAYS keep a piece of paper outlining your subtensions with you, and ALWAYS keep smart phone on hand, and ALWAYS have lots of time to develop your ranging solution, then the variant spacing can be an advantage, but overall, you have to do a LOT more work because one part of your tape measure reads millimeters, one part reads inches, and one part reads feet... Screw that noise.

I regularly use milling reticles for both ranging & hold over. Regularly graduated reticles are worth their weight in gold for me.

When ranging or holding over with a milling reticle, it pays to use a First Focal Plane model.

I saw this post with one response, I knew it had to be you! To the OP, this guy (Varminterror) is the one to ask....

Russellc

 

[JeeperCreeper]

So Varm, do you rely mostly on your reticle for range, or do you rely on a laser rangefinder?

As far as keeping subtensions, I have a pouch on my stock that I would keep notecards (if I went with a BDC). That's what my brother did for each of his loads but we never got to play too much with it before he traded the rifle and scope on something else. But I'd much rather be good at ranging through the scope only

 

[Varminterror]

So Varm, do you rely mostly on your reticle for range, or do you rely on a laser rangefinder?

Laser rangefinder is much more accurate than ANYONE with a reticle. But I do almost all of my windage as holdover, do about 1/3 of my shooting as holdover, and try to do as much ranging on known size objects to be able to quickly do some math in my head and get myself on target. Milling with the reticle is a very valuable skill, and it reinforces the shooter's ability to be able to read increments between the stadia for holdover range or windage, but it's not a precise measurement process. Sure, from 0-600 with a high velocity bottleneck centerfire, you'll be able to get on a torso sized target, which might be all you need. But if you get out there to long range or ELR, milling for range loses relevancy.

Here's an example I ran this summer with some students which describes why it's so important to have an LRF if you're shooting long range:

I read a known 10" wide target at 1.3Mil on a mil-dot SFP at 18x, 12x reference. Run that math out, and it comes up to a corrected/true read of 0.87mil, which then solves out to 320yrds. I lasered my target at 325yrds on the nose (laser +/-1yrd spec). Now, for most rifles, a difference of 5yrds at 320-325yrds won't matter - but I was shooting a 22LR, and I'm dropping more than an inch per yard out there, so milling 320yrds for an actual 325 would mean a miss of 5" low - and missing by 5" means instead of hitting my 10" plate almost every shot, I'd only hit it half of the time.

Ok, so you might be wondering - WTH is he talking about? Here's the rub - I read 1.3mil, and I got 320yrds. But it SHOULD have been 325yrds... That 5yrd difference means I SHOULD HAVE READ 1.28mil... Who's really going to mil down to the nearest hundredth?

So expand that to something a little less ridiculous than a 22LR: Throw an IPSC target out there at 1,000yrds with a 6.5 Grendel - very attainable with a good rifle, good conditions, and a proper booger picker. Let's say you're using a Leupold TMR instead of a mil-dot this time... A guy is likely to read that as 3/4mil, or 0.8mil... Hopefully 0.8... So you punch that in - you get 1024yrds with 0.8, or 1092yrds ranged if you picked 3/4mil... But we know the target is at 1,000 on the nose... The reading should really be 0.82mil... Again, can a guy really read accurately to within those 2 hundredths mil? If I read 0.8, that's a miss by 30". If I read 3/4mil, that's a miss by 10ft....

Or what if you don't know the EXACT size of the target? Maybe you estimate a fence post as 40" tall, but it's really 37" tall? Say it reads 2mil, I'll solve that out to be 555yrds, whereas it should REALLY solve to 514yrds. That's a miss of about a foot with that Grendel (reusing that trajectory since I have it open), at a range where a guy should be delivering 8" groups - missing by a foot...

So laser rangefinders really do make a HUGE difference in a shooter's ability to deliver hits on target. If you take a read through the Precision Rifle Blog summary articles around the Advanced Ballistics Weapon Engagement Zone (monte carlo) simulations, "How much does it matter?" you'll be able to see how much having accurate ranges matters, even better than my examples outlined here. Bryan and the crew's work in presentation, and PRB's representation thereof were both fantastic.

As far as keeping subtensions, I have a pouch on my stock that I would keep notecards (if I went with a BDC). That's what my brother did for each of his loads but we never got to play too much with it before he traded the rifle and scope on something else. But I'd much rather be good at ranging through the scope only

Even with a cheat card, it just takes too long to have so many various subtensions, and a guy is too prone to mess up somewhere. With a mil-dot reticle, I can read .1, .2, .8, .9, 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.8, 1.9, 2, 2.1, 2.2... So there are some big gaps in there between reads. With a BDC, a guy can read more spans, but it's AWFUL to remember the spans between all of them, and even having a card, you're just slowing yourself down way too much. It SEEMS really handy, but it ends up being about as handy as wearing a motorcycle helmet while driving your truck to work - turning out to be really UNHANDY most of the time.

