Just curious if the Kestrel is a necessary (or highly recommended) piece of kit for the Hunting / Some long range target practice? I’m assuming most people do without and just use a ballistics solver app on their phone… but wondering if it would be good to invest in something like a Kestrel to have a dedicated reliable unit. Interested in your thoughts.
My personal viewpoint:
A Kestrel is a nice-to-have item, but when you are hunting, you may not have time to measure the wind. IMO, better to learn to read the wind, using natural features of the terrain. Extra weight (minor) of the unit + batteries isn’t something you really want to carry for a hunting trip.
Precision shooting matches…different story. That would be where a Kestrel would be very useful.
I think the kestrel with ballistics solver could
be handy. Better than a phone. A range finder bt link with the environmental conditions and your range data stored from a chronograph. Sounds like fun. Should be impossible to miss. 
Expensive. But what price for an accurate shot on a 6x6 bull that most will have few chances to get. Judging the wind without a meter is not so easy. And you would need a meter to learn how to judge the wind anyways. Tell
me what a 10 mph wind looks like on a tree - with some leaves or not or type of tree or whatever.
I just bought a Fury 5000 AB and its awesome. Ill use it during rifle season. It will pair with a Krestrel but while hunting I personally think too much technology it too much and if you need to make that long of a shot is it really ethical but I’ll keep my range finder when it come to bow season in my bino harness.
Maybe but if you have technology that makes you more accurate regardless of range - is it not unethical to not use it? In Oregon it took years to get lighted nocks and expandables, both which imho improve odds for recovery of an animal that you shoot at. One could say muzzleloaders and traditional bows increase the risk of a bad shot. Not saying either should be stopped but tech that makes you a better shot is better. If you are better at 600 yds then you are better at 400 and 100 and so on.
I agree. What i meant was if you trying to push technology to make a shot 100 to 200 yards or further than your comfortable with. I have started to shoot and hit metal at 1000 yards. Im 50% at best right now. 625 yards or more, enviromental conditioms and bullet spin comes into play. A Krestrel could give a false sense of security. IMO
Kind of a catch 22 for sure. This is in another thread about the water jug challenge. Most of us cannot say how we would do at 600 since we don’t practice it. If we can’t practice it we should not do it. The technology does not make you skilled but the technology can help
make you skilled - if that makes sense.
Other than a wind reading, what does a kestrel provide that a ballistics app on my phone cannot? Does it have other environmental readings?
Seems like it would be nice to have a dedicated unit with saved profiles that is built to withstand harsh environments.
It also seems like people have been talking alot about the Burris Veracity PH. Will the kestrel soon become obsolete with more and more scopes getting this technology put inside of them?
It is significantly faster to hold a kestrel up to the wind and get a solution in a single button press than it is to mess with your phone, and its also a weatherproof device that is usable with gloves etc. I doubt it will become obsolete anytime soon.
It also measures pressure, temperature and humidity.
I got to play with someone else’s Kestrel during a long-ish .22lr match earlier this year and I think its more appropriate to view it as a device to calibrate your ‘feel’ for the wind that day (as feel depends on a lot of factors including temp and humidity) than an absolute solution for wind holds. If you know that the wind is about 5-15mph that day, that gives you a feel for the range of holdovers you’re going to use, even if you’re not using the device every single time.
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