Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Large Objective scopes and low light shooting

My low light hunting has been done with my Swarovski 2.5-10x56 PH, Meopta 3-12x56, and a borrowed Schmidt & Bender 2.5-10x56. These scopes were designed for night hunting of boar in Europe. Having spent a lot of time behind these scopes at night I can say without a doubt that yes, they do help that much. With a decent amount of moonlight you can hunt all night. The reticle is as important as everything else and as one poster mentioned, you'll generally be shooting with the power maxed out to discern the detail to make the shot. There are caveats though, you're not going to get a blister pack bushnell with a 56mm objective and have it do anything for you, you've got to start with best quality glass.

There are other considerations than just the scope too. Your eyes don't completely adjust to darkness until after about an hour of low light. Remember your biology classes and how they eye receptors are composed of rods and cones, cones are for daylight vision and rods for low light. It takes about an hour of low light before you get your full night vision, that's why you use green or red lens on flashlights to avoid messing up your night vision. Bright light will bleach out your photoreceptors and it takes about an hour to get your night vision back after you've been hit with bright light. During that time you're not going to be able to take full advantage of a scope like that. Most people compare them right at dark when their eyes aren't adjusted and say they can't see any difference, wait an hour in the dark then try it, you'll see a difference. If you just want to shoot to the end of legal shooting hours then most scopes today will handle that fine, but if you want to hunt at night then those top quality 56mm scopes stand out. They've got to have some light though, if it's pitch black you're going to have to use thermal as mentioned.