If you were born in the 50's came into shooting in the 60's and used what was "common",read the authors of the time,and got out and actually hunted varmints and big game.....well, you were gonna eventually come to use a fixed 3X,4X etc....and maybe a fixed 6X,7.5X or 10X for your wood chuck and varmint hunting
Variables were not as highly regarded back then, at least among the BG hunters I knew,and the most common scopes I saw in use among the guys who traveled to hunt were fixed power Leupolds....some few had variables,but they were in the minority.In my crowd, no one really trusted them.....
Any how, for many of us, the notion that a fixed 4X was not "enough" was pretty curious, and the next question was ..."not enough for what?" .....since we all hunted east and west with 3X and 4X,and never had an animal get away,or missed a shot opportunity due to any lack of magnification, in all those years....and yes we killed deer, antelope, elk,etc clear out to almost 500 yards,but mostly under 400...I've killed a few animals moving pretty quickly at distances under 20-30 yards with them.....
To this day (and even though I own them)I have a hard time distinguishing the practical difference between a fixed 4X and a 1.5-6, or 2-7; neither one, IMO,offers any real world advantage on BG over a fixed 4X,........you can get lots of confidence in a fixed 4X if you go shoot stuff with them.
Last edited by BobinNH; 04/17/10.
