The number of riflescopes on the market is absolutely staggering. Each scope comes with strengths and drawbacks depending on the style of hunt. While most scopes can be pressed into service on a wide variety of hunts, scopes are designed with a specific shooting system in mind. Below we break down the three main systems for shooting in hunting scenarios and what type of hunts each is best in.
Maximum Point Blank Range
Maximum point blank range (MPBR) is one of the oldest shooting systems still in use today. The concept is to sight your rifle in so that the bullet stays within a few inches of your zero for the furthest possible distance. For those interested in the MPBR system I wrote an entire article on the concept here.
MPBR shines with it’s speed and simplicity. For most modern rifle cartridges a MPBR system is a point an shoot solution to somewhere between 250-300 yards. For many hunters, this is as far as they will ever need to shoot. The drawback of MPBR is it is very difficult to place accurate shots once the shot distance exceeds 300 yards. MPBR requires the shooter to estimate wind and elevation by holding off target. It is very difficult to estimate holdover accurately with no frame of reference. The best MPBR setups are rifles chambered for high velocity cartridges. Another strong use case is for rifles specialized for close range hunting. High velocity helps to increase the maximum range of the system by flattening out the trajectory.
Scopes optimized for MPBR shooting systems have capped turrets and are lightweight. This lends itself to lighter handier rifles. As a side benefit the capped turrets eliminate the issue of bumping a turret off of zero. They also typically have thicker crosshair style reticles that are easy to see in low light and quickly pick up for rushed shots. This is ideal for hunting dense timber where the backdrop is broken. Thicker reticles are also well suited to coastal environments where fog, rain, and condensation make seeing a fine reticle challenging.
Ballistic Drop Compensation
Another shooting system used for hunting is the ballistic drop compensation (BDC) reticle method. These scopes have reticles with hash marks that correlate with various distances. Classically, there is a hash mark for each 100 yards. These systems allow the user to shoot to around 500 yards quickly without having to take the time to twist a turret or guess holdover. The BDC system is more complex than MPBR but extends the ethical shooting range. Additionally, with a BDC system it is not imperative that the turrets track absolutely perfectly.
The chief drawback of the BDC shooting system is that the reticle is not tailored to your specific rifle, cartridge, bullet, or environmentals. When hunting with a relatively standard rifle such as a 22 inch barreled 308 Winchester, the BDC should be very close. However, when hunting with a hotrod cartridge, lever action cartridge, or at an extreme elevation, the further hash marks can easily be off by quite a bit. Because of this, BDC systems are not appropriate for extreme range shots. Another issue is that many BDC scopes are second focal plane, meaning that the reticle is only accurate at maximum magnification.
The BDC shooting system is ideal for use with standard cartridges and rifle combinations in situations where a 450 yard shot is possible but closer range opportunities are more common. A good example is hunting a treed area where a cross clear-cut shot is a possibility.
Dial Up Turrets
Finally, the third shooting system are utilizing dial up turrets to account for elevation. In this system a shooter uses a ballistic chart or calculator to determine the exact adjustment required for a given distance. This adjustment dials into the riflescope, eliminating the need to account for bullet drop.
The main benefit of the dial up shooting system is the high level of precision at extended ranges. Using this system the shooter precisely accounts for bullet drop. These systems allow the shooter to shoot out to the limits of their bullet or skill level, whichever comes first.
Riflescopes optimized for dial up shooting have technical reticles with measurements in MOA or MRAD. Often times these reticles are relatively fine. These enable the shooter to make precise wind calls. Additionally, they have exposed elevation turrets. Both of these attributes make the shooting system more precise, but also slower and more complex. Hunters will need to find their correction, then dial it, before they are ready to shoot.
However, there are a few other weaknesses of most dial up system riflescopes. First of all, there is the possibility of bumping the turret off zero accidentally if the scope does not have a zero lock. Another common issue is that many precision rifle scopes are FFP, making complex reticles difficult to see at low power. Illuminated reticles are a common solution to this problem. Finally, FFP dial up scopes tend to be heavier and more expensive than a capped turret scope of similar quality.
The dial up shooting system gives the longest effective range to the hunter at the cost of simplicity and speed. As such, the dial up system shines in open country hunting. It’s also essential the dial up system is matched to a cartridge capable of shooting extended ranges.
Closing Thoughts
More and more hunters are moving towards dial up shooting systems. For many of them this is a mistake, adding complexity to their systems to extend their range despite never using it. Personally I use all three of these systems depending on the hunt. That said, for the majority of my actual hunting opportunities the MPBR system would serve me just fine. Pairing the right shooting system to a rifle, cartridge, and optic combination sets up the hunter for success when an opportunity presents itself.