Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Scout Scope Discussion

I was heavy into levers for a time. Had them from most brands and in many configurations that were offered. Still have around a dozen of various ilks and calibers.

I never went through with leaving a scout scope mounted to a barrel. Tried a couple, but I felt it was a downgrade over a receiver mounted scope, red dot, or just a ghost ring rear and fiber optic front sight. As such, I used a lot of levers with receiver mounted scopes, and I wouldn't necessarily agree with the assertion that it's better to shoot any lever gun with the scope off the receiver. I've shot a lot of good groups with receiver mounted scopes, and I haven't experienced poi shifts that weren't related to scope failures.

Cooper lived in AZ and Hunterdon Africa. When the sun comes up it's up.
I'm in the south where there's a canopy of trees. Deer move at dusk and dawn mostly.
This said, scout scopes don't offer much in the way of light gathering. Your cutting your chances.
A decent 2-7 would suffice.

It's an awful idea. Stock fit, scope height are way more important for quick acquisition.

I've got a Burris 2.75x on my pseudoscout M70 Stainless Classic, Took it to Col. Cooper's rifle class at Whittington and broke one starightaway clay bird. Another guy with a lot more shooting experience than me used a Steyr Scout and broke three. Haven't had an opportunity to hunt with it.

I've got the right-handed, left-eye dominant problem as well and am always fighting the tendency to close my left eye. Has anyone found the problem easier to cope with using an LPVO?

I went deep into the Scout concept about 20 years ago, to include exchanging letters with Jeff Cooper and Finn Aagaard about it. I had a pseudo Scout built in 30-06 and hunted exclusively with it for several years in the jungle-covered tree farms in the Pacific Northwest, where it’s gloomy, foggy, and wet during deer and elk season.

As I was glassing across a draw on one rainy Opening Morning, I could barely see the heads and shoulders of three or four blacktails as they moved through the mist a couple of hundred yards away. With 8x binoculars, I could see antlers on one. When I switched to my 2.75x Scout scope, I couldn’t see the antlers. I switched back and forth between the rifle and the binos until the deer faded back into the brush.

I sold the Scout after eating tag soup that year. These days I use a short, light 308 with a conventionally mounted scope.

Cooper wrote a lot about sights with no magnification, which is basically what you get with a red-dot sight like a Trijicon RMR. I think that would be a much better bet these days.


Okie John

As others have mentioned, downbore scopes don't work too well in low light, which unfortunately is when hunting is often best. That was my experience on a hog hunt near sundown, i.e., I couldn't get a bead on a 70-yard hog that was clearly visible to my naked eye but too dim to see in a 2x scope on my .454 pistol. I haven't used a scout scope since.

I tried very hard on several different scout rifles to like the Scout Scope concept. It never felt right and for me, I just could not get used to it after years of trying. Bottom-line for me it was cumbersome.

In my travels, most people who drank the kool-aide revert back to the conventional scope.

But it does work, and it does solve certain problems, so I suspect there will always be a following.

I’ve run a scout rifle for thirty years or so. Leupold scout scope held zero for all those years. Rough use bouncing around Wyoming on four wheelers and Jeep. Easy to use and fast. The sunset thing in my testing is BS. Never did I not take a shot because of the low power or the sun washing out.
I’m too tall for conventional mounted scopes on bolt action rifles so the scout works very well for me.

What he said.

As far as I'm concerned and for my purposes scout scopes are useless, maybe less than useless. The sight picture is so far away and small that I just as well use a peep or conventional irons.

I concur

To each their own , I suppose.
It also depends on hunting conditions and expections.
I found the Burris 2 x 7 works well for me on my BLR TD/ .270 wcf.
Besides being a takedown, it obviously has a 2 piece stock and a barrel ring.and a epoxy pressure point in the barrel channel.
There is various points of contact between the barrel and other things to affect barrel harmonics.
The L.E.R scope lessens these affects and keeping upward pressure off the barrel by shooting off the reciever helps me.
My view of things.
Leverguns are wonderful things, imo. box or tube magazine, so are some of the Single shot rifes out there.

Made me a redneck scout rifle back in the early 90s. Used a 1912 Chilean rifle in 7X57, modified the rear sight base and attached a Weaver base to it. Mounted a 2X pistol scope with a large dot reticle. It worked perfectly shooting moving deer in the thick stuff on our midday walk drives. I killed 7 deer with it, all one-shot kills using the 175 gr Hornady RN bullet. All I needed to do was to put that large dot over the chest cavity and pull the trigger!

I never stopped using other rifles with conventional scopes and never really saw any difference in effectiveness between the two styles. The scout rifle eventually got used less and less, especially after we stopped having the walk drives very often. I let a young man have it several years ago. Figured it was too neat a rifle not to be used and he wanted to use it.

Probably no point chiming in, as this seems like a pretty polarizing topic, but I'm going to do so anyway. Have had a Burris 2 3/4x Scout on a Marlin 1895 and I currently have a Ruger GSR with a Leupold VX-II 1.5-4 Scout (rides pretty far back for a true scout scope) on it. It is a pretty slick set up, and the big feature that I like is the ability to keep back-up aperture sights in place. If this is not a gain for you, then there is limited value given newer 1-8 and similar powered optics. The GSR is my back up hunting/go to Canada/politically correct rifle for all sorts of things and the scout style scope fits in very well for that purpose. For my main hunting, I prefer something with more magnification. Other than magnification, I have not observed most of the negatives I've seen commented on. I do question how much negative testimony comes from people who have used them to any extent. They are not THE answer for optics, but are certainly the answer for certain applications.

Thanks to all who responded!
My BLR is a little muzzle light and I thought that a barrel mounted scope would give it a little better balance. I've never shot a rifle that had a scout scope so am ignorant of that system. The ideal would be to find someone with that set up and compare. Anywho, thanks all.

Joe, where in Louisiana are you. I'm just south of Monroe, in Columbia

If there is no practical way to effectively mount a proper scope on the receiver, where it should be, the scout scope concept is OK. I have one on a Swiss K31 and its better than iron sights, for my mature eyes. Apart from situations like this, I've never liked the concept. GD

Slick describes the Scout concept perfectly—mine was very easy to use quickly. The Scout scope is the only way I have found to have a scope and peep sights on a rifle at the same time but that was years before red-dot/magnifier combinations that we have now.


The Scout scope definitely shifts the balance forward, which is rarely a bad thing. In that sense, it serves the same purpose as the full-length stock and steel nose cap on a full-stock Mannlicher-Schoenauer carbine.


Okie John

The only "scout" scopes I have used that are really worth anything are the leupy IER scopes which are basically lpvos with 2-3 inches more eye relief. They definitely have a home on some rifles and I really like them for what they are. My experience with pretty much every other LER scope I have tried is that they are trash.