Nikon IRT

It wasn't a difficult shot, at least not at first. We spotted the band of pronghorns down in a network of washes on the lee side of a rise, taking shelter from the howling wind of northcentral Wyoming. The stalk was short and easy, and soon the rifle was resting in the shooting sticks and the crosshairs were on the buck I wanted. I hit the button on the Burris Laserscope; the orange digital numbers at the top of the field of view read "275." No sweat.

I squeezed the trigger on the Tikka T3 .25-06, and the buck rocked a bit and started off with the rest of the group, although from his stiff-legged jog I could tell he was hit but not well. I rushed the next shot and missed him by a mile at 325 yards, then by a whisker at 375.

Most of the band hightailed it out of sight, but the buck and a few does lagged behind. Then they stopped.

The buck was quartering away, and I mashed the rangefinder button again: 438 yards. I put the second bar of the Ballistic Plex reticle just above center on the last rib and squeezed the trigger. The 115-grain Ballistic Silvertip struck right behind the rib and exited the far shoulder, dumping the buck into the sagebrush.

That was my introduction to laser rangefinding scopes, the next logical step in the progression of optics/rangefinding technology.

"The trick was to figure out how to make the laser intersect with the crosshairs," said Pat Beckett, my host, hunting partner and marketing manager for Burris. "It wouldn't do you much good if every time you adjusted your scope you'd have to reset the laser because, of course, if the two aren't pointing in the same place, you're not going to get accurate range readings."

An overseas company developed the necessary technology, which the Burris unit and the Nikon IRT share (as does Bushnell's Yardage Pro, which I did not test). Zeiss, the other company producing a laser rangefinding scope, went with a different design.

To us as users, how the scope makers accomplish their goals doesn't matter as long as the optic functions as it should. What does matter is whether laser rangefinding scopes are worth it.

Frankly, they're heavy and bulky and expensive (compared to comparable non-rangefinding scopes), and a lot of shooters and hunters simply won't want or need them. But for those who are already using laser rangefinders and are routinely faced with the possibility of long shots, the benefit is obvious: These new riflescopes provide instant feedback--no picking up a rangefinder to get the distance then having to put it down and pick up the rifle, during which time the quarry could have changed location or vanished altogether.

On my pronghorn, had I been switching back and forth between rangefinder and rifle, I would've felt more rushed. Sure, I could've asked Pat to call the distance for me, but that requires one to ask a question and then mentally process the answer instead of focusing on the shot. By hitting the button and seeing (not hearing) 438 yards on the readout, I knew right away exactly what I needed to do since I had zeroed the Ballistic Plex reticle so the second bar was dead on at 400.