A guy HAS to have a card to make it work with a BDC, or you're stuck only reading with one or two spans which you can readily remember.

I use this analogy: Think about a tape measure - at the tip, it's marked in inches, at mid length, it's marked in feet, and farther near the other end, it's only marked in yards. A guy will be able to measure just as accurately by repositioning the tape measure a few times, but it'll take longer, and it sure won't be as easy to build a house as it would be if it were marked in even increments - the way real-world tape measures are marked...

 

[JeeperCreeper]

Laser rangefinder is much more accurate than ANYONE with a reticle. But I do almost all of my windage as holdover, do about 1/3 of my shooting as holdover, and try to do as much ranging on known size objects to be able to quickly do some math in my head and get myself on target. Milling with the reticle is a very valuable skill, and it reinforces the shooter's ability to be able to read increments between the stadia for holdover range or windage, but it's not a precise measurement process. Sure, from 0-600 with a high velocity bottleneck centerfire, you'll be able to get on a torso sized target, which might be all you need. But if you get out there to long range or ELR, milling for range loses relevancy.

Here's an example I ran this summer with some students which describes why it's so important to have an LRF if you're shooting long range:

I read a known 10" wide target at 1.3Mil on a mil-dot SFP at 18x, 12x reference. Run that math out, and it comes up to a corrected/true read of 0.87mil, which then solves out to 320yrds. I lasered my target at 325yrds on the nose (laser +/-1yrd spec). Now, for most rifles, a difference of 5yrds at 320-325yrds won't matter - but I was shooting a 22LR, and I'm dropping more than an inch per yard out there, so milling 320yrds for an actual 325 would mean a miss of 5" low - and missing by 5" means instead of hitting my 10" plate almost every shot, I'd only hit it half of the time.

Ok, so you might be wondering - WTH is he talking about? Here's the rub - I read 1.3mil, and I got 320yrds. But it SHOULD have been 325yrds... That 5yrd difference means I SHOULD HAVE READ 1.28mil... Who's really going to mil down to the nearest hundredth?

So expand that to something a little less ridiculous than a 22LR: Throw an IPSC target out there at 1,000yrds with a 6.5 Grendel - very attainable with a good rifle, good conditions, and a proper booger picker. Let's say you're using a Leupold TMR instead of a mil-dot this time... A guy is likely to read that as 3/4mil, or 0.8mil... Hopefully 0.8... So you punch that in - you get 1024yrds with 0.8, or 1092yrds ranged if you picked 3/4mil... But we know the target is at 1,000 on the nose... The reading should really be 0.82mil... Again, can a guy really read accurately to within those 2 hundredths mil? If I read 0.8, that's a miss by 30". If I read 3/4mil, that's a miss by 10ft....

Or what if you don't know the EXACT size of the target? Maybe you estimate a fence post as 40" tall, but it's really 37" tall? Say it reads 2mil, I'll solve that out to be 555yrds, whereas it should REALLY solve to 514yrds. That's a miss of about a foot with that Grendel (reusing that trajectory since I have it open), at a range where a guy should be delivering 8" groups - missing by a foot...

So laser rangefinders really do make a HUGE difference in a shooter's ability to deliver hits on target. If you take a read through the Precision Rifle Blog summary articles around the Advanced Ballistics Weapon Engagement Zone (monte carlo) simulations, "How much does it matter?" you'll be able to see how much having accurate ranges matters, even better than my examples outlined here. Bryan and the crew's work in presentation, and PRB's representation thereof were both fantastic.



Even with a cheat card, it just takes too long to have so many various subtensions, and a guy is too prone to mess up somewhere. With a mil-dot reticle, I can read .1, .2, .8, .9, 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.8, 1.9, 2, 2.1, 2.2... So there are some big gaps in there between reads. With a BDC, a guy can read more spans, but it's AWFUL to remember the spans between all of them, and even having a card, you're just slowing yourself down way too much. It SEEMS really handy, but it ends up being about as handy as wearing a motorcycle helmet while driving your truck to work - turning out to be really UNHANDY most of the time.

A guy HAS to have a card to make it work with a BDC, or you're stuck only reading with one or two spans which you can readily remember.

