Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting Leupold B&C reticle?

I think I'm "reticle or bust" inside 400, maybe 500 yards... and then "turrets or bust" beyond that!

I'm confuzzled.

-jeff

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HD

Jeff-put in Premier dotz to your fav long range rig to say 700 and then get back to me about this.

To 500 it's a slam dunk, past 500 lots of stuff changes.

Past 700, I'd go with turrets but then again I have no interest in taking game at past 700 so its a moot point.

I've used the dotz a ton load on game in the long range arena. It is stupid simple and deadly quick.

Range and kill.

Guess I am just a dotz kind of guy.

Dober

So much of this stuff is situation and terrain-dependant. I'll be glassing a hillside tomorrow, if I don't tag out in the morning, where a long shot, in the 400 to 550 range, could present itself. But I'll be alone, and it would be an epic adventure to even get over to where the animal is down if I did see and kill one... and I'm not sure how in the hell I'd find it.

In very brushy/woodsy country without a spotter to stay back at the shooting spot and guide you to the downed animal... it might be foolish to even shoot. It would probably take an hour and a half to get to the animal, IF I could find it.

Over where we hunt elk it's a different story, much more open. Much more feasible to find the spot the animal was at when it was shot. That's really the terrain I've been practicing for.

Then there's brand-new, say a year or two old, clearcuts over on this side. It's not impossible to catch a buck in one. The logging slash is pretty brutal to try and get a deer back out of there, though... just about killed myself getting a doe out of a cut a couple years ago.

Maybe I'll take a picture of the hillside I'm talking about, the brushy one, and post it. Without something there for scale though I don't think you guys could get your brains around what you were looking at.

Anyway... there's so much that goes into a long shot, even beyond the shot itself.

-jeff

I've seen a fair bit of country both guiding professionally and hunting for myself so I know what you mean by the terrain being thick on the other side.

Like I said b4-pracitcing teaches one to read the shot the conditions, the wind (as best as it can be done, the angle, the mirrage the so and so on.

It teaches one when to drop the hammer and when not to. Just because a long shot presents itself and just because one is set and ready doesn't mean one should take it. The same goes for close shots as well.

Hey Jeff PM coming your way.

Dober

Shoot an azimuth with your compass. You already know the range. Now enter that point in your GPS. It may sound silly, but not as silly as not doing it and wishing you had.

Note to self: read the manual for the GPS.

-jeff

Cuts can be tough to get in/out of. It's a common scenario for us. They can be real legbreakers...

They look so peaceful and easy from a half-mile or more away though, don't they? Like meadows. Then you get there and realize what looked like grass is waist-high brush with logging slash underneath... or worse...

I was sitting in a cut yesterday watching a bear in a cut on the opposite side of the canyon probably 1000+ yards away... too far for my rangefinder anyway. Anyway, this cut looked so open and like it would be easy to navigate around in, but then there's this big black bear literally disapearing into patches of "grass". D'oh!

-jeff

Critters in the cuts are but one step away from being invisible...

Packed a deer out of one yesterday without my corks, and cussed myself a bit...grin...

GPS use comes in really handy at times!! As long as I could get within 20 feet or so I can find the tracks/blood and good to go. Pretty simple solution I've been using since the late 90s...

Also just realized something.... that a BC type reticle AND target knobs could be the best of both worlds....

Jeff

I do like the idea of an azimuth and distance reading then plugging that into the GPS. Can you just use the "compass" in the GPS for the azimuth?

I can see that the reticla AND turrets could be great for real long distance work. The B&C tops out at around 500 yards. You'd just have to choose a crossbar of the reticle to reference off of for the turret. However... that's getting pretty far out there, from a keeping on top of things perspective.

For me, for now, just a reticle (or turrets) that allow me to function out to 500 yards will be plenty to keep me busy. The main reason is that I cannot seem to hit reliably out past there anyway due to wind and other issues. I don't know what the other issues might be.

-jeff

I built a long range mule deer rifle for a particular area I hunt in Idaho.

It's a long throated 300 Win & has a 3.5x10 Lepuold with a Mil-Dot and turrets.......the B&C wasn't available then or I would have used it instead of the Mil-Dot.

Works well.....dots for ranges to 500 yards or quick use; turrets for longer & time to use them.

MM

The Nighforce with the NPR-2 or NPR-1 reticle is a perfect combination of a MOA reticle combined with turrets.......

That's the system i typically apply also. Just got back from the specialty pistols annual antelope hunt in Casper. Was using my Savage Striker 243 WSSM that has the Leupold VX-III VH reticle on it. With my load (115 Berger @ 2525 mv), the 3rd stadia (7 MOA with 200 yd. zero)is right @ 430 yds. Once it's verified and troubleshot if necessary, i go back to the ballistics program and rezero at that range noting MOA comeups using the 3rd stadia as a zero then...but i also use the lower post tip (4th stadia) as a reticle zero, so comeups are calculated to the 3rd stadia from ranges beyond the 4th stadia's zero. IMO, this is the most flexible ballistic reticle made by the factories--especially for the turret elevation/reticle windage guys due to the excellent windage system right along the reticle's horizontal axis to the tune of 3- 1.77 MOA windage subtension units...but it is not as good as the Rapid Reticles, right here-- www.rapidreticle.com Here's a pic of the rig the kid in the foreground's trying to shoot--





HG hunting partner Ernie Bishop is shooting a custom XP-100 7mm Dakota using Darrell Holland's 2nd generation ART reticle (based on MOA also). This rig gets out there very well with the 200 ULD Wildcat bullet @ 2700 or so--



The rig now has Ward Brien's ACI attched as well as Sinclair's ACD.

That's really the fun part of all of this stuff is learning to apply the reticle to it's fullest potential for vertical, horizontal, and rangefinding, whether it be a ballistic/rangefinding/custom/plex whatever one might have.

I'm kinda late to this thread, but, it's a darn good one guys! I really like turrets, hardly ever hunt without them, but, am about to buy one of the 6X Leupies with the LRD reticle in it, well, just cause! grin

You can; I guess it depends on your screen and how easy it is to sight over accurately. I find it easier to sight with a real compass. Of course the easiest way for me to do it by far is setting the Newcon to the mode that tells me azimuth every time I range something. That�s also helpful for navigation (non-GPS).

Though with that or the GPS unit, I�m always a little suspicious of electronic compasses if you don�t, at the very least, check their calibration often. Maybe I�m just paranoid but I don�t think of them as replacements for the real thing for more than short periods of time.

Some GPS units have an electronic compass and some do not. The ones that do not still show a direction of travel as you are moving . If you stand still and move the GPS in a circle, the bearing does not change.

It is very difficult to take a bearing with these "non compass" GPS units.