Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics FFP and SFP Optics

This is progress.

Just for giggles I looked at various animals around my house with the Athlon Helos at 9x to stimulate a traditional U.S. hunting scope. My neighbors horse at slightly less than 200 yards away where a 150 gr jsp .308 would need roughly half a mil of hold over and half a mil of wind hold at 10mph with a 100 yard zero, the horse took up roughly half the scope view. I could see the whole horse and several feet around him.

That is where most milradian reticles start. Less range would need less holds so reducing the magnification wouldn't really hurt anything.

Now if I were looking through a 20x scope and I needed it to be 9x to have that view, yes I would want to have a ffp scope, but I personally don't feel a 9x sfp scope would be any issue hunting as at max magnification and at a distance where the reticle subtensions become useful I can use the reticle at full mag while at closer distances with lower magnification, it isn't needed.

But I am definitely not an expert and I am open to learning.

Agreed. SFP optics have their place but a good quality FFP reticle is an incredibly versatile tool for the majority of what I do. Quick up close and accurate as you strech out the range. It also makes the mid range much more practical than a SFP where you're more likely to only use min and max power....

Some of my FFP scopes that will die deerless:

Schmidt Bender 3-20x50 34mm PM II
USO 1.8-10x37 Ergo Upgrade MOA scale type 1 reticle
IOR 2x10x42


Some of my clothes I will not wear out:
Carhart extra large rain jacket.

You obviously don’t own a FFP scope. The effect is exactly the opposite of what you state.

Too big or too small?

Exactly correct. I couldn't believe what I was reading over on page one and no one seemed to pick up on it. I really like my 1st focal plane 1.5-6x42 Zeiss Euro scope for it's correct reticle size for a close range whitetail scope. My Swarovski FFP 2.5-10x42 reticle appears too large up at 10x even though it covers the same amount that it does down at 2.5x.

Say that you are going to shoot a broadside deer at last legal light. Do you want to shoot it with your SFP variable scope set to the lowest power? I don't and turning a FFP scope to a higher power makes the reticle stand out boldly against the target. Those European guys get to hunt later in the evening than we do and those high end Euro scope manufacturers know something about building scopes that work well in that environment.

I am fine shooting SFP in any light and at any distance.

Europeans tend to hunt in very controlled situations.

Anything will work.

Sure as hell don't - it's not for me - at all. Sorry, I forgot which way the figgin reticle went - it was annoying as hell at both ends of the power range. I have tried it on 2 different scopes one a cheap Hawke and the other a Quigley. Pretty much both ends of the price / quality range and hated them both.

The bottom-line is that it is an individual preference when it comes to hunters, it really makes no key difference in terms of missing a shot or not. For ultra-precision long-distance shooting such as competition and sniping where hold-over versus dialing can be super important, I would think the FFP would become a technical choice, not one based on preference as there is too much in favor for the FFP in this scenario.