Too Much Scope???

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Is there such a thing as having too much scope? I recently purchased a Tikka T3 in 30-06. Now I'm scope shopping. I've been doing alot of research and have found out that a scope is not just a scope. Anyway the more I get into it the more I want the higher end scopes with all the do-dads. The problem I see is that I will probably only be putting about 100-300 rds/yr down range. I have already decided I'm not cheaping out but I'm also not going to have another mortgage payment.
Also with regard to magnification I find myself going big; Is there such a thing as too big? I do want to get into some long range shooting because my club has a 600yd range.
My choices are :
Vortex Viper PST 6.5-24x50 FFP
Vortex Viper PST 4-16x50 FFP
The non FFP versions of above are also an option and a significant price drop. But somehow I feel that I would be cheating myself.

I also like the
Vortex Viper HS-T and HS-LR in the above configurations.

I know the choice is mostly personal preference, but I'm looking for more of a High Power Shooting geek kind of response with regard to personal experiences of their own and other technical jibberish.
 
The only benefit to first focal plane is that is allow ranging with the reticle at all magnifications. Many top shooter actually prefer 2nd focal plane since the reticle does not change size with magnification
 
Do you want it as a target gun or a hunting gun? If I was planning to hunt with it and wasn't spending all my time hunting the west I'd probably not go higher than 3-9x. I have a 4-12x on a target AR build and wish I had up to 24x. Different purposes for me. That said I agree with others when they say, spend as much as you can afford on glass, it's worth it. I have not tried any of the $2000 or higher scopes though, I am strictly talking from hunting scopes experience on low, medium and higher end glass with names such as Leupold and Swaro.
 
Do you want it as a target gun or a hunting gun? If I was planning to hunt with it and wasn't spending all my time hunting the west I'd probably not go higher than 3-9x. I have a 4-12x on a target AR build and wish I had up to 24x. Different purposes for me. That said I agree with others when they say, spend as much as you can afford on glass, it's worth it. I have not tried any of the $2000 or higher scopes though, I am strictly talking from hunting scopes experience on low, medium and higher end glass with names such as Leupold and Swaro.

This is mainly a target gun. Like I said I want to start using my clubs 600 yd range. But I will also take this rifle into the field for the occasional hunt(hopefully out west). All the above scopes are between $600 - $900. If I can get away with spending $600 and still be happy that would be awesome.
 
How far do you want to shoot and what do you want to shoot at? If you want precise shots at long distances, get as much scope as you can afford.

Even shooting at 300 yards I noticed an improvement in grouping going from a 16x to a 20x scope, groups were consistently smaller by about half a minute, I think the reason being that I could see the bull better, and hold on a more precise/consistent spot.

ETA Millet makes a really good mil-dot scope for under $600 in a 20x
 
I built myself a long range fun gun this past year.

I have a savage FCP-K action, in a XLR industries Element chassis.

I was taking a class at Sig this summer, where we were going to be shooting out to 1000 yards.

I ended up getting a Sightron : http://info.sightron.com/Riflescopes/SIII-First-Focal-Plane/SIIISS624X50LRFFP-MH/
Don't let the retail price frighten you away. It can be had for about $950.

I really like it. I ended up with this model after speaking with a bunch of target shooters, many of whom use Sightrons. Its not a well known name, but the SIIIs are made in Japan with top quality Japanese glass.

Its got all the things I wanted. One thing you do want is to make sure that your reticle is in the same units as your turrets. So if its a mil reticle, the turrets should be in .1 mils. If its a MOA reticle, your turrets should adjust in MOA increments.

That makes things easy. If you are a bit high or low, you can use your reticle to see how many clicks you need to go to come up.

This Sightron is FFP. The SFP ones are a couple of hundred less expensive.

At the Sig class I took this summer, I got a chance to look through a lot of scopes. Some cheap, some very big bucks. The only one that was noticeably better than the Sightron was the Schmidt and Bender, which cost 4x what I paid.

Its tracking and optical clarity was comparable to more expensive Leupold VX6, Nighthawks, and US Optics glass. I am very happy with my choice.

