Horus Vision News

Five page article from "Varmint Hunter" October 2005 issue. Explains how Horus Vision's scope design does away with clicks. Reviews Horus PDA aiming software.

The Horus Vision Scope

If You Don't Like Clicking For Windage And Elevation, This Scope Is For You

By John Antanies

There are lots of things to hunt in the world that are fun, and I have been lucky enough to pursue quite a few of them, varmints and game alike. But you know what I find the most fun in the world of shooting and hunting? Long-range shooting. And it doesn't much matter if I shoot at varmints or inanimate objects - the challenge is supreme. I know a lot of others who feel the same way.

Long-range shooting possesses many challenges, not the least of which is bullet drop. When I first started trying to connect with long-range targets, I used simple holdover. That worked OK out to 300 yards, but I found it lacking at longer ranges. In the early '80s I bought a Weaver KT10 scope. The Weaver T and KT series scopes had a feature called Micro-Trac (and current Weaver scopes still have it), which promised absolutely repeatable adjustments if one chose to spin the windage and elevation knobs. I found that scope to be very reliable, but like a lot of shooters, I found range estimation to be a much greater problem.

The author used his favorite field position when testing the Horus Vision scope: shooting sitting with a bipod and a shooting sling.

Of course, laser rangefinders have just about rendered the problem obsolete, but they do have some limitations. I find they are degraded quite heavily in bright sunlight. My Geovid is virtually unaffected, but lesser quality rangefinders give up half their range when the sunlight UV counts approach 10. Yesterday in the desert my Leica 800 would not detect anything over 400 yards. And one time, after passing through an airport metal detector, I dropped a Bushnell rangefinder after it went through the X-ray machine. I was on my way to Scotland to hunt red stag, and found out after my arrival that the rangefinder no longer worked. Good thing they call it stalking and not shooting. Fortunately, the rangefinder was not needed anyway.

I recount these stories simply to say that while there is no substitute for a good rangefinder, they don't always work. And when that happens, you need a way to estimate range. In the days before laser rangefinders, many shooters, your scribe included, used a stadia wire system to estimate range. Premier reticles makes these, and in a pinch you can use a mil. dot.

But most of these affairs are meant for big game hunting, making it difficult to use them to estimate the range to a prairie dog.

The Horus Vision scope attempts to address the two bugaboos of long-range shooting: range estimation and bullet drop/windage compensation by using an elaborate targeting grid within the scope. John Anderson thought many readers might be curios about this scope, so he asked me to review it.

This is the author's target at 700 yards. The orange circle is about 3 inches in diameter. The bullet splashes are the light colored marks.

My first inclination was to mount this on my .220 Swift. That rifle has a fast twist and shoots heavy, long bullets quite accurately. A 75-grain .224 Hornady A-Max has a BC of .435, which is almost exactly the same as another fine long-range bullet: the .277 caliber 130-grain Nosler BT. I believe that I write too often about heavy "non-varmint" calibers such as the .300 RUM or 7mm STW, but John persuaded me to use one of my RUMs.

I picked a rifle that I thought was closest to what other readers might own: a Remington 700 Sendero in .300 Remington Ultra Mag. That particular rifle has a Vais muzzle brake (I own five of these brakes and love them like children). Everything on the rifle is stock, except Gordy Gritters bedded the action. That rifle is quite accurate with either 180-grain Hornady SSTs or 180-grain Nosler BTs over 94 grains of H1000 powder.

The Horus Vision scope has a 30 mm tube diameter, so I dug out a pair of Leupold rings and attached them to the scope. I mounted the scope and then boresighted it with a Bushnell bore-sighter. I have tried the laser bore sighters, but like that old ad for Jack Daniel's whiskey, you always come back to the basics. The Bushnell and Leupold magnetic stud boresighters get you on paper at 100 yards, so why mess around with anything else?

The first thing you will notice on the Horus Vision is the most complicated reticle on the planet. To characterize it any other way would be a dis-service to readers. My first reaction was "you have got to be kidding me!"

