PDS, it SHOULD be common knowledge that variables shift POI with power changes -- but it isn't. The hype from manufacturers and magazines, combined with the predominance of variables on the shelves and in the catalogs, has drowned-out all common sense about optics selection as far as most shooters and hunters are concerned. You'd think Moses brought variables down off the mountain as prescribed by The Almighty, from the way they're generally regarded.
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<br>You've mentioned slack. One of my tiresome points for lo! these many years is that anything that HAS to move when you want it to move CAN and WILL move when you don't want it to move. This is why variables also sometimes shift POI at a given, set, unchanged x setting. Their guts move around. Have to.
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<br>A large root of the problem is the mistaken notion that every scope must magnify your target. Part of this foolish notion is the assumption that making it LOOK bigger makes it easier to hit. Nope. It's still the same size, still as far away, with the same size of scoring or killing zone. Magnification is necessary and useful only when the APPARENT size of the target is small -- because the target is indeed small, or it's 'way off out yonder, or both little and distant.
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<br>The finest big-game scope I've ever used is a 1x Weaver K-1. A Weaver K-1.5 is almost as good. At the ranges and under the conditions where I've shot elk, caribou, and moose, I don't have to have those critters magnified to see 'em well enough to pick a spot and put a bullet there.
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<br>Prairie dogs at 500 yards and gophers at 300 present an altogether different set of considerations -- but I don't remember many other field situations where I needed either a very high magnification or a menu of several magnifications.
