Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Rifle scope $$$

Always a pleasure to "meet" and assist the members here. Give a call, 516-217-1000, to discuss options

For a hunting rig and a grand, I'd buy a Tikka T3 Lite in .7-08 or 6.5 Creed and top it with a SWFA 10x...

at my age $1000.00 ain`t enough to purchase a good rifle ,mnts. and a excellent scope more like $2500.00 for a good hunting rifle with a scope mounted. don`t sell yourself short on your hunting rifle buy the best you can afford or get a part time job for a great rifle. good luck,Pete53

You tell em Pete...

It would be tough to have a better set-up than that right there even if you had some extra coin to add to it. You could hunt a lot of critters with that combo!

I'll probably spend between 3 and 5 hundred on the scope, but probably not when I buy the rifle.

I always have one or two center fire rifle scopes in stock, and only buy additional scopes when they are on some kind of yearly sale.

Willingness to wait on legitimate sales will reduce to scope cost by between 30 to 40%.

Either I'm way overspent on rifles or way underspent on scopes. I don't feel limited by shooting various flavors of Leupold, Burris, and Nikons.

$700 rifles with $300 scopes seems to be working fine for me. $1500 rifles with $300 scopes also work fine for me.

Only if you are into cheap rifles.

Couldn't agree more with your philosophy and results. (for set-and-forget-and-go-hunting scopes)

T3, SM, SWFA = easy.

$142 2 weeks ago from Doug. Shop his site.

There's simply nothing in NA that I couldn't or wouldn't chase with a 1k setup.

To answer the OP's question, given this budget, I'd be inclined to go 40-45% on the glass.

I'm not. I like Blaser, Steyr Scout, Volquartsen, Cooper, etc. Same advice.

I have scopes that cost more than some of my rifles.

Never did understand the correlation between rifle cost and scope cost. And even though I and most of the looneys on this site like quality rifles and optics, I never correlate cost of a rifle with how well it hunts unless it is really a POS... I wouldn't have any qualms about hunting anything in North America or Africa with a Remington ADL package rifle, toss the scope, and mount a used Leupold 3-9 x 40 on it- wood or plastic stock. You could get into something like that for around $750 most of the time and it would be as reliable as most $2500 rifles ... wanting is much different from needing, IMO.....

You can get a very serviceable scope for that money.

I did a similar setup. Kimber hunter with a leupold 2.5-8

I'd probably spend it all on a rifle and use a scope I already have.

This is about on the money.

I’d buy a nice L-61 Sako for 650-700, then buy a Leupold 4.5x14. That’s about what I have in these, some less than a 1000. Bought an early L-61 30-06 on GunBroker for 400.00 not long ago.

If buying used, I like hanco's advise given above. I love my Sako/leupold combo. If buying new, You can't go wrong with a Tikka T3 lite and a good used Leupold. Should be able to get either rig in your price range and they are proven accurate shooters.