This week I made the decision to purchase a new scope foe my Ruger No.1 in 7x57, and once again was faced with the never ending question, what is the best scope for my money? Over the years I've purchased everything from Vortexes to Schmidt & Bender scopes. What I've noticed is as I get older, the quality of glass becomes more and more important.
I've never understood spending $800-$1,200 on a rifle only to top it off with an entry level scope. The light gathering quality of the more expensive brands can be critical during the last five minutes of the day, it can mean the difference between properly identifying a trophy buck or seeing just a dark object. Some people believe that a $250 Weaver is all you need while others believe that you should spend as much for a scope, if not more, as you do a rifle.
What makes sense, is a $2,000 Night Force scope a remarkable tool that provides the absolute best in vision and clarity or is it a rich man's toy? Is a Weaver all the scope anyone really needs? How much is enough?
Which S&B 3-12 did you end up buying?
This was a entertaining read for sure with all the varied responses. It just goes to show how we all think differently about our rifle scopes and how they are used.
My comments are just for conversation going forward so I'm just shooting the bull so to speak.
For whatever reason rifle scopes are very interesting to me. Have I ever been back and forth as far as what scope to use on what rifle. The mag range, the quality levels, the price, the size and weight, the features that I prefer, the amount of over all travel, do I need illumination, or close focus and what reticle do I pick.
Cutting it short, after using most brands, I got S&B's as well for my nice rifles. It was because I could afford them and that they can be very very versatile depending on the model.
Reasons for my choice were, close focus 10M to 25Y if I wanted to put one on a 22 or PCP air rifle, illume for night matches, H59 reticle for holdovers to a mile(I hold over a lot), superior glass than most scopes, built tough and reliable, they aren't huge scopes, some even compact, fantastic turrets(some locking), zero stop with 2cnd rev indicators, huge amount of over all travel, dead nuts tracking, euro style diopter for fast focus of the reticle and matching mil turrets to go with the mil reticle.
I could only afford so many though being I'm not made of money.
So what did I discover, I hate not having a good portion of the specific combined features I like in a rifle scope, it actually got frustrating to me when I considered other brands that didn't offer them in their lines.
Many of us have inexpensive rifles that don't really require a ton of money to be spent on scopes, I know I do. Well, I found Athlon Optics Co which solved my dilemma/ shameless plug, sorry. I got the close focus I like, decent glass(really is), nice holdover reticles, reliable tracking and mil/mil FFP. For me it's awesome having these features on the cheap rifles because I use them often!!!
Well anyway I'm kinda old myself almost being in the late 50's. Remember all the old 2.5 and 4x scopes on our hunting rifles. Then the 3-9's became popular, then, then, then, look how far scopes have come!
My latest dilemma is finding a compact and lightweight 1" tube scope that is FFP mil/mil, heck I'd settle for SFP and a 3-12x36 would work but it's got to have a decent holdover reticle. As far as I know this unicorn doesn't exist - yet anyways. And this one is for small 7 lb carbine bolt rifles used for hunting out to 500Y or so.
Don't forget that those 63 year old eyes may need a nice fat crosshair to stand out in dim light. 
jd
