Thats right Dave (say hi to your son for me by the way), now the mildot system was developed for ranging military applications and it works very well for that application, if you slightly inaccurately range an enemy soldier, the likely hood is you will still hit with an incapacitation shot, afterall if you hit anwhere from groin to head you are going to do dammage enough to eliminate the enemy from battle, you have almost a meter of target area in which to drop a bullet verticaly, that means if you misjudge the range by a few meters you will still hit, getting the dope on the wind is far more important than ranging to the exact meter for military applications, as the enemy provides a target that is approx 1m from groin to top of head, but only perhaps 40cm wide, hence misjudging the wind will lead you to more misses than will been a bit of with your mildot subtentions and estimations, now when you cone to range deer or pigs we definately have to hit within a smaller kill zone, the vitals on a game animal are not alll that big, and we want to kill that animal with the minimum of suffering, ie. none at all, so we must estimate range and wind as accurately as possible. The only way to become effective at this is to practice practice practice. If you use a lazer rangefinder often, try to estimate the range by guessing, then by using the mildot reticle and then verify with the lazer, you will then be constantly practicing and testing, thus increasing you ranging ability. Then when its foggy or the battery packs in, you will still be effective. With practice it is possible to become very proficient with a mildot reticle.
I prefer the scopes (like the S&B and most European scopes) that let you range with the reticle on any power setting, also by far the best policy is to forget about feet inches and yards altogether. work in Meters and centimeters, its all ones and tens, far easier to calculate than fractions of an inch or of an MOA. stick with mils, 1 mil(miliradian) = 1m @1000m, the S&B PMII's i have adjust in clicks or 1/10 miliradian @100m (ie. 1cm) it is just so simple to use this, no division by 36, no fractions, all easy easy to do. why the hell the US military range in miliradians using the mildot scope, then convert into feet inches and yards, adjust the scope in fractions of an inch, and measure distance in meters and Km is beyond me, if we stick to 1's and 10's its so much easier..
Pete
