When you navigate such a document, you are very likely zoomed in on one or more details of your document. Adobe Acrobat and the free Adobe Reader allow you to print that view that is currently being used in the application. Unfortunately, it's not obvious on the print dialog how to accomplish this because the option to print the current view is actually hidden by default:
You need to first expand the "More Options" section as indicated on the screen shot. After that, you will have access to the "Current View" option. The only scaling option that is compatible with the current view is "Fit", you need to select that in the "Page Size & Handling" area of the print dialog.
Once that is selected, you should see the preview area on the print dialog being updated to show you how much of the document will be printed.
Karl Heinz Kremer
PDF Acrobatics Without a Net
PDF Software Development, Training and More...
http://www.khkonsulting.com