The Scopes I’ve Owned
And Stories About
Them
Lessons Learned
I’ve written extensively about scout scopes over the years
so I thought I’d put into writing what my experience is with different
scopes. Some of this is just background
and some is a review of various scopes from my experience. My experience is by no means exhaustive. Most of it is just trial and error based on what
I find in Central Virginia piedmont hunting.
There have been some training classes in the past 6 years but for the
most part, this is hunting experience.
Leupold M8 2.5X – Nice little scope. It started off life on a Winchester Model 70
in .308 (the old style with the push feed).
I was looking to have a scoutish type rifle back before it was fashionable. The rifle was crap but I kept the scope for a
number of years. I used it on various
rifles including an FN-FAL and it wasn’t bad on that. I finally sold it a few years ago. Nice scope.
It was handy and fast and very light weight.
Leupold Vari-X-III 2.5-8X – This scope came on a used
rifle I bought in the early 90’s and it was a really good scope. Very clear, rugged and light. I sold the rifle and kept the scope for a
number of years and finally sold it.
When I sold it, it had a weird speck that appeared at some point. It was in the glass, next to the reticle. The guy I sold it to didn’t care because he
knew of Leupold’s lifetime warranty and knew they would take care of it.
Leupold Mark 4 10X40mm M3 – I had this scope on a
Remington heavy barrel that was supposed to be the same configuration as the US
military sniper rifle of the time.
Unfortunately, this was a time in my life that I couldn’t find a range
longer than 100 yards so I really can’t describe how it performed. The rifle could produce some astonishing
groups at 100 yards but that doesn’t really speak too much to the performance
of the scope.
Nightforce 5-25X – I had this for a hot second back
in the 2007 timeframe. I mounted it on a
Steyr Tactical Elite and again, it was a tack-driver but as with the Mark 4, I
never had the opportunity to use it before financial realities forced the sale.
Leupold Vari-X-III 1.5-5X – I think I bought this in
the late 90’s to put ton a Remington Model 7.
It is a fantastic little scope.
Very crisp and clear and good low light performance. It is a good match for a light and handy bolt
gun. It currently resides on my wife’s
Ruger American .223. My only complaint
is that the eye relief varies too much between the high and low magnification settings. The difference is so dramatic that it is
difficult to mount it properly as the eye relief at 1.5 is just too long.
Burris 2.75X Scout – This was my first scout scope
and at the time, the choice was between it and the Leupold 2.5X. Everything I could find at the time said
there was really no difference so I chose the Burris because… well, 2.75 is
better than 2.5, right? I found the
scope frustrating and couldn’t explain why until I actually used it side by
side with a Leupold 2.5X Scout. The
Burris had a lot of black area visible in the scope around the viewable image. Where the Leupold had a very thin ring of
metal, the Burris had a thick housing and even within the lens, it seemed to
have a smaller visible image. A true
scout scope allows your eye to see the unmagnified surrounding area and the
magnified image in your dominant eye without requiring you to focus through the
scope. That black ring caused a
distraction to my eyes and never allowed it to do what it was intended to do.
Leupold M8 2.5X Scout (the first one) – I used this
scope pretty extensively in the early 2000’s.
This was before I took any training classes and I didn’t have a place to
really train so my use was exclusively in the hunting field. It got quite a workout. I loved how fast it was to acquiring
targets. I took deer from 40 out to about
250 yards with it and I want to describe a few situations where it really
shined… and where it didn’t.
The longest shot I ever took was 250 yards. I was hunting with friends and we would
“push” a woodlot by having one guy walk through a patch of woods the several of
us would be waiting on the other end to cover escape routes. Because the deer were not pressed hard, they
usually didn’t come flying out. I was on
top of a hill when a deer trotted past me down in a valley. He was headed toward a fence where I knew he
was going to pause to jump. I dropped to
a seated position and got looped up in my sling. As predicted, the deer stopped at that fence
in preparation to jump. With both eyes
open, the scout scope showed up in my vision exactly like it was supposed to
and I briefly shifted my focus to the reticle and pressed the trigger. It was a textbook success for the scout
concept.
Another time, I was hunting in the snow and was walking
along a ridge when a doe broke from cover below me. She was bounding in the snow about 50 or 60 yards
below me. I didn’t pause and swung the
rifle up and used it like I was shooting sporting clays with a shotgun. I timed my shot so she was at the apex of a
leap and she was dead by the time she landed.
