Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Inexpensive scope for heavy recoil - Simmons?!

Question

Can an inexpensive scope survive on a rifle with heavy-ish recoil? Let's say "inexpensive" means less than ~$100. And recoil is 300 Win Mag level or higher from a medium weight rifle.

Purpose

Really just for the heck of it. I'm not suggesting anyone replace their Leupo 4x with a Simmons, but maybe someone would find this interesting or at least entertaining.

Simmons 4x32 ProDiamond

A few years ago I was looking for an inexpensive 4x with good eye relief. My interweb research kept leading to the 4x Simmons ProDiamond. That scope had somewhat of a following with 3-gunners, supposedly started by Benny Hill (3-gunner, not actor/comedian :D). Low recoil, but high round counts? And there's a sizable following for that scope with turkey hunters. High recoil, but low round count?

Anyway, I've tried killing two of them on two different .338 Win Mags, which are/were the hardest kickers I've owned since selling my .375 Ruger. First one I bought for ~$40 new, put it on a 77 with plywood stock. Second one I recently bought for $56 from Amazon and put it on a 700 XCR, also in .338 Win Mag.

Here's the plywood Ruger MKII in .338 Win Mag. Load was a 225 gr TTSX at 2900 fps. I had 150+ rounds with the scope, then sold the rifle to a co-worker who still uses that scope (not sure how many rounds though). Really not a ton of rounds, but a fair amount of recoil.

Now the 700 XCR in .338 Win Mag. Load is a 210 gr TTSX at 2915 fps, which is a good bit milder than the 225 gr load above but the 700 weighs noticeably less than the 77. This scope has 150 rounds through it, and several intentional drops from waist height to hard ground to see if the zero would shift. It didn't, as best as I could tell shooting this level of recoil in a light-ish rifle.

By no means do I claim this to be scientific evidence that a cheap scope is recoil proof. But, it might indicate that a low cost fixed power could have some merit depending on use, recoil level, round counts, etc. Obviously, one would need to try more samples, with higher round counts, 10-shot groups, etc. I figured these scope would have puked after 50 rounds, and maybe they will tomorrow, but I was somewhat surprised that they survived the 100 round mark. For some people, this could be a lifetime of shooting!

Frankly, I'm past my limit in terms of shooting good groups with the 700 and 210 TTSX load. If I had to wager, the flyer in the last photo was probably me and not the scope. That load has been tested with a SWFA 6x, and am sure it shoots well. The SuperCell pad on the 700 noodle stock is amazing at cushioning the recoil, but the rifle still comes back pretty fast and hard.

The image thru the Simmons 4x ProDiamond is sufficient for shooting purposes. Eye relief is good, and eyebox decent. Parallax seems minimal at the distances I checked. IIRC, the first one I had tracked decent for zeroing and held zero right away. This second one has erratic tracking while zeroing, but once settled it doesn't seem to move. It does need one shot fired after final zero for it to stay put. What do you want for $56 ?

The diamond reticle is 5 mils from crosshair to bottom tip of diamond, for anyone that is curious.

I've had a 4x32 ProDiamond on my Remington 870's 12-gauge slug barrel for years, and its always worked fine. If it works on a slug barrel, it will work on hard-kicking rifles.

Interesting, good post.

Maybe not a fair comparison, but my one and only Simmons self destructed on the second shot from a springer air rifle.

A Burris Mini 4X PA survived as did a Leupold Ultralight 3-9 EFR.

Jack

Thanks for the info, JB.

jt402 - was that a 4x ProDiamond?

Jason

In the 80s we ran a couple of Jap made 8x40 Tascos on a few rifles, 308s and 30-06s and a 6.5 Swede too. They never lost zero over thousands and thousands of rounds shot spotlighting / culling. The rifles got knocked around shooting from vehicles a lot too, as well as suffering the odd fall when I fell off my Honda XL250S chasing pigs!

One of them is still going now on a clunker 308 and still holds zero, even though the objective lens eventually came unglued and rotates within the tube :-D

Good post on the Simmons.

I always felt a light scope was best for a hard kicker. The lighter the better. For a real heavy kicker these days I think I would just go red dot.

