[Jeff Higgins]

It might be hard to believe, but I have actually never owned such a device. Well, thanks to my oldest son (and Christmas), I can no longer say that. I guess I’ve always kind of questioned the real world application of these things. He knows that, so he started me out with a decent low end beginner’s model, one without many extra features. It’s from a company called Afar, and it’s their model HX-800H. Sounds impressive, and maybe it means something as far as describing what it does or where it falls in their lineup. Maybe it would be more impressive if it were the Binford HX-800H. I dunno…

Anyway, I’ve been ranging things up and down the road for a few days now. Might have blinded a few of the neighbor kids, at least in one eye. Doesn’t seem to bother them, though. Anyway, it’s been pretty revealing. I really, really suck at range guestimation, that much has been made obvious. Maybe my ultimate goal will be to use it to train myself to be better at that.

Where this is all going is that my son, and his brother in law, want me to accompany them for muzzle loading deer hunting next year. The brother in law lives in Spokane, and has access to an awful lot of private land in the area. It is, however, very open country, just rolling hills covered in sagebrush. I didn’t think I had any trouble shooting deer with a muzzle loader in years past in our North Okanogan (which I assume is pretty similar), but having seen both, my son assures me that where we will be hunting is much more open. So, o.k…. He’s convinced I need to be able to tell how far away they are, which is true, but I was convinced I was pretty good at that already. I just proved to myself that I’m not.

So, here I am, embracing a new, battery powered, whiz bang technology, all of which I've been pretty critical of (when it comes to hunting and shooting). I might feel kinda weird with my real Hawken, shooting patched round ball, using a laser range finder. Maybe I’ll wrap it in buckskin…