The basics of mil dot. Need HELP.

Scrapps_31

Scrapps_31

New member
I'm overseas, and a couple of buddies on here are getting my rifle and scope setup. It should be ready for when I come home on leave. It's a new Savage model 12 Long Range Precision in a .260 REM. Sitting on top will be a Zeiss 6-20x50 mil dot and target turrets. I have the formulas for finding distance of an obj by using the size of the obj. However, If you don't know the size of the coyote, How can you find the distance? Is there a better way without a range finder.

Thnx Ya'll
 
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If I were going to guesstimate as your suggesting, I would
just use an average size, about the same as a German Shepard
average, say for instance, shoulder height of approx. 18".
That should give you a reasonable kill zone. BUT, That's
also dependent on the Shooter and Weapon. If BOTH are able
to provide 1" groupings consistently at 1 / 2 / 300 yds,
then there's no reason you couldn't do it the way your
suggesting. Now if were talking 6" groups at 100 yds, that's
a Horse of a different color.
 
If I don't see less then 1", I wont mess with it. I will only buy a rifle if it is capable of sub MOA. I just don't have the experience with this rifle yet. But I will i due time. Thanx for the info. That will help dramatically. This will break down my formula greatly.
 
Originally Posted By: Scrapps_31I'm overseas, and a couple of buddies on here are getting my rifle and scope setup. It should be ready for when I come home on leave. It's a new Savage model 12 Long Range Precision in a .260 REM. Sitting on top will be a Zeiss 6-20x50 mil dot and target turrets.
You got good buddies! Have them zero your rifle/scope @ 200yds, shoot it yourself to confirm and go hunt!
Quote:I have the formulas for finding distance of an obj by using the size of the obj. However, If you don't know the size of the coyote, How can you find the distance?
You can swag it, but you'd most likely just confuse the heck outta yo'self. Your range 'calculation' based on a guesstimate of a coyote's size will be nothing more than that. And the further the distance, the larger the margin for error (missing or wounding an animal).
With a 200yd zero, holding on center mass to 250 will cover 96.725%
wink.gif
of your called coyote shot opportunities.
Quote: Is there a better way without a range finder.

Thnx Ya'll
No, there isn't.

have fun with your new rifle...
smile.gif
 
Yeah I do have good buddies. Thats for sure. Thanx for the info. guess I'll just have use the range finder as a double check.

Good journey's to ya'll
 
I asked the same thing on ranging coyotes with mil dots, and most said that from the top of their back to their chest is about 11". The one I measured confirmed that. With one mil being 3.6" at 100 yards, 11" = 305 yards.

I do agree that a range finder is the the best, but, if a broadside coyote is bigger than 1 mil, you know it's closer than 300 yards. HTH
 
204 AR, just to clarify in the above example, if you have the magnification set at the given factory power, say 10X, and the coyote is right at 3 mils, then in your example the yote is at 3 mils x 3.6" = 10.8" or 11" correct? Then dial up for the right drop for your rifle? Just wanted to check if I am thinking this through logically.

Just wanted to clarify. I bought a mil dot master from MidwayUSA and have been playing around with it. I really am starting to like the mil dot system.

Thanks guys!!
 
Well, what I was saying is that if he was 1 mil, that he would be right at 300 yards. So to take that further, the more mils he covers, the closer he is. In your example, if he covered 3 mils, he would be at about 100 yards. If he covered .5 mils, he'd be about 600 yards.

But like someone else said, the further out he is the harder it is to tell, and the more critical small errors are. The difference between,say, .6 and .4 mils is pretty hard to tell, esp since you won't be real steady and the coyote might not cooperate and may not be the perfect size. The other thing that could bite you is not having your scope set at the correct power for the mil dots to be correct.

I hope that makes sense. I really started liking this system last summer, so I'm not the true expert on it. But it's really pretty easy. Mainly, the way I see it, if you know the size of your target, you can calculate range. Or if you know the range, you can use it to calculate the size of the target. If you know neither range nor size of target, you can't calculate either.

For practice I built a steel coyote silhouette, the proper size, so I can place it at unknown ranges and judge range, dial and shoot. I plan on trying it out this weekend. After judging with the scope, I'll check it with a lrf and see how far off I was.
 
Yep I had it about half right lol. Still learning and fine tuning it in my head. Let me know or PM me after you shoot this weekend to see how it went. That is a pretty good idea to use the silhouette built to scale!
 
I also like to play around with reticle-rangefinding, with any multi-stadia reticle. Mostly RR'ing is a guesstimate but can be quite rewarding when it all comes together. The main problem with RR'ing predators is that you will only rarely have an opportunity to use it. I use 11" back to brisket and adjust a bit for smaller (younger) coyotes, bit in 5 years of use only had the oppotunity to apply it a couple of times, but it did work even as far out as ~500 yds. (with some lucky guessing tgt. size and reticle interpolation). The MD reticle does not have to be used at the optics cald. power and the equation just needs to be adjusted for the subtension (SFP magnification) used. One alternate advantage about learning the "how to" of multi-stadia RR'ing/downrange zeroing is that you will learn more about your optic--and there's nothing wrong with that.
 
I would suggest going onto SWFA.com and buying the mildot master. It has a book that gives you everything you need to know about mildot and it also comes with a quick reference card for figuring distance and compensation.
 
I agree that Mildot Master works great! I play around with it quite a bit just to get it into my head.

As a side note there is a pretty good article in Predator Xtreme this month about a guy that makes lifesize coyote targets with a steel plated vital area. I picked up some scrap plywood today and am going to make a couple of these targets. I think they would be great over the summer to plink on to get to know the scope, wind, etc. I don't mind punching paper but these would be fun to use in the off season set at different ranges.
 
I got to play with my steel coyote silhouette this weekend, and it's a blast ranging, adjusting and shooting, then seeing how far off I was. I've got a Redfield Accurange on the 25 wssm, and it actually works pretty well for ranging, as do mil dots. But it became pretty apparent that at longer ranges the room for error is large, and it's hard to hold steady enough w/o a benchrest to get a good reading. It worked really well out to 350 or so, which is further than you should have to shoot at a called coyote anyway.

The best thing about the Accurange is that the circle happens to be the right size to bracket a coyote (11") at 250 yards. So a quick check will tell you if he's as large as the circle or larger, then no holdover needed. If he's smaller, well (keep calling!) then you need to adjust. Same with mildots, if he's larger than 1 mil, he's closer than 300 yards.

What really surprised me, comparing the Redfield to my Mark AR, both 4-12x, the Redfield was noticably clearer. Which is weird bc the Mark AR is a $500 scope, compared to $219 for the Redfield, both made by Leupold. Also impressed with how hard a 75 vmax out of the 25 wssm hits, makes a pretty good dent even out to 350 yards.
 


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