Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders Best Muzzleloader Scope?

Folks -

I’m new to muzzleloader shooting and want to put a good scope on a Remington Ultimate .50 cal. muzzleloader so I can shoot further. Is there one with graduations for longer yardage? Is there one to dial for longer yardage that is made for muzzleloader use? Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for any/all information.

Any reliable scope should work just fine for either method. You'll need to actually shoot at the ranges you want to cover to be certain anyway.

I put an ordinary Burris FF2 3-9 with Ballistic Plex on my new Knight. Gonna zero at 100, then check at 200 to see how close the actual drop is to the figures generated by the Nosler app on my phone. Very unlikely such a shot will ever be presented to me, but it'll be interesting to see if it's practical. For certain, if I can't pull it off with regularity on the range, I have no business trying it on a live critter, just as with anything else.

My CVA Optima wears a Bushnell scope featuring 1.5 - 4.5X settings. It has met my needs quite well for many years; most of my shots at deer are approx 75 yards or so.

Sherwood

My CVA optima has a Leupold 6x42 LRD, Its basically a 20yd-200yd gun and so any scope that would work for a rifle in that application ( which cover 90% of all whitetail hunting) is going to work pretty well. if you use a ballistic recital you will need to do just a bit of figuring to work out the ranges/drops for the muzzle loader but that takes all of five mnutes.

Leupold Ultimate Slam or duplex with the CDS option. There are far better scopes and the first thing that comes to mind is one that can handle the harsh recoil of the 200gr loads of the new Rem700UML. Dont skimp on base or rings either. Pay close attention to eye relief. Harder kickers can suck if your eye relief is too short. Whatever you get its not gunna be cheap for good tough glass plus nice rail/rings.

Do yourself a favor. Just grab a Nighforce SHV or better now and save yourself the grief later. Murphy SS base and Seekins rings.

Meopta Optika6 with DNZ game reaper mount . Or the new Optika5 is supposed to be out this summer. I have a Optika6 on my Smokeless muzzleloader and I love it . Don't go to cheap . I've have destroyed many run of the mill scopes and cheap mounts on hard kicking muzzleloaders. .

Interested in seeing reviews on the Optika5s and the new Burris Sig HD lineup too. If you cant spend a grand the SWFA SS scopes are tough and track well. You will still be spending about $700-750 for them. I think Sightron has 1-2 in that price range and they hold up good.

Isn't the only difference in a muzzle loader scope designated as such that the parallax is set at 50 yards.Quoting what someone posted quite some time back.

Maybe long ago but ml scopes like the Nikon Omega have been 100y parallax for a quite some time. The RUML is capable of 200y+ shots anyway but to make good use of it you will need a scope that tracks well and handles recoil. Unless you move upto the HD5 or 6 series, newer Leupolds are not that great in either department. On a budget i would look at Sightron S-TACs. Somewhat more affordable, nice glass and they track well.
https://www.opticsplanet.com/sightron-s-tac-30mm-3-16x42-riflescope.html
https://sightronusa.com/product/s-tac3-16x42/

I've been very happy with a Bushnell Banner 3-9x40mm on my LHR Redemption. It easily gets out to 200, and it's been on for 3 seasons without a hitch.

How about one of these?



-Please excuse my twisted sense of humor-

If it's made by Leupold it will hold up. By looking through the scope @ 100 yds you can easily determine the subtention of the reticle at that yardage. This is the optical distance from the actual crosshair, to the point (literally), where the crosshair thickens.

For example: My 6.5X20X40 subtends 1 1/2" @ 100 yds, 3" @ 200yds, 6" @ 300 yds etc.
All you need to do now, is go to Hornadys ballistic calculater, enter you information, and print out the "cheat sheet" that you can tape to your stock.

I've used this system for over 40 years very successfully on groundhogs to deer, and with an adjustable objective you can easily eliminate parralax. It also lets you purchase the best performing scope the budget allows for without compromise.

Good luck,I hope this helps out.

Ive seen plenty of harder kicking muzzleloaders trash newer Leupold scopes. Even some of the HDs got beat up but rarely. That RUML is a beast with full power 200gr loads. 375H&H type recoil or worse.

You want a good tough sub $500 scope with great glass and good tracking? I found this Zeiss which gets great reviews from guys shooting hard kicking smokeless builds. These are around $700 or more anywhere else.
https://www.classicfirearms.com/zeiss-conquest-v4-3-12-44-zbr1-reticle/

I agree. I've never had any problems with the Leupolds I've used on the various muzzle loaders or magnum center fire rifles I've owned. When I had a Savage 110ML, I shot some brutally recoiling loads. Nikon, Leupold, Burris, etc. should serve you just fine.

I've had several of the Leupold Shotgun/ML 2-7 scopes and never had an issue with any of them. The last is mounted on a Knight Ultra Lite, a pretty lively piece, and has withstood at least a couple hundred rounds. Don't know if these were built any tougher to take shotgun recoil or not. That one was purcahsed in 2014, IIRC. Don't know how the newer ones do.

I believe the only difference is that the shotgun/muzzleloader scope has a closer parallax setting. I used one on a crossbow for awhile after self adjusting the parallax down to 30 yards, but I've since moved it to a rifle and plan to adjust the parallax to 150 or so.

Pretty sure they're simply V-whatever-1s with heavy duplex reticles. The first two were friction-knobbers, my preference in set and forget. Once zero is chased down and hog-tied, they seem to keep it.

Don't believe I ever touched the knobs on the last one after zeroing either.