S2H Scope Interest

[KHntr]

I showed a guy a picture of a 223/TMK kill on whitetail one time and he said “I don’t know if I believe that”.

The number of times that I have heard that when showing someone a pic of a dead moose or elk and a 223….

 

[Chris in TN]

DUMB is the point. Under stress and time pressure, I am DUMB. I will go full STUPID on my load to make it something I can shoot easier in a stressful situation. Hell, I just cut 6" off a 284 Win barrel to run a suppressor. I lost 150fps, a full mph wind number, and 100yds of terminal range. BUT, it's got way less recoil, is easier to spot impacts, more accurate, still an above average wind number, and a better match to quickdrop. And still lethal to my MER. Overall a much more shootable and hittable package. Now that's DUMB.

To a point I get that. But they're elk, not Viet Cong. There comes a point where you need to take the time and think these things through, not just go all Buck Fever on a 600 yard mule deer in a gale. Learning to control your emotions, control your stress responses and make calculated responses, is part of growing up. Certainly your gear needs to be user-friendly and intuitive. But that's no substitute for taking the time you need - and if you don't have the time you need to make an ethical shot, don't shoot.

I understand and applaud your .284 mods. I'm about to do basically the same, for the same basic reasons, with my .280ai that has became useless (to me) since I've bought centerfire cans. But at the end of the day your confidence in your equipment and your familiarity with it is infinitely more important than the fact that you've got quick drop (instead of turret marked for yardages) or your version of quick wind (that divides wind into brackets in an mrad increment instead of an moa division).

I absolutely cannot convince you of that. You'd have to want to be convinced, and all the convincing in the world won't change that.

 

[Chris in TN]

How's a 3 moa bracket work at all ranges? How do you account for wind values?

If you base a wind bracket on some arbitrary distance, like 500, it's obviously going to overdo closer distances.

You could easily boil wind down to a rough equation - if your rifle is, say, for example, 2moa at 500 yards in 10mph wind, and you were face with a 300 yard shot at 6mph (est), you could easily do (3/5)*.6 or .36 times 2 or .7moa (or .72 or .75 or just say 'less than moa'). Is that value going to be perfect? No. Is it going to ethically kill anything the size of a coyote? Yeah.

Or you could make it even faster and say - for example - that your brackets, based on 500 yard wind values, are 0-3, 3-6, and 7-10, for ~3mph subdivisions. At 300 yards, which is 3/5 of the base value, you could switch your subdivisions from a base-3mph to a base-5mph. So now your wind brackets for this 300 yard shot become not 0-3,4-6,and7-10, but 0-5 and 5-10 and 10-15. And, of course, if you're out past 500 yards, you shouldn't be doing 'quick', you should be doing 'precise careful repeated measurements plugged into an accurate solver'.

My point in this isn't to confuse you by offering two ways. My point is to say that simple and fast hacks can be spit out here about as fast as you can ask for them.

At the end of the day we live in a bubble where guys are arguing about Shell versus Chevron gas additives when the bulk of the people around us are burning wood gas with a bit of water left in it.

 

[Jake Larsen]

To a point I get that. But they're elk, not Viet Cong. There comes a point where you need to take the time and think these things through, not just go all Buck Fever on a 600 yard mule deer in a gale. Learning to control your emotions, control your stress responses and make calculated responses, is part of growing up. Certainly your gear needs to be user-friendly and intuitive. But that's no substitute for taking the time you need - and if you don't have the time you need to make an ethical shot, don't shoot.

I understand and applaud your .284 mods. I'm about to do basically the same, for the same basic reasons, with my .280ai that has became useless (to me) since I've bought centerfire cans. But at the end of the day your confidence in your equipment and your familiarity with it is infinitely more important than the fact that you've got quick drop (instead of turret marked for yardages) or your version of quick wind (that divides wind into brackets in an mrad increment instead of an moa division).

I absolutely cannot convince you of that. You'd have to want to be convinced, and all the convincing in the world won't change that.

Nobody is saying you cant make an inferior system work if you practice with it.

We’re saying you can make an inherently superior system work even better if you practice with it.

