When Colonel Jeff Cooper came up with his Scout rifle concept, he put a long eye relief scope in front of the action. This was to allow reloading the rifle with five-shot stripper clips, which requires vertical clearance. The original (Steyer) Scout allowed clip loading.
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Couldn't prove it by me. My own Steyr Scout does allow a detented magazine cutoff and a careful single top off loading but does not allow clip loading. The Dragoon (.376 Steyr) might allow single loading but if so it takes more dexterity than I've cared to worry about. Given the extra magazine stowed in the stock and the possibility of more cartridges in plastic on the off side I don't miss clip loading.
My own understanding is that
scout was intended to mean many things and not to mean military scout. Folks these days do seem to emphasize extended magazines and an obsolete military rifle look.
Taking scout to include timber cruiser and all the other woods wanderers I figure the intended use is
walking around in the woods (not so much stalking known game at a known location) and so giving up the last bit of low light performance with a scout scope is an acceptable trade-off. That is for that last 5 - 10 minutes I'll not be watching for game when I'm wandering around - I'll be trying not to trip. When I'm on stand and not wandering around I may well use a brighter higher power range scope.
It's no secret the scout scope has inferior low light performance, inferior close to the sun performance and inferior long for some value of long range performance including dial in bullet drop and windage.
A scout sope would be flat silly on a sniping varmint rifle in .204 (3x15 on mine anything more on the top end would be for paper only) or .220 Swift (16X fixed on mine but it's an old rig, retro by today's standards) but fun on a walking around or called game coyote rifle. If we ever see black tail jackrabbits numbers like the early 1980's explosion then I'd love to have a Poodle Scout. Horses for courses as the saying goes.