But I swallowed hard and headed out to the desert to sight-in and test this rifle. I first zeroed the rifle. I then took a few shots at 688 and 740 yards, and was quite surprised that I was able to hit the targets using the grid reticle. ("Look Ma! No clicking!") But I otherwise called it a day. I wanted to return under different atmospheric conditions to determine if I could make a first-round hit at long range without the benefit of a "fresh" zero.

The Horus Vision scope comes with a Pocket Data Assistant (PDA) that calculates ballistic trajectory when the range, wind speed, muzzle velocity, barometric pressure, and relative humidity are known.

The Horus Vision scope does not come with a chronograph, but it does come with a hand-held pocket weather station that measures wind speed, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and altitude.

Unlike clicking windage and elevation knobs, the Horus Vision scope contains a grid system that is laid out with a series of vertical and horizontal lines. There are major lines spaced in 1 milliradian increments; these major lines are further subdivided, using hash marks, into .2 milliradian increments. The concept with this reticle is to provide a means of determining holdover for elevation and holdoff to compensate for any wind.

In general, I am not a huge fan of trajectory-compensating reticles for the simple reason that they are not precise enough for long-range work. Beyond 600 yards most bullets are dropping enough to require some kind of trajectory compensation every 10 yards. In other words, if you aren't making an adjustment for every 10 yards of range, you stand a good chance of missing. Standard trajectory compensation reticles just don't possess the granularity required to calculate holdover at "in between" ranges. The Horus Vision system doesn't have this limitation. Because the .2 mil. hash lines are so close together, you actually can hold between them. A tenth of a mil. at 700 yards is 2.52 inches; one click in most scopes at this range is 1.75 inches, which means you have incredible precision with the Horus Vision system without ever clicking a windage or elevation knob.

After I zeroed my rifle, I took it back out for some practice. My first-shot attempt was at a target 700 yards away. Using the ballistics program provided by Horus Vision, I calculated that I needed to hold 2.5 lines above zero. This meant I would bracket my 3-inch aiming circle in between two of the .2 mil. has marks. My first shot just about hit that 3-inch circle. I shot several more times and produced a barrage that would have killed many a prairie dog.

I then moved to the 850-yard target. This target required a holdover of 3.9 lines. My first shot was almost perfect for elevation, but it hit 7 inches to the right. Over the course of a few months, I was very impressed with this scope at that range. If I missed ( I call a miss anything 5 inches outside of the center of the 3-inch bullseye), it was solely because of the wind, which at that range is very tough. The .300 RUM that I was using spits out 180-grain Hornady SSTs at 3,300 fps, but even still, they blow 4 inches for every 1 mph of wind speed, nearly double the drift at 700 yards, which is 2.5 inches per mile of wind speed.

Shooting in the wind is done the same way as holding over for range, only here the Horus Vision system becomes a bit more difficult to use. The vertical compensation really does work well; in fact, it is stunning in its accuracy. Of course, you need to line up the right vertical hash mark.

If you don't take the time to do so, it is easy to use the wrong hash mark. The potential to line up the wrong hash mark increases even more when you start holding off for the wind. With no wind, it is easy to line up the correct hash mark; you have a vertical line to ensure you don't move left or right. When you hold off for wind, you lose this reference. I found this to be a bit unnerving and constantly found myself double checking to ensure I was properly lined up. I thought it would be quicker to just use the windage knob to compensate for wind. And you can certainly do that - the knobs on the Horus Vision are graduated for .1 mil. adjustments - a bit more coarse than ¼ - inch clicks, but the math is quite a bit easier.

One thing I didn't like about the Horus Vision scope was the lack of target knobs. If you buy this scope, you will be limited to the targeting grid, because at long range you need a rotation counter to identify if you have spun more than one complete revolution. The Horus knobs do not have a rotation counter and thus you can lose track of your zero if you spin either knob more than one revolution.

I was most impressed with the PDA trajectory device supplied by Horus Vision. I thought about producing something similar several years ago, but rumors of a major vendor bringing one out on an inexpensive platform (in other words, something other than a full-blown PDA) prevented me from attempting the project.

This is the Horus Vision PDA. The photograph shows that in this case the correct hold is 3.18 "lines" of elevation using the Horus Vision reticle. The PDA is configurable to show either lines on the Horus scope or standard clicks.

