MilDot Rectical Pros & Cons

I have a brand new Sightron 10X50-60 FCH that is ready to put on my 308 build if my Shilen barrel ever shows up (6 Months and waiting).
I saw that Sightron has a MilDot on their 8X32-56 scopes.
I have never used a MilDot and would sell my 10X50-60 FCH on classified if I thought I would like a MilDot better.

I would like to hear the Pros of a MilDot from those who own one and like them.
I would also like to hear the Cons from those that do not care for a MilDot and why.

I will be using the 308 for punching holes in paper (70%) and also for some varmint hunting (30%) where a holdover reference would be helpful.

To me the Mildot reticle is more versatile than a fixed ballistic reticle simply because you can range with it, and swap it to any rifle
no matter what the trajectory and still use it.

That said with a lot of traditional mildot scopes the reticle line width and dots are really too big for long distance target shooting or a dog.
IE a mil dot might cover an entire center section of a target (or a dog) at very long distances.
Its really made for sniping man sized targets and for quick acquisition. One I can think of is the SS 10,16,20x. Very thick line but a nice scope.
Too thick for target for me especially with 223 but fine for hunting larger game.

A USMC dot is 1/4 of a mil (I think), so it will appear .9" at 100 yards and 9" at 1000 yards.
The army dot is .2 mils I think.

The lines vary, but like on a SS the lines are so thick they will pretty much cover a .223 hole at 100 yards.

Nightforce has hollow dots and that helps.

More versatile of the mil reticals is the Milhash II reticle like on IOR scopes.
Marked with lines instead of dots at 1 mil points and also marked at half mil points.

IOR scopes usually have 10 mils of holdover.

Marked in half mils with 10 mils of holdover means you have 720" of holdover at 1000 yards and since it is marked in half mils, if you
consider shooting between two lines you have a good judge of 1/4 mil holdoff with no huge obstruction, or 9" at 1000 yards, 4.5" at 500 yards
which is not too bad for hunting.

One Mil or from one dot to the next is 3.6" at 100 yards or 36" at 1000 yards.

A true mil scope will have the knobs in 1/10th mils so each click is .36" at 100 yards, or 3.6" at 1000.
If you dial in and use mil calcs that is the type of adjustment you want.

Some scopes are made with MOA knobs, so if you are milling and have to adjust in MOA then it becomes iffy.
A lot of serious mil guys wont touch a scope like that. For me I use them for hunting so I set my scope at
X distance and leave it there, then shoot holdover, so I can deal with it.

Most variable scopes mil at some X power.

Nikons all mil at 12x max or if lower that max power.
Muellers all mil at 8X max.
Sightrons I believe all mil at the highest power, but not 100% on that.
The Nightforce 12-42X scope mils at 20X.

That presents another problem in that if you dont have the scope set where it mils, your shot will be off, but thats the same
for any ballistic retical too except for FFP scopes.

FFP is front focal plane and with one of those the scope will range at any power.
The downside is at lowest mag the lines will be super thin.
At the highest mag the lines will be thick.

In the end the main pro to me is its just more versitile, without being pinned down to a ballistic retical
that might not match an odd round/load. That said for me it is mandatory that the scope mils at its highest power.

The main Con is the traditional reticles are too thick for small targets at distance.

Ideally for hunting I would like a 2-16X or a 4-36X FFP milhash II scope, with a variable width reticle, with 10 mils of holdover
with 1/10 mil adjustments.

Either that or a cammed scope with a ballistic reticle you can tune would be nice too.
Somebody makes one.

Thats about it I guess.

Tammons about covered it.

Of significant note....there is one other item that needs to be mentioned. There is a difference between MIL and MOA lines/dots AND MIL/MOA adjusting knobs.

If you buy a scope, make sure it is equipped MIL lines with MIL knobs or MOA lines and MOA knobs. Otherwise, you are adjusting in MOA with your turret while trying to range in MIL with the lines/dots in your scope.

You really have to dig for this information from the scope manufacturers.

Dig is right.

All you have to do is call tech support and ask "What magnification does your scope mil at"
You will get a lot of "please hold" or wherever you want.
I called bushnell one time with that question and was on hold off and on for 30 minutes.
I still dont know all the companies dont put that info on their advertising specs.

To me, from the scopes I have used, I think the best overall hunting mil scopes are the IOR FFP scopes
Like the 3-18X FFP snipers hide special edition scope.

For long distance target I think I would rather have a Nightforce 12x-42x with a NP-R1 reticle, IE 1 moa hash marks on elevation and 2 moa on windage.
Shoot it at 40x and that becomes 2 moa and 4 moa.