All your theorizing about this is pointless. A lot of us have actually tested this in the field. The results speak for themselves. That’s why you can’t convince us we’re wrong. Data and personal experience are aligning here. And for many of us, we held your same opinion not all that long ago. We didn’t grow up on Mils. We just chose to drink when led to water


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[Chris in TN]

Nobody is saying you cant make an inferior system work if you practice with it.

We’re saying you can make an inherently superior system work even better if you practice with it.

All your theorizing about this is pointless. A lot of us have actually tested this in the field. The results speak for themselves. That’s why you can’t convince us we’re wrong. Data and personal experience are aligning here. And for many of us, we held your same opinion not all that long ago. We didn’t grow up on Mils. We just chose to drink when led to water


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Appealing to a 'test experience' where you tried to shoehorn your moa system into a mrad social environment and - wonder of wonders - it didn't work so well - is sort of like declaring French to be better than German because you took three years of German classes then really struggled to speak to French people.

ETA: cue the Mark Twain quote about convincing people they've been fooled. Mrads didn't fix your shooting. Shooting a lot, fixed your shooting.

 

[ChrisAU]

I'd love to have one for a planned early rifle high country Muley hunt in September...

 

[chutinlead]

Ask the same people if they'd rather have a Leupold or a Zero Tech scope and you'll be told to GTFO with your Chinese $hit!

It would be a tough sell. I looked at their website and I wouldn't bet on them any more than the gun show special osprey scopes.

 

[Chris in TN]

It would be a tough sell. I looked at their website and I wouldn't bet on them any more than the gun show special osprey scopes.

I'd heard of them but didn't know anything about them. But we know, at least, that they're willing to gamble on this.

I genuinely hope this gamble 'makes' them.

 

[MHWASH]

So could you just stop twisting it at 12? Just curious what makes a fella all in with a 3-12 but a 3-18 is a no go. 18 is more than I would need too but I figure I can just the magnification to the situation. Likely keeping it lower than expected and turn up if needed/wanted like everything else.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but a larger zoom range surely equals more weight, more moving parts, more bulk? We've all been told by the "experts", even the ones who are developing this scope, that for hunting, a top end magnification about 9 is not necessary. A 18x zoom with a 44mm obj bell is also going to have a very small FOV. So if you want all that jazz just to be S2H cool, have at it.

 

[Schmo]

If you base a wind bracket on some arbitrary distance, like 500, it's obviously going to overdo closer distances.

You could easily boil wind down to a rough equation - if your rifle is, say, for example, 2moa at 500 yards in 10mph wind, and you were face with a 300 yard shot at 6mph (est), you could easily do (3/5)*.6 or .36 times 2 or .7moa (or .72 or .75 or just say 'less than moa'). Is that value going to be perfect? No. Is it going to ethically kill anything the size of a coyote? Yeah.

Or you could make it even faster and say - for example - that your brackets, based on 500 yard wind values, are 0-3, 3-6, and 7-10, for ~3mph subdivisions. At 300 yards, which is 3/5 of the base value, you could switch your subdivisions from a base-3mph to a base-5mph. So now your wind brackets for this 300 yard shot become not 0-3,4-6,and7-10, but 0-5 and 5-10 and 10-15. And, of course, if you're out past 500 yards, you shouldn't be doing 'quick', you should be doing 'precise careful repeated measurements plugged into an accurate solver'.

My point in this isn't to confuse you by offering two ways. My point is to say that simple and fast hacks can be spit out here about as fast as you can ask for them.

At the end of the day we live in a bubble where guys are arguing about Shell versus Chevron gas additives when the bulk of the people around us are burning wood gas with a bit of water left in it.

Don’t you see how these are all mental gymnastics when with a mil system I know that the first number of my G1 BC is the wind speed at which my bullet drifts 1/10 mil every 100 yards?

Edit: Sometimes there will be a correction factor if you have a bad gun or good gun, but all that that changes is the wind speed at which your bullet drifts 1/10 mil every 100 yards.

 

[Chris in TN]

Perhaps I'm wrong, but a larger zoom range surely equals more weight, more moving parts, more bulk? We've all been told by the "experts", even the ones who are developing this scope, that for hunting, a top end magnification about 9 is not necessary. A 18x zoom with a 44mm obj bell is also going to have a very small FOV. So if you want all that jazz just to be S2H cool, have at it.