Again, the scout scope performed exactly as intended.
Over the years, I learned that I had to stop hunting before
the end of legal shooting light. Unless
a deer happened to wander into a field, there was just no way to see them at 15
minutes past sunset if they were in the woods.
Even in a high contrast setting like a deer in a green field, that last
15 minutes of legal light was a challenge.
I had noticed this for some time, but had just filed it away as an
annoyance that I could live with.
Then it happened. I
was hunting in the early afternoon and crested a hill where I could look down
in a small draw below me. The draw had
tall brown grass, some scrub brush and was littered with small pines. Distance was 100 to 150 yards depending on
where I was looking. I could see nothing
with my naked eye but scanned it with my 8X binoculars. There was a herd of deer filtering
through. It was a mix of does and fawns
and I’m a meat hunter so I was excited.
I sat down and looped into my sling.
I brought the gun up and… nothing.
I couldn’t find them.
I thought maybe they busted when I sat down so I raised my
binos again. They were still there. They were oblivious to my presence. There were at least 8 of them. Again, I raised my rifle and again, I could
not find a single deer. “You’ve got to
be kidding me!” was the though going through my head. “A scout scope can’t be this bad, can
it?” Well, apparently, it could because
in broad daylight, I could not find a single deer in the lens of that 2.5X
scout scope. It was at this point that I
decided two things. 1. There is
something wrong with the scout scope concept.
2. I need to find a better
solution that doesn’t sacrifice many of the benefits of the scout concept.
Leopold Mark 4 MR/T 1.5-5X – This is the scope that I
decided upon to replace the scout scope.
This was in 2006 (or thereabouts) and it was the best low power variable
that I could find at that time and it is still a pretty good choice. It has an illuminated reticle but takes a
weird battery and has a large appendage on the side of the ocular housing for
it. It has an exposed target turret
marked for 63 grain 5.56 ammo and it has ½ MOA clicks. The reticle is a circle dot crosshair with
mil markings. So yes… a military
configured scope with a mix of MOA and mil markings. This scope completely solved the shortcomings
of the scout scope and I used it for several years. It isn’t as light as the scout scope and it
isn’t quite as fast or handy. It wasn’t
bad either and was excellent in low light or with hidden targets. I successfully used it on deer right to the
edge of legal shooting light without any problems. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking that
there had to be a better solution that didn’t give up the advantages of the
scout scope but had the benefits of this one.
More to come on that.
Leupold VX2 4-12X – I purchased this to go on a heavy
barrel Remington Model 700 in .223 Rem.
This was my coyote gun. It did
its job. Nothing fancy but it worked as
intended. My coyote hunting never really
exposed any flaws but I never asked it to do anything crazy. I’d call it a good value.
Leupold VX2 1.5-4X Scout – I’m not sure when this
scope came out but I bought mine in 2016.
I was excited because I thought this could be the answer. This could solve the issues I had with the
original fixed power scout scope but give me to versatility of the LPVO. In all honesty, I wasn’t bad. It was clearly better than the original scout
scope in fading light and I could find game better. It had a shorter eye relief than the fixed
scout scope but still allowed for the open field of view of the scout. Still though… it just didn’t really
shine. One hunting trip found me sitting
in the woods and 3 does were picking their way through the hardwoods toward
me. At about 70 yards, I found that it
was difficult to really see them in the lens.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t see them… they were just hard to find in the
glass. I chalked this up to too little
magnification. More on this in a bit. For reference sake the VX2 Scout has been
replaced by the VX Freedom Scout which seems to have the same dimensions as the
VX2 Scout.
Burris 2-7X Scout – This had to be it. This had to be the solution to match the versatility
of the scout rifle concept… right?
Wrong. Using this scope finally
made me realize what the problem with scout scopes really is. Yes, this scope is a true scout scope with a
9” eye relief and it is a variable that can be cranked all the way to 7
power. In that regard, it works. I found it to be less bright and crisp than
the Leupold VX2 Scout and I noted a fair amount of edge distortion (AKA fish
bowl effect). But the real problem was
that it still didn’t allow me to see small, camouflaged targets, especially in
low light. I had been mistaken in what
the cause of this was. I had thought
that magnification could solve this issue but that really wasn’t it. The problem was that with an ocular lens so
far from the eye, any image in that lens requires fairly high contrast to pick
it out. Magnifying it helps some but then
you have issues to losing the subject in the limited field of view. This is exacerbated by the fact that both the
Burris and Leupold VX2 (and the fixed power Leupold Scout for that matter) have
fairly small ocular lenses. A small
lens, far from the eye, means finding low contrast target indicators is
difficult at best. That is why the LPVO
works so much better for these targets.