In an article I wrote some years ago I defined ultra-long-range shooting as that which requires one to compensate for atmospheric conditions and not simply range. For example, any bullet will drop more in colder temperatures than warm temperatures. The Horus PDA device allows one to compensate for these and other effects. All you have to do is enter the data that pertains to your zero: bullet BC, velocity, range, temperature, etc. In the field, you enter the range to the target, the wind speed, wind angle, temperature, and barometric pressure. The device then calculates the correct number of elevation lines to hold over and the correct number of hold-off lines for windage. I found that the device was priceless in terms of calculating holdover. I have shot enough to know the wind drift per 1 mile of wind speed, but this device performs this flawlessly as well.

Here is what I really liked about the ballistic PDA device: You can configure it to display clicks instead of holdover lines. That means you can use this to calculate the correct number of clicks using standard ¼ - MOA click adjustments. To be honest, I think the number of potential PDA users far outnumbers the potential user base of the Horus Vision scope itself. The PDA is like a rangefinder: It is portable and can be used with a variety of different rifles and loads.

You can define and enter the data (muzzle velocity, BC, scope height, zero temperature, etc.) for a number of different rifles and then recall that data while in the field. For example, I used the device for the .300 RUM I tested as well as a .300 SAUM and .220 Swift.

The PDA pocket ballistic calculator is quite useful when field shooting. I went out a few weeks ago to shoot at long range. The wind was blowing toward the 1:00 o'clock direction. I was shooting at 750 yards and thought the correct wind drift to be about four clicks after measuring it. The Horus system said eight clicks, which I thought was a bit excessive. After all, I thought, a 1:00 o'clock wind is blowing almost straight from behind, so I held for four clicks. My bullet hit 7 inches to the right, or just about four clicks.

The PDA also works quite well when using the Horus system. Instead of displaying the number of clicks required to hold over, it displays the line count. This is a pretty quick way to shoot at long range. Earlier this week I shot again at 750 yards. The correct holdover at 700 yards is 2.5 lines, and the correct holdover at 700 yards is 2.5 lines, and the correct holdover at 850 yards is 4 lines. The PDA told me the correct hold-over for 750 yards was 3.1 lines. That is where I held. My first shot was perfect for elevation and 3 inches to the right.

So what don't I like about the Horus system? First, the reticle is extremely busy. It has to be to offer the precision that it does. I can tell you this: for calculating holdover it is every bit as good as clicking. The accuracy will astound you. But that accuracy comes at a price, that price being the reticle is slow to use. You must carefully line it up and make sure you are holding on the right line. With a pure vertical hold, that is not a big deal, since the lines are well marked. However, holding off for the wind presents some problems, because you lose the vertical tracking.

Another thing I did not like about the reticle is that it is hard to be precise with it against dark targets; you lose the reticle. You see, with a normal reticle, your eye naturally gravitates to the center. Not so with this one. You must count the vertical lines, and that is somewhat difficult to do against a black background. Will it cause any misses? It didn't for me; it simply slowed me down somewhat.

Finally, a scope of this nature should have target knobs with a rotation counter. The reticle is designed to do all holdover for range and hold-off for windage, but it would be nice if there were target knobs with a rotation counter to do the same.

Whenever I try out a product, I like to use it over a long period of time and really wring it out. I told John Anderson that I would test this scope only if I could use it over a long period of time and use it as if I owned it.

And that is what I did. My observations took place over several months at ranges that varied from 600 to 850 yards. Wind speeds were generally moderate and never exceeded 7 mph. At ranges to 750 yards, I would have killed a prairie dog nearly half the time and deer 100 percent of the time. At 850 yards, the wind caused me to miss by as much as 9 inches; I don't know what my hit rate was, but it was less than 90 percent on a 10-inch by 10-inch target. All of my shots were sitting with a bipod and shooting sling. The wind was never blowing harder than 10 mph.

Here is the bottom line with the Horus Vision scope: If you don't like to click windage and elevation knobs, this is the scope for you. I cannot imagine a reticle that offers more precision than this one.