Help with a scope

[Wolfgang]

Hello All,

I am curious if any of you might have or have read about a scope that I ended up with in a trade today.  It is a new in the box Bushnell 3x9x40 Banner Dusk to Dawn. Nothing unusual except when you look though it.  It has a lighted reticle and the crosshair has hash marks (not Mil Dots) on both the horizontal and vertical stadia wires and below that is a graph with several horizontal lines.  I guess it is some sort of range estimating type thing but it says nothing about how to use it in the manual.  I can't find anything on it on the Bushnell site nor really anywhere else that I've looked.  The reticle looks like one that is pictured with a Barska scope their site.  Is this thing a custom reticle from Bushnell?  Can anybody tell me how it's supposed to be used?  On the box it says 4 plex Mil-Dot.

Thanks for any information,
Wolfgang

[Graybeard]

Sounds like the new reticle Bushnell recently came out with. I forget the name of it but it's only offered on a few models and I think one of them is a Banner.

[Wolfgang]

I'm not sure Graybeard.  All I know is that they sure didn't take any great pains to decribe it in their manual that came with the scope.  I would guess that like Mil Dots, that ranging graph is only good when the power setting is correct which is probably at the highest power but it says nothing about it.  I would also assume that the distance is calibrated for a certain sized object at a fixed distance but again there's nothing written about it.  I did find their new DOA reticle on their site but that's not what's in this scope.    Might just have to email them and see if they might know what I have.

Wolfgang

[Graybeard]

That's the one I was talking about the DOA. If it's not that then I have no clue what it might be.

[Wolfgang]

Here's a picture of what the reticle looks like.  This is taken off the Barska web site.

[sscoyote]

That's a reticle that i've seen in other optics--often referred to as the crossbow reticle. It was designed years ago to range tanks and artillery pieces--hence the curved vertical lines in the lower half. The optic will work OK for rangefinding and trajectory/windage reference but u're probably gonna have to go out and measure the subtensions at the range. I would just apply the shorter stadia for rangefinding and downrange zeroing since for game/normal shooting tgts. (steel, etc.) u're not gonna need all that clutter down below.