MOA to MIL - did you switch?

[ShtrRdy]

I'm still on the fence for this choice. I currently use both. The following thoughts come to mind as to the tradeoffs:
1. What are other people you shoot with using? If you can "talk the same language" it will be a much more enjoyable experience. Plus it's faster using adjustments others are using - no conversions needed.
2. Stay away from "how many inches" at some distance for this way versus that way. It's good information to know and understand but don't use it regularly.
3. If you have trouble rounding off numbers then mils are a little easier. Some people have trouble rounding a number to the nearest 1/4.
4. 1/4 Moa is a bit finer step size than 1/10 mil. Does it matter for what you're shooting? Are you wanting to connect with an elk or a prairie dog?
5. You can use moa or mil with any dimensional units you want to use. Inches, centimeters, feet, millimeters, yards, meters, furlongs, kilometers, miles, ......
6. It seems that the easiest use of moa versus mil would come if you were ranging an object. Due to the relationships associated with a mil reticle, if you knew an object's size in meters, you could multiply that by 1000, (move the decimal point right 3 places), and then divide by the number of mils you see the object span in you scope. This would give you range in meters. Note that most of the calculation you can do in your head.
7. As far as spotting your hits and making an adjustment, either moa or mil will work. You don't need to get inches or whatever involved. Just use the reticle like a ruler and note how many mil or moa the impact was off and make a correction. This is where it's really important to have the turret scaling match the reticle scaling.

 

[Barrelnut]

Can anyone recommend some reading material to teach a novice, rifle scopes, setup, use and MIL/MOA

Post 24 has a link to an article on this site. The article is an excellent read. It will explain the differences in MOA and MIL in detail. Here's the post with link.

I switched because of Mils having better reticles but both are easy if you can do math. I never knew Mils were metric? This will help https://www.longrangeshooting.org/articles/moa-and-mils-explained

 

[Bob Wright]

If you have a reticle with actual MOA subtentions, dial the scope to the power where the subtentions are true. This is usually the highest power. There are two MOA formulas:

1) Size of target in inches / apparent size in MOA x 95.5 = Distance in yards

2) Size of target in MOA at 100 yards / apparent size in MOA x 100 = Distance in yards

Unfortunately my reticle is a bdc holdover, Leupold varmint, 2.5 moa at each sub tension if I remember correctly. It's not in my manual but I may call Leupold and discuss options.

 

[22Kreedmire]

Post 24 has a link to an article on this site. The article is an excellent read. It will explain the differences in MOA and MIL in detail. Here's the post with link.

It does have an error tho. Says 1 mil is 3.6" or 10cm at 100 yards. Wrong. 10cm at 100 METERS. 9.1ish Cm at 100 YARDS. And yes I agree forget measuring in inches at distance and use your reticle no matter MOA or mil. IF you can spot your hit. Measure it with you reticle and adjust accordingly. sometimes that's not possible !!! but on a coyote or elk or similar , it's gonna run and you'll likely have to hold a different value anyway.

 

[ShtrRdy]

Can anyone recommend some reading material to teach a novice, rifle scopes, setup, use and MIL/MOA

Here's a couple videos to get you started. The guy in this video has also written a book about long range shooting I highly recommend.




https://www.amazon.com/dp/151865472X/?tag=lrhmag19-20

 

[flylo]

Take the bolt put of the rifle for safety, get a friend, put the crosshairs onwhatever distance you sighted in for then have him run a measuring wheel to the next dot or hash mark & have him note the distance all the way up & down the scope. You can range an animal the same way, a deer is aprox 18" back to belly, elk are 24" so see where they fit in your dots or hash marks. Type it up, laminate it & attach to your rifle .Most scope makeers post all this info. Nikon has an exellnent progran on line.

 

[Mram10us]

Makes me wonder, how many people don't use range finders? In 30 years of hunting, I have never had to range an animal with my scope.

 

[User4302021]

this is the problem with what the tactical crowd tries to preach. This is a long range hunting forum. not a tactical forum, and not a range shooting forum. In all these discussions I think we leave out specific uses of optics, range and tactical are a different use that is distinct from hunting. spotting your shots really depends on a bunch of factors. shooting position, recoil of the rifle. suppressed or non suppressed. the tactical community acts like you should see every miss and that the reticle is perfectly lined up on the target still at the point of impact and you can just simply adjust and take another shot.

for one thing nearly all the animals I shoot at don't give you a second shot at least not just still stay standing there. also its very much not a given you can even see where the shot went, can you see your shot if there is snow on the ground? how about damp ground from morning dew? how about any other situation that keeps you from seeing dust fly up or just simply not being able to see the miss. All this is reasons why we must seperate hunting from tactical shooting. ITS NOT THE SAME. its also revealing where people use their optics the most. I have access to public lands and most of my shooting on them. Most of the country has to shoot at a gun range.

the most common situation I can spot my misses is when I am shooting priarie dogs. in that situation I just swag it and stay in the scope. I say to myself I missed by aboutta thatta mucha. I am also typically using a gun that doesn't have all that much recoil, probably suppressed as well. its also dry and dusty. in that case I think I missed by 3 inches or say 5 inches and I just guess what that looks like in the scope and simply send another shot, I don't even bother with looking at the hash marks most of the time. this is different than shooting an 8# 7mag across a canyon over a shooting pack. how about a coyote in the sage brush, aint seeing a miss there either. plus the coyote low recoil gun and the big game animal shot at with a 7mag aint standing there just waiting for a second shot to come flying in.

those saying I lack technique because I can't always see my miss, I say on what planet have you been doing your shooting? not the same one I shoot on.

but I digress, I will admit mils is probably a better unit of measurement if you are into FFP scopes. it just seems to fit better in that format. I hate FFP , again tactical vs hunting. but that is another discussion I don't wanna even mess with. If you want a higher powered scope in FFP mils is probably a better fit for the reticle, that I will admit.

