How far is this deer?

[phillietimothy]

Using a mil dot reticle in this link, how far is the standing deer. I am using the standard 18" back - brisket measurement as the known. I am assuming the scope is on the correct power for ranging? I come up with 187.5 feet or 62.5 yards. I want to know if I am ranging correctly? Under photo selection, I chose deer herd. Under the reticle selection, I chose the mil dot full ir. They actually look more like elk to me, but for the purposes of this thread we will assume an 18" back - to brisket measurement. This is a nice feature, I wish other scopes offered this.

http://www.hawkeoptics.com/us/riflescopes/reticles/reticleinfo/index.php

 

[SBruce]

You are correct.
Assuming the same things, 62.5 yds or slightly more (maybe 64 yds).

Reason I say slightly more is because the "deer" doesn't quite exactly cover 8 mils. Looks more like 7.8 to my eyes. Yes, no deer I've ever seen looks that way.

BTW, most deer I've measured are more than 18" B2B. Large muley doe's avg 18-20, mature bucks are 20-24". Most antelope bucks avg 16-18". In real life and extended ranges, those extra 2" are important if we're going to range with a reticle.

Likewise, being as precise as possible with the coverage is important at extended ranges. 1.3 mil vs 1.5 mil makes quite a difference with a 24" buck, 512 yds vs 444 yds respectively......enough to miss or make a poor hit.

This is partly why 500 yds was considered long range in the days before laser range finders. In fact, anything beyond 300 was long range......anything beyond 500 was really long range. Lower BC bullets, no rangefinders, no windmeters, no ballistic software, scopes that didn't track accurate at all when we dialed the knobs, on and on.

 

[sscoyote]

John Barsness talks about reticle-rangefinding using simple plex reticles before the lasers came out--and said he was quite successful at it.

This stuff is really fascinating to play with as it's all (rangefinding and downrange zero reference) based on the mil-ranging formula.

Take a look at the 30-30 reticle in that website (...of which is one of the best resources out there for rangefinding reference, BTW). By applying the "mil-ranging formula," it can be seen how the simple plex reticle itself can be applied as an adequate rangefinding device very similar to the mil-dot. They give the subtension of that reticle as 15" from X-hair to plex post tip at 100 yds.

If u bracket the "buck deer" which is actually a bull elk, and use say 27" back to brisket it can be seen that the b-b profile occupies about 1.5 plex post tip units. Here's the mil-ranging formula substituting 15 IPHY for the 3.6 IPHY subtension--

27 x 100 / 15 / 1.5 = 120 yds.

Neat stuff and GREAT site to study this stuff.