I've been pretty vocal that 3x/4x erectors are sufficient for how I use riflescopes but somewhere in this thread it was explained that the manufacturer suggested a 6x erector because apparently, if I understood what was being said correctly, they'd already sort of put all their manufacturing eggs into the 6x erector basket.

Which makes sense - I have a 20 year old LOW scope with a ~6.5x erector that has been absolutely great for me and has been used pretty danged hard.

 

[Chris in TN]

Don’t you see how these are all mental gymnastics when with a mil system I know that the first number of my G1 BC is the wind speed at which my bullet drifts 1/10 mil every 100 yards?

Don't you see that calculating a base wind value is literally a one-time-per-load calculation (uh, mental gymnastic exercise) that wouldn't make a lick of difference if it took half an hour because you only have to do it once per load?

I'll happily concede that mrads work well. I'll concede that mrads are undoubtedly best if you're learning in an environment where the instructors and teammates are using mrads. But I have yet to see you guys even address the notion that mrad versus moa is - if I concede for the sake of argument that one system is better - an incredibly minor aspect of shooting. I don't care if you failed math in the fifth grade and dropped out after that or if you're an engineer with a PhD; being able to read the wind - especially out west - is light years more important than whether you're compensating for it in one measurement system or another. Instead, what I get is 'well if you attended the right class you'd understand'.

The inability to frame this debate in such a context is telling.

 

[Formidilosus]

My skill doesn't make or break my argument here; it isn't about me; it's about the underlying math, and that's what I'm focused on. My skills probably suck compared to most of you guys. But I won't sacrifice my grasp of math - or reason - on the altar of being a better shooter. Because I don't have to and nor do you.

A reticle with l/r windage hashes of 1moa each will handily allow you to bracket the wind. Even a couple of 2-moa hashes would be sufficient. Most rifles will be maybe 2-3moa in a full value 10mph wind at 500 yards. If you have 1-moa or 2-moa hashes that allow you to identify a 0-1moa bracket, a 1-2moa bracket, and a 2-3moa bracket for wind, you can divide your wind into mild (0-4 mph) medium (4-8mph) and full (8-12mph) values, more or less (I'm spitballing rough numbers here, not exact figures for any given rifle). Beyond that, you really ought to be slowing down and double checking everything. You can even use those numbers at intermediate ranges - if you think you have a full (12mph) value wind at 300 yards you know 300 is way less than 500, you're gonna hold less wind, so instead of using the 3moa bracket you're gonna use the 2moa mark, now say you're off and the wind was really only 7mph. You're still gonna hit a volleyball sized target.

(Obviously those wind values are going to be dependent upon your rifle's specifics, but those numbers will get most people started)

At 530 yards I dial one minute past the 500 blob on my turret and if I think the wind is 6mph I hold very close to the far edge of the intermediate (3-7 or 4-8mph depending on gun speed, etc) bracket (which means I'm close to a 2moa hold, but I didn't even have to check that - I just recognized 6mph as being out on the edge of my middle wind bracket) and shoot. If I miss, it's because I was wrong on the wind, not my hold.

(Truth be told, 530 in 6mph, both of us probably need to slow down and double check things in an app; 530/6 is a difficult shot)

