TFB Tip: Reticle Should Match Your Turrets On Optic
We have the pleasure of getting quite a few optics in for review. The vast majority of them are largely excellent products, but there is always a feature that one sees (especially on the low-end) that absolutely puts a burr up my derriere… a mismatch between the turret adjustment and the reticle.
Its common to see scopes have a mil-dot reticle and MOA adjustment. In fact, my Leupold Mark AR 4-12x40mm, which is a fine piece of glass. The scope came equipped with a standard mil-dot and has MOA adjustable turrets. Yes, I commonly adjust in to my target, but its annoying, especially when pushing shots out past 300 yards and/or in high wind conditions.
Yes, its certainly possible to be perfectly functional with a “mismatched” set, but for one actually using the optic subtensions, having the turrets match makes adjustments on-the-fly significantly easier.
Taking a look at the math is MrGMan9999:
Just for reference at 1000 yards even (not meters) 1 mrad ( (milliradian) is 36 inches. But that is 3.44 MOA (minutes of angle) 1 MOA at 1000 yards is only 10.49 inches or 0.29 mrad. So you really want your riflescope (reticle and turrets)and spotting scope to use the same sets of units unless you are good at either multiplying or dividing by 3.44 all the time on the fly.
3.44 is not an easy number to use in one’s head.
One of TFB's resident Jarheads, Nathan now works within the firearms industry. A consecutive Marine rifle and pistol expert, he enjoys local 3-gun, NFA, gunsmithing, MSR's, & high-speed gear. Nathan has traveled to over 30 countries working with US DoD & foreign MoDs.The above post is my opinion and does not reflect the views of any company or organization.
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this just seems like common sense... even if i only ever shoot at point blank ranges, i still would never buy a scope with disparate reticle and turrets. maybe i'm just a little retentive.
This is a pet peeve of mine as well. I want a mil-mil scope (reticle and turrets) and I see a lot of mil-MOA scopes. That's dumber than dirt. I can only assume that a mil-dot scope looks more tacticool, and the marketing department demanded a simple reticle change to make a new SKU for their product lineup without the cost of changing the internal mechanism. This seems like the sort of thing some sales weasel would do if he didn't know squat about what he was selling. It's possible that there is consumer demand that's helping to drive this, but I'd argue that those people should be educated instead of catering to them. No doubt the sales guy would disagree and will sell anything to anyone, whether it's something they should want or not.
I don't know why this bothers me so much. I live in the US, which should have gone metric in the 1970s, but balked, and now we live in metric imperial hell. As an engineer, I generally convert to metric, do the calculations, and then convert back to "English units". Ugh. And what about those 1980s Plymouth Horizons and Dodge Omnis (and many others of that era) with a metric engine and imperial chassis?