Perched high in a spruce tree, I heard leaves crunching underfoot. Forty yards to my left, a heavy-footed mule deer was making his way through the woods. With any luck, he’d give me a shot opportunity.
Fortunately, I’d already used my laser rangefinder to capture various distances. With this buck on approach, I grunted and he stopped. At 23 yards quartering away, I sent an arrow through him. Big buck down!
While a small percentage of bowhunters can shoot instinctively, most can’t. To shoot today’s compound bows with any accuracy, we need to know the distance to our intended target. This is where today’s laser rangefinders shine.
have revolutionized our bowhunting.
If you bow hunted in the early ‘90’s, you might remember the old dial-up rangefinders. To operate them, you looked through a sight window, rotated a dial and when the object you were looking at came into focus, or the two images aligned, you then stopped dialing and looked at the manual number on the dial, which was your distance. They were reasonably accurate, but not without limitations, and certainly not precise. What a difference a couple decades makes!
As bowhunters, its critical to know the exact distance to our target. Both rifle hunters and archers use rangefinders, but for those using a bow and arrow, even one-or-two yards difference can put an arrow off target, especially when we’re looking at distances over 40 yards. With today’s laser rangefinders delivering precise distance measurements, guessing is removed from the equation, leaving the bowhunter to now rely exclusively on their ability to capture a reading, draw and shoot accurately.
ENGINEERING MARVELS
Today’s laser rangefinders are precise, compact, easy to use, and they can be adjusted to accommodate variable conditions. A far cry from those early mechanical iterations, contemporary rangefinders are loaded with variable functions.
As bowhunters, seldom to we need to measure shot distances beyond 60 yards, but it can be enormously valuable to identify distances as we move in on target animals at any distance. For my own applications, I like a rangefinder that’s capable of accurately capturing distances out to 700 yards and one that offers angle compensation readings for tree stand hunting and shooting uphill or downhill.
One that I currently use is the 6×24 mm Bushnell Prime 1800 has been ideal. Bushnell boasts that it can read range out to a mind-blowing one mile. It can accurately read reflective surfaces to 1,800 yards, trees to 1,000 yards, and deer or other big game animals out to 700 simply by centering the target in the viewfinder and pressing a button. One of the reasons I chose this particular rangefinder is because of it’s ActivSync™ Display technology that fluidly morphs the reticle display between black and red to best contrast with the background I’m viewing.
Among many features with today’s rangefinders, one of the most noteworthy is the ability to compensate for angles. With the Bushnell devices for instance, they call this ARC Technology – ARC (Angle Range Compensation). It accounts for terrain angle, providing true distance display to target on uphill and downhill shots – an especially valuable feature when hunting steep topography or from an elevated stand.
Similarly, most of today’s dedicated laser rangefinders allow the user to switch between rifle and bow mode, which in turn gathers accurate readouts for your weapon of choice to account for arrow or bullet drop, angle, and ballistics.
Another great feature is the option to switch sensitivity settings. Each manufacturer has its own terminology, but to illustrate, with Bushnell rangefinders, they call this Brush™ and Bullseye™ Mode – Brush mode ignores foreground objects like brush, trees and branches, reading distances to background objects only. Bullseye mode acquires the distances of small targets without inadvertently measuring background object distances.
AFFORDABLE & NECESSARY
I strongly suggest that every bowhunter should be using a rangefinder. Why? Because, for the most part they are relatively affordable and it’s the right thing to do to help improve your odds of accurate kill shots on game.
PyramydAir sells many great options, listing anywhere from around $150 for a Muddy LR 650X, to a mid-class rangefinder like the Vortex Viper HD3000 that sells for $400. In this general class, a couple other options worth a closer look include the TenPoint Align 800 and the Vortex Crossfire HD 1400. Of course, you can spend more for a step up in class and functionality as well.
Regardless of which make and model you chose, one thing is certain – using a laser rangefinder will definitely help improve your shooting, both on the range and while you are hunting.
