Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Need a light weight low light scope.

Optics are so much better than they were just 20 years ago. Wal Mart special scope names, in particular Bushnell, now have some really great scopes - easy to zero, maintains zero, returns to zero, adjustments are accurate and repeatable and the glass on almost all scopes offered looks great in the daylight. Small differences, costing us thousands of dollars more to obtain, may not amount to anything more than 5 to 10 minutes of extra shooting time at dawn and dusk.

308 -
You owe it to yourself to look through a 6 x 42 Schmidt Bender. Doug has a sweet deal on a custom batch coming in from Germany. If you do enough searching S&Bs Hungary factory made are lower cost but I prefer the German made.

Have you looked at a 8x56 Docter? With a illuminated reticle, it weighs 550 grams.

DryPowder, yes I did. On their own website and most websites that sell them, the eye relief spec. I finally found a site that gave the eye relief and now I know why it is not listed on most sites. For the 8x56 and many other Docter scopes, the eye relief is 3". That's a no-go. All else is very good but the 3" eye relief just doesn't cut it for me. That scope was on my short list until I found that out. RJ

My Leupold VX-6 2-12 fire dot is a vast improvement in low light from the VX-3's and VX-III's I had been using. So much that I picked up two more! I agree the fire dot is a handy feature.

I have a 1-6 VX6 mounted on 3 hunting rifles. They are pretty amazing in low light. They are the brightest scopes I own. They are a huge difference over a VX3 to my eyes.

Some are 80mm, which is not surprising for a european scope. I believe the V6's are 95mm.

With 40mm objective scopes, you should really give a close look to Vortex Razor HD LH 2-10x40. It is a really nice design.

If you are having problems with reticle visibility, your best bet is an illuminated reticle design. There are not that many of these that are light weight, with Leupold doing some good things there, particularly in the VX-5HD line-up. 2-10x42 is very nice with a good reticle illumination in FIreDot guise. In terms of optics overall, I think I like Razor HD LH a litle more though.

Another interesting option Is Delta Titanium 1.5-9x45. The reticle is very visible and illumination is done well. I have not spent too much time with it yet, but I like what I am seeing so far. It may be a touch heavy for you, but it is a nice scope.

ILya

I don’t have that exact scope, but I do have a Leupold VX-R 3-9x40 with the Ballistic Firedot reticle (their item number 111236). I got it because I wanted an illuminated reticles for hunting in western Washington after I went on the hunt described here: https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/11623852/First_Elk,_First_Roosevelt

This scope has a 30mm tube, actual magnification is 3.3x-8.6x, and the optical quality, smoothness of operation, and precision are typical for Leupold.

Reticle dimensions are about right for a hunting scope designed for use in low light. The dot is 1 MOA at 8.6x and 2.5 MOA at 3.3x. It appears as a short red vertical line, not as a circle or square. It’s bright enough to see in daylight on low settings. I wear glasses and I have astigmatism so the dot flares on the brighter settings. This is not a flaw in the scope; reducing the brightness fixes it. It’s hard to find truly dark situations around here since I’m in a major West Coast city, but the dimmest settings would probably be fine in very low light.
• The horizontal crosswire tapers from a fairly heavy base to the same thickness as the dot, which could pose a challenge for hitting very small targets past about 100 yards.
• The circle’s interior diameter is 4.4 MOA at 9x.
• The circle’s line width is 0.4 MOA at 9x.
• The distance from the dot to the top of the circle is 2.19 MOA at 9x.
• The distance from the dot to the bottom of the circle is 2.19 MOA at 9x.
• The distance from the dot to the middle hash mark is 4.8 MOA at 9x.
• The distance from the dot to the lowest hash mark is 7.82 MOA at 9x.

I tested this scope on a couple of rifles including a Tikka 30-06. The only ammo I had in bulk was Greek DCM ammo loaded for the M-1 Garand, but it averages 1.3 MOA in this rifle and shot better than I expected all the way out to 400m (437 yards). With this load, the bottom of the circle worked as a POA at 300m (328 yards), and POI was just barely below the middle hash mark at 400m. It was easy to get hits on 6” steel targets at both ranges, even when the barrel got hot—I even had no trouble hitting a gong partially concealed in the grass—but I couldn’t hit anything beyond that. This is not the fault of the scope or the ammo, but of the shooter. I need to firm up my zero and shoot some paper between 400 and 500m to figure out the drops.

Conclusions
• The Leupold VX-R 3-9x40 is a good scope. I wanted an illuminated reticle and some ranging ability, which I got just not in the manner that Leupold implied or advertised. That said, I respect the Ballistic Firedot’s ranging properties. I still haven’t figured out the 500m holdover, but I’ll get there.
• I’ll hunt with the power ring at the low end. If I have time to assume a solid position for a long shot, then I’ll push it to the high end. I’ve hunted with 4x scopes for nearly 40 years, including a lot of close fast shots in the dripping forests of western Washington and very long shots in open country on the Edwards Plateau in Texas. I just don’t see using the middle of the range much.
• The Ballistic Firedot is a decent general-purpose reticle once you figure it out and get the right zero. Most experienced shooters would choose something more versatile (like the Leupold TMOA) for regular use in very open country or anywhere that the wind is a problem.

The 3-9x50 might be better for really low light, but I can't say from experience.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have questions.


Okie John

Hi Ron,

Horia has that older Zeiss 6x42 with a German 1 that came on that .243. The glass was still was nice to my eyes and that reticle might not disappear on you ... How does that look to your eyes?

When I lived in Sweden a lot of our boar hunting from stand was done at night with a Zeiss Diavari(?) 1.5-6x42 illuminated. It was a nice fit on the K95 in 6.5x55 and Heym SR30 in 30-06. We took many pigs in the pitch black of early winter before the snows came. Many a roebucks also fell in those last few minutes where lesser scopes or non-illuminated models would have not performed as well.

For the money I think the mentioned VXR might be a safe bet but I would personally look for second hand - higher end illuminated Euro glass.