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.
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