So I've been practicing and getting ready to finally bowhunt white tail this year. I've heard some mixed ideas and wanted to see everyone's thoughts on proper range finder usage. Most range finders on the market do not account for the angle of the shot. Which makes me think that when shooting from an elevated position one should use the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate the actual distance. Or is that just being a bit ridiculous and I should just use the range finder yardage since the difference is typically a small amount?
I'm surprised that "most" rangefinders nowadays don't have a BOW setting. However, if yours doesn't, I would just use the ranged distance as a max as there won't be a significant difference in actual horizontal distance compared to your ranged (hypotenuse) distance. For example, if you are about 20 feet up the tree (about 7 yards) and you range your deer at 20 yards, the horizontal distance is just under 19 years (18.7). That's not a huge difference. The farther the target is beyond 20 yards, the less difference there is between the ranged distance and the horizontal distance. For shots under 20 yards, the difference can be more substantial, but since most bows have very little change in point of aim/point of impact at less than 20 yards, just aim and shoot.
Well the math is easy to prove to yourself if you think it was worth it. It is usually close enough at archery ranges that I have never owned a range finder with arc. So if you ranged 20 yards (60') the actual distance from the base of your tree would be ~56.57' or ~18.86 yards. That is only a difference of ~1.14 yards. Shoot at home at 20, then step up to even 18 and tell me if you miss .
I range beforehand at multiple trees and do so at my eye level to get an idea of what my distances are. I've yet to have time to range a deer at the shot so a quick guesstimate is about all you're really working with. Would be nice to have a rangefinder with angle calculations though to get dead on at certain points. Where I hunt, the deer typically follow the trails because it's marsh and that's the easiest to walk so ranging an intersection of two trails or a clear spot on a trail to the exact yard would be nice. Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk
That's all very true. I was thinking about just mapping the distances so I have a mental perimeter. I figured that no one went as far as taking angle into consideration because your right when a deer comes in there's barely enough time to range it let alone break out a calculator and do some algebra haha. Thanks for the input.
if you are 21 feet up, and the actual distance is 20 yards, your range finder will read 21 yards. Does 1 yard at 20 make that much of a difference in poi? I also range the trees around me to establish the perimeter. I do this at the horizontal distance instead of the base, but again, the margin of error is so small that it probably does not matter.
By the time I got done with all the calculations the deer would be long gone. Practice at elevation and and know how far your trails are from your stand. The rest is muscle memory.
Uhhhh just buy a bushnell arc they are like 170 bucks kinda pricey but saved me many deer by telling me where to aim with the angle
for me it depends on the terrain. if it's relatively flat then I'm not too concerned but throw in steeper terrain and I'll definitely take my range finder with ARC.