It's why air rifle scopes are made completely different inside. Some recoil is from the "wrong" direction.

I hear you Bob. The Simmons 4x is listed at 9 ounces. I'm wondering if low mass is the reason that these lightweight fixed power scopes seem to survive, and not necessarily fancy internal construction. I highly doubt that the Leupo 3x20 Big Bore, Leupo 2.5x20, or Leupo 4x33 have anything different than their other FX or VX scopes in terms of construction. They are just lighter, but this is pure speculation.

The Simmons ProDiamond is supposed to have the fancy TrueZero erector spring, which is located at the aft end of the erector tube instead of pressing against the fore end of the tube body like the typical leaf spring. It's supposed to provide resistance to the erector tube & turrets, plus help with recoil. This was supposedly designed by the Meade engineers when they bought Simmons. Swaro has a somewhat similar design for their higher end scopes, IIRC. But, peering into the objective end of the ProD, I see a fat leaf spring





I'm with you on the red dot sight too. The same 700 in 338 Win Mag, but with Grayboe stock (instead of factory noodle stock) at 180 yards; 3-shots while getting zero dialed in:

Nothing wrong with that!

I have used a 3x24mm Japanese Simmons I bought years ago (1990?) on a couple of 44 Mags and a 475 Linebaugh with zero issues.

Very informative post. Thanks.

Has anyone used the 1.5-5x version of this? How'd it do?

I have three of the last Weaver 2.5X scopes made; the last version before they were discontinued. The have been used on relatively 'bumpy' rifles: 375 H&H, Ruger #1s in 45-70 and 9.3x74R, and a #1A in 270. Also a M77 in 375-350 Rem. They are my favorite 2.5X scope and seem to be quite reliable.

I've got 4 or 5 of the Bushnell 1.5 x 4.5 Shot gun scopes...

those are pretty decent scopes for toughness and utility...

yet have enough magnification that I've dropped a couple of deer or three
at distances in excess of 250 yds.....

also got three or four of the old Tasco 4 x 32 scopes.. they were pretty darn tough and durable
little puppies with plenty of clarity for my eyes....and never had those fail either...

Back in the mid 90's I had a Simmons 4x32 Shotgun scope, Plex model, on my Winchester 1300 slug gun. This gun is light, kicks like a mule, and is a fire breather with Rem. 3" Sluggers.

One afternoon while shooting at a friends house trying different loads, I saw something weird in the scope. There was this weird sound after that shot too. When we started to look, we found that I blew the front lens assembly completely out of the scope. The whole threaded assembly for the front portion of the scope was laying next the rest on the table. The treads were all rounded off. Simmons did stand behind everything, as they replaced the scope in about a 2 week turn around time frame.

I did use the replacement scope for a few more years without a problem. I replaced it with a Nikon ProStaff 2-7x 32mm Shotgun scope and it has held up well too.

The Simmons ProDiamond is supposed to have the fancy TrueZero erector spring, which is located at the aft end of the erector tube instead of pressing against the fore end of the tube body like the typical leaf spring. It's supposed to provide resistance to the erector tube & turrets, plus help with recoil. This was supposedly designed by the Meade engineers when they bought Simmons. Swaro has a somewhat similar design for their higher end scopes, IIRC. But, peering into the objective end of the ProD, I see a fat leaf spring





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I bought 3 of the MS Pro Hunter Series within a year after they first came out with that system. One 2-7x33 and two 6x40's. The 2-7x33 has stayed on a .45-70 GG for years. The two 6x40's get moved periodically. This year one is on a fairly heavy 7mm magnum M70 XTR and the other is on a 6lb Husqvarna .30-06. Al three scopes are lightweight,have a hydrophobic lens coatings,LOTS of eye relief,track true,and hold zero.

This is a good topic. I owned a Simmons 1.5-5 with the diamond plex reticle that I had mounted on an M1a. Scope performed well through many rounds fired. This is also the same model scope that Bennie Hill used on his three gun rifles in the past. To my knowledge, he did not use the fixed 4 X scope. He used these variable low magnification scopes to great success, before they were cool.