Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics So What's the Diff?

Most of these rude people on this forum would NEVER say anything like this in person...

Keyboard Cowboys...

Yeah because you and Baby Huey would kick my ass.

LOL

What is “legal hunting” for you? Different people have different rules, depending on where and what they’re hunting.

The difference is YOU can't tell the difference. You demands are low. I'm much like you, 75 set in my ways, frugal, don't turn turrets, don't think I need the capabilities shoot game in the next county. Most scopes in the lower price range will do a good job for you.

I'm a coyote hunter, more than avid, I usually kill coyotes in five states some years. Most of my coyote rifles shoot flat enough to hold on fur to 300 yards and if they don't they don't go out in country that offers shots that long. $500 would be a very expensive scope for me in fact I don't think I've ever spent that much on one. I've never lost a coyote due to having a low cost scope on the rifle, my Konus 1.5-6x42 works just as well as my Meopta 1.5-6x42. In 55yrs of shooting scopes I've only broken one scope and at the time it was a pretty good American made scope, it was repaired and has been on one of my rifles for 30 yrs now.

Legal hunting is not interpretive, it is set by the state. He stated what is legal in his state.

Back in the day, you could buy a very good expensive scope and easily switch it between rifles.

Still works today although fails the "Tactical test".

Where was this stated? I do not see it.

60% of the time he kills them every time...

That percentage might be high or low depending on what your definition of kill is. Ones I see or ones I shoot at.

Only saw two this day

Nice.

"It's made with bits of real Panther, so you know it's good."

not to derail the thread-is that a vintage TW200?

I guess it is going to come down to how good is good enough for an individual. I worked with a guy who told me the story about not being able to sort a deer out of the background with his bargain scope when he could see it with his normal vision.

Then there is my own example of sitting on a hillside seeing a nice buck at very last light feeding its way along on the far hillside. I had a 2.5-8x36 Leupold Vari-X lll on a .308 and shot when he was broadside. One shot and gone without a trace of a hit. The next day on the same hillside I had my 1.5-6x42 Zeiss 30mm Diavari on my 7mm-08 and looking at that same hillside where the deer was and I said to myself “What were you thinking?” There was a wall of brush that a bullet could deflect on. Optical resolution matters. That Leupold is on a seldom used .22 now.

I will only comment that there's far less optical difference between rifle scopes today than even 25-30 years ago, due to more companies using fully multi-coated optics. When I started hunting, some popular and supposedly quality American-made scopes didn't even have coated lenses!

I know some of this due to research conducted while writing about optics for the past 30+ years, including long talks with various people in the industry, often during factory visits both in the U.S. and Europe. But I also test scope optics far more formally than just looking through 'em during midday or even dusk. Some very inexpensive scopes (but not all) have optics very similar to some Euro-scopes costing several times as much.

Erich can tell you more but it's a Van Van.

Awesome bikes. I love when he posts pics of it in use. (That's what she said)

No offense but if you "upgraded" to a Bushnell Elite, Bushnell Trophy 4-12X40 and Bushnell Banner 3-9X40 you definitely haven't looked through quality glass, especially in low light.

He's not after "quality glass". He's after good enough for his job. What's wrong with that?

Kentucky's rule is a half-hour before sunrise to a half-hour after sunset.

Thank you. That's what most states use, but some are different. South Carolina, where I hunt, allows for 1 hr before till one hour after. That is a big difference and requires much more from the optics to take full advantage of that time. There are also people who hunt hogs and coyotes at midnight. That is often done with thermal scopes, but can be accomplished with moonlight on a traditional scope--these things can tax a scope even more. If what you have works for you, then there's no reason to change.

I haven’t shot that many deer at absolute first light, but one that comes to mind was on a heavy overcast morning under a heavy hemlock canopy. Legal light by my watch, but near dark under those trees. The only way I could shoot that one was to hold my scope up to the sky and follow that too fine a crosshair down to the deer. I ordered a heavy Duplex and used ffp scopes after that. We don’t get that many shot opportunities here on public land, so being prepared with better than okay equipment has worked well.

I've gone from absolute mud at dusk and dawn to being able to acquire targets well before and after legal hunting.

Windfall's situation was where I started, or even worse. That's all gone now. I can hunt right up to the ends of legal hunting without hindrance. What amazes me is that I really can't see a difference between the Elite, the Trophy, or the Banners. I'm sure there probably is.

Another problem that got solved by migrating to the Banner scopes was shooting up-sun. I have one stand in particular where I had to deal with the sun playing hell with my sight picture. Internal reflections in my scopes made about 10 degs of woods a nogo zone on sunny days for the better part of 20 seasons. This past fall, I took my buck in pretty much the center of that nogo zone. In the past, it would have been a curtain of yellow haze. I've had that Banner scope mounted on my Savage 99 for several years now. This was the first decent shot I've taken with it.

The other thing that amazes me is how they stand up to other scopes. I've been looking through other folks' glass over the years-- Leupold, Nikon, Burris, etc. Maybe it's my tired, old eyes, but the lowly Banners seem to compare well with those as well.

As far as ruggedness, I've had only one Banner fail. That was a scope that I purchased in the early 90's--well older than the current crop. A freak gust of wind tore the rifle off the rifle rack on the front porch and it clattered down about 5 feet to the concrete. Bushnell wanted enough money to fix it that I just replaced it with another scope. That Banner, btw, was nothing like the half-dozen I have mounted on rifles currently. It had miserable low-light capabilities.

I'm am not trying to sell folks on Bushnell Banner scopes. That would be pissing into the wind. Rather, I'm just trying to understand better what I'm missing.

Shaman, you are missing out on bragging rights.