Anyone here have experience with the brushline or hardline series of scopes from Crimson Trace? They're not made in China - the cheaper ones are philippines made and I think some are Japanese made as well. I'm sort of wondering if they are similar to the discontinued Nikon scope line - I'll bet they're made in the same factory.

All the new Crimson Trace scopes are made in the Philippines as far as ive seen. There are 2 major optics plants in the Philippines also. Kenko and Scopro.

Correct. Broadly similar, depending on the model to some of the past offerings from Nikon, Sig and Vortex and made in the same place.

ILya

Bumping this thread. I’m interested if anyone here has experience with the Brushline and/or Hardline series of scopes.

Bumping this thread also. I just bought the 3-9x40 slugger model. Not going to put it on a slug gun tho. I read the specs online and the eye relief is 5" which is just insane. Once I saw it in person, the eye relief is exactly as advertised.

But do not take my word on scopes as "gospel." There are only a few things I care about on a hunting scope. 1: Will it hold a zero. 2: is the eye relief good. This scope does at least one of those so we will see how easily it will zero once I have a chance

Crimson Trace brand lasers are the best I have owned.

A year or so ago, I ordered one of the Crimson Trace Series 5 34mm 3-18x50 that Midway was clearancing out. The Series 5 were all Japanese scopes, and optically the glass was excellent...the rest of the scope was really not that impressive. Turrets were a little mushy for my tastes, but had a decent/audible "click"...but that wasn't the biggest issue. The biggest problem was the reticle. These were all FFP, so the reticle changed sizes through the magnification. At 3-7x, it was almost invisible....and basically unusable at less than 9x. It was simply too small, and even at 18x, the reticle still didn't fill the entire FOV. Not sure why they did it this way, but it was a big letdown. Illumination was decent, but not great. I think the initial price on these were around $1500, and Midway dropped them all the way to $600...even at $600, I wasn't impressed. I actually tried a second model, it was no better than the first.

The old ones made in Japan were made by the same company that makes scopes for Brownells and iirc some of the top tier Riton scopes. Might have been Japan Optical.

I put a brush line 3x9x40 on the nephew’s 6.5 CM rifle. Got himself a couple of deer with it this year.
Where he hunts is woods with some open spots. So a long shot for him is about 100yds, the scope has worked great for that type of hunting.
At the range he used the bdc to reach out to 500yds on 12” gongs. Bdc’s we’re close but he did have to do a little hold over to hit at 400-500yds.
He’s shot about 100rds using the scope, so far he’s had no issues and likes it.

I bought a 3-9x40 Brushline at closeout from Academy with intentions to put it on the shelf for the next project. A young family member needed a scope for his .243, so there it went. I liked what I saw for the money and it is performing fine for the kid.