How to Estimate Range With Your MIL Reticle

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If your optic has a mil hash system, you can use those angle measurements to get a rough estimation of your target’s range based on an approximate or known value of the target’s height. The following formula will give your distance to the target in meters:

If you prefer to render a distance in yards, you would use the following formula:

Your optic should come with a manual for your specific reticle. Different components of the reticle can be used together to measure the target rather than guessing between hashmarks. Below is a Zero Compromise Optics reticle manual:

And another popular reticle from Vortex:

Ultimately this is a matter of “garbage in, garbage out.” If you do a poor job of estimating the height of your target or calculate the total mils your target covers on the reticle poorly, you’re going to get a bad range estimation.

As an example, when ranging something like an IPSC target, you know it’s exactly 75cm tall. In this example, we see it measure 2 mils, so we estimate the target is at 375 meters – 750/2=375.

But when you start ranging living targets, there’s some variability in size. A whitetailed buck might be somewhere in the vicinity of 80-90cm at the shoulder. In this case we see the buck is 5 mils at the shoulder, and therefore might be 800/5=160 or 900/5=180 meters.

That variability may not be an issue ranging a target inside 200 meters, but it’s going to present greater difficulty as you move toward the end of your cartridge’s effective range as the bullet drops more quickly.

If you’re still using MOA for some reason, you can do the same with this formula:

Keep in mind that if you bought a second focal plane optic, there is a specific magnification (usually max power) that is used for ranging with your reticle.

You won’t find many people still ranging in this way, but if your rangefinder dies in the field, it’s good to know how to do it the old fashioned way.

If you really don’t like math, here’s an affiliate link for a Leupold rangefinder, a Vortex rangefinder, and I carry this Leica rangefinder at the shop.