by bladeracer » 03 Jan 2020, 6:47 pm
I could only recommend what I've used myself, which also means they suit my specific wants in a scope. I haven't put much time into scopes I have no interest in owning, like capped turrets or adjustable-objective designs, or scopes with price tags based around a fifty-year-old reputation. I don't want or need a dozen $1000 scopes sitting in my safes, especially when they don't give me anything I don't find in scopes of half the price or less. If I were only going to own a couple of scopes, or own one for a very specific purpose, then I could see me paying $1000 or more, and several times I have been finger-hovering-over-the-button close to pulling the trigger on something before coming to my senses.
One very important point for me is that I want all my scopes to be identical on all my field rifles, from .22LR to .30-06 and pistol-caliber levers. No matter which rifle I'm carrying, the scopes are exactly the same, same view, same controls, in the same places, same holdovers, same reticle. And my rifles don't shoot twenty rounds per year at sambar, I shoot thousands of rounds per year. I use them in rain, from winter's zeros to summer's 45's without any problems.
For me it came down to the AR Optics 4.5-18x40 223BDC for around $350. I have eleven of these now, I've been using them on my .22LR's out to 300m+, making elevation adjustments of 100 minutes (400 clicks) and back with zero tracking problems. I've used them shooting groups on paper until it's too dark to see the white paper at dusk. I have dropped rifles more times than I can count, without damaging a scope yet, the nastiest probably being when I knocked the rifle off my bench, landing inverted on the floor on the elevation turret, hard enough to compress the adjustable rail mount.
For my purposes I haven't been able to fault them at all. I can't comment on how well they work for spotlighting as that's not something I do, but I'd bet there are plenty of these being put to that purpose as well.
I received the Visionking 10-40x56 yesterday and mounted it on the .204 last night. My initial impression is that I'm impressed, but I need to get out and do some testing with it alongside the Bushnells. It says 1/8 MoA clicks on the turrets which I need to confirm on paper. 60 clicks per rotation, which is a little strange as it's 7.5 MoA, so you have to divide your elevation adjustments into 7.5 MoA groups, 13MoA would require a full rotation to 7.5 MoA, plus 5.5 for example. It only does 6.5 rotations (around 48MoA) though so it's not a PRS-type of scope you'd be making huge adjustments to. It is of course huge so would not go onto a hunting rifle, although it wouldn't be out of place on a varmint rifle. One odd thing is that it has illuminated reticles - plural. It has two reticles, one roughly 6MoA below the primary. It's very hazy with smoke here still, but looking at a fence line 650m away, set on 18x alongside the Bushnell, I can't see a significant difference in optics, both show up magpies perfectly well. The VK reticle is finer, at 40x it's about half the width of a star picket at 640m.
I'll post my thoughts once I've had a good play with it.
Last edited by
bladeracer on 03 Jan 2020, 7:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Practice Strict Gun Control - Precision Counts!
have you changed jobs SCJ 
