Rangefinding Reticles

What’s good — and what’s great!

Written By Wayne van Zwoll

2020

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Any reticle that will subtend — or bracket — a known measure at a known yardage can put you on target at any distance, if you know the size of the target. However, for hunting, a reticle should be simple enough to use without thinking.

Mil-dot Master, a laser RF, a smart phone and other devices work at the range but burn precious seconds.

Start With Simple

The single dot, popularized by T.K. Lee, is simple. When a 3-minute dot blocks half the 18″ chest of a mule deer, the animal is 300 yards off. Best dot size depends on magnification. To me, a 2-minute dot seems right for a 6x scope, a 3-minute for a 4x, a 4-minute for a 2-1/2x.

Tics on the vertical wire give distinct aiming points to hunters using powerful riflescopes at a distance. Burris intelligently spaced three tics on its Ballistic Plex to roughly match impact for popular loads at 100-yard intervals beyond 200. Clean, simple and practical, the Ballistic Plex helped me collect a beautiful pronghorn when, denied closer approach by his alert harem, I fired my .280 from 390 steps.

Next came windage tics. Alas, these bred with elevation tics and multiplied, infesting once-empty quadrants with tangles of dots and lines. I marveled at one reticle with more than 1,050 aiming points. A long time counting, I’d have taken longer finding the one to use and then trying to keep track of it against deer hide.

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The “30” and “36” index lines allow for ranging targets bigger than elk. All others are ranged at 15x.

Mil-Dot Madness

The mil-dot reticle has remained clean but with enough useful information to bring hits at extreme range. Mil is short for milliradian, an angular measure spanning about 3.6″ at 100 yards. On a mil-dot reticle, a mil is the measure of each space between dots on a crosswire. To find range with this reticle, divide target height in mils at 100 yards by the number of spaces subtending it. If a whitetail 3 feet at the shoulder (10 mils at 100 yards) appears in your scope to stand two dots high, divide 2 into 10; you get 5. The deer is 500 yards away. Or divide target size in yards by number of mils subtended, then multiply by 1,000 to get range in yards. In this example, 1 divided by 2 multiplied by 1,000 equals 500. A rear-focal-plane mil-dot reticle in variable scopes works at just one power setting (usually the highest). Front-plane mil-dot reticles accurately read range at any power, as dot spacing remains in constant relationship to the target.

Lately, complex reticles have been displaced by “trajectory-matched” dials pioneered on Leupold scopes by GreyBull Precision. “To cut a dial so you hit with a center hold at any range,” says Don Ward, “we must know the bullet’s starting speed and 700-yard drop, or actual ballistic co-efficient.” To increase reach per rotation of the elevation dial, he substitutes 1/3-minute clicks for 1/4-minute — a good idea. Now Leupold offers the Custom Dial System (CDS) dials to match customer loads. Other firms have followed suit.

Burris was early to the stage with a laser-ranging scope. I reported on the first, then in 2014 on a lighter, improved Eliminator III. The current is 3-12×44 and 4-16×50 range game to 750 yards. Program the scope for your load, and each range reading lights a dot on the rear-plane reticle which is your aiming point. An inclinometer helps with vertical angles.

SIG SAUER’s BDX scopes have injected Blue Tooth into optics. Download an app in your smartphone with ballistic data, synchronize the phone with a BDX Kilo laser rangefinder and your scope shows a bright dot where the bullet will land.

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Holland’s affordable 2.5-15x50 Game-Getter scope on this Ruger RPR features the Fit-To-Hit ranging reticle.

The Burris Eliminator is a laser-ranging scope that works well. Slimmer now, it’s still a beefy unit.

A Better Mousetrap

Darrell Holland, an Oregon long-range buff who also runs an excellent shooting school, markets his own ART (Advanced Reticle Technology) reticle. It has mil-dots and tics marking minutes of angle. Darrell says most other rangefinding reticles “are of limited utility past 500 yards.” In a 3-12x50 Schmidt & Bender scope, I’ve found ART values spot-on at very long distances.

Holland recently fielded another rangefinding reticle — “Fit-To-Hit.” Using it, like running through gears on a motorcycle, is easier to do than to explain. The standard reticle on Holland’s new Game-Getter 2.5-15x50 scope is a modified plex with windage ticks inside the horizontal bars. The vertical wire has a ladder of 15 “Hit” lines below center. Above center is a ladder of three rangefinder lines (24, 18 and 15) then above those are four “Fit” lines.

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Use the line of the chest measure (here 18") as the base (above). “Fit” number (here 4) is even with the back.

Making It Work

Choose the number on the rangefinder ladder best approximating the chest depth of the animal you’re hunting. Bring this line against the animal’s brisket and its withers will then match a number on the Fit ladder. Find the same number on the Hit ladder below. Hold this intersection where you want the bullet to land.

This system works for most popular high-velocity game loads. After a few minutes, you’ll find it intuitive. Darrell couldn’t resist extending Hit lines to help with drift.

The reticle’s rear-plane placement compels you to range at top (15x) magnification. But “30” and “36” on the power ring adapt the 24″ baseline to range beasts as big as moose and eland. Thoughtful! Ditto yardage figures on the right-hand bar, should you range with a laser and need a Hit number quickly.

A hunter, Holland has made W/E and parallax dials easy to read. Long-range shooters will adore the reach afforded by half-minute elevation clicks (windage are quarter-minute). The resettable dials have zero stops. Multi-coated glass of course. At the range on my Ruger RPR in 6.5 Creedmoor, the Fit-To-Hit reticle proved out. Holland’s Game-Getter scope delivered bright, sharp target images. Spot-on at 0.5″ each, elevation clicks repeated perfectly. The parallax/focus dial puts targets in crisp relief as near as 10 yards, so can serve on air-rifle ranges as well as for steel plates at a four-figure distance.

At $495, the Game-Getter is an affordable scope. It takes 30mm rings and uses no batteries. It has no laser unit so is legal for hunting in every state.

For more info: www.hollandguns.com

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