One other thing to consider is objective size vs magnification. I find that above 20x a 50 mm objective gives such a small exit pupil that it requires my head to be in exactly the right spot. I don't like that. So even at 1000 yards I was shooting at 18 to 20x. This is a function of simple physics, a more expensive scope will not get you a larger exit pupil. If you want to go much above 20x, I'd suggest a 56 or 60 mm objective.

I'd have been happy if my scope only went to 18x, even at 1000 yards.

The way the sightron was described to me, and how I've found it to be was that it was the best glass and best tracking for the money. Its as good as USO, Nighthawk, and Vortex Razor(a step above viper) scopes. But what you give you give up is a military level of toughness. You can beat the crap out of a Nighthawk or a USO and it won't get damaged. I've been told that the Sightrons are plenty durable for most of us, but you can' thold the rifle upside down and drop it onto concrete from 4 feet and not expect damage.

I dont' want to give you the impression that the sigtron is delicate. Its not. Its just that its durability is not in the full military category.

One other thing. The new Bushnells are very nice. But they are HEAVY. My rifle already weighed 13 lbs. So I wanted to keep the weight down if possible.

At the sig course, I fired almost 400 rounds over 2 days and everything worked great.

Don

p.s. the Sightron does not have an illuminated reticle or a zero stop. Those are the two things its missing. It didn't matter to me. But it might matter to you.
 
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Both me and my daughter qualified at Pelham's 600 yd range using an AR-15 with 1x-5x scope (Weaver Super Slam, just over 400 USD). Could use a bit more magnification, but do not go nuts on magnification - focus on good quality glass, the type of reticle you like and you'll be fine.

Yes, good glass is expensive... but mine works fine for what I need...

http://www.amazon.com/Weaver-Super-...=1412953847&sr=1-1&keywords=weaver+super+slam

And Amazon has it for $352.
 
There was someone at my Sig class this summer with a SWFA "super sniper" 10x scope. Its fixed so the whole FFP/SFP thing goes away. He was banging the gong at 1000 yards as well as any of us.

The schmidt and bender was on such an amazing rifle, i had to excuse myeslf for a few minutes. Picture an Accuracy International AWM in .300 Win Mag with the S&B glass on it. Figure 12-15K.
 
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If your sole purpose is to make holes very close together at long distance most people do the opposite of that. Take your rifle price DOUBLE IT and start there.

Why?

The less you move the rifle around, the less robust you need your scope to be.

If you shoot in perfect conditions all the time (bipod, rear bag, on a table under a roof on sunny days with no one shooting back) I don't see how you can objectively justify something like a $2000+ USO, NF, S&B, etc...

OP, if you're punching holes at fixed distances, you don't need FFP. Save yourself some $$ and buy the regular Vortex PST 4-16x. FFP is for when you need to range stuff because you don't know the distance, or if you need to hold an exact amount on a target that doesn't have grid lines.
 
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If your sole purpose is to make holes very close together at long distance most people do the opposite of that. Take your rifle price DOUBLE IT and start there.

This... IMHO for any magnified optic, unless the gun is stupidly high end, you should at least be spending what the gun cost you or potentially double that on glass.

Nothing sucks worse than shooting a $600 rifle with a $200 scope on it. Shitty optics suck so bad they start playing tricks with your mind. "Why is it so blurry all the time?" "Why is it so ****ing dark when there's not a cloud in the sky?" etc.

Shitty optics even can drive you to sell guns. [laugh]

-Mike
 
With my Ruger American in .308, I bought a Vortex Crossfire II 6-18x, only because it was on sale and just barely more expensive than the 4-12x one. The crossfire's are the cheaper series, I did not want to pay more for a scope than my actual rifle [laugh]. I use it for target practice. Only been out a few times at 100 yards, but the combo works great and I'm a newb!
 
If your sole purpose is to make holes very close together at long distance most people do the opposite of that. Take your rifle price DOUBLE IT and start there.

Why?

The less you move the rifle around, the less robust you need your scope to be.