I use this analogy: Think about a tape measure - at the tip, it's marked in inches, at mid length, it's marked in feet, and farther near the other end, it's only marked in yards. A guy will be able to measure just as accurately by repositioning the tape measure a few times, but it'll take longer, and it sure won't be as easy to build a house as it would be if it were marked in even increments - the way real-world tape measures are marked...

Dang... I gotta lotta work to do...

So is there a scope for under $200 that can get me started? I'm a broke grad student... (I found a 4-12x40 Simmons scope with Mil Dot reticles for $75... I don't know if I'm ready for that low of a budget)

 

[cdb1]

Dang... I gotta lotta work to do...

So is there a scope for under $200 that can get me started? I'm a broke grad student... (I found a 4-12x40 Simmons scope with Mil Dot reticles for $75... I don't know if I'm ready for that low of a budget)

Do yourself a favor and pass on a Simmons scope.

 

[cdb1]

Instead of using a scope to range I use a rangefinder.

 

[JeeperCreeper]

Do yourself a favor and pass on a Simmons scope.

Hahahaha I'm well aware of that mistake... but my inner scrooge aches thinking of dropping big bucks to drop big bucks

 

[cdb1]

It's your choice. From the context of your statements I speculate your definition of big bucks is different than a lot of us. I can't afford to spend big bucks on scopes. To me big bucks start at $1k. I don't have any. My scopes are all $300.00 to $750.00 on my centerfire rifles. I also understand being a poor grad student.

For every one story you hear about good experience with a Simmons, newer Tasco, Barska, etc., you will hear ten bad experiences. So if you buy the scope for $75.00, the chance is very high that the money spent is wasted and you will be $75.00 in the hole in the quest for a decent scope for your rifle.

 

[roscoe]

You kinda have to enjoy math. Like using a sextant instead of a GPS. It is slower, much less accurate, more expensive, and requires way more work. But I like math and doing things old-school, so I enjoy going through it. But in any kind of practical situation, go with the electronics.

 

[Chuck R.]

I use a laser but practice subtense and as Varminterror points out, it's a chore and even with known target sizes isn't an exact science due to the usable graduations. I'm using a Leupold MK4 with TMR and a Vortex Razor HD and I'm often "close" but still sometimes 30+ yards off. There's a pretty good tutorial here:

http://www.mil-dot.com/user-guide

I created a simple spreadsheet for my phone that allows me to enter tgt size and mil reading and it will crank out the distance in yards. Faster than math, but the accurate mil readings are still the kicker. For regular big game hunting I find a BDC "OK" out to about 500 with an 8" kill zone as long as my load comes close to what the BDC is set for. You can check the Strelok app for the BDC reticle you're using, IF it's supported, you can plug in your load data (MV & BC) and it will calculate what the subtense bars equate to in distance, but then your stuck with a data card or dope chart taped to your rifle.

Chuck

 

[Klint Beastwood]

Hahahaha I'm well aware of that mistake... but my inner scrooge aches thinking of dropping big bucks to drop big bucks

If you are going to go cheap, then look at primary arms 4-16x44 ffp mil/mil
ebay had one for a buck fiddy. They work. More so then a simmons anyways.
Next, SWFA SS line scopes...ideally a fixed 10x mil/mil are pretty affordable.

 

[Varminterror]

So is there a scope for under $200 that can get me started?

Well, not a lot for less than $200, but there are a few which are serviceable.

That 22LR trajectory I described above was shot with a Ruger Charger wearing a Nikon Buckmaster 6-18x40mm Mil-dot. It was $300 when they were made, and included target turrets. Doesn't have to cost you $1,000 for an optic to get you shooting longer ranges or to house a mil or moa based reticle.

I just got a pair of Bushnell Trophy 3-9x40mm mil-dot for a 22LR which has finger adjustable knobs, one rides on my son's 22LR Savage bolt gun, the other is going on my 17WSM B-mag because I got so sick of the Nikon Buckmaster 4-12x40mm BDC. These go ~$140 street, although I got them on a steal for instructor demo.

I have only seen the 6-24x model which is a lot more expensive, but the new Bushnell Engage 6-18x with the moa based reticle looks to fit your bill well, but might be a little higher than you want to spend coming in around $230. The Bushnell Banner 6-24x40mm AO Mil-dot can still be had for $175 - I have these on a couple 17HMR and 22LR rifles and am very happy with them, just leave them under 20x else they'll get dim (sub 2mm exit pupil). The Engage SF 6-18x or Banner 6-24x AO would be great options for learning milling or "moa-ing" on a budget.

