Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics The Perfect Whitetail Scope

Can't the guys that need to hunt at night make use of thermal scopes or spot lights ? I mean my god an hour after sunset is fuggin DARK.

Never get tired of seeing pics of that superb rifle and scope. Weatherby and Zeiss hit it out of the park with that combo.

Yes, in some areas for non-game. It all depends on the local laws.

I always liked the Bushnell 4200 1.5 - 6 X 36 , for whitetail hunting, discontinued unfortunately

So if you would had the right scope you would take a 300 yard shot 50 min after the sun went down? And you can see what kind of Deer you are shooting at in the dark? And recovery wouldn’t be a problem if they ran off?

As Blackheart mentioned, it is dark 50 minutes after sunset.

Most definitely things are different where I hunt.

I'll play along...with a grin....

Everything is a compromise. With the S&B 3-27x56 one of the compromises is weight/size at ~40 oz. On any 9x zoom range there's a compromise on the reticle.

If you really wanted one with fewer compromises you'd have gotten the Tangent Theta LRH 3-15x50. It's ~13 oz lighter, almost 2" shorter, etc, etc....everything else is a compromise...grin...

Pick the good/bad compromises that meet your preferences and then you're getting your "closest to perfect" scope.

Better than average glass is important here also. Of course here Leupold isn’t a better than average scope….so I do handicap myself. Here, as far as appropriate reticle, a big fat one is most often the best.

You are most definitely correct when it comes to those who can’t move around.

Yes and I have. Recovery has never been an issue. I’ve never had one go further than 100 ft. Usually drop right there.

Thanks; interesting story how that setup came to be. I had decided I need something a little handier than ny Sako Model 75 Hunter Stainless .270 for tree stands and walking. Went on a search for a Model 7 or Finnlight in 7mm-08. Saw this rifle in original stock with a silver Conquest on the rack at a local pawn shop. Had never seen one before. Thought it interesting but went home and did some research. Found they were only made for 2-3 years and went back and bought it.
Found a Bell& Carlson stock for it here; it was a nice upgrade over the original. Put a S&B Summit 2.5-10x40 on it and thought I was set. The "perfect whitetail" scope, right? Hunted it for a season and was never satisfied with the Summit. It has TERRIBLE glare issues with a setting sun. Literally unusable at times. And was not thrilled with the Weatherby styled B&C
During the off season the Zeiss came available here and I grabbed it.
A member here in Alaska listed the McMillan stock; a Sako Classic inlet for a 6 lug Weatherby. Talk about needle in a haystack find! The stock truly transformed the handling of the rifle. The package weighs 7lbs 1oz and comes to shoulder like an extension of my arm when you need to take that quick shot at a trailing whitetail from an awkward position. Which is exactly how this nice buck was taken; from I.D. as #1 on my list and the "it's him" moment to shot was seconds. He was never going to stop. For me; its the perfect whitetail rifle

When I get a chance, I’ll take a pic of what things look like 10-50minutes after sunset at 300 yards. And then you can tell us what you do. 😂

50mm end bell? How does one hunt in low light with such a small thing like that? Not to mention the pissant 15x power. Can’t see anything with that low power.
Nope, the S&B covers that and more.

Ok. I’m happy to explain it. I have some wide open fields that I hunt. Shots from my stands can be up to 400 yds to the tree line. Most of my shots have been 150-300 yds. The one example over 300 yds also happened to be the latest, about 50 minutes past sunset. It was also from my best stand, that has a very sturdy bar to rest from. To have a shot this late, the moon has to be right to illuminate the deer against the dark background of the wood line. Not a full moon, but it has to be up at the right time. But the animals are not visible at all without scope or binoculars. I’ve actually had a harder time seeing the reticle in low light than I have seeing the target.



This photo was taken with my phone, 25 min past sunset last night. These two does were about 100 yds out and I used digital zoom on my phone to get this photo. I watched them until I climbed down from my stand at 60 mins past sunset. I shouldered my gun several times just to see how late I could have shot one, just to see. I figured I could have shot until about 40 min past sunset. After that, I had no resolution to put a shot on the shoulder. That was with an older FX3 6x42. The best scope I have for low light right now is a 30 year old Vari-X II, 3-9x50. It’s far from alpha grade but it works ok. I’m soon upgrading one of my rifles to an S&B to see what all the fuss is about.

I have zero experience with this one, but I would not be afraid to give it a try for your hunting. I have several Meopta scopes and have been very happy with them. All were bought from Cameraland.

On the occasions I hunt late in the woods, I use a German #1 reticle


https://www.meoptasportsoptics.com/en/produkt/meostar-r2-8x56-rd-1149_13243/

Yea, well things get smaller as it gets darker...significantly smaller. And that was 100 yards...Stretch it out to 300...your claim...and what would it look like. And now we need the moon to be just right... How about the perfect cloud cover?

Please....there are more than a few here that will tell you there is a time to go home and come back another day...No matter what scope you are using.

They arrest us here for shooting half an hour after sunset and imo, a lighted reticle just promotes poaching. I don't think that the OP wanted this topic to morph into low light only shooting, but from another hunting forum I remember a UK market hunter saying that the best scope for him in ultra low light was a 30mm fixed power 8x56 S&B. A variable scope has more lenses and will lose some light gathering ability to a fixed power.

The only reason that I got a good deal on a 4.5-14x40 Vari-X ll AO for my Fireball is that the exit pupil is very small on that scope and the original buyer wanted a faster aligning scope for his deer hunting; one with a much larger exit pupil. He got a lower power variable.

Those Europeans hunt way later into the evening than we do, so taking that into consideration, getting a high end European scope equals better light gathering. If I was the OP on a budget, I would be looking at the used market for a better European scope. For my whitetail hunting that is a Zeiss 30mm Diavari VM/V 1.5-6x42 with the #8 reticle. That cross hair is very heavy on the outside and thin in the center. In very low light a target is very easy to bracket in those heavy outside cross hairs as was noted by Battue in an earlier post. The better lenses and coatings make resolution better.

In my opinion, that opinion still rings true.

Any decent quality $500 scope will get you to 30 minutes after sunset. After that it's called poaching here. I'm starting to see why Big Stick comes across as crazy in his posts. Reading this kind of drivel post after post for years would make anyone nuts.

Sure.

In the same way having a penis promotes rape.

🙄

Great, a Big Stick disciple wanna be. Maybe Big Stick "comes across as crazy" because he is crazy. A "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."

If such "drivel" is beneath you, why bother responding at all?

Almost all my deer hunting is done with 2.5-8x36 vx3's and one 2-7x33 vx2. When Im shooting paper, I go for more magnification like a 4.5-14x40 vx3 and ar15's a 1-6 with red dot cross hair just works me.