Scope Advice!

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Wrangler95
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Scope Advice!

Unread postby Wrangler95 » Fri Feb 11, 2022 12:17 pm

Would like your opinion on what magnification would be best on a varmint rifle?Thanks


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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby KRONIIK » Fri Feb 11, 2022 3:23 pm

Wrangler95 wrote:Would like your opinion on what magnification would be best on a varmint rifle?Thanks


What caliber rifle and what sort of varmints, mostly?

(I'd recommend a different type of scope for a heavy twelve-pound .22-250 used for shooting prarie dogs than I might for a seven-pound .243 for hunting coyotes on the go, for example...)
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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby Lockdown » Fri Feb 11, 2022 3:50 pm

KRONIIK wrote:
Wrangler95 wrote:Would like your opinion on what magnification would be best on a varmint rifle?Thanks


What caliber rifle and what sort of varmints, mostly?

(I'd recommend a different type of scope for a heavy twelve-pound .22-250 used for shooting prarie dogs than I might for a seven-pound .243 for hunting coyotes on the go, for example...)


Shooting distance will factor in as well. No need to pay for high magnification if you’re not planning on shooting past 350-400 yards.
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seazofcheeze
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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby seazofcheeze » Fri Feb 11, 2022 4:05 pm

Lockdown wrote:
KRONIIK wrote:
Wrangler95 wrote:Would like your opinion on what magnification would be best on a varmint rifle?Thanks


What caliber rifle and what sort of varmints, mostly?

(I'd recommend a different type of scope for a heavy twelve-pound .22-250 used for shooting prarie dogs than I might for a seven-pound .243 for hunting coyotes on the go, for example...)


Shooting distance will factor in as well. No need to pay for high magnification if you’re not planning on shooting past 350-400 yards.


Respectfully disagree on this if by varmint, you mean woodchuck or smaller. I'd want, at minimum, a scope with 15x magnification. Even at 150-200 yards, a prairie dog can get lost in the reticle of a 9x scope. If you will be shooting smaller varmints regularly, something in the 20x or greater max magnification range is even better. With that said, high magnification scopes suffer when mirage is bad, and cheaper high magnification scopes usually have bad eyeboxes and a lot of scope shadowing, so there can be diminishing returns. However, you can always turn a 20x down to decrease mirage, hard to turn a 9x max magnification up any more. I also like something with a "christmas tree" style reticle, where you have elevation hash marks and has marks or dots (or both) for wind holds etched into the reticle (example pic below). It seems like the wind is ALWAYS blowing in Montana, and having a distinct reference in the reticle to adjust follow-up shots at longer range targets is huge.

Lots of great scopes out there and your budget will probably dictate the rest.

Xmas Tree Reticle.PNG
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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby Lockdown » Fri Feb 11, 2022 4:26 pm

seazofcheeze wrote:
Lockdown wrote:
KRONIIK wrote:
Wrangler95 wrote:Would like your opinion on what magnification would be best on a varmint rifle?Thanks


What caliber rifle and what sort of varmints, mostly?

(I'd recommend a different type of scope for a heavy twelve-pound .22-250 used for shooting prarie dogs than I might for a seven-pound .243 for hunting coyotes on the go, for example...)


Shooting distance will factor in as well. No need to pay for high magnification if you’re not planning on shooting past 350-400 yards.


Respectfully disagree on this if by varmint, you mean woodchuck or smaller. I'd want, at minimum, a scope with 15x magnification. Even at 150-200 yards, a prairie dog can get lost in the reticle of a 9x scope. If you will be shooting smaller varmints regularly, something in the 20x or greater max magnification range is even better. With that said, high magnification scopes suffer when mirage is bad, and cheaper high magnification scopes usually have bad eyeboxes and a lot of scope shadowing, so there can be diminishing returns. However, you can always turn a 20x down to decrease mirage, hard to turn a 9x max magnification up any more. I also like something with a "christmas tree" style reticle, where you have elevation hash marks and has marks or dots (or both) for wind holds etched into the reticle (example pic below). It seems like the wind is ALWAYS blowing in Montana, and having a distinct reference in the reticle to adjust follow-up shots at longer range targets is huge.

Lots of great scopes out there and your budget will probably dictate the rest.

Xmas Tree Reticle.PNG


For whatever reason my mind went to coyotes. You would be right if youre shooting p-dogs and such. More magnification is definitely an advantage.

