Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Spotting Scope Review

Per the other thread, I'm posting my thoughts on the Athlon Ares scopes.

I had owned a Vortex Skyline 20-60x80 scope since 2008-ish, and it was used 95% of the time at my local (200 yards max) shooting range. I did take it on western packhorse hunts twice, and left it with the guide after last month's goat hunt. In the search to replace it, I was quickly overwhelmed by way too many models from way too many optics companies. There seemed to be no objective way to sort them from one another, apart from price. Internet reviews were few, far between, and hardly thorough. There are plenty of worthless YouTube reviews where guys play background music while reading a company's product literature. It seems one can find out crap-tons of information about binoculars, but spotters are a damned wilderness.

After chatting with Doug 'n his crew from CamerLandNY, I ordered-in the 20-60x85 and 15-45x65 scopes to check 'em out. I figure he has a far better pulse on the industry than I ever will, and I suppose I trust him: I've sent more $ to CameraLand over than the years than to some of the bursar's offices at my kids' universities.

As usual, I got a much better deal than I expected. The package arrived in 2 days. I was impressed with the packaging: If one of these gets damaged in transit, some serious schidt went down.








Cases are included, though I didn't get them out and play with them. They look to be pretty standard.





The reason I ordered both was to see whether the 65mm could hang with the 85mm for my purposes. Again, it'll be at the range 90+% of the time, so if the less expensive model can do the job, then so much the better. Granted, size/weight isn't a factor for range work, but with the goat hunt still fresh in my mind (I'm still breathing heavy), better portability would definitely be another plus.

The size difference was immediately obvious:








Side-by-side:





(cont.)