Thread: How to choose a rifle scope

FFP Mil Mil. Massive magnification isn’t really a requirement. I have shot (on paper) at 1000m on 4 power with a FFP scope. 1/4 Moa click is actually a finer adjustment that 1/10 mil. 1/10 mil is 100mm at 1km, so your finest adjustment at that distance is 100mm, or 4 inches. Add a bit of room for ballistics error and some wind, it gets very hard to guarantee hits on the chest of a deer that measures, say, 16 inches. I enjoy long range shooting as a sport, but it often runs into some issues when hunting. Low weigh is only important if you have to carry it. Heavier rifles tend to be easier to shoot accurately. Military DMR systems are very heavy. Reliability of the zero and the accuracy of adjustment is critical. Glass, really depends on the shooter. Good glass to one eye is rubbish to another. The real reason that the consistent value of FFP reticle scopes offer an advantage to the hunter is that just on dusk or daylight, you can’t run full magnification anyway on most high power scopes, and that’s when you really see animals in the open.

There is something you have missed here however. In a hunting scenario, velocity is king. A rifle and a scope are a system. Barrel life isn’t really relevant for a hunting rifle, as if it’s only used for hunting you would have spent more on reloading components before the barrel is worn out than the barrel by quite a large margin. Speed minimises a lot of room for error in a ballistic sense. Lobbing large projectiles isn’t really that necessary in NZ where the game isn’t that large. A good 30 cal magnum is more than enough for anything in New Zealand. A 6.5 or 7mm on a 30 cal mag case has some positive merits too. Longer barrels have better velocity for any given setup. A huge amount of shooting here is in the bush or on small clearings, say, less than 200m. A 308 works fine for that. Stalking is fun, and you are a lot closer as inevitably, your going to have to walk over there anyway. Bow hunters still shoot deer and they have to get real close.