Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics who uses lower powered scopes? (1-4x, 1-6x)

The Meopta Meostar 1.75-10X has been a winner for me for the reasons others have shared….bright, good FOV, versatile. Also have a 1.5-6 x 32 Burris Signature that’s been great on a boat paddle 7mm RM.

My most powerful zoom scope starts off at 3x. It's a Schmidt & Bender 3-12x42 Klassik mounted on a Ruger No. 1A in 6.5x55 SE. The rest of my zooms are shorter than that mainly because I hunt in the southern woods and the majority of my shots are under 200 meters. I prefer not having too powerful a scope simply because it's easier to put the crosshairs on the deer or hog with a lower powered scope & the accuracy is more than adequate for the ranges I'm shooting at. Some of my favorites are:

Schmidt & Bender 1.5-8x42 Stratos
Swarovski z6 1.7-10x42
Swarovski z5 2.4-12x50
Nikon Monarch 1.5-6x42
Redfield Revolution 2-7x33
Leupold 3x20 Big Bore
Leupold FX-3 6x42

The only scope I have that has a longer minimum value is a Meopta R2 8x56 RD.

This is a good point. Poor technique can give pretty much the same result. A lot of people bring the scope up to their eye, then look around for the target in the scope. Instead, you should be able to look at the target then bring the rifle up to your eye and find the crosshairs superimposed on the target. A few rounds of dry fire will help you understand which method you're using.


Okie John

Most of my hunting these days is done with a 308 Win that wears a Nikon 4X. It seems to work well. My 375 H&H wears a 1.5x6 Bausch & Lomb and it has been to Africa 5 times. My 9.3x62 wears an old 6X Burris. I don't need high magnification on a hunting rifle. I have good binos and a spotting scope for the long distance stuff. My scopes are for after I have closed the distance to shoot.

I think I have (3) 1-4 Leupolds, 2 of which have coarse crosswires and adjusted for zero parallax at 75 yards. Both my No 1 Rugers (a .308 1B and a 7X57 1A) have 1 1/2- 5 Leupolds. My 700 XCR/CTR .223 has a 1.75 - 6 Leupold. I recently put a Burris LPVO 1-6 on one of my AR's. The rest of my hunting rifles tend to have 2 1/2 - 8's with a few 3 - 9's thrown in the mix.

As mentioned above, having a rifle that fits and handles well and having the scope mounted correctly relative to your size and shape and the eye relief of the scope is the biggest part of the equation. For fast shooting at close range I would prefer a quality vixed 6X set up properly over a lower power scope of lesser quality set up wrong for me.

At least where I reside (east coast) multi hundred yard shots do not exist and as others have said sub 100 yard shots are more common. Thus, a smaller scope is the logical choice. When I see someone who has a huge "tactical" scope on his hunting rifle I would guess they are pretty new to the game and will go home empty handed more often than not.

I hunt the northeast, so close cover. Big fan of 2x-7x on my deer rifles. I mounted a Nikon Monarch 3x-12x on my Ruger M77 .35 whelen when I hunted in Colorado 15 years ago, I've been meaning to put a 2x-7x back on it. I run 2x-7x Burris scout scopes on my .308 Ruger Scout, .223 Ruger Scout and my Springfield M1A scout. I have two rifles in the safe that I need to get back in action, the first is my Uncle's Marlin /Glenfield .35 Rem and my Father in-law's Rem 660 .308 Win that's had the stock hacked on and is missing the rear sight. The .35 Rem is probably getting a LPVO 1x-6x. The 660 I'm thinking of having rebored to .358 Win., and done up in Scout configuration, and it'll get a Burris 2x-7x Scout scope. I realy like the Scout setup for deer hunting.

I like to use and the looks of a straight tube scope.

But keeping snow outta the front objective is harder for me than a objective with a bell.

My rule of thumb is if I am going to be shooting off my hind legs I use a 4x, if I am walking and using a rest it is a 10x-ish. If I have my arse firmly planted in a vehicle and under a spotlight it is a 24x.

I have had enough of the later, now it is the first and second.

