Weaver Enters The World Of Rangefi nders Thomas C. Tabor
quently face hills that seemingly have grown steeper over the years, we look favorably on the name of Weaver. Many of us grew up carrying a rifl e equipped with a Weaver V or K-Series scope. After decades of use, many of those very same scopes are still out in the fi elds today, providing faithful and reliable service for their owners. Much of Weaver’s long his- tory has to do with the company’s philosophy of producing high quality products at reasonable prices. Unfortunately, though, dependability at a price a shooter can afford doesn’t always sustain a company. As a result, Weaver went through a period of substantial turmoil. But like the old saying goes, “Often what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” and now under the auspices of ATK (Alliant Techsystems), Weaver has emerged an even better company because of it. The new products that are now being offered by Weaver clearly are on the cutting edge. In my opinion that includes the company’s latest product – their new 8x28mm 1,000-yard rangefi nder. My fi rst introduction to this new rangefi nder was in Brit-
F
ish Columbia, Canada, while on a moose hunt. Even before they were available on the open market, Weaver graciously provided a couple of the very fi rst prototypes for use on the hunt. Due to no fault of the rangefi nder, I stepped into a hole in the knee-deep snow and incurred a fairly severe injury to my ankle. The result was that I came back moose-less. Nevertheless, I was able to run the new Weaver range-
finder through its paces under sometimes fairly severe weather conditions … and found it worked perfectly. Un- fortunately, Weaver made it clear that they wanted the units returned to the factory after the completion of the hunt. I countered, however, by asking for a replacement and within a couple of weeks one arrived at my offi ce for further testing and evaluation. One thing I found remarkable about this Weaver
rangefi nder was how well it locked onto its target. Its 8x magnifi cation certainly helped when targeting smaller objects at longer distances. But, while the unit is rated at 10 to 1,000 yards, understandably in some cases it falls short of that dis- tance when it comes to smaller, not so refl ective, targets. For the most part, it holds up exceptionally well when ranging refl ective things out to the full 1,000 yards, but on deer-sized animals you should expect a maximum range of about 600 yards. I found, however, if I couldn’t achieve a reading on a smaller object frequently I could select another target located at approximately the same range and get a reading off of it. At close range, I found that I could obtain accurate and consistent readings as near as 6 yards. HOW IT OPERATES
I would characterize this particular rangefi nder to be
a no-frills unit, but as such I found it to be very simple and trouble-free in its operation. You have three buttons to con- tend with. For lack of a better name, I would call the closest button to the user’s eye the “activation button.” When fi rst
Weaver’s new rangefi nder has only three buttons to contend with. At the bottom of the screen is the activation button. Once you have the unit set to the desired unit of measurement, this is only button that you have to deal with.
www.varminthunter.org Page 111
or those of us who now fi nd ourselves a bit skimpy when it comes to hair on our ol’ noggins, and fre-
A real test for any piece of hunting/shooting equipment is to expose it to severe conditions, and that is what happened on the Canadian moose trip. Frequently we were in blowing snow and sub-freezing temperature. Under those conditions the Weaver rangefi nder held up perfectly.
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