 

[Klint Beastwood]

Also data books and cheat sheets never hurt when learning.

 

[cdb1]

You don't have to spend anywhere near $1k for a good scope. If that is the way my previous post came across that wasn't my intent. But a $75.00 scope won't cut it for shooting "long distance".

 

[eastbank]

first I don,t like a busy retical, i use a 4.5x14 with AO-SF-30mm tube leupold with a turret set up for my load out to 750 yards(for hunting) and a good range finder. if you use the two wire or other wire ranging crosshairs it makes for a busy scope to me and may confuse you a little, and what if the animal you are shooting at is skinny(smaller) or fat(bigger) that could throw your ranging abilaity off causeing a miss or worse a wounded animal. I would get a good bipod and practice a lot shooting at differnt distances and field conditions you may find when hunting. and please don,t SKIMP on your optics and mounting system. eastbank.

 

[Klint Beastwood]

first I don,t like a busy retical, i use a 4.5x14 with AO-SF-30mm tube leupold with a turret set up for my load out to 750 yards(for hunting) and a good range finder. if you use the two wire or other wire ranging crosshairs it makes for a busy scope to me and may confuse you a little, and what if the animal you are shooting at is skinny(smaller) or fat(bigger) that could throw your ranging abilaity off causeing a miss or worse a wounded animal. I would get a good bipod and practice a lot shooting at differnt distances and field conditions you may find when hunting. and please don,t SKIMP on your optics and mounting system. eastbank.

Can you hit a 10in target cold barrel on almost any given day, at any given altitude, at any given temp with that set up? (not throwing wind into the equation)

 

[eastbank]

the wind can realy mess with you when shooting longer ranges, I have two rifles that will shoot a clean cold shot and a dirty cold shot into the same poi. I zero my 7mm-mag in at 200yards and run the clicks(1/4") on out, 9-10-300yrds, 20-21-400yrds ect. I have passed up shots at deer that were well within my range capibilitys, but the wind was just to strong and directional to make a clean kill. I use bow hunters deer paper targets for my longer range practice. I have several light easy to move one man shooting benches that i set up in the woods several weeks before season starts(private land, about 800 acres). eastbank

 

[Klint Beastwood]

the wind can realy mess with you when shooting longer ranges, I have two rifles that will shoot a clean cold shot and a dirty cold shot into the same poi. I zero my 7mm-mag in at 200yards and run the clicks(1/4") on out, 9-10-300yrds, 20-21-400yrds ect. I have passed up shots at deer that were well within my range capibilitys, but the wind was just to strong and directional to make a clean kill. I use bow hunters deer paper targets for my longer range practice. I have several light easy to move one man shooting benches that i set up in the woods several weeks before season starts(private land, about 800 acres). eastbank

The wind can, and i dont ever hold that against anybody, which is why i wanted to exclude it. I was just asking because if you had said yes, i would say that is a great set up and would be really impressed. Either way, i was making a point that there are different disciplines of shooting that a custom turret and a standard cross hair can't really accomplish.
Cold barrel at long distance in different environments, especially with those ballistic turrets are hard to keep up on. Cold barrel, being fouled or unfouled either way, meaning first round impacts at 750y, 1000y, 1700y, or whatever in different atmospherics. That's where a lot of the computers start to shine, is if you know how to use them, and you verify your shots and your true data, makes it a lot easier rather than going through a ton of data book pages for different theaters. Knowing the sciences, the whys and why nots, and so forth, can give a shooter more potential at range than maybe custom turrets. However a lot of people simply don't have the instruction/resources, or the desire to want to do all the work to be able to do it that way...in which case, "I" think the custom turrets shine..especially for hunting.
Sorry you walked into this, i just saw leupold, and i had a feeling that all the leupold fans where going to come out of the wood works and start taking about how well they do at long range, when in some practice its one way of doing it, but there are other...more practical ways of shooting long range, which is probably in the eyes of the shooter.

 

[eastbank]

750 yards is about all I can get on a light line on one of my stands. most are a lot closer, buts its nice to know if a monster buck walks out at 700-750 yards I have a chance take him. I just picked up a Remington 700-p in 300 win mag, but have not worked with it yet. eastbank.

 

[Klint Beastwood]

Same type i use, its in a xlr chassis now and the barrel has long been replaced with Schneider m40 barrel, the guy that actually makes the barrels for the Corps, but its a good rifle, and my hunting loads i just swiched to the 212gr eld-x...bc's are amazing. Switched from the MK 248 loads, which arent obviously a good hunting bullet. For animals anyway.

