Longer story short - I've been eyeballing this thing for a while. Decided to get one last week before I went out on my hunting trip in the mountains.
The first real-world test that I did with it was range a clear cut area on the side of a mountain adjacent to my usual target shooting area. I know this particular spot to be 900 meters away. I've been able to range this with the Vortex Ranger 1800, but I usually have to brace against something to get the reading (despite perfect weather). The Sig almost instantly gives me the distance without me having to brace.
The next test was another hillside on a different terrain feature that is visible from this same spot. I had never been able to get ranging info from this point with the 1800. The Sig took a few seconds, but eventually reported 2100 something meters out. Again, not braced against anything at all.
Fast-forward a couple of days later, I'm setting up to snipe a coyote that I was tracking from a high point overlooking a river valley. As I'm ranging different features of this kill zone, I decide to scan the far side of the valley with the Sig's ranging feature - aiming it at point along a mountain ridge a few miles away at first, and then gradually scanning along that ridge towards my location until it gave me a reading. It blanked until I got it aimed at a point where it read 2813m. Sure enough, I was able to range that far out multiple times from that position.
I've been playing around with some of the other ballistic features, and it doesn't feel "gimmicky" at all. The wind meter is decent, it registers wind close enough to my home WX station's meter, and I can probably see using it with Strelok when the weather here really starts to turn to hell (any day now). Nonetheless, I have wanted a rangefinder with this sort of capability for both shooting and mountaineering / hiking - where I've often WISHED that I could just range certain waypoints and terrain features instead if fumbling in the cold wind for my maps or trying to work my GPS with gloves on.
The price isn't palatable. I won't sugar coat that at all, I got a veteran discount at Cabelas, but that was about it. The BDX model is about 1/2 the price, I haven't tried it - but I suspect that it performs equally on the ranging side as the ABS (but I'm no expert on that). I also considered getting the 3000 series binoculars, but the weight of this guy is much lighter and an all around win for what I need out of it.
The first real-world test that I did with it was range a clear cut area on the side of a mountain adjacent to my usual target shooting area. I know this particular spot to be 900 meters away. I've been able to range this with the Vortex Ranger 1800, but I usually have to brace against something to get the reading (despite perfect weather). The Sig almost instantly gives me the distance without me having to brace.
The next test was another hillside on a different terrain feature that is visible from this same spot. I had never been able to get ranging info from this point with the 1800. The Sig took a few seconds, but eventually reported 2100 something meters out. Again, not braced against anything at all.
Fast-forward a couple of days later, I'm setting up to snipe a coyote that I was tracking from a high point overlooking a river valley. As I'm ranging different features of this kill zone, I decide to scan the far side of the valley with the Sig's ranging feature - aiming it at point along a mountain ridge a few miles away at first, and then gradually scanning along that ridge towards my location until it gave me a reading. It blanked until I got it aimed at a point where it read 2813m. Sure enough, I was able to range that far out multiple times from that position.
I've been playing around with some of the other ballistic features, and it doesn't feel "gimmicky" at all. The wind meter is decent, it registers wind close enough to my home WX station's meter, and I can probably see using it with Strelok when the weather here really starts to turn to hell (any day now). Nonetheless, I have wanted a rangefinder with this sort of capability for both shooting and mountaineering / hiking - where I've often WISHED that I could just range certain waypoints and terrain features instead if fumbling in the cold wind for my maps or trying to work my GPS with gloves on.
The price isn't palatable. I won't sugar coat that at all, I got a veteran discount at Cabelas, but that was about it. The BDX model is about 1/2 the price, I haven't tried it - but I suspect that it performs equally on the ranging side as the ABS (but I'm no expert on that). I also considered getting the 3000 series binoculars, but the weight of this guy is much lighter and an all around win for what I need out of it.
