Sorry, Ray, that's simply not so. A typical 3x riflescope (whether fixed or variable) has a field of view at least 30 at 100 yards. This means that at 20 yards the FOV is 6 feet, more than enough so that not "all you see if brown." At 30 yards it's 1.5 times as wide as at 20, 9 feet. I know this not just from theory but by shooting big animals at those sorts of ranges with 3x. It's easy to pick the right spot.

Of course, if the magnification is less than 3x, the FOV is even larger.

“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.”
John Steinbeck