This article originally appeared at Ammoland. If you’re at a competitive shoot range, figuring out the distance variable is easy – just look at the match program or ask the guy or girl next to you. In the field, things become slightly more complicated if you’re not in a position where you can pace off […]
Optics Buying Guide: Do You Get What You Pay For With Scopes?
There are few products where the adage “you get what you pay for” applies more than with optics. With many products, like cars, it’s pretty easy to see and feel exactly what you’re paying for. The cornering performance and zero to sixty specs for a 1970 AMC Gremlin are pretty easy to distinguish when you […]
Optics Buying Guide: Big Scopes
So why would you want or need a very high magnification scope? There are two related reasons. You might need to see and hit a reasonably-sized target at very long range, or you might need to be able to see and hit a much smaller target at shorter ranges. For example, if your job calls […]
Optics Buying Guide: AR-15 Optics and Scopes
There are plenty of reasons that the AR-15 has become so popular. It’s handy, easy to shoot, configurable, multi-caliber, and has low recoil. Oh, and it’s just plain fun. Matching the seemingly infinite number of AR rifles on the market is a multitude of suitable optics. Red dots, holographic sights, fixed-power scopes, and variable-power scopes […]
Optics Buying Guide: Holographs and Red Dots
Red dot sights are like Coke. Where I live, any non-alcoholic beverage that fizzes is called “a Coke.” That’s kind of like how people refer to reflex and holographic sights. Most of us call them “red dots” no matter what the underlying technical differences are. In this episode of the optics buying guide, we’re going […]
Optics Buying Guide: Using A Laser Rangefinding Scope
If you intend to reliably hit a target at long range, you have to process a number of steps in short order: You need to determine the exact range to the target. You need to figure out whether you are shooting at an uphill or downhill angle relative to the target. You need to calculate […]
Optics Buying Guide: Scope Reticles
What’s the last thing you see before you pull the trigger? The reticle! I’ll bet most of us tend to give only passing thought to reticle selection, but there’s a reason that there are somewhere over 96.2 billion reticle designs floating around out there. They’re designed for specific purposes. For example, a thick, course, reticle […]
Optics Buying Guide: Hold-Off Reticles vs. Adjustable Turrets
I used to play a fair bit of golf in my younger days. One of the reasons I gave it up was the increasing frequency of my travels into other fairways – you know, the ones two counties to the right. I could hit the ball a country mile, but unfortunately, that “mile” was usually […]
Optics Buying Guide: Finding Range With A Scope
Sometimes it’s good to know how to do things the “old-school” way without all the electronic gadgets and gizmos. For shooting at anything past 200 yards, and even less with some calibers, it’s pretty important to know how far away that thing is. The very nanosecond a bullet leaves the fiery end of your rifle, […]
Optics Buying Guide: How To Properly Zero Your Scope
The process of zeroing scopes causes a whole lot of grief and aggravation, not to mention wasted ammo. I have to wonder if the reason for this problem is that it involves math, and most of us shut down on the whole math thing about half way through eighth-grade Algebra. So, what exactly is zeroing? […]