All that rant, and you still failed to grasp the point I was getting at. So, spelling it out reeal slooow...

To make a correction, you MUST see your miss somehow. If you don't, how do you know what correction to make? This is exactly the same truth for duplex, moa, or mils.

If you DO see your miss, (again, if you don't then reticles aren't your problem) then there is no reason whatsoever not to use the ruler 6 inches in front of your nose (mils OR moa) to tell you EXACTLY how much to correct.

The ONLY way you would HAVE to do it the way you describe, is with a plain crosshair or duplex, which is not what we are discussing.

Your brain is so addled with hate for all things mil, that your arguments aren't making any logical sense in the context of ANY graduated reticle.

If I see my shot, even on a prarie dog, and I can see with my reticle it was 1 moa right...why on earth would I need to guestimate it at 5 inches? If I see 1moa right, I hold 1moa left.

It is really that simple.

 

[Memberberries]

Can anyone recommend some reading material to teach a novice, rifle scopes, setup, use and MIL/MOA

This one is pretty good, not sure if there are any errors and it is from the perspective of a competition shooter.

https://precisionrifleblog.com/2013/07/20/mil-vs-moa-an-objective-comparison/

 

[User4302021]

Unfortunately my reticle is a bdc holdover, Leupold varmint, 2.5 moa at each sub tension if I remember correctly. It's not in my manual but I may call Leupold and discuss options.

There are actually some ways to get around that. It involved the magnification ring and a known subtention. It is called "bracketing". Wherein a target of known size will subtend a fixed distance at a particular magnification. You basically use your mag ring as a rangefinder. It is crude, but works pretty well out to about 400 yards.

 

[Canhunter35]

I agree^
I bounce around both all the time. Being just angular measurements, it really makes no difference. If one has the ability to learn the difference and get intimately familiar with, then it will help in use of a matching reticle, and the features that go with that. I wish some of you guys were into this whole long range hobby when scopes were commonly in mil reticles and moa knobs. You had to know both at the same time...and how to convert corrections.

I'm still rocking my mark 4 lol

To the op:
I like making my wind calls in .1mil increments, instead of .5 moa increments but I'm from Canada lol. I have scopes in mil/mil, Moa/mil, Moa/Moa, and have no plans of getting rid of any, they all get the job done

 

[Memberberries]

I'm still rocking my mark 4 lol

To the op:
I like making my wind calls in .1mil increments, instead of .5 moa increments but I'm from Canada lol. I have scopes in mil/mil, Moa/mil, Moa/Moa, and have no plans of getting rid of any, they all get the job done

My wifes mark 4 is moa adjusments and TMR reticle(mil). She knows it, loves it, and has no plans of changing her ways.

 

[cummins cowboy]

All that rant, and you still failed to grasp the point I was getting at. So, spelling it out reeal slooow...

To make a correction, you MUST see your miss somehow. If you don't, how do you know what correction to make? This is exactly the same truth for duplex, moa, or mils.

If you DO see your miss, (again, if you don't then reticles aren't your problem) then there is no reason whatsoever not to use the ruler 6 inches in front of your nose (mils OR moa) to tell you EXACTLY how much to correct.

The ONLY way you would HAVE to do it the way you describe, is with a plain crosshair or duplex, which is not what we are discussing.

Your brain is so addled with hate for all things mil, that your arguments aren't making any logical sense in the context of ANY graduated reticle.

If I see my shot, even on a prarie dog, and I can see with my reticle it was 1 moa right...why on earth would I need to guestimate it at 5 inches? If I see 1moa right, I hold 1moa left.

It is really that simple.

I am ranting? that is interesting. I use the hold offs for my initial shot if I am shooting far enough to dial. IE beyond 300 yards. that is way a plain crosshair is not what I am suggesting. although pdog hunting I just guess and think the wind is going blow my bullet off by such and such amount and just hold off. if I am shooting at an animal, coyote, big game whatever, I am using the hold off's of the reticle to make a wind call. Its typically a shot that isn't that rushed. I said all the reasons why seeing my miss in many cases isn't even able to be seen, even more I described how seeing a miss means nothing when the animal runs off anyways. to me seeing my miss in said circumstance is only usesful to determine if your scope is shooting off and you have lost zero, which isn't a bad thing to know.

all of what you are saying is too tatical of a school of thought and suggests range shooting under controlled conditions, ie the 20# rifle off a fake barricade scenerio. Which is ok if you are into that discipline but understand that is a very different discipline than hunting. you are likely to be doing it at a range, its way more likely to see your misses on the target burm, also its possible to be shooting at moving targets at extended ranges. I only shoot coyotes moving at long range, if its a big game animal and its a distant shot I need them not moving. I also plan on them bailing when the shot breaks. sometimes you get another shot because you are from such a distance that the animal is confused at where the shot came from. but either way the animal usually runs some distance and stops, in which case seeing a miss is of limited value. the whole reticle as a ruler thing is overthinking it, in a big game scenerio.

 

[Deleted member 48126]

@cummins cowboy im in the mil FFP department, but well said.