The Distance I Guessed Wrong Until I Bought a Rangefinder

I have hunted whitetail since I was twelve years old, which means I have spent about forty-six years guessing how far away the deer was. Most of that time I was guessing wrong, and the worst part is I did not know how wrong until I had already squeezed the trigger. Last season I finally bought a rangefinder, the Bushnell BoneCollector 850, and it changed the way I hunt in a way I did not expect. It did not make me a better shot. It made me an honest one.

The story of how I got it is probably familiar. Near the end of the 2024 season I had a close call coming down out of my ladder stand, and it shook me enough that my son Cody talked me into upgrading my whole kit at once instead of piecemeal. A new harness, a new trail camera, a new way to keep my hands warm, and a rangefinder. I had used my eye for distance my whole life, the way my dad did and his dad before him. Cody just looked at me and said, Dad, you are not going to believe how often you are wrong.

He was right, and I have the proof now. I bought the Bushnell BoneCollector 850 in late summer 2025, before last deer season, and I have used it for one full season in the ladder stand and the ground blind. It is a 6x24mm laser rangefinder that measures distances up to 850 yards reflective, 500 yards to tree, and 350 yards to deer. It is waterproof, runs on a single CR2 battery, and it fits in a coat pocket without any trouble. But the numbers that matter are the ones I did not expect, the ones about me.

Here is what I learned in the first month: I was wrong about distance almost every single time I was over about forty yards. Not by a little. By a lot. I called a buck at the edge of the food plot well inside where he really stood, and the Bushnell set me straight. I called a doe crossing the logging road the same way, and I was short again. I had spent decades holding high or holding low based on a guess that was not even close to the truth, and I had no idea because nothing ever called me on it.

I had spent decades holding high or holding low based on a guess that was not even close to the truth, and I had no idea because nothing ever called me on it.

The thing that surprised me most is how fast it works. The BoneCollector has a scan mode that updates the range four times per second, which matters more than you would think when a deer is walking a field edge and you need to know the distance to the spot where it is going to stop, not the spot where it is standing. I range the tree, the fence post, the far corner of the food plot, and I know the whole setup before the deer ever steps out. By the time a shot presents itself, I am not thinking about distance at all. I am just thinking about the shot.

The glass is better than I expected too. Bushnell put an all-glass optical system in this thing with fully multi-coated optics, and the image is bright and clear even in the low light of early morning. The magnification is 6x, which is plenty for ranging a deer at the distances that matter in south Alabama. I am not going to tell you it is a spotting scope, because it is not. But I can see a deer's chest clearly at the ranges that matter, and I can range it before it sees me.

There are honest things to say against it. It will not range a deer past 350 yards, and if that sounds like a limitation, it is. I also had to learn to hold it steady and use the button with a gloved hand, which took a few sits to get smooth. And the case it comes with is fine, but I mostly keep the rangefinder loose in my coat pocket where I can get to it without noise. None of that changes what it did for me. It made me stop guessing.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you are over forty and you have been hunting as long as I have, I know what you are thinking, because it is what I thought. My eye is fine. I have been doing this my whole life. I do not need a gadget to tell me what I already know. I am here to tell you, from the other side of a full season with the Bushnell BoneCollector 850: you are wrong more than you think, and the deer know it before you do. A rangefinder will not make you a better hunter. It will make you a more honest one, and that honesty shows up in your shot placement and in the deer you actually recover.

Buy the rangefinder before you buy the next thing that goes in your hunting pack. I would put it ahead of the new coat, the new calls, and honestly ahead of most of the gear we all convince ourselves we need. You do not need to spend a fortune. You need something waterproof that fits in your pocket and tells you the truth fast. The BoneCollector has earned its spot in my truck, and I do not say that about much.