When the first laser rangefinders appeared on the civilian commercial market a decade ago, tactical precision rifle shooters saw them as a dream come true. Indeed, we finally had a means of accurately determining our range to the target. In earlier times, we were forced to estimate ranges, which even when attempted by an experienced field shooter often resulted in a highly unacceptable margin of error.
In fact, before laser rangefinders, we grappled with the range determination problem, attempting various processes to overcome it, but with marginal results at best. The Mil-Dot method replaced simple dual horizontal stadia lines, but both methods were based upon the assumption that the size of the target was known.
