I was looking at rangefinders the other day. I almost bought one with true ballistic range but something just didn't look right to me. The illistration showing a 40 yard line of sight distance and a 34 yard true ballistic range. It didn't show the height of the tree stand. I punched the numbers into the old calculator. The height of the tree stand in the illistration would be 63 feet. Might have to do a little welding on the ladder stand to get up that high. I then calculated what the true ballistic range would be for a 20 foot high stand. It came out to be 39 yards. That's only a yard difference from line of sight distance. I also did line of sight distances of 20 and thirty yards with the 20 foot high stand. True ballistic range was only about 1 yard closer with each distance.

I wouldn't invest any extra money into a rangefinder with true ballistic range if you hunt fairly flat ground. It might help a little in steep terrain, but that opens another can of worms as the angle may be too severe to get a good ethical shot.