Gear

When people get into hunting they're often advised on ways to set up their rifle/scope/cartridge combination to maximize the potential to take successful long-range shots.

"Choose a flat-shooting cartridge." "Sight in 1 ½ inches high at 100 yards"—maybe 2 inches. "Figure out the diameter of the vital zone, calculate the maximum point blank range and sight in for that." "Always hold on hair." The list goes on. Wouldn't it be nice instead to simply sight in your rifle so that it's really zeroed at 100 yards, and then just as easily make accurate shots at 200, 300, 400, 500 or even 600 yards?

Bushnell has added a new reticle option to its riflescope line with the objective being to make long range shots just that easy. The new "Dead On Accurate," or DOA reticle, does so with a simple array of indicating marks on the reticle wires. Two reticles are offered: The DOA 250 intended for inline muzzleloaders and shots out to 250 yards; and the DOA 600 for centerfire rifles and shots out to 600 yards. In addition to the long range shooting feature, DOA reticles also have what Bushnell calls the "Rack Bracket" for field judging antler size.

As I had on hand a McMillan Tactical Hunter bolt-action rifle chambered in .243 Winchester for another project, I opted to see how a Bushnell Elite 6500 2.5-16x42mm with the DOA 600 reticle performed, as .243 Winchester is one of the many cartridges that will work with this reticle.

The basis of the DOA 600 is essentially a duplex-style reticle. Below the normal crosshair intersection are a series of dots. Those dots are much like the familiar Mil-dots, but instead of being positioned in respect to Mils, are positioned to correspond with the correct hold-over for shooting at longer range with specific, common, centerfire loads when the scope is set on a specific power setting. In the case of the scope I tried, that setting was 16x.

Many of those loads that will work with the DOA reticle are listed in the owner's manual and you can find more on the Bushnell website. Note that when using loads that have the same weight but different style bullet than listed, their actual points of impact may be different because different bullets styles will have different trajectories.

For a given velocity, actual trajectory is dependant in large part on a bullet's ballistic coefficient (BC) and generally the higher the BC the flatter the trajectory. At close to medium range, a difference in BC probably isn't going to matter much, but stretch the range and it's a different matter.