Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting mildot question

I have mildot in my soon to be long range set up, and i recently sent my vortex in for repair, whic by the way was excellent service with quick turn-around. got a new scope no charge! but i was reading through the mildot manual and had 2 questions, 1- does the distance a mildot is depend on the power the scope is on? so if your mildot is 36" at 300 yards and zoom in, would it move down to 24"? not sure if those are correct numbers but just a situation. and does the mildot differ at the yardage? so same situation, if its 1st mildot is at 36" at 300 yards, and move out to say 600yds, would the 1st mildot be 72" at that range? this is all for windage, not elevation

Is it first focal plane or second? FFP a mil is a mil is a mil. SFP it varies with magnification.

It is SFP. i will mil only if i dont have time to adjust my turrets. and the only other time i will use mils is for holding wind. so if i use mils for wind, my scope will have to be on 14x?

In a SFP, the dots are only 'true' at a certain magnification, normally max power. You can work around that, as in set power at 1/2 max, and divide by 2, etc., and the same holds true for trying to dial based off of dot measurements at anything other than max magnification..Makes my head hurt, lol.
For a "dialing rig" , much easier / simple to ditch the SFP and go FFP or fixed power so that the turrets, reticle and dots all match.

Klaus....you NEED to read the instruction booklet that comes with the scope..should have answers to your questions. Then practice with the glass.

I second the reply above of reading the instruction manual.


Mil Dots were originally designed for fixed 10x military scopes., thus most models of variable powered SFP scopes with a high magnification over 10x the mildots are ONLY measuring true mildradians at 10x . Which means your 14x SFP scope will have to be turned to 10x to get true Mildot subtensions. This applies to most SFP variables.
On lower powered SFP variable scopes with a power range less than 10x,, usually the Mil dots measure true subtensions at the highest power. Of course, a First focal plane scope measures true mils at any power.


In any case ( with any model of scope) I recommend verifying your reticle's subtensions on a grid target at 100 yards. I do that with any drop compensating reticle I hunt with to avoid mistakes in the field that might cause missed shots / wounded game.

Actually, and in my most diplomatic, humble voice, a mil is a mil is mil regardless of FFP or SFP or fixed power. The same is true for MOA. An MOA is an MOA. Doesn't matter what type of scope it is.

Correct. By all means please explain it better than I did.

Mils are mils, but the scale on the ruler can change.

Indeed a Mildot is always a mildot but as stated what that equivolates to depends on the “ruler”. Subtension remains constant when using FFP but changes with magnification in a SFP scope and only subtends true to scale at 1 set magnification.

Sort of but then to call a reticle a mildot reticle in a second focal plane scope is a misnomer, because it mostly isn’t

When you Mil you will need to be on the desinated power setting unless you are on a FFP scope. On variable power scopes, the correct power for the Mildots to be accurate will depend on whether it's a First Focal Plane (FFP) scope or a Second Focal Plane (SFP) scope. On FFP scopes the appearance of the reticle changes with the power adjustment (the reticles don't change size, they're just magnified along with the rest of the view), so it is always accurate regardless of which power setting you're on. On a SFP scope, the reticles appears to be the same size through all the power settings so the mildots only subtends the correct size on one power setting, usually the highest power setting on the scope. If your scope is SFP there will sometimes be a dot or driangle that will tell you what power to mil off. Im pretty sure the Vortex has a marking on it.