how many shots per stage at same target? is spotting your own misses important? why? sighters
ok then, here's where it falls on it's face, our brains are spatially and visually wired, so when we go on auto-pilot (which is what we do on game, actual hunting) and if we miss the animal, assuming long shot, we are not using the reticle to measure the miss and find the right hash mark for the next few shots, we can reference the distance on the scene against the animal and move the main reticle to where it needs to be held to send another...poo happens when you start playing long range hunter so that reticle and all that practice being done in prs goes completely out the window if you mess up the first shot on a critter, prs is not teaching you to reference against a critter...it's teaching you to measure misses with reticles against little white squares...which if you try on animals will slow you down as you're going away from how our brains work
and so the ffp mil is the way to go for elrh shooting, there's a very tiny percentage of guys who cross that over to actual hunting and when polled most of them have about a 600 yard cap on animals, the reasons are several but you can see that a few of them are .5 to 75 seconds tof along with ~20" of wind with an important tag in your pocket on a live animal is where the buck stops for most, coincidentally if you look at those numbers and apply to 3d archery and actual archery kills at distance you'll see the same trend, there are natural field limits on game in hunting that make this basically law, you will find moderate amount of consistent killers to 450 and few to 600 and after that it's very minimal...only so much you can do with ~300 fps arrows and ~24-3200 fps bullets, 50-70 yards or 450-600 yards sort of thing
from there you figure out the simplest boiled down system for hunting, or cross your target gear over to that and hope for the best, you can skin the cat many ways and there are guys who will kill to 600 with sporting rifles and very boiled down systems quicker and better than prs rockstars, so you don't have to spend the money and jump on the trend if hunting is your actual primary, by all means if you like to shoot a ton then giver, try not to get too much of the wrong kind of practice for hunting though as it may mess you up out there on game if trying to apply the not so best strategies, methods, gear to the task at hand
elevation to 600 is the easy part, dial, sfp several hash reticle...there isn't a lot of data to account for to go from mpbr to 600 so this can really be simplified and minimized for pure hunter set up, this can be argued a bit but really if you set that up for middle of your elevation ranges and temps then you can actually use one data set for this and be done, assuming you hunt in your home state at similar areas but I have a 5000' range from prairies to mountain tops and I would only be out 1-2 clicks max at 600 up high on a sheep vs down low on antelope so no need for anything but a basic rangefinder and if it does true horizontal perfect
most guys will stop playing on game around 20" of wind, that could be 35 kmh at 400 or 10 kmh at 650 but you get the idea so lets just take an above aver bc bullet at .5 at a moderate velocity like 2600 (.308 running 168's) and look at the only wind you really need to know from 300-600 or 4 data points (300, 400, 500, 600) (4", 8", 12" 18" of 10 kmh drift)
INCHES of drift at 10 kmh
4"
8"
12" (500) (3/4 sec tof lands 550 in this example)
18" (600)
20" (this at 650 yards in this example and .94 seconds tof - this is pushing the upper limits of long range hunting right here and beyond mosts abilities to do consistently afield on game)
MOA at 10 kmh as compared to the above
1.2
1.7
2.2
2.7
3.0 (650 - 20")
MIL at 10 kmh as above
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.8
0.9 (650 - 20")
hold inches for first one and here's why, our brains are wired spatially and visually and the animals are big and we know their size, not little white squares only as big as a kill zone, we can see an 18" hold on an animal, a reticle trying to show me 1.7 moa or 0.4 mil will not be looked at again once shooting starts and will just get in the way of seeing the spatial gap I need to see when shtf or you shoot till it's down
mil reticles on windage are they marked every 0.1 mil? what's the norm? moa/inches sure look to make more sense for lrh than mils
so what about odd yardages and middling wind calls, well most prepared to go past mpbr are paying attention to the wind while afield, if day hunt they look it up on weather while driving out to spot then combine the expected winds with in field observations, so with inches lets say you call wind at 15 kmh (you're not likely going to call it 12 so you're only going to be working in 5's on the kmh) and say you've got a ram at 450 yards, your 400 yard wind is 8" and 500 yard is 12" for 10 kmh, 10" is 450 but you've got 50% more wind so 5 more inches for 15" wind hold...this is the longest part of your solution...super simple quick math from 4 data points, you've already dialled to the 4.5 of your speed dial turret or dialled up your scope to max mag and know where to gap or hold hash marks for 450...the wind is the last call, I'll be doing it this way rather than trying to convert or play with moa or mils because after the first shot it doesn't matter anymore, you go auto reference with no measures from there...just a bunch of unnecessary noise in your scope when it doesn't need to be there for shot one anyway, you can math the wind out so easily from 4 base inches hold points, I'd argue easier than mil or moa...unless you're trying to use a ballistics computer built into your rangefinder that does that all for you...personally not going to rely on that just to get from mbpr to 600 and inside 20" of wind....too much crap that can do way more than is required, I don't take the kitchen sink up the mountain with me, only what's necessary...same can apply here
now, if you travel all over and hunt way more than 5000' elevation gaps you may want the computer in your rangefinder instead of your head? and or, with multiple guns or whatever then this need not apply, if you're into prs or other shooting sports then giver, anything will work that you practice with, endless gear tech and puters, if you think you're going to be an elrh hunter...well good luck, start trying that out and you'll soon see why most talented guys won't go much past 600...the laws I mentioned above, field situations, live animals, one tag...it's a different level of serious than static target you get to shoot at multiple times(sighters) and it doesn't move
so if you're serious about hunting, grab some gongs, set up as simple as you can and put your own field time playing to 600, learning wind, your rig and you won't need to think for one second about all the target stuff, then practice your craft calling coyotes and wherever you can consistently kill them too you can add about a 1/3 to that for you big game max, you can ice fish all winter, chase coyotes too...not shoot year round burning up barrels and reloading your face off, heck you can do everything in lrh off the shelf including ammo and really have a diverse life
this is minimalist approach to lrh, everything else moves you further into fack around and find out territory
