Rule of Thumb ESTIMATE DISTANCE

Using the rule of thumb to estimate distance

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[DavidCanterbury]

For those asking about the multiplier of 10 the distance between you eyes is about 1/10 the distance to your fist.

[eatmorenachos]

Math is hard, but that's a brilliant idea. Reminds me of the method you showed for estimating how much time you have until sunset (extend your arm and count how many finger widths the sun is from the horizon. Each finger equals 15 minutes). I use it all the time.

[Doodlefisher]

Minute of angle 📐 vs minute of thumb 👍 thumb is approximately one inch thick. Inches to yards using parallel shift of eyes which are roughly 1 1/2 to “2” apart in triangulation to distance. 2divided by 1 or in half. Yardage measured by stride of step can vary according to flexibility and posture and terrain. That’s why it’s estimated roughly and not in precision. Got it!

[instantsiv]

900 meters is just over half a mile. Guessing 2 mph walking speed thru the fields would take about 15 minutes.

That’s useful info, thank you for showing it.

[Uncivil-Engie]

Perfect! A good fast substitute when you need to range something. This is pretty similar in concept to milling with a scope.

I suspect the x10 multiplier is an approximate ratio of your arm length to your eye spacing and should be very consistent for most people.

Never ceases to amaze me how much you can do with just a little know-how.

Thank you for a great video, as always!

[mr.zardoz]

Back in the day, the Rule of Thumb, meant you couldn't beat your wife or kids with a stick thicker then your thumb. Hence, Rule of Thumb. Its also mentioned in the movie Boondock Saints.

[jasoncastle]

Dave is a Jedi knight!! Outstanding AF!!

[spiritsuit]

The most useful information I have heard in a long time. Thanks Dave!

[sepehryekebash]

I learned it from ultimate sniper more than a decade ago and this is the first time I've seen someone else knowing it 👍🏻

[Mart]

Great method but its more a short range trick. But i never heard of it. So thanks. But the bigger the distance and the smaller the target, the harder it becomes.

In my recon platoon, we were spotters for artillery also so if you have features in the terrain, you can use a map to try and figure out the location and distance from you to that location. But with no reference points it's hard to guess long range distance. So we trained on it a lot to guess long range distance. When you first start doing it, you're absolutely terrible at it. A battle tank/big object is easier than a person. Is this target 500 meter, 600 or 800 meters away? We practiced that a lot cause it's very important in recon.

So spotting for artillery you guess the location and get on the radio, give coordinates, ask for 1 round to see where it lands. Takes like half a minute cause they are 17km behind you. And you correct it like 1 forward and 2 left, bit like that, one more round. If you're on target you say a word i can't translate but the whole battery of howitzers fires not on the same location but in a grid pattern around it and 2 times. It's crazy to watch the impacts and devastation of artillery rounds like that.

Later in life at a company party, we doing a game where you had to answer questions in teams. Who do zebra's have stripes. (heat regulation and camo so a hurd becomes a giant barcode in a dust cloud so hard to target 1 btw) And we had to guess the distance between 2 cones from 10 meter/30 feet away. I won and i was off by 10mm/1cm. It was like 5 meters and 6cm and my guess was 5 meters and 5cm. How did you do that they asked me? Dunno i just can. I won a fire extinguisher. Yay!

If you want to get into guessing distances. You train to do it. Like Dave is showing in the video. With this method, do it yourself. And guess and walk it out like he did. Here the distance between 2 lamp posts is 25 meters. How many steps do you take between 2 lamp posts? 30 maybe. So 15 steps is 12, 5 meters. Practise like that to get a feel for guessing distance. And what dave is showing is very cool. You can guess and check/correct yourself.

Very cool video Dave. You're awesome for sharing your knowledge. Shawn is awesome too btw. Love his channel.

[patslee]

thank you. very informative video. i already use the fingers method to guess relative time till the sun goes down below horizon as its pretty good and will now be trying this too for distance. appreciate all you release for free.

[The_Story_Channel]

This was a better explanation of the rule of thumb than the last video that I watched. Thanks.

[davidadams]

Thank U Brother for all the info & teaching! Great video's! GODBLESS U!

[acarrier]

Thanks David. That is a awesome trick! Will be using that a lot.

[kotycassidy]

So cool you showed this my grandfather taught me this technique when I was 10 or so shooting my Fred bear recurve. Dave you are a treasure please keep these knowledge videos coming so important

[ricdonato]

Very good example for estimating distance. Thank you for sharing a very useful tip.

FYI, your camera (cell phone) is vertical, portrait orientation, when capturing video always have the camera in landscape, horizontal, orientation. A vertically captured video is spatially disorientating. Portrait captured videos are called stick videos for a reason, the left 1/3 and the right 1/3 of the image is cut off (appears blank on the screen), however the viewer sees a tall narrow center of the video dead center on their screen. Vertical captured videos appear as if the viewers are looking through a keyhole or wearing horse blinders. Notice, every TV screen, Computer screen, movie theater screen, and the like, is orientated horizontally not vertically, thus we want our video to fill a screen fully left and right. Also, every human, maybe all animals, see their world considerably more horizontal than vertical. Thus, when capturing videos always orientate the camera or cell phone horizontal a.k.a. landscape, never portrait, vertical, mode. Hope this helps you and other folks using a cell phone as well.

[stephenstruman]

Just tried this across the room and it’s pretty accurate.

[davidribner]

This is an awesome technique. Thank you for sharing.

[raymondward]

I’ve seen a lot of survival l tips videos and I think this is probably the most important thing to know how to do!

[averagecamper]

I was expecting dave to just get in the jeep and drive off