"The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts."Omar N. Bradley
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A New Outdoor Craft Idea - Artificial Rock Boulders
When we were searching for a method of re-creating a national pastime favorite, the fun of caves and artificial rocks, we resorted to experimenting with our own concoctions and landed with a process that is fun, easy, and surprisingly durable, with the ...
Dreaming Winter Photography
The sight of early morning snow, the shimmering frost in the trees, your sister falling off in your snow filled front yard and your stunning snow angel, don’t you ever wish you could just capture that moment right away and place them in your computer ...
Setting up Portraiture
Introduction Portraiture is the 'bread and butter' of any professional photographer. Getting it 'right' is essential. I once heard a professional artist - an oil painter - describe a successful portrait as one which told you something about the subject ...
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Outdoor enthusiasts love to guess about all sorts of things. We guess how many stars are in the Milky Way, we guess how fast a deer runs or we might even guess about how long it will be until that big, dark cloud dumps rain us. But there are times when guessing in the backcountry just doesn’t get the job done. Specialty gear is available to help us determine how far we’ve hiked - and in what direction - and other tools are available to help take the guesswork out of purifying water. But there is a another useful tool overlooked by many avid backcountry visitors - the rangefinder.
Rangefinders are used in a number of commercial applications - surveying, mapping, mining, etc. - however for our purposes we will be discussing the portable laser rangefinder used by outdoor sportsmen and sportswomen.
Laser rangefinders calculate the distance to an object by bouncing a laser beam off of the object and measuring the lapsed time until the beam returns. Since the calculation is based upon the return of the beam, it stands to reason that a more reflective object can be measured at a greater distance than a less reflective object. Readily available models are accurate to within one yard and have the ability to measure distances to reflective targets up to 1500 yards away - that’s nearly a mile - and they’re accurate under nearly any condition.
The past few years have seen a number of technology advances across all rangefinder price ranges. Many models are lightweight, are easily operated with one hand, can measure through rain or snow, can see through nearby clutter, function well in low light, contain integrated optical magnification and are 100% waterproof. Additionally there have been vast improvements lately to lens coatings, battery life and information display.
If distances are
important to your activity, you need a rangefinder. BackCountry features - rocks, trees, lakes, mountains, ravines, cliffs - have a tendency to distort one’s depth perception. It is easy to misjudge even short distances. The most widely used application of rangefinders is in measuring shot distances by hunters. Whether you are hunting waterfowl or elk, distance to your game is the most critical factor in placing an effective shot. Bow hunters would never hunt without their rangefinder, the difference between 45 yards and 50 yards for a bow hunter is the difference between success and failure. Rangefinders are also used by golfers for determining club selection, by hikers to determine the best route to travel and by campers, boaters and wildlife observers for a wide variety of distance measuring purposes.
The next time you plan to spend time in our wondrous backcountry consider taking a rangefinder along with you. If you’ve never looked through a rangefinder, you don’t know what you’re missing. With a quality rangefinder, guessing distances just became old news. Use this information and you’ll Get It Right The First Time. Get Outdoors!
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South Bend Tribune |
Outdoors: Reels need TLC, tooSouth Bend TribuneIt's mid-summer, you're on the lake, the fish are bitin' and your favorite reel begins to act up. Maybe it growls, develops a strange vibration with every turn of the handle, or the spool won't engage. Something like that happens to me every year. |
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Outdoors Notebook: Hunter contracts rabies from a deerPittsburgh Post GazetteBy John Hayes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette A Lancaster County hunter has been treated for rabies after field dressing a deer Jan. 20 in Valley Township, Chester County. The deer later tested positive for rabies. "The hunter contacted us about his concerns ...and more » |
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Outdoors news and notes from around Southeast LouisianaNOLA.comBy Bob Marshall, The Times-Picayune Beginning with the 2013-14 deer season, allow a hunter's choice option: season limit still will be six deer per year, but a hunter would have option to harvest as many as four antlerless deer. |
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