You're making the assumption that all that money is going into making the scope more shock resistant? Good glass costs money.
 
One thing that nobody has mentioned here is tracking.

Tracking is the ability of the scope to return to the same point after the turrets are turned in all direction, then returned to the same position.

The most common test is called the box test. Here you fire a few shots to get a group. Then adjust the top turret to move the shot up, then fire a shot, then left, then a shot, then down, then a shot, then right, then another few shots for a group

If the scope has decent tracking the last group will overlay exactly on top of the first group.

For most people, this isn't important. They zero the scope and leave the knobs alone. Maybe they hold over with a ballistic reticle, but generally all they care about is the scopes ability to hold zero.

When you are shooting long distances, its common to "dial for distance", so you are dialing up and down based on range. You need a scope with good tracking. Thats another thing you pay for when you step up from the world of $400 scopes.

For inexpensive optics, I've found the Nikons to be better than anything else in the $200 range. Of note is the fact that even Nikon's $200 scopes are made in THEIR OWN factory in the Philippines. Not jobbed out to the lowest bidder to china.
 
I don't shoot scopes often so take this with a grain of salt, but I generally don't go much higher than 16x at 600. Higher than that and I start getting lost in the target and over-magnifying the mirage.

Also keep in mind that if you use it to shoot stuff that moves you're going to want a good field of view, which you tend to lose as magnification increases.

Anyway, YMMV but magnification isn't everything. (Unless maybe you're a bench rest or f class shooter.)
 
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Which reminds me.

When we were shooting at 1000 yards at Sig. At 16x I could watch the bullet impact the target through the scope. Occasionally, I could even see the vapor trail.

At 20 x, the field of view was too narrow. The recoil would move the rifle enough so the target was no longer in view. One of the many things that class taught me was that there were many disadvantages to high magnification that i had never considered. Off the top of my head:

1) slower initial because the exit pupil is small
2) slower shot to shot speed because the exit pupil is small and you need to reorient rifle without being able to see the target through the scope
3) difficulty in tracking moving targets
4) greater tendency to chase the target waiting for the perfect sight picture, then jerking the trigger. (go ugly, early)
 
You're making the assumption that all that money is going into making the scope more shock resistant? Good glass costs money.

Not just shock resistance. Weatherproofing, anti-scratch and anti-fog lens coatings, glare reduction coatings, high contrast coatings (or more accurately, lesser contrast reduction), etc...

That stuff doesn't really apply to a bench rest gun. I can see the argument regarding image clarity, but adding a sunshade will have a greater effect than any of the high tech coatings in terms of image quality.

Things like a lower degree of barrel distortion may make a scope more pleasant to shoot, but I won't agree that it will make you shoot smaller groups.
 
Not just shock resistance. Weatherproofing, anti-scratch and anti-fog lens coatings, glare reduction coatings, high contrast coatings (or more accurately, lesser contrast reduction), etc...

That stuff doesn't really apply to a bench rest gun. I can see the argument regarding image clarity, but adding a sunshade will have a greater effect than any of the high tech coatings in terms of image quality.

Things like a lower degree of barrel distortion may make a scope more pleasant to shoot, but I won't agree that it will make you shoot smaller groups.

I think for me at least, the most significant difference between a cheap scope and a higher end scope is eye fatigue. With lower grade glass you will find your eye will tend to compensate for any blurriness which in turn wears you out faster. If you intend to be sitting behind your scope for any extended period of time, spend the money.

eta: I would imagine this would only become more apparent shooting at small targets.
 
Dan - I may have a chance to do some prarie dog shooting (you can't really call it hunting) soon. I've been reading a lot on the Internet. One of the things that I've seen a lot is that when you are dog "hunting", you spend hours looking through your scope.

Compare that with deer hunting, where you may glass a field now and then, but generally the time spent actually looking through the scope is measured in seconds, not hours.

Which leads me to another potentially desirable feature. A side parallax adjustment. Which is really just a way to focus the scope on whatever you are looking at. It just so happens that when the item is in focus, there is the least amount of parallax.

