A few pieces of advice sought- Famous last words I know

Question 1.

Your scope is fine. You dont say what distance you are wishing too shoot too, but I use similar magnification on all my rifles and shoot out too 400 meters. It's capable of more but that's a good distance.

later on you might choose to upgrade for better clarity and quality in other areas, but Ive had a Burris on one rifle for years and its worked fine.

question 2.

Unless you dont wish to be in the hills with everyone else, which is understandable, just go for it. You have to be out there to have a chance and won't see anything from home.

Question 3.

I rotate through my hunting areas about once every two weeks. But even then depending on the area Ill divide it up and hunt different parts of same spot more often than that. IE, upstream one week, downstream next week.
If it's got good numbers then it won't hurt. Trickj is not to fire heaps of shots at once.

1. Scope
I used a 3-9 for the last three years tops hunting. Shots out to 300m no worries. What I would say is that you need to be confidently grouping sub 1moa at 100m and know your drops well. I went to a 3-15 that I can dial recently, its opened up maybe another 100m, but that's if the wind, rest, recovery, etc all line up which will stop you more often than the 3-9. I think in the three years there was maybe 1 deer I couldn't shoot cause of the scope's limit, and that was to do with there being no hashes or dial, not the zoom.
2. Easter/Roar
I've been out the last two Easters and bumped into 1-2 people. But that was 5 hours up a mountain range with no track. Places with tracks and huts must be crawling. I've started wearing high vis caps and putting a high vis strip on my pack as well.
3. Spots
If you just want a meat deer, go to the spot as much as it'll handle. If you want to explore country, challenge yourself, maybe find a trophy then you've gotta keep exploring new ground.

You'll be in the same NZDA as me, I'll flick you a dm with more info.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blip

How's this, I've shot deer goats and pigs using a nikko stirling scope. They still fell over

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Same as, Nikko Stirling 4-12x50 happy days

Cheers for all the responses team- I get the sense from everyone that current optics are all good. As I say, I’m not brand snob, and know that even the “top” brands can have issues- as evidenced by a friend’s experience with said top of the range scopes on first use in the field.
Always appreciate the advice from members here, even if it does end up in multiple rabbit holes.

Just get out there and get into it. Youll figure out along the way what suits you. I just use some pretty basic stuff, ill never win a bragging contest with it but it does what I need it to do and within my budget( which isnt much)

It all comes down to what you can afford and how ejoyable you want the experience to be and of course success rate also comes into the equation.

I was using the same scope as you which came on a Tikka package from h&f, I shot some deer but didn't really love the set up and felt I wasn't 100% confident with what I was using.

I bought a Swavo Z5 and put it on the riffle, I went to the range and practiced shooting at 100-500 meters. I could use my range finder dial the scope, bang, flop, almost too easy.

I have since bought a 223 and put the same scope on it, I have sighted it from 100 - 400 meters and using my range finder it is a killing machine.

I don't call it scope snobbery I call it enjoyable, practical and extremely successful hunting. If you can afford it and want the above then I would highly recommend however if on a budget then what you have is fine to go hunting.