The only purpose a mil-dot serves is ranging. If you don't need to range the target they are pretty much useless.

Check the articles section on the front page for more info on mil-dot scopes and how to use them.

Far from useless for hunting.

With a little practice a mil-dot can be very useful for hunting, each dot can be used as a hold over point. Knowing one mil = 3.6 inches @100 load development for any caliber can be used and practiced.It will take the guess work and cross your fingers and pray out of the equation.

I am setting up a couple of high BC hunting loads, 308 and 338 and if you run around a .6 BC bullet
at about 2650 fps or so and zero it at 150 yards, the dot spacing is very close out to 700 yards.

The JBM calculator has a option for drops in mils. Good thing for a range card.

What are you hunting at 700 yards?

If you need to shoot at game animals at distances that require hold overs you need to get a bdc reticle or get closer.

I have one field I hunt in that is 850 yards long but I wont shoot a deer over about 400 yards.
I will however shoot a Hog or a Coyote at most any distance if I have a good shot
without too much wind.

Why are you so negative on mildot reticles.
I prefer them over BDC reticles.

Since mil/mil or moa/moa are generally very expensive, I just use the mil dots for ranging. Once range is determined, I go to my cheater card and dial up the turent in MOA. The JBM ballistics program makes a nice cheater card in either MIL, MOA or both.

For ranging deer, I use the assumption that a deer is 36" tall. So at 100 yds he is 10 mil tall, at 200 he is 5 mil, at 400 he is 2.5 mil and so on.

So if I range a deer at 2.5 mils or 400 yds. I go to the card for my 25-06 AI, it tells me 4 MOA @ 400 yds. So 16 clicks up, center the cross hairs and let her fly.

A mil dot calculator, it a very handi piece of equipment for a long range shooter. It converts objects of a know size from mils to yds. They run about $30.00

We have successfully, multiple times, with ONE shot, effectively harvested deer from 768 to 1868 yards. You have to have very good optics to do this though.

We range the deer and dial up accordingly.

I agree with the mil/mil or moa/moa. I just bougt a vortex viper with their BDC reticle. The vertical dots are moa, the horizontal dots are mils, and the scope adjusts in minutes. I didn't realize it was that way when I bought it, kind of goofy. Nice scope just a strange set up on reticle. I put the scope on a Mod 70 featherweight 22-250 that is my walking around coyote gun so it will just be a matter of knowing the correct range for zero on each vertical dot. Not a big issue but I sure was suprised to learn the reticle was that way.

Mike

I'm not against mil-dots. I have one. Heck, I even wrote the product review on the Mil-Dot Master.

I still don't see a need for them other than their original purpose which is ranging targets. Some folks think that since snipers use them they must be the perfect reticle for everything. While they can be used as a substitute for a duplex reticle in general shooting or hunting applications they are not well suited for precision target work. Also, if you have no plans to use them for ranging then a regular duplex works just as well. A lot of folks get them without having any clue as to how they work. I guess it's the tacticool thing to do.

Most REAL snipers don't use them anymore. They use custom reticles and laser range finders. This is the 21st century.
Now if you want a mil-dot scope that is USABLE....try a Bushnell 6-24 Elite.
The mil dots are relative @12 power, and when you turn the power to 24X, the dots are 1/2 moa and 1.5 moa apart. That is usable for hunting.

Mil dots work great if you have FFP and Mil adjustments otherwise you have to run the math and a duplex and laser range finder would serve better IMHO.

Two things:

1) Snipers didn't use them for ranging, they used them for reference points when the spotter was talking the shooter on to a target. The spotting scope has the same reticule and the dots gave them a common reference scale allowing the spotter to use the dots to get the shooter's eyes on a target based on the number of dots from an easily identified base point. It's only been fairly recently that people have bothered using them to estimate range.

2) As long as your dope card is in the same measurement (mil or MOA) as your turrets, it doesn't matter what the reticule is calibrated in. You get the range, reference the dope card and dial your come-up. If you're simply doing holdovers, know what range corresponds to what mark and hold over as required. It doesn't matter what the turrets are in if you're using the reticule for holdover.

The reason that the military uses mils is that the Army has gone totally metric when it comes to distance measurement and mils are the metric unit of angular measurement. As long as you're using a mil-dot reticule to estimate range in yards based on target size in inches, you're using a much more complicated formula that is really a bastardization. 1 mil subtends to 10cm at 100 meters and 1m at 1km. As soon as you start throwing English measurements into the mix, you're only confusing things and making them harder than they need to be. You can figure most of the same things with MOA but the math isn't as elegant.