One hint to those who are new to this. A decent long range scope will have an adjustment on the eyepiece and on the side. You focus the eyepiece to get the reticle in crisp focus, then you adjust the side focus/parallax.

Don
 
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One thing that nobody has mentioned here is tracking.

Tracking is the ability of the scope to return to the same point after the turrets are turned in all direction, then returned to the same position.

The most common test is called the box test. Here you fire a few shots to get a group. Then adjust the top turret to move the shot up, then fire a shot, then left, then a shot, then down, then a shot, then right, then another few shots for a group

If the scope has decent tracking the last group will overlay exactly on top of the first group.

For most people, this isn't important. They zero the scope and leave the knobs alone. Maybe they hold over with a ballistic reticle, but generally all they care about is the scopes ability to hold zero.

When you are shooting long distances, its common to "dial for distance", so you are dialing up and down based on range. You need a scope with good tracking. Thats another thing you pay for when you step up from the world of $400 scopes.

For inexpensive optics, I've found the Nikons to be better than anything else in the $200 range. Of note is the fact that even Nikon's $200 scopes are made in THEIR OWN factory in the Philippines. Not jobbed out to the lowest bidder to china.

Dan - I may have a chance to do some prarie dog shooting (you can't really call it hunting) soon. I've been reading a lot on the Internet. One of the things that I've seen a lot is that when you are dog "hunting", you spend hours looking through your scope.

Compare that with deer hunting, where you may glass a field now and then, but generally the time spent actually looking through the scope is measured in seconds, not hours.

Which leads me to another potentially desirable feature. A side parallax adjustment. Which is really just a way to focus the scope on whatever you are looking at. It just so happens that when the item is in focus, there is the least amount of parallax.

One hint to those who are new to this. A decent long range scope will have an adjustment on the eyepiece and on the side. You focus the eyepiece to get the reticle in crisp focus, then you adjust the side focus/parallax.

Don




Both posts are on point.

You can get good glass quality for mid-range money, but tracking and the accuracy of the adjustments will often separate the $400 scope from the $1000 scope.

The other thing is whether the adjustments are actually what they're marked as. Is 1 click actually .25 MOA, or is it only .20? A guy who zeros his scope and never touches it won't know (or need to know), but for someone who is making big adjustments, it's very important....and very important that the scopes comes back to the original zero.
 
If you are shooting precision bench rest, you really can't have enough magnification. If you are shooting minute of man gongs, deer or other less precise shooting use iron sights or something with less magnification. It really depends on your desired application.

I recently had to qualify at my new clubs 200/300 range and it was simple with my Mueller 8-32×44 set at 20x on my ar-10 where the guy next to me with a 5x red dot really struggled passing. He would have hit the gong every time, but certainly wasn't keeping it in the black.

If you don't want to spend a ton and are just getting into long range shooting, I would look at the offerings from Mueller and Millet.

This could be a cheap place to start:

Mueller 4-16×50AO Tactical

You will then get frustrated if you are shooting benchrest at 300 yards and want more scope.

I hope you have budget for target ammo or reload as most regular ammo just isn't that accurate either.

Chris
 
How far do you want to shoot and what do you want to shoot at? If you want precise shots at long distances, get as much scope as you can afford.

Even shooting at 300 yards I noticed an improvement in grouping going from a 16x to a 20x scope, groups were consistently smaller by about half a minute, I think the reason being that I could see the bull better, and hold on a more precise/consistent spot.

ETA Millet makes a really good mil-dot scope for under $600 in a 20x

I concur, and +1 regarding Millet high magnification optics. Nice prices plus periodically on sale at Optics Planet. Using one for about a year- holds its zero and image and light are at least good enough to shoot dime-sized groups.
 
At Sig, the most amazing thing was how predictable things are when you know what you are doing. It wasn't me who knew what he was doing, it was the instructor. I knew in my head that physics is physics. But its really nice when the theory matches the reality.

At the end of day 1 we chrono'd our rifles. I was shooting my own handloads. I got a MV of 2720 fps average (with only 3 fps SD!!!). My bullets were 175 gr SMKs.