I'm sure some of you guys are incredibly fast with your wind holds in that 0-600 realm. But the terrible not-so-secret secret is, if you swapped to MOA you'd be just as fast once you'd had a very minimal time to adapt. And like you, it didn't take me long at all to figure that - in the field it would take me way, way longer to be confident in my grasp of the actual wind value. Knowing the wind value is the hard part by an order of magnitude. Guesstimating where to hold for it is almost an afterthought.
You can bracket stuff in moas. You can 'hack' your elevation dope. Again, I'm reluctant to argue this very much; I'm not mad about it and I don't think that you guys that get hung up on mrads are any worse shooters for it - my stance is not that one system is better, my stance is that both systems work as well as the effort you put into them - and effort will equal results. I'm not worried that .mrads are holding you back. At all. I'm much, much more worried that once good instruction gets boiled down and internalized by mediocre math guys, what they then regurgitate on the internet, which is read by new shooters, sounds like 'I can't get good until I get a .mrad scope'. And that creates a hurdle for the people who need to improve the most - the new guy, or the lifelong hunter who's tired of missing and wants to get better. The *LAST* thing he needs is to worry about whether his riflescope is in moas or mrads. Just watch the optics classifieds on this board - dudes trade in a ton of moa scopes so they can chase newer/better scopes in .mrads. I'm 100% for upgrading gear where needed - but that's primarily going to be in the realm of reliability, not whether the scope runs on moas or mrads. The reality is that these 'bad' shooters who want to improve, need reliable scopes first, and practice time second. Different dialing increments can come later - much later - if they choose. But it's a choice, not a need. And that's why I harp on this. There's a genuine transaction cost to upgrades and those need to be done based on needs, and for most of us, the $50 to $250 it might cost to upgrade (maybe more depending on what sort of scopes we're dealing with, markups, availability, used prices, and so on) would be much, much better spent on ammo. I try to take a triage approach to things like this - fix your biggest problems first. And for the vast majority of shooters, their biggest problems are that they suck, they think they can shoot because their daddy gave them a box of .22s one time or that being a good shot was their birthright as an American, they don't know any sort of field positions and might be too fat to get into them anyway, they don't practice, their rifle isn't bedded properly and their scope isn't mounted properly and wouldn't hold zero if it was. Mrads versus MOAs doesn't even make the top ten list of reasons they can't hit stuff - and honestly never will.

You are writing a lot about things you don’t understand. It’s not a guess to say that given the same level of ability with both, a shooter will always perform better with FFP mil/mil scopes, than they will FFP MOA/MOA scopes.
Reality of a targets and timers doesn’t care about your “understanding of math”.

 

[Formidilosus]

I believe that it's true - I've read the instructor saying as much - but I also recognize that if the reverse were true and you were taking a class with people who had shot mostly moas for decades and refined their techniques within an moa system,

Again, you saying things you don’t know or understand.

and you were trying to use .mrads in their environment you'd struggle in the same ways.

No, you wouldn’t.

People in either camp have their own ways of doing things and I think they often internalize their own assumptions to the point they don't even realize them anymore. And that's the issue. Taking that class didn't expose you to some hidden truth about the superiority of one system - the wind and the bullet don't care either way - it exposed you to the reality, realized or not, that one system was baked into the class.

You are ignorant of what you write.

I 100% assure you that if you took the best mrad based shooters and instructors in the world and rewound time and gave them nothing but moa-based scopes, they'd be just as good.

You mean like everyone that has shot for more than a decade? All you are doing is showing extreme ignorance about things you have never done, know nothing about, and which has been proven repeatedly for almost 20 years.


In at least one class a year, I make the S2H coaches shoot MOA for pretest and most of the class. To date, not one person has scored higher than them- that is number of hits, and time to make those hits. Nobody has even been close.

Every 18 months are so I shoot MOA exclusively for 3-6 months. In any event that measures speed an accuracy- I do not lose. Yet, no matter how many rounds, no matter how much work, no matter what techniques- me using FFP Mil/mil always beats me using FFP MOA/moa. Always. And has former last 16-17 years. And has with every single shooter that has measured. That your “understanding of math” doesn’t grasp this has no bearing on reality.

They'd likely have different hacks altogether - not a mrad hack multiplied by 3.43775 to make an moa hack, but a hack that approached the math part of the problem (and every shot beyond point blank range is a math problem) from a different angle.

“Likely”? If you don’t know a thing, why are you talking about it definitively?


No- “they” don’t have a hack. Trajectory and wind does not follow MOA in a linear, logical, consistent format. It does in mil.

Approaching wind brackets for the 0-600 yard realm from a mild (no more than 3-4mph depending on gun), medium (perhaps 3-8mph depending on gun) and full (perhaps 7-12mph depending on gun) wind values, using an MOA based reticle with 1 or 2 moa hashmarks out to 4moa, is fundamentally going to work exactly the same way as approaching the wind from a mrad based system. Medium wind, medium hold, bang.

