Thread: Scope advice

Based in Christchurch, you will get a lot of shots at 200-300m. You will appreciate the 9x and if you had it 12x as well and use it for a lot of shots in that country.

For low light, you will see the most detail when the exit pupil is about 7-8mm ie 5-6x for a 40mm scope or 7x for a 50mm scope. Try this out in scrub just on dusk one evening.

An exit pupil under 4mm is starting to get a bit tricky to use in a hurry eg 14x 40mm objective. Field of view also starts to tunnel down so if you go to 12x or higher strongly consider a 50mm scope. Or you will need to do a lot of practice as mentioned above ( its field of view and gun fit that counts.....if you can pick a spot on the wall/back fence...close eyes,throw rifle to shoulder and find you are looking through scope at that spot....you ON THE MONEY..... my all time favourite is a fixed 4x loopy....just cause its AWESOME...... ) plus making your own cheekpiece to help quick alignment helps.

I would suggest using your current scope for a year or two once you have the rifle cut down and then spend once. You might find you want a bigger scope, higher power like 3-12x or 4-16x maybe even with dialing as there's not so much tight bush hunting in the South Island as we have up here. A higher grade scope like Leupold VX5, Zeiss or Swarovski might turn out to be more help than tweaking the power range among value for money optics.