Ran into a hunter in the WMA parking lot a week ago that had a big tactical scope on his 6.5 AR 10. He’d been unable to pick up the deer he saw in time. That scope was a 5-25 I think, borrowed from his PRS rifle. He was all kitted out in web gear, including a can of bear spray under his bino case. Nice guy, and an experienced shooter, just following the current thinking on hunting gear. There was another just like him across the lot but with a .458 SOCOM carbine, a more practical choice IMO than that big AR 10.

Just looking at their combat loads made my back hurt though….

For those of you who are hunting with scopes that start at 1 or 2X how many of you kills come at that magnification level?

Most.

I did crank up the 1-6 Credo on my Grendel last season to get a better view of the doe I shot. She was in a bunch of scrubby pawpaws.

That one btw, is a great scope.

Back in the early 70's a 2-7 was the way to go....in the late 80's a 3-9.....now the sky is the limit and all the crazy crosshairs.....
For big game my maximum is a 3-9 but in close to 60 years of hunting only one time I've shoot over 600 yards and that time a 2-7 worked just fine....

I live out west and mainly hunt coyotes, some years I hunt up to five different states. I'd say that 80% of my kills are on the lowest power of the scope I'm using be it 1x, 1.5x or 2x. I find FOV trumps X's most of the time when calling coyotes.

NM


WA


AZ


NV (Burris 4X 1.5-6x4?) Testing a 22 Mag



Having grown up in MN and WI all my deer hunting was in the northern forests where all my hunting was either still hunting or tracking, again FOV trumped X's. Fast target acquisition is king.

Nice WI public land buck 25-204 100gr Partition Weaver V-3

The number of kills I have at low magnification can probably be counted on one hand. Most of mine have been at moderate magnification from 3x~6x. I always like the option of the lower magnification levels when I'm moving through the woods but I've had very few opportunities for an unexpected shot where quick target acquisition was paramount. Most of the time I'm stationary with a field, clearing or shooting lane visible & the magnification gets moved up a few notches. The two scopes I have that top out at 12x were both acquired because of a great price & not an actual need for that much power.

While we hunt different places, I’m of the same opinion on coyote hunting: they’re almost always moving and about half the time, there’s more than one. They often move cover to cover, and FOV, eyebox, and speed are far more important than hitting a dot at 300. The same often proves true on deer/hogs around here as well: it’s not that you have to shoot fast movers all the time that makes LPVs the ticket, it’s the speed with which you may have to execute a shot opportunity in a given window or bad position. LPV (or fixed power) optical properties of eye relief, eye box, FOV, and depth of field make mounting and shot execution smoother….to me. JMO

A pretty good bunch of them, but I also like hunting with open sights so maybe I'm demented......

I would say around half. If I’m still-hunting in the woods most of them. I generally only have a short time to take the shot or lose it and I’m generally close enough to see that it’s a deer I want. From elevated stands, here in the Low Country, not as many because I often have time and sometimes need to crank up the x’s to be sure I’m looking at a doe and not a spine or button buck. The best three bucks I’ve killed last year and this were shot down on low power, from elevated stands because, as is sometimes the case, they showed up close and unexpectedly and were obviously hot on a doe’s track and I had only a couple of seconds to make the shot.

I use a variety of scopes, but also a few low-magnification variables, like the 1-4x Leupold on this drilling. Had it set on 4x when taking this pronghorn at around 250 yards, but could have easily gone to 300+ after practicing on the full-size painted pronghorn gong on the local range.

The gun is something erich might use, a Sauer drilling 16x16x6.5x57R, a cartridge that produces the same basic ballistics as the 6.5 Man-Bun. The handload used the 129-grain Nosler AccuBond Long Range, which groups five into less than an inch at 100 yards.

I like low-power variables on drillings for the same reasons erich does, but also because if I keep it on 1x while hunting big game it also works very well on any gamebirds accidentally flushed in 16-gauge range.

I ran into a guy kitted out like a Spetznaz trooper during late deer season this year. His rifle had a prone stock, an adjustable cheekpiece, a big ol' detachable magazine, a huge scope, and a bipod that made it look like an M-249 SAW from a distance. He was wearing close to $1k worth of designer camo and had a big rucksack with a tripod lashed onto it.

I have no idea whether he scored but there are a couple of spots on that property where his rig might have been put to good use.

I wish him the best either way.


Okie John