After being incredibly bored while my brother took his turns at our local range, I decided I wanted a spotting scope. I had used some friends ones before and they were totally terrible. Even the $250 ebay jobs were rubbish. So I was pleasantly surprised when this Bushnell Excursion came on ebay as an ex-demo unit. Retail was $545, I made an offer and bought it for $280, and I can say it's money well spent.
The spotting scope comes in a nice little protective bag with clips at the bottom for the tripod. Some people don't like the standard tripod because it's a bit hard to make fine adjustments but I have heaps of tripods so it didn't concern me.
Inside the protective case there is the scope and the tripod head, which I now just leave attached to the bottom of the spotting scope. The spotting scope comes wrapped in a waterproof (I would call it water resistant) onesie, which helps protect it from knocks and the elements when at the range.
The onesie is very well made, with velcro on the back of the flaps so you can secure them out of the way when using the scope.
The controls are fairly simple, both zoom and focus on the rear where you look through.
A quick test at home was promising, but it wasn't until my brother and I got to the range (hi Baldrick314! Great to meet you today!
) that I could test it properly with our 22 and 308. It was brilliant there, easily spotting our hits at the maximum range I wanted to use it at (200m). Even at full zoom on a hot 35° day with lots of mirage and using the standard SSAA white paper targets, seeing hits was easy. I was super happy - the person who wasn't shooting could provide feedback and engage in discussion with the shooter rather than sitting and waiting for their turn. I wish I could have gotten a good photo today of what it looked like. I'll try taking a camera next time I go because my phone struggled.I would estimate that the maximum usable range for 308 would be between 350-400m before the shots would become hard to see on the normal white paper targets. You could probably see them at 400-500m with the high visibility targets. I could easily see the .22 hits at 100m, didn't see anyone shooting .22 at 200m to test it. I could easily see what looked like .223 hits (a fair bit smaller than our 308 hits) at 200m on other peoples targets.
I'll try to get a photo with a proper camera looking through the scope at 200m next time I am at the range.
So yeah, I feel like I scored a bargain and actually have a spotting scope that does what I need. Always great when you don't waste money on junk!