That said, I have killed a prairie dog at 427 yards with a .223 and a 3x9 scope. ;) my buddy bested me with a 450 yarder shortly after that. He has a 22-250 with a 4x14.

So depending on what you’re doing you don’t necessarily need a 20 or 24 power scope. More zoom does mean more accuracy though. Seaz is not wrong about that.
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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby Lockdown » Fri Feb 11, 2022 4:40 pm

Here’s what I can tell you about optics. You get what you pay for. So save up and get the scope you truly want. Especially if it’s got a lifetime warranty (Leupold fan here) it’s a one time purchase that will last you forever.

I’m pretty frugal when it comes to a lot of things, but I don’t skimp on optics.
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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby BRoth82 » Sat Feb 12, 2022 1:20 am

Great questions above, I would add my experience coyote hunting.

For my bolt gun I run a 4-12x44 I used it for daytime shooting and on a full moon night when there is snow. I'd look more at the size of the outlet objective than magnification if using it at night.

That said I did run a Sightmark Wraith day/night scope on one of my guns as well. It has a day time more and night vision, with the night vision your IR illuminator is everything, mine I could easily see a coyote at 300 yards. A buddy of mine ran an ATN and liked that as well.
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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby KRONIIK » Sat Feb 12, 2022 1:26 am

Lockdown wrote:
seazofcheeze wrote:
Lockdown wrote:
KRONIIK wrote:
Wrangler95 wrote:Would like your opinion on what magnification would be best on a varmint rifle?Thanks


What caliber rifle and what sort of varmints, mostly?

(I'd recommend a different type of scope for a heavy twelve-pound .22-250 used for shooting prarie dogs than I might for a seven-pound .243 for hunting coyotes on the go, for example...)


Shooting distance will factor in as well. No need to pay for high magnification if you’re not planning on shooting past 350-400 yards.


Respectfully disagree on this if by varmint, you mean woodchuck or smaller. I'd want, at minimum, a scope with 15x magnification. Even at 150-200 yards, a prairie dog can get lost in the reticle of a 9x scope. If you will be shooting smaller varmints regularly, something in the 20x or greater max magnification range is even better. With that said, high magnification scopes suffer when mirage is bad, and cheaper high magnification scopes usually have bad eyeboxes and a lot of scope shadowing, so there can be diminishing returns. However, you can always turn a 20x down to decrease mirage, hard to turn a 9x max magnification up any more. I also like something with a "christmas tree" style reticle, where you have elevation hash marks and has marks or dots (or both) for wind holds etched into the reticle (example pic below). It seems like the wind is ALWAYS blowing in Montana, and having a distinct reference in the reticle to adjust follow-up shots at longer range targets is huge.

Lots of great scopes out there and your budget will probably dictate the rest.

Xmas Tree Reticle.PNG


For whatever reason my mind went to coyotes. You would be right if youre shooting p-dogs and such. More magnification is definitely an advantage.

That said, I have killed a prairie dog at 427 yards with a .223 and a 3x9 scope. ;) my buddy bested me with a 450 yarder shortly after that. He has a 22-250 with a 4x14.

So depending on what you’re doing you don’t necessarily need a 20 or 24 power scope. More zoom does mean more accuracy though. Seaz is not wrong about that.

My personal (and admittedly limited) experiences with varmint hunting/shooting have been almost identical to yours, Lockdown; Prarie dogs in the Dakotas for the bulk of it.

The only rifle I owned at the time that was remotely suitable was an (insanely accurate) Remington 700 in .223, equipped with a 3x-9x Leupold Vari XII with a Duplex reticle.
We had fast action right off the bat, so it didn't take me too long to get my holdovers figured out, and with that scope' cranked all the way up, had no trouble dismantling those vermin out to around 400 yards with remarkable consistency.

I would have preferred a finer reticle with holdover features, but dividing the space between the Duplexs' fine crosshair intersection and the top of the heavy reticle's lower section helped a bit and made it at least doable for holding over, though certainly not ideal.

I had a 20x spotting scope along with me, and deduced that that would have been a little too much magnification for a riflescope on that particular hunt, at least for the hot part of the days when the dogs were most active.
Mirage coming off the hot ground made the extra magnification more of a liability under those specific conditions.

