^{Continued From Part 1}

Mil-XT MRAD Grid 

The actual working feature of the Mil-XT reticle is its grid, which sits below the main horizontal stadia line. At first glance, the Mil-XT’s MRAD grid reminded me somewhat of the classic Horus H58 reticle (my first stepping-stone to grid-based precision reticles many years ago). The Mil-XT’s grid is more straightforward and simpler.

Nightforce did a great job marking the Mil-XT’d grid along with its horizontal and vertical stadia lines with clear hashes that are evenly spaced 1 mil apart. No matter one’s skill level or experience with optics, the Mil-XT reticle and grid make it easy for anyone to pick up on these primary 1 mil wide hold lines.

Every full mil hold line, whether vertical or horizontal, is clearly numbered with easy-to-see numbers. It’s one of my favorite details about the Mil-XT reticle, especially on the principal horizontal stadia line.

Segmented Stadia Lines

Beyond the main mil wide spacing, the main vertical and horizontal stadia lines are further segmented by 0.2 mil hash marks from end to end. This essentially breaks down each 1 mil wide section into fifths. Spacing hashes and hold marks at 0.2 mils is very practical, as fifths of a whole are “finer” than quarters. But they’re also not overly fine either, to the point of being counter-productive, like tenths.

Every other horizontal stadia line besides the primary one on the Mil-XT reticle is completely composed of 0.2 mil spaced dots measuring 0.05 mil wide. On these stadia lines, every fifth dot is a bolder 0.1 mil, making it easy for the shooter to connect any two of these bolder dots and recognize a full 1 mil wide space. Because they’re spaced 1-mil wide apart, more advanced shooters can get away with using these as wind dots if need be.  

Fractions Of Mils And Sub-Grids 

Dividing whole mils into fifths is convenient for many reasons, from making corrections on the fly or using the reticle to range a target. However, as large as halves are, they have their place too. So, the Mil-XT incorporates a “lightweight” skeleton sub-grid of equally spaced 0.05 mil wide dots (same size as central aiming point) at every 0.5 mil interval for this reason.

This secondary grid is very easy to see because its dots are only found at 0.5 mil spacing in between the horizontal or vertical numbers associated with whole mils.      

Ringing Steel In The High Desert

Back to this humble county range in the High Desert of the American West…

After capturing a baseline muzzle velocity figure with the “new” Garmin chrono and also with a little help from a ballistic solver, we took turns shooting the 400, 450, 500, 600, and 700-yard steel targets. Elevation-wise, the DOPE was only about .10 mil off in any case. When it comes to wind, however, there’s no feedback like actual experience or watching the splash or impact through the scope or spotting scope, regardless of what an app says.

I’m working on the experience bit. The onus behind writing this article and getting out there to send lead at distance has actually been a huge boon towards my hands-on rifle experience.

Because it’s my luck, every time I deliberately make a plan to shoot rifles, the wind is beyond terrible.

My first outing (I ended up going back to shoot some more in between drafting these) to ring steel with the 6.5 mm Creedmoor Bergara BMP target rifle was no exception. That late morning and early afternoon, the rifle range was swept by a consistent easterly wind with speeds ranging from 20-30 mph. Not to mention the 47 mph gusts that blew away my target stand and zeroing targets into the desert.

After correcting the zero for the 1.8 mils in elevation, I had to dial an additional 0.5 mils to the left at 100 yards just to be square. That won’t stop the wind from playing games with the .44 G1 BC (ballistic coefficient) bullets in flight, especially at further distances.

Wind Games And Spin Drift

It was while trying to figure out that day’s wind holds for those five distances that I truly came to embrace the utility and simplicity of the Nightforce Mil-XT reticle and its grid. There’s also the instance of bullet spin drift if shooting at long enough distances. Having clear horizontal hashmarks for windage holds or bracketing makes it easy to account for this spin drift.

The image below, which focuses on the primary horizontal stadia line with its 1 mil wide and 0.2 mil divisions, is what I’m talking about. Having been (un)fortunate to shoot in strong wind, using this horizontal line was mandatory. Dialing would have been futile and too slow, anyway.

Bullet spin drift, a topic deserving of its own series of articles, is simply a bullet’s tendency to veer off to one side at extended distances. Most barrels’ rifling cuts into bullets with a clockwise (right side) spin. After leaving the muzzle and during flight, bullets are still spinning in that same direction as they travel through the air. Over time, usually, after the bullet has been traveling past several hundred yards, the spinning force imparts a bias in that same direction (again, typically towards the right since most rifling spirals clockwise).

