Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics What Scope for .270 WSM ?

Open-country Western hunting rifle for 600 yards and under. Steel to 800 yards. Mostly 140-150gr bullets out of a 24” .270 WSM.

No Nightforce, SWFA or other tactical-style scopes. Holdover reticles are OK. So are sensibly-sized turrets.

Budget is < $700.00 firm. What do you suggest? Why?

Why no Nightforce or SS scopes? Seems you hamstrung your self before your started trying to walk.

My son has a Leopold VX2 3-9X40, duplex, for his. Works!

You might look at the Swarovski with the BRH reticle. It allows you to match your ammo to the holdover points.

Nightforce makes the SHV line, good glass (read not great, but better than most everything but Alpha), great durability, capped turrets on most models. Starting at about $800 bucks for a 3-10X.

I just put a used 4-14x50 meopta Meopro aon my 300WSM, traded out a nice Vortex razor (I was borrowing) and I'm every bit as impressed with this glass. I gave $500 for it I think.

I have a 20 power scope but decided I didn't need that much on this rifle. I'm comfortable with it to 600 yards.

Nothing like stating a "need" and then immeadiately knocking out the only scopes that will actually work....

Leupold VX-3 4.5-14x40 or 50!

Leica ER-5 3-15x56 with the Magnum Ballistic Reticle 51074 for 699 bucks at Camerland.

I don’t even like 50mm objectives but I’d jump on this if it were a 50mm. I just don’t know if I can do it at 56mm, though. I don’t think I can force myself to purchase a set of “high” rings, let alone “extra high.” Might cause a stroke.

LOL, it's a long scope w/ good eye relief, your WSM probably has a factory contour barrel, it wont be that high, or, you could just go grab the Leica 3-10x50 for a hundred + bucks less.

They're a chitload of scope for the money.

I run Bushnell 4.5x30 6500 Elites on my 270WSM, 300RUM, AR15 in 223, and as soon as I finish my AR10 in 6.5Creedmore it will wear one also.. As I have stated before Washington State game dept.in its great wisdom has decided that we may only hunt 3pts or better for deer and Elk must be a spike, unless we have a special branched antler tag. So I use a high magnification scope to look for that third point or lack thereof before chasing it all over the countryside. I also like the scope for long range shooting at targets, it allows me to be more precise in where I place the cross hairs on the target. I also have a couple Zeiss HD5s in 5x25, but they do not work very well in cold weather.

Most people today are way "over-scoped' as far as magnification goes. I have found that shooters do better with magnification of 6X and lower on game, even when the shots are long
the image may look bigger through high magnification, but the game animal is the same size and so is the bullet.
A larger field of view and a brighter image is more important (by far) then high magnification.

Mine wears a Conquest 4.5-14x44. Had a MeoStar 4-12x40 on it but wanted a little more magnification.

We discussed it over here and came up with a couple of ideas. We then ran it past our mfg reps to get their input. Here's what we would suggest:

From our Hawke Rep:
The Frontier 30 SF 5-30x50 LR Dot#18230. The reticle will give the correct aiming points on double the magnification seen on the chart from yesterday’s meeting letting him see and shoot to 700 yards without turning turrets. It’s slightly over the budget but meets all of the other requirements.
The AirMax 30 in a 6-24 is in the budget but the customer will have to learn MilDot reticle systems.

In the Athlon line you may want to take a peek at the Midas BTR series. These are available in both MIL and MOA options with different reticles. HD glass so good optics. It is a SFP scope. If you prefer FFP look at their Helos line.

If we can answer anything for you please give a call, 516-217-1000

I have a 4.5x14x50 Leupold CDS on mine.

Hubble Hubble

Mine wears a 2-8 Leupold and works fine for my edge feather weight version at about 7 lbs. If I were to do it over I might go CDS or German #4. Or my ultimate would be the #4 with dots but Leupold won't do it.

My .270 WSM wears a Leupold VX3 2.5-8x. I have in the past had a 3.5-10x CDS scope on it, but found that the trajectory with a 130 gr. E-Tip, at 3300 fps, is so flat that wearing the larger, heavier scope was simply unnecessary.

Bushnell LRHS 3-12x44