Help Needed - Understanding Mils

Hey all. Thanks for the replies.. proper replies from me tomorrow. I am sun whipped and in need of a Scotch... Barrel break-in went well today. First 15 rounds down the tube. I am understanding Mildots a bit more....emphasis on the word "bit"..... Headed to find the bottle of Macallan and put my feet up! Thanks all. Victoria
May I suggest a Redbreast 12 year old Irish single pot, double distilled?
 
A little advice:
Using a different system is like driving a car in a foreign country...

It doesn't matter how the speed relates to speeds you are used to seeing back home. What matters is that the speedometer in the car matches the speed limit signs you are passing.

So, if you are going to run a mil scope, then do your drop in mils and your wind charts in mils. Don't try to hang on and extrapolate from moa. Just run mils the same way you ran moa, as it's own independent system.

It works the same anyway, you just get easier math to do...
What's easier figuring in your head, 17 quarters (1/4 moa's) or 17 dimes (1.7mils)?
Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I find myself trying to convert mils to inches.. Need to retrain myself to think in terms of mils.
 
Yes its a retain the brain thing &
BUT you do need to jog your mind when you have used MOA all you shooting life & then get a MILS scope & swap between the 2.

I am lucky, I grew up in the the metric system so thats easy for me, but there are still so many things in life & shooting that are in inches so you have to understand both anyway.
It would be much more difficult for people who only grew up with imperial measurements.

Then of cousre I do all my reloading I measure in inches, well thousands of an inch anyway.
That is what I am getting at, retraining my brain! I understand in simplest terms it is an angular measurement. Trying to figure out the best way to learn it
 
You are off to an excellent start with your newly acquired reloading skills and excellent choices in equipment/rifle set-up. You have gotten excellent advice thus far. When you finally get there, please do not make look too bad. 😇

Have fun with it ... happy safe reloading and shooting/hunting. Cheers!

Ed
Thank you, Ed. I love it.. I love the learning of all of this. Especially love how helpful everyone has been on this forum. This resource is a Gold Mine!
 
I have been shooting scope that made adjustments in inches.. now I have a whole new system to wrap my brain around.

Boom! There is your issue. You had a scope that made adjustments in MOA. Us American shooters convert MOA to inches bc we never bothered to learn what MOA actually meant.

If we, because I am equally guilty of this, learned MOA as an angular measurement the transition to mils would be easier. If we spoke MOA instead of inches, then mil would come naturally. Like you said, our brains are trying to relate it to inches, when didn't have to do that all along.
 
May I suggest a Redbreast 12 year old Irish single pot, double distilled?
Love how you think! I just so happen to have a Cask strength 12 year old Irish Red Breast on my table. Good stuff for certain... Yes, and I like flowers too ;).. oh and fast cars.. cannot forget about Roxy, my Dodge Challenger with the 392 Hemi.. she is a beauty!

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Boom! There is your issue. You had a scope that made adjustments in MOA. Us American shooters convert MOA to inches bc we never bothered to learn what MOA actually meant.

If we, because I am equally guilty of this, learned MOA as an angular measurement the transition to mils would be easier. If we spoke MOA instead of inches, then mil would come naturally. Like you said, our brains are trying to relate it to inches, when didn't have to do that all along.

I am determined to retrain my brain. It will be a good exercise for certain!
 
I get the struggle, I just successfully retrained my brain from inches to MIL's but I still instinctively think in inches. I was shooting at 400y this past weekend with a 13mph wind from 90* and my wind call was off. My first thought was "how far right was my miss" but then stopped myself and used my reticle to measure the miss (.3 MIL). I made the 3 clicks to the left and was dead on with my next shot. I can't tell you how much quicker and easier that was than trying to think through the miss in inches. It literally takes seconds to make the correction thinking in MIL's.
 
I am determined to retrain my brain. It will be a good exercise for certain!
Here is how most MOA shooters think:
"My drop is 40 inches...so, at this distance that is about 8.5moa. So, that means 34 clicks...1,2,3,4".....a couple minutes later, a shot rings out.

The proper way:
"At this distance, my drop is 8.5moa" ...(looking at numbers on scope, turns to the "8" then counts 2 more)... a shot rings out a few seconds later.

Mils is exactly the same process:
"My drop at this distance is 2.2mils"...(looks at numbers on turret, and dials to the "2" and two more clicks)...a shot rings out a few seconds later.

The exact same process is used for wind. It's the angle, not the linear measurement.

The mental block with shooters using MILS is most often the fact that they never learned to properly use MOA.

It isn't thier fault. When you have a duplex reticle, and a scope with no numbers on the turrets, you HAVE to do it the way in the first example above. But we now have scopes now with good reticles, good turrets, and the turrets match the reticles.
 
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