The Kid asked:
I am a bow hunter in need of a way to determine my distance from my stand to the deer. Lately I have noticed digital scope and rangefinders marketed towards the golfer to find the distance from him to the green. Has anyone used one of these for bow hunting or hunting in general? The reason I ask is that the hunting rangefinders are $200-500 and a golfer’s scope/rangefinder are only about $50.
I am a bow hunter in need of a way to determine my distance from my stand to the deer. Lately I have noticed digital scope and rangefinders marketed towards the golfer to find the distance from him to the green. Has anyone used one of these for bow hunting or hunting in general? The reason I ask is that the hunting rangefinders are $200-500 and a golfer’s scope/rangefinder are only about $50.
Tags: Bow Hunting, Deer, Hunting Rangefinders
The rangefinder that is used in golf would work, though in my experience are not as well made. In golf precision comes with the swing and the strike of the ball. In hunting knowing if the deer is 22 yards away or 26 yards away can make a big difference. The quality of the optics used in hunting rangefinders is usually better, too. Deer hide in brush, and better optics help you find them. Golf greens don’t hide in the brush – they are out in the open. (But then, if you play the way I do, you are hitting the ball out of the woods or tall brush most of the time, so its a wash…)
Something I do when I hang my stand is put a marker of some sort at 20 yards, so even without the rangefinder I know about how close the deer is before I draw.
It should work well enough for a bowhunter, but I think you’d be wasting your time if you want to use it for both bow and rifle hunting.
If you know a golfer who owns one, why not borrow it and check to see if it is accurate enough. Range on something that looks like the distance from your stand to a known landmark, and then pace it off to check. Otherwise, buy it, try it, and sell it if it doesn’t do the job you need it to do.
Doc
Why do you need a range finder? Pace off the distance from your stand to a prominent mark in each direction where you hunt. The mark may be a certain tree or bush. With that information you can estimate the distance to your target with a 2 yard variance while you are drawing on the target. A range finder takes time to use, pre measuring the distance as you go to your stand will eliminate the need. With practice, the distance is known by the eye, the pace off is no longer needed. This is common woodcraft. But you can spend money on more toys for who has the most wins.
Many of the golf scopes do nothing more than measure the height of the flag to a known scale. They don’t do anything else and will not work for hunting. Unless you’re hunting on a golf course and have a flag handy to measure. A laser rangefinder is just that, an actual rangefinder. They sell both marketed to hunters and golfers, the only difference being the color of the casing.
If you can find an old differential style rangefinder, the kind that you turn a knob to align 2 images, it will work fine for both.
Golf scopes have a graduated scale on the lens that measures the height of the flagpole at known distances. Hunting rangefinders use a laser that actually ranges the target and display a number. I guess you could use a golf rangefinder, by making an assumption about the deers height, then doing some quick math to figure out how tall it is in relation to a golf flag, and dividing the flagpole height by the percentage of that height that the deer is, then converting that # to yards. If the deer is still there, it would work.