Here's a thought that just occurred to me. Let's say you have a 10 year old family member (we'll say son because it's easier to write "son" a bunch of times as opposed to grand daughter, niece, nephew, etc.). You want to teach your son how to hunt, so you go for a squirrel hunt with your Marauder. You find a good spot to sit and range find a few trees, so you'll have a good idea of the ranges when you see a squirrel. Every time you see a tree rat, you tell your son how much to hold over. Maybe, after a while, you give him a dope sheet so he can figure out his own hold overs. Then you range the squirrels and tell him the yardage, but the squirrels don't like all of this yammering, so you give him the range finder. Now, he can spot a squirrel, range find it, look up his dope and shoot it. Mission accomplished.
Here's my thought: If you think that field target (especially Hunter division) is supposed to be training or a simulation for hunting, consider that the current rules for Hunter Division encourage unethical hunting. You are supposed to take a variety of shots from a variety of distances, but you aren't allowed to know what those distances are. You can use the parallax focus of your scope to try to figure out the distance, but you have to turn the magnification down to a level that makes it extremely difficult to range find past 40 yards. The reasoning for this is so that you can be competitive with a cheap Walmart scope, but everyone you are shooting against has a $1,500 scope to try to get a marginal performance increase when range finding.
The obvious way to level the playing field and slow down the equipment race is to allow range finders. A $60 range finder will vastly out perform a $3,000 scope at range finding out to 55 yards. But, because range finders were a bazillion dollars when the FT rules were first written, we have decided that range finding is just part of the sport. Long distance field target thankfully realized that range finding with a low powered scope is ridiculous,
I'm not proposing any rules changes (because that has never worked out for me), just wanted to point out that the Field Target rules don't reflect the way that most people hunt. I would love to go back to shooting Hunter Division, I enjoy the simplicity and comfort. But I can't afford a scope that would allow me to be competitive within the current rules.
Here's my thought: If you think that field target (especially Hunter division) is supposed to be training or a simulation for hunting, consider that the current rules for Hunter Division encourage unethical hunting. You are supposed to take a variety of shots from a variety of distances, but you aren't allowed to know what those distances are. You can use the parallax focus of your scope to try to figure out the distance, but you have to turn the magnification down to a level that makes it extremely difficult to range find past 40 yards. The reasoning for this is so that you can be competitive with a cheap Walmart scope, but everyone you are shooting against has a $1,500 scope to try to get a marginal performance increase when range finding.
The obvious way to level the playing field and slow down the equipment race is to allow range finders. A $60 range finder will vastly out perform a $3,000 scope at range finding out to 55 yards. But, because range finders were a bazillion dollars when the FT rules were first written, we have decided that range finding is just part of the sport. Long distance field target thankfully realized that range finding with a low powered scope is ridiculous,
I'm not proposing any rules changes (because that has never worked out for me), just wanted to point out that the Field Target rules don't reflect the way that most people hunt. I would love to go back to shooting Hunter Division, I enjoy the simplicity and comfort. But I can't afford a scope that would allow me to be competitive within the current rules.
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