My overall takeaways from that particular experience was that a 6x-18x or 20x at the top end would have been about ideal for that, and probably capable beyond the capabilities of that cartridge class.
A more powerful cartridge launching heavier, high BC bullets might justify a little more magnification for rockchucks or woodchucks at very long range where mirage wouldn't be as much of a factor.
Just speculation on my part...
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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby Wrangler95 » Sat Feb 12, 2022 3:28 am

Thank all of you for the great advice.I will be shooting a Remington 700 25-06 with 85 grain bullets!I have a Luepold 3x9 scope on it now but some of the fields I will be hunting are river bottoms with long shots.For shots in the 300 to 400 yard shots and I am only hunting coyotes.Would a variable scope in 4x12 power be sufficent?Thanks again!
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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby BRoth82 » Sat Feb 12, 2022 4:08 am

Wrangler95 wrote:Thank all of you for the great advice.I will be shooting a Remington 700 25-06 with 85 grain bullets!I have a Luepold 3x9 scope on it now but some of the fields I will be hunting are river bottoms with long shots.For shots in the 300 to 400 yard shots and I am only hunting coyotes.Would a variable scope in 4x12 power be sufficent?Thanks again!

I would say a 4-12 would be great, the problem with some of the bigger magnification scopes is you loose the low power. When I had my ar with the night vision scope I actually had a red dot on it at a 45 deg angle for those very close shots.
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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby Lockdown » Sat Feb 12, 2022 4:31 am

Wrangler95 wrote:Thank all of you for the great advice.I will be shooting a Remington 700 25-06 with 85 grain bullets!I have a Luepold 3x9 scope on it now but some of the fields I will be hunting are river bottoms with long shots.For shots in the 300 to 400 yard shots and I am only hunting coyotes.Would a variable scope in 4x12 power be sufficent?Thanks again!


My man!! I shoot a 25-06 too. I have a 3.5x10 Leupold VXIII on mine. I would think a 4x12 for coyotes would be fine. My 3.5x10 works good, but if I was consistently expecting those longer shots I would absolutely get a 12 or 14 power. The reason I didn’t go higher is I didn’t want to have a close range shot at a moving target with too high of magnification. Sometimes the advertised minimum 4 power is actually higher than that. I think my advertised 3.5 min is actually lower than that, and a 4x12 min was a little above 4.
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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby KRONIIK » Sat Feb 12, 2022 4:38 am

Wrangler95 wrote:Thank all of you for the great advice.I will be shooting a Remington 700 25-06 with 85 grain bullets!I have a Luepold 3x9 scope on it now but some of the fields I will be hunting are river bottoms with long shots.For shots in the 300 to 400 yard shots and I am only hunting coyotes.Would a variable scope in 4x12 power be sufficent?Thanks again!


A coyote's vitals are what, maybe 6 inches in diameter, not counting neck, spine and brain?
If the rifle/load combination's truly accurate and either dialed in or correctly held-over for the distance, you really have no good excuse to miss them out to 400 even at only 4x magnification.

Honestly, for coyotes at those intermediate distances, I'd save myself a thousand bucks or more and hunt with what you already have.
Spend that money on ammo and long-range practice instead.
You'll end up further ahead in the long run.

But if you really just want to get yourself a new scope, a 4x-12x variable would also be a fine choice for such work, assuming it's also of good build and optical quality.

As the others have noted, don't go cheap. Stick with the mid-to-upper-end Leupold or Vortex products or better yet Leica, Zeiss or Swarovski if you really wish to splurge.
Cheap riflescopes are never a good investment.
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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby Ol Split ( ) Toes » Sat Feb 12, 2022 10:10 am

Lockdown wrote:Here’s what I can tell you about optics. You get what you pay for. So save up and get the scope you truly want. Especially if it’s got a lifetime warranty (Leupold fan here) it’s a one time purchase that will last you forever.

I’m pretty frugal when it comes to a lot of things, but I don’t skimp on optics.

This is spot on!
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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby Wrangler95 » Sun Feb 13, 2022 12:46 am

Thank all of you for the expert advice!!
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Re: Scope Advice!

Unread postby KRONIIK » Sun Feb 13, 2022 6:54 am

Here's a link to a great forum for anything optical-related:

http://www.opticstalk.com/
Very helpful bunch of guys there.

SWFA is the company that owns/operates that Forum.
I've done business with them with great satisfaction (in the past). Still the same owners so I expect they're still good.
They also buy and sell used firearms and scopes if you want to trade up.


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