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I’m in the process right now of teaching my oldest daughter how to shoot her 6.5 x 55 Swede for an upcoming moose hunt.We went out to the range and did some shooting at various distance to get our holdovers down pat. She is very steady btw.

This afternoon we’re going to shoot at a steel target that I have set up in the area that has dried up. ( wolves )The target that I have is 36 inches deep.( the depth of the average moose )Setting them up reminded me of an old article that you wrote in rifle magazine quite a number of years back ( 20? )about ranging targets with a simple duplex reticle.

I cannot recall all the details but what I learned from the article is that by knowing what your reticle subtends at 100 yards you can use a simple proportional equation to range an animal fairly reliably out to 450yrds. ( about as far as I like to shoot at game)

At six power( on her scope) the bottom point of her rectangle subtends 6 inches to the cross hair at 100 yards or 12” from point to point. From this , we can instantly know if a moose is under 300yrds ( hold dead on ) or further and have to hold above poa. In my case I don’t have to do any math anymore. It’s more instinctual now than anything.

This is the most useful shooting advice that I have ever executed in all my years of reading about guns from any writer. I have put literally thousands of pounds of moose meat on the table by implementing this simple ranging technique. Because of my ambush technique there is quite often not enough time to range targets with an actual rangefinder to find distance. (Moose crossing cut lines in heavy bush)This technique has worked time and again over the last 20 years

Thanks for sharing your insight John. I am happy to be passing this technique along.

Glad it's working for you!

I still use the technique quite a bit, for situations like you just described where there isn't always time to use a laser.