The instructor took that MV and the bullet info and the next day gave me a very nice laminated ballistic table of how much I had to dial up for a given distance. It has separate lines based on density altitude ranging from -2000 ft up to 15,000 ft. Up till then, we had only shot out to 300 yards.

When we went to 500 I dialed in the proper correction and fired. The elevation was perfect. The same was true at 600, 750 and 1000. Its just amazing how with the right tools you can produce such predictability. He had the correct software with the correct ballistic coefficient for my bullet and all the offsets for density altitude (which takes into effect barometric pressure, altitude, temp, and humidity.)

His software was then able to give me a firing solution for almost any combination of DA, distance, and wind. The fact that the theory and the actual bullets path were so exactly matched kind of blew me away.


Don

p.s. Whats so revolutionary about density altitude and its use in the shooting world is it distills the basic concept of the "thickness" of the air into one number. This greatly simplifies charts. Prior to the use of DA, shooters had charts that had to account for barometric pressure, alt, temp,and humidity. It was very complex.

Density altitude has been a staple of aviation flight planning for decades. In fact the best discussions of density altitude come from aviation sources, not shooting sources:

https://www.faasafety.gov/files/gslac/library/documents/2011/Aug/56396/FAA P-8740-02 DensityAltitude[hi-res]%20branded.pdf

There were also some minor corrections for spin drift, one other thing, an Coriolis effect.

There are now electronic devices from Kestrel and others that will give you density altitude by doing nothing more than pushing a button and reading a display. This is huge. All thats left is to look up the correction, set it in the scope and hold for wind.
 
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At Sig, the most amazing thing was how predictable things are when you know what you are doing. It wasn't me who knew what he was doing, it was the instructor. I knew in my head that physics is physics. But its really nice when the theory matches the reality.

At the end of day 1 we chrono'd our rifles. I was shooting my own handloads. I got a MV of 2720 fps average (with only 3 fps SD!!!). My bullets were 175 gr SMKs.

The instructor took that MV and the bullet info and the next day gave me a very nice laminated ballistic table of how much I had to dial up for a given distance. It has separate lines based on density altitude ranging from -2000 ft up to 15,000 ft. Up till then, we had only shot out to 300 yards.

When we went to 500 I dialed in the proper correction and fired. The elevation was perfect. The same was true at 600, 750 and 1000. Its just amazing how with the right tools you can produce such predictability. He had the correct software with the correct ballistic coefficient for my bullet and all the offsets for density altitude (which takes into effect barometric pressure, altitude, temp, and humidity.)

His software was then able to give me a firing solution for almost any combination of DA, distance, and wind. The fact that the theory and the actual bullets path were so exactly matched kind of blew me away.


Don

p.s. Whats so revolutionary about density altitude and its use in the shooting world is it distills the basic concept of the "thickness" of the air into one number. This greatly simplifies charts. Prior to the use of DA, shooters had charts that had to account for barometric pressure, alt, temp,and humidity. It was very complex.

Density altitude has been a staple of aviation flight planning for decades. In fact the best discussions of density altitude come from aviation sources, not shooting sources:

https://www.faasafety.gov/files/gslac/library/documents/2011/Aug/56396/FAA P-8740-02 DensityAltitude[hi-res]%20branded.pdf

There were also some minor corrections for spin drift, one other thing, an Coriolis effect.

There are now electronic devices from Kestrel and others that will give you density altitude by doing nothing more than pushing a button and reading a display. This is huge. All thats left is to look up the correction, set it in the scope and hold for wind.

The DragTimes application for your phone has a DA feature, takes it from the nearest weather station.

I use that and a cheap Kestrel wind meter.
 
After a ton of research and budget considerations I went with a GAPrecision Rock rifle and Vortex Razor HD 5-20x50 FFP . They were on sale at euro optic for 1349, I decided on it based on money and quality . I rwad tons of reviews and tried a few different scopes out to make that decision. I almost bought a uses Schmidt bender but I just couldn't see spending 4,000 to shoot out to 300-600m even though the glass was superb.
 
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