Leupold VX-R 1.5-5X Scout – This was the
solution. This fixed everything. The eye relief is between 6 to 7 inches and
on the Steyr with the stock spacers removed, it comes right to 6 inches. The ocular lens is 50% larger than the VX
Freedom Scout. The lenses themselves
have much better lens coatings and are clearly of better quality than the other
scout scopes. Being 6” from the eye with
high quality glass and being so much larger than the others, it is like a
totally different category of optic. The
performance of this scope in low light is nothing short of stunning. I used it in a Randy Cain Practical Rifle
class where he has a low light drill.
Students are lined up at 100 yards from their target stands near
dusk. Students are to pull themselves
out when it becomes too dark to identify the targets and place an accurate
shot. With that scope, I was on the line
the longest. Hunting has confirmed just how
amazing this thing is in low light. It
really seems that the trick is not so much the magnification, but rather, the
fact that the lens is large and closer to the eye which allows me to pick out
subtle target indicators. It is a
fantastic optic.
The other thing that is nice about this scope is that it overcomes
some of the issues with an LPVO. An LPVO
is a very versatile optic but it suffers some in the way of handiness. In the real world (as opposed to on a square
range), a person can get contorted into all manner of jackass shooting
positions. Quite often, this means one is
forced to creep up on the back of the scope.
That can be a bloody problem with a conventionally mounted optic but it
is no problem if you start out 6” behind the ocular. Brimmed caps are another area where an LPVO
is often less than handy. The brim often
gets in the way, particularly under recoil.
Again, the longer eye relief of the VX-R Scout makes this a
non-issue. The VX-R Scout has the best
of both worlds and is a rare instance of a compromise actually working
better.
Of course, this means that Leupold discontinued it and seems
to have no plans for a replacement.
Leupold M8 2.5X Scout (second try) – I was signed up
for a second time to take Tom Russell’s Scout Rifle class at the Whittington
Center in New Mexico. I decided to run
this one with the lightest and most handy package possible. I stripped down one of my scout rifles to the
bare essentials. I removed the bipod,
modified the stock, and shaved every ounce of weight possible. I installed a Leupold Scout scope and the
whole package weighed in at exactly 3 kilos… grail weight! Running that scope in that class illustrated
to me why Col Cooper was so enamored of this package. It was phenomenal. It was light and handy and very fast. I won the overall shootoff at the end. I earned my Expert rating from Tom. The thing was just a joy to carry and shoot
the whole week. If all my shooting were
on a range like that and the targets were equally visible, it is all I would
ever want or need.
Leupold VX-R 1.5-4X Patrol – I have this mounted on
an AR15 and it is a really nice optic.
The reticle is easy to pick up for snap shots and it is clear and sturdy
for more precise work. I haven’t put it
through its paces enough to say much more than that, but overall, it is a good
scope. I do wish it had a bit more
magnification but it is so compact that I am not sure I’d change it.
So that’s my scope use resume’. I might have missed one or two but that’s
what I recall. I know there are plenty
of people with more knowledge, training and experience than me. My brain is funny though. I really try to examine what works and what
doesn’t and why. It irritates me to no
end that I finally found the best and most versatile scope only to have Leupold
discontinue it the following year. It makes
it difficult to recommend a scope to others.
The perfect scope doesn’t exist at this point. LPVO’s are developing nicely with lot’s of
real world experience. The military, gun
culture 2.0 and the competitive 3 gun community all have contributed to
furthering development of those scopes.
The VX Freedom Scout is probably the best of the scout type scopes but
there isn’t a lot of competition.
Apparently Skinner Scopes is developing a variable power scout scope so
that will be interesting to look at.
If somebody were to ask me to develop the ultimate general
purpose scope, I would hand them the VX-R 1.5-5X Scout and tell them to put a BDC
reticle in it and a CDS turret and call it a day. If somebody at Leupold ever reads this and wants
to gain an advocate for life, that is what I would beg them to do. Considering that they already had this scope
on the assembly line at one point leaves me with a glimmer of hope every year
when SHOT show rolls around.