The degree of the bullet’s deviation from its original path depends on several different factors. Overcoming spin drift usually relies on holding the sight picture to the left to some extent. I found that holding laterally with the Nightforce Mil-XT reticle was very intuitive and easy to do.

Continued In Part 3

The Nightforce Mil-XT Reticle is a modern MRAD-based reticle found on current catalog Nightforce riflescopes. These range from the entry-level SHV scope line all the way to the Australian-turned-Idahoan company’s top-of-the-line flagship ATACR “professional grade” tactical optics.

A few months ago, I reviewed the Nightforce SHV 4-14×50 F1 C694 in one of my other publications. This 30 mm first-focal plane rifle scope also continues to be one of the supporting characters in my ongoing review of the Taurus Expedition bolt-action hunting rifle. (I promise I’ll get caught up on it soon!). 

For the Christmas holiday, I traveled back to the American West to spend time with the family, and I yanked the Nightforce SHV4-14×50 F1 off the Taurus and brought it with me.   

Nightforce SHV Musical Chairs, From Brazil To Spain 

Within 48 hours of landing back West, the SHV C694 and the 30 mm Nightforce X-Treme Ultralite rings that cradled it, all found themselves torqued down atop a 6.5 mm Creedmoor Bergara BMP bolt-action target rifle. Up until this point, the Nightforce SHV had been exclusively mounted to the Taurus Expedition and zeroed at 100 yards for Federal’s timeless 168-grain Gold Medal Match factory loads. Though Sierra Matchking bullets aren’t for hunting, they showed lots of potential in that rifle a few weeks ago.

Back West, one finds not only cooler and crisper air at higher elevations but also more interesting topography. More importantly, the land seems to stretch farther in empty vastness. It’s paradise for long-distance rifle shooters.

The local county rifle range has a setup of numerous extended-distance steel targets and gongs from 300 to 1776 yards. Not only is this facility open to the public, it’s less than a 30-minute drive from where I stayed. At home back in Texas, having access to such a target array is a luxury requiring both longer drives and/or special access or exclusivity to private long-distance shooting facilities. 

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. If you have convenient access to longer distance steel (and the local outdoor big-box department store happens to have 6.5 mm Creedmoor cartridges on sale that weekend), this is also a form of making lemonade!

Zeroing Is Easy With A Built-In Ruler 

After mounting the scope to the Bergara, re-zeroing the point of impact from a 168-grain Sierra Matchking flying at 2500 fps to a soft point (they were on sale!) 6.5 mm bullet at 2760 fps was extremely easy thanks to the Mil-XT reticle itself. At 100 yards, a basic 5-shot group of 6.5 mm Creedmoor shots printed high.

Without even needing to take the gun off target, the main vertical stadia line of the Mil-XT reticle allowed me to easily determine the correction. I simply anchored the central aimpoint point on my actual point of aim and counted how many whole and partial mils the center of the new 5-shot group was. It was 1.8 mils high, which meant I needed to correct it by dialing 1.8 mils down on the SHV C694’s turret.

After dialing, confirming, and re-adjusting the SHV’s zero-locking mechanism to the new 6.5 Creedmoor zero, this scope and rifle combo were ready to ring steel. After dealing with so many other optics of a less precise nature, I felt spoiled by simply being able to correct my new zero on the fly. This is because I had enough magnification to see the center of the group and because I could use the reticle like a literal ruler. 

Nightforce Mil-XT Reticle Overview 

The Mil-XT is a modern MRAD (milliradian) based target and precision shooting reticle. The Mil-XT’s principal horizontal and vertical stadia are arranged in a perpendicular cross pattern. The upper hemisphere is basically left empty, save for the short 5-mil upper limit of the vertical stadia line that sits above the 0.05-mil floating central aiming point.

On rifle scopes with illumination, this same perpendicular-cross reticle section is what lights up red. Even though Nightforce uses this reticle across three different product families, the corresponding sight picture will depend on the physical attributes of a specific scope. In the case of the Nightforce SHV 4-14×50 F1 C694, which tops out at 14x magnification, there are only 12 mils of visible horizontal or vertical stadia line.

At 10x, 15 mils on either axis will become visible. Below 10x, the extreme bounds of the horizontal stadia line give way to thick black lines on either side of the 30 mil “usable” span. The thick black line is easier to see when the scope is adjusted to lower magnification, given the shrinkage that’s part of first-focal plane optics.

With regards to the primary vertical stadia line, at the lowest setting, which is 4x magnification, I can count it spanning 40 mils starting from the aiming point down to the bottom of the reticle. 

To Be Continued In Part 2