Thanks for your insights - very informative. A few questions to draw from your experience:
1. Was your spotter having trouble with windage or elevation with the mildot reticle (or both, with one more of an issue than the other)?
2. What are your thoughts about mildot or other ballistic reticles for intermediate distances (300 to 400 yards)?
3. What are the keys to using turrets for windage? Obviously winds can be variable (highly variable in some cases), and I've thought that a reticle would be faster to make adjustments to wind changes (plus the simplicity of not having to remember how much windage you had dialed in and figure out how much to dial one way or the other after you had already dialed in a couple different windage amounts in a short period of time).
4. What is the biggest issue you have found with reticles - is it that people have trouble with being able to sight/aim with enough resolution (a small enough increment) between markings (e.g., getting accurate resolution/aim of 1/8 or 1/10 mil on a mil-dot scope)?
Thanks.
Good questions RR. I should have been more specific. I almost never dial wind. Preferring to hold because it switches so much. Only on single really small targets and very consistent winds do I dial. I'll answer your questions in order.
1) It was a combination. Holding for elevation is very easy when there is little to no wind. Holding for elevation when the wind is kicking up means that you have to visually "guess" how much you are holding for both elevation and windage. It doesn't take that much error to miss a 10-12 in target like that. Regular Mil-dot reticles work but I prefer I prefer a reticle with at least .5 Mil hash marks over regular "dots" and a Horus reticle over both for military use, or if I don't want to dial. With the Horus you're not holding in thin air.
2) It depends what the application is. For the hunting the four legged kind of animals I hardly ever hold using the reticle for range. I do use a Mil based reticle for wind if it is present. For military use I hold a lot in the intermediate ranges. A couple of differences between them though. With deer/elk/etc there is usually only one animal I want to shoot and it usually is not changing distances very much. Absolute accuracy is important. In military applications there may be multiple targets and all at vary different ranges. In the span of 30 seconds you can have targets at 10 feet, 75 yards, 250yds, 390, and 600 yards. And quite frankly in that environment I'm probably using a semi auto and it's more then likely not earth shattering if it takes me a couple of rounds to get good hits on them.
3) Don't. Like I wrote earlier I should have been clearer. Dial for range. Hold for wind.
4) You nailed part of it. Excepting the Horus or others similar, you have to extrapolate where exactly you should be aiming. The smaller the target and the farther away it is the more critical it becomes and consequently the more misses we observe. Now it is more consistent with Mil based reticles then with BDC reticles.
I don't want to give the impression that I believe that BDC reticles hold no value or don't work. They do. It's just that given their tradeoffs, dialing has proven to be much more consistent across the board in getting hits.
