Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Vortex Viper 3-9x40 Review

I recently acquired one of these scopes. Overall I am very pleased with the apparent quality of all aspects of this scope.

I mounted it on a Rem 700 30-06 SPS LH, in Talley LW low mounts. It's a good fit for tube length, and fairly low to the barrel.

No eye-relief issues. Optics are clear and bright. Turrets and power selector are smooth and firm.

The reticle is a dead-hold BDC. Looks like it's well designed for quick holdoffs for range and windage.

Turrets are low profile capped. 1/4 moa, 12 moa per rev. The turret dials are spring loaded so you can lift them rotate to re index your zero, then let them back down. No tools needed, takes only seconds.

I zeroed at 100 yards with 208 AMax, at 2600-ish fps. After zeroing, I have 48 moa up, 42 moa down, for a total of 90 moa el travel. Advertised as 92 moa, I likely lost a couple zeroing windage.

Here are a few pics,

Thanks for the write up and pictures. Love the pop up reset turrets.

Shane, have you had a chance to put it through its paces yet? Interested in how it tracks. Did it return to zero after running the box? Another rifle is in my future, and while I still love the Meopta Meopro (would be a no brainer there if they ever offer at least an el turret and SF on their 4-12x50), the Viper HS peaks my interest.

I didn't do a formal box test. After zeroing I did crank it top to bottom a few times then returned to zero and shot it. It was right where it should be.

The 208 AMax at 2600 tracks almost dead on with the dots to 500. Furthest it's off is about .4 moa at 200 yards. At 300, 400, 500 it correlates within .25 moa.

Would you have any reservations about putting this scope on a rifle that you would take from the rack if you were, at a minimum, hunting for a trophy worthy of sending to the taxidermist? IOW, would you feel comfortable putting this scope on a 1st tier hunting rifle?

Jeff

Jeff,

Considering I've only had this scope for a week, and had it to the range twice, in moderate weather, I think it would be premature to make that judegement.

It seems like a quality piece of gear, but I haven't had it in any type of harsh weather, or even shot it more than 50 rounds.

I did read up on a lot of Vortex Viper reviews and posts on a few forums though, and haven't seen any trends of unreliability.

Shane

FWIW, I intend to use this scope on this 30-06 as my primary hunting rifle.

With the same load? Do you have prior experience with that 208 amax on game?

I ask because I recently shot some 162 amaxes into wet magazines at 200 and 450 yards that were started out right around 3050 fps. The recovered bullets left me thinking that shoulder blades should be avoided. But then, you're starting them out significantly slower...

The load may or may not change.

As you say, I'm not starting them too fast, and with 208gr of mass, I sorta doubt they will nuke.

But, to be honest, my best accuracy in this rig has been with the 200gr Sierra SPBT. It has punched .5 moa for 5 shots more than once.

I love the BC and resultant downrange performance of the 208, but we'll see. Consistent accuracy has to come first.

If it's any help in your decision I've had a 2-7x32 version of the Viper on my 9.3x62 for over two hunting seasons now. Plenty of shooting and adjustments done with it in load development and such. Hunted some real nasty weather with it to. I've got total confidence in it. So much so that I recently picked another one up for my .270 M70 Fwt. My friend who turned me on to the Viper has had the same configuration scope on his M70 .375H&H even longer.

Sorry to take this thread off course, but are you still using rl17 with the 200 grain range bullets in your 06's? Any concern over the new hype of temperature stability? I know you get some extreme weather in your neck of the woods.

I would be very interested to see how this setup works out for you as your primary hunting rig. Please keep us posted. Your opininions and experiences are some of the most valuable on this forum, at least to me.

Yes I'm using RL17 with the 200gr Sierra, and 208s.

The .5 moa accuracy with the 200s was with 52gr RL17. Didn't chrono it, but QL predicts about 2500 fps from the 20" bbl. Pressure calc is 52K PSI, so there would be plenty of safe room for hot weather. The sporter bbl on this '06 doesn't do too well when I push the heavies, but it seems to shoot the Barnes 130, and 168 very well at full pressure velocities.

Generally I do most of my load development in the warmer months, and adjust for the cold via elevation correction.

My load for my heavy LR 30-06 is 55gr RL17 under a moly'd 208 in Win brass. This load gets 2740 fps in the summer, and about 2680 in temps in the 30s. At -20F it gets about 2640 fps.

The temp swing seems about the same as I have seen using RL22, roughly one fps per degree.

Shane,

Are these "turrets" meaning you can range, dial, and dope effectively for any given load?

Greg,

You could use these turrets like any other moa-based turret. They are just low profile and capped. Something like a Leupold M1 is more accessible because it's not capped, but functionally they are the same thing.

The reticle subtensions of course will correlate to different bullets/velocities differently. The way they are set up they are pretty versatile for "average" hunting rifles. A slight adjustment in zero range will make it accomodate a lot of popular ballistics.

Thanks Shane -

Any concerns about the turrets being so easy to reset. I've wondered about hunting with finger resettable turrets. Had a friend who had his rifle in the truck with the caps off and his kid just started playing with dial including pulling it up and turning it and just clicking too.

I have one of the new viper HS 5-15x40 mil/mil midway specials and it's been great so far. The glass doesn't seem quite as clear as my weaver grandslams but it's pretty good and the features are excellent. I have 2 more of the HS's on backorder.

Also, Shane have you ever ran 4831sc with the heavies in a 30-06. My hunting 30-06 runs 54.5 RL-17 under a 200 NAB at 2725fps and 1/2 MOA but I've thought about giving 4831sc a go.

Bb

The only thing with these turrets, is that they don't have rotation hash marks, so you have 12 MOA of elevation to play with before you have to start remembering how many revolutions you've turned passed your zero.

Maybe it would be nice to make up a chart for dialing a small correction for each holdover dot? Or maybe you could figure out exactly what yardage the dots correlate to, and adjusting from there. I would also think that if you really wanted to, 12 moa added to the bottom holdover point would get a fellow quite a lot of distance...

Bb, I'm not concerned about accidental turret "re-zeroing". The spring tension seems sufficient. But nothing is child proof, not an issue here. I haven't tried H4831sc.

seven miller, I'll have my come-ups handy (taped to rifle) for when there is time, holdoffs for hasty engagements.

I was crunching some different loads I use through Quickload to see how well they lined up with the dots. I found you can tweak your zero from somewhere between 100-150 in most cases, and be within .5 moa of the dots out to 500.

To me, making up data to adjust from each dot to accomodate the true ballistics would be overly complicated, time consuming to employ, and not really necessary.

I could see holding on the top or bottom of the dot to favor toward true ballistics, but to be practical, if there is time for all that, I'd just as soon dial the come-up, and hold dead on.

I see the dots most useful for a hasty engagement inside 300 yards or so, where the dots beat a guess, aid in holdover, and a small error (say .5 moa or so) is inconsequental in terms of hitting deer or elk in the vitals.