 

[JeeperCreeper]

You don't have to spend anywhere near $1k for a good scope. If that is the way my previous post came across that wasn't my intent. But a $75.00 scope won't cut it for shooting "long distance".

Hahaha no I understood what you meant. With my current skill and knowledge, a $1000 scope will probably be wasted. With the range I used to go to, and the hilly overgrown nature of my area, it's a struggle to find even a 400 yard shot.. let alone something that would really require real glass and great skill. Most budget-ish scopes can handle that. I'm looking for the $100-200 range to get started for the next couple of years until I hopefully have a more reliable and substantial source of income.

That primary arms scope looks promising!! I'm going to see what I can find for a price on those Bushnells.

 

[Varminterror]

i was making a point that there are different disciplines of shooting that a custom turret and a standard cross hair can't really accomplish.

With the exception of ranging with the reticle or hold-over shooting, this is not accurate. Your implication that custom turrets (your apparent beef with Leupold and their fanboi's) are inferior to adapting to environmental changes is faulty - there's functionally no difference in dialing with a custom turret or a standard turret.

It's no different using a custom turret and plex reticle compared to using a graduated milling/moa-ing reticle. Either you know your corrections from your base trajectory, or you don't. If I'm .2mil less drop on a cold day hunting outside Eagle, CO for a 500yrd than I am when hunting the weekend prior outside of Lindsborg, KS, I have to know that whether I hold .2mil more, or dial two more clicks on my turret, regardless of whether that turret simply says "3" or "500" (or some other arbitrary number back when we didn't have resettable zero turrets!!!). Ballistic matched turrets are nothing more than a range card wrapped around your turret - they still have the same 1/4IPHY or .1MRAD click detents, but as @eastbank described, they count out yardages in addition to numerical clicks. So if I had the CDS turrets installed, I'd crank to my 500yrd mark which matches my "base trajectory" at home in Kansas, back off two clicks to 2.8mrad and deliver a 500yrd shot on target. If I had standard turrets, then I'd have to look at my range card, I'd read 3mil and start dialing to 3mil, see my altitude correction DOPE of -0.2mil, and stop at 2.8. As long as you're dialing, there's no real difference in custom ballistic turrets and standard turrets if you actually know how to use your gear in the field.

And a graduated milling or moa-ing reticle doesn't change the way my turrets are used in any way. If I'm dialing, I'm dialing, regardless of what the turret is labeled. A standard reticle doesn't work as well for hold over as a graduated reticle, that's plain to understand, but there's no functional difference once you're dialing - if you're dialing for shots, you're dialing for shots, so the appearance of the crosshair is largely irrelevant EXCEPT for ranging with the reticle.

I can understand that many folks don't know how to run their gear, so they'll not realize that the hornady.com trajectory they punched on their phone (used to be the trajectory printed on the box) might not match their actual trajectory in their rifle, let alone their current location trajectory. If a guy doesn't actually know their trajectory, or how to manage it, and is printing/publishing a new range card for every environmental condition they shoot, instead of simply utilizing their base trajectory and making adjustments according to environmental changes, then they might be mentally crippled by having ONLY their base trajectory engraved into their turrets. But inexperienced shooters are inexperienced shooters - what do you expect? Dropping in a milling reticle won't change the fact a guy doesn't know how to correct their trajectory for environmental conditions.

Ballistic turrets are not unique to Leupold, either.

 

[Varminterror]

Cold barrel at long distance in different environments, especially with those ballistic turrets are hard to keep up on. Cold barrel, being fouled or unfouled either way, meaning first round impacts at 750y, 1000y, 1700y, or whatever in different atmospherics. That's where a lot of the computers start to shine, is if you know how to use them, and you verify your shots and your true data, makes it a lot easier rather than going through a ton of data book pages for different theaters. Knowing the sciences, the whys and why nots, and so forth, can give a shooter more potential at range than maybe custom turrets. However a lot of people simply don't have the instruction/resources, or the desire to want to do all the work to be able to do it that way...in which case, "I" think the custom turrets shine..especially for hunting.

It's really not all that complicated... Guys have been shooting long ranges for a really, really long time... Ballistic solutions were out there for cannon way back when guys fought wars on horseback with swords.

And of course, 1700yrd cold bore shots only happen on really big targets, with really big cartridges. Since the OP is talking about a $500 rifle in 30-06, going to absurdisms like this just isn't productive.

I've seen what @eastbank can do and has done with a rifle enough to know he didn't walk into your obvious little "trap" you tried to pull. If a dude knows his gear and how to use it for his application, custom turrets and standard reticles can work - and eastbank qualifies.