I am not saying that BG is wrong. Most shooting for deer comes in close in a lot of states, and you can sort of control it with stand placement to a point. None of my friends use a range finder when bow hunting, but they have been doing it for many years and judge yardarge fairly well (not as well as they think however as I have proved with the range finder). I can't though so I use one when I set my stand to check things out. I bet I could do with out it if I had to, if I limited my shots to 20 and in. 30 seems pretty far away when I'm in a tree. And he is right, the typical shot here is closer to 15 to 18 yards. However I set up on field edges quite often and the deer could be any where from 15 to more than 50.

And I use a muzzle loader to gun hunt with, I forgot to mention that. My max yardage is 150 yards with that rifle. It's 2 inches high at 70-80 yards and 2-3 inches low at 150. And if it's more than 150 I won't take the shot, I don't really like to do it that far away any way. Besides the property line ends at 147 in the far corner of the meadow I hunt over, and I can't shoot over it. The rifle is set up so I can harvest a deer if it is anywhere in the meadow. Most of my shots are at a tree line directly in front of me 80 yards a way.

If you judge yardarge well, a range finder is sort of an expensive luxury item, not to mention one more thing to drag along. If I was confident enough to judge yardarge from a stand I wouldn't bother with one. You could get a bow for what some of these range finders cost. I like having one though.

Paul