Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics SWFA 3-9 HD or 3-15

Just to be clear, are you accusing me of group think? I was promoting FFP since the day I learned such a thing existed.

On most hunting scopes being SFP in the olden days: only in the US and, weirdly, a lot of it was due to US hunters having legal light limits. In Europe, FFP was a lot more common mostly because they needed better reticle visiblity for night hunting. A ton of old SFP hunting scopes have reticles that are too thin for low light use, but they worked great when sighting in at 100 yards, so that's what people wanted. Why do you think Leupold always had standard duplex and heavy duplex? Heavy duplex was mostly for people who actually use their scopes, while thin duplex was for people who show off their 100 yard groups.

On magnification: we are in full agreement. An average hunter can't tell his ass from an elbow as far as scopes go most of the time, so he assume bigger is better. I field these question every day. People send me e-mail with questions whether their 6-24x scope is enough magnificaiton to shoot a deer inside of 100 yards. This happens often enough that I have several prepared answers I can copy and past.

Both designs do have tradeoffs and we disagree where those tradeoffs are. To me, SFP is at its best in blister pack scopes because they are cheaper to make and in high magnification static target scopes. For just about everything else I am firmly in the FFP camp.

Appropriate reticle illumination is most certainly the way the industry is going, whether you like it or not. Battery issues are nicely resolved with auto shutoff features and more efficient illumination. You may not like it, but that is where things are going. For example, in the excellent Blaser 1-7x28 scope I tested not long ago the reticle is DESIGNED to virtually disappear on 1x, so that the large illuminated dot looks like a reflex sight with no distractions. It is not a tactical scope. They want that 1x performance for driven hunts and stuff like that.

On current FFP scopes that are designed for good low power reticle visbility without illumination: there aren't that many because it is not a design goal for all that many. Off the top of my head, here are the ones I can come up with: SWFA 3-9x42, Bushnell LRHS with G2 reticle, March 3-24x52 and 3-24x42 with several reticles, higher mag Blaser Infinity scopes, Meopta Meostar 3-12x56, Burris Veracity, several S&B scopes.

More on low light use: when things slow down in low light, for a lot of people I know, it is pretty common to bump magnification up a bit to 5-6x or so where there is a good compromise between magnification and exit pupil. It seems like with a scope like SWFA 3-9x42, 3.5x where the sight tunneling goes away is most commonly used in decent light where you might be presented with a quick shot offhand. At least, that's how I tend to use it. For most other situations I tend to bump up magnification a little bit with 6x being very common. The scope goes on 9x for sighting in and, once in a while, when I really have time to shoot.

ILya

I can't even finish this thread. I'm so glad I actually listened to a couple VERY serious hunters and shooters (hint several have posted in this thread) and bought a couple SWFA 6x and 3-9's with the mil-quad reticle. Had it not been for their experience I would have NEVER, EVER bought what I thought was a garbage scope brand. I didn't know what I didn't know.

The 3-9 is excellent if you actually get out and shoot with it at various ranges, so is the 6X. Get out of the parking lot, spend day learning the scope, its adjustments, your drops, etc and shoot at various distances. Trust me you will be sold. These scopes took me from a very average shooter who thought 350 yards was a stretch to comfortably ringing steel at 838 yards (farthest my range goes). I actually favor the 6X over the 2-9, and didn't care at all for the 3-15. Shooting these SWFA scopes also made me realize I was using magnification as a crutch.

The thing I like about these scopes is they have just made hunting and shooting easy for me. Meaning I don't need to think about scopes. They just work. I know they work. They are proven, easy to use, easy to shoot at distance with, repeatable. Anymore I get burned out thinking about gear all the time and whats better, or should I switch blah blah blah. I couldn't even tell you what all the new scopes are because I don't care. I'm not competing, I'm not in the military anymore, I just like to hunt.

Well said.