But, yeah, doing it with an instructor who is 20 years deep into using mils? Yeah, there's gonna be some hiccups.

The most ignorant, are often the most confident.

 

[JFK]

I was in when I heard it would be 3-12 at around 20oz. At 25oz and 3-18 i might get one down the line but not buying one when they release it.

Kinda wild that s2h preaches lower mag, the merits of fixed X scopes, then makes a 3-18.

 

[BLJ]

I'd love to have one for a planned early rifle high country Muley hunt in September...

Don’t respond with something relevant to the OP.
We’re arguing MIL and MOA here.

 

[Chris in TN]

Again, you saying things you don’t know or understand.





No, you wouldn’t.





You are ignorant of what you write.






You mean like everyone that has shot for more than a decade? All you are doing is showing extreme ignorance about things you have never done, know nothing about, and which has been proven repeatedly for almost 20 years.


In at least one class a year, I make the S2H coaches shoot MOA for pretest and most of the class. To date, not one person has scored higher than them- that is number of hits, and time to make those hits. Nobody has even been close.

Every 18 months are so I shoot MOA exclusively for 3-6 months. In any event that measures speed an accuracy- I do not lose. Yet, no matter how many rounds, no matter how much work, no matter what techniques- me using FFP Mil/mil always beats me using FFP MOA/moa. Always. And has former last 16-17 years. And has with every single shooter that has measured. That your “understanding of math” doesn’t grasp this has no bearing on reality.




“Likely”? If you don’t know a thing, why are you talking about it definitively?


No- “they” don’t have a hack. Trajectory and wind does not follow MOA in a linear, logical, consistent format. It does in mil.





The most ignorant, are often the most confident.

So in your own words, the system you use 3-6 months out of 18 always loses to the system you use 12-15 months out of 18. That's my point.

And yes, trajectory and wind do follow moa in a linear logical format to the exact same extent as it follows .mils. Neither are perfect or really even close. Both are close enough to be made useful in simplified models. A rifle that has one mrad of wind at x range/yspeed, will have ~3.4moas of wind at same.

 

[ChrisAU]

Don’t respond with something relevant to the OP.
We’re arguing MIL and MOA here.

To be fair, there's no way I'd let a muley catch me using an MOA scope. It might think I'm there to shoot squirrels or something.

 

[Formidilosus]

I was in when I heard it would be 3-12 at around 20oz. At 25oz and 3-18 i might get one down the line but not buying one when they release it.

Kinda wild that s2h preaches lower mag, the merits of fixed X scopes, then makes a 3-18.

A 3-18x can be shot on a lot of powers other than 18x. Making a scope and reticle that is actually usable on all magnification from 3-18x has been the issue.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but a larger zoom range surely equals more weight, more moving parts, more bulk? We've all been told by the "experts", even the ones who are developing this scope, that for hunting, a top end magnification about 9 is not necessary. A 18x zoom with a 44mm obj bell is also going to have a very small FOV. So if you want all that jazz just to be S2H cool, have at it.

None of that is correct anymore. 3x and 4x zoom ratio scope development stagnated 15+ years ago. All of the engineering development and work has been on 6/8/10x zoom ratios. Now 8x and especially 10x still have some serious drawbacks, but 6x has been figured out.
Thats the big difference- there are 5x and 6x zoom ratio scopes that are as good or better than the best 4x zoom ratio scopes. The problem, is most of the market is still using 6x zoom ratios scopes from 2018-2020 in design (Tenmile, RS1.2). This scope is a 2025/2026 design. Even in a year and a half, to two years that this has been in the works- the optical system made a large leap in performance; that’s why it was used.

There is no downside in optical quality, weight, or performance with this optical system.

 

[Formidilosus]

So in your own words, the system you use 3-6 months out of 18 always loses to the system you use 12-15 months out of 18. That's my point.

And yes, trajectory and wind do follow moa in a linear logical format to the exact same extent as it follows .mils. Neither are perfect or really even close. Both are close enough to be made useful in simplified models. A rifle that has one mrad of wind at x range/yspeed, will have ~3.4moas of wind at same.

Have you done long term, comparative testing of hit rate and time, using both MOA and mil scopes with the same shooters, and using the best known optimized techniques for both?