Thread: Seeking feedback about the NZ rifle scope market/product offerings

Hi , I think there are two types of scopes used by the New Zealand hunter:
There is a light, close to mid range bush gun scope, for shooting from 0 to 300 +/- on a shortish barrel rifle .
The typical scope would be :
Leupold vx3 2.5-8 or more common 3.5x10 with 1 inch tube and cds turret, swaroski 3x10 ( I wish it had come with a turret, that would have made almost the perfect scope), the vx5 2-10 and vx 6 2-12 ( although a bit over kill for a light rifle), the nightforce 2-10, and to larger extend the Burris signature 3-15 .

Then there are the longer range guns , used a bit more on the tops and for the longer distances . For these the typical scopes are:
Leupold vx5 or 6 3-15 / 3-18, swaroski z5/z6/z8, your bigger and heavier nightforce (2.5x20 …etc) .



What the market is missing is a lightweight first focal plane rifle scope. A few candidates that are almost there are ( or were):
The bushnell 3-12 LRHS and 4.5-18 LRHS, although a little bit heavy, they have a low turret , ( important when you are bush bashing to not get caught in the vegetation and to not brake it during a fall). They also had a very nice reticle https://www.bushnell.com/dw/image/v2...&sh=800&sm=fit

The new leupold mark 4 scope are good except that the 2-5x 10 model does not have a parallax adjustment ( not important for me but some prefer that option) and the 4.5-18 comes in a 34mm tube which is too big and too heavy. And we don’t need to have 120 Moa of verticale adjustment ( We are hunters ,not extreme long range shooters).
The Burris veracity in 2-10 is also a good ffp scope , a bit heavy though. They had a good reticle which was thick on the sides , going thinner toward the middle, which mean that at high magnification you have a clear view without to much obstruction, but at close range and low magnification, you have thicker reticle that you can see and place on that deer that just popped up at 20m on the last light.
Another very good reticle is this one:

https://images.eurooptic.com/images/...mx-reticle.jpg

As you can see, as you increase the magnification,the thick bars would disappear leaving a clearer view in the middle for the longer shots and you can still compensate for drop using the reticle if necessary, and at any magnification since it s ffp.

A current scope which is almost there is the new gpo 4-16-44 centuri ffp. It is ultra compact, has a double turn turret in mills with a zero stop ( zero stop is very important on any turret scope). It is fairly light for its magnification range. But the threes things wrong with it are, a poor reticle with no numbers on it , the illumination is only from 0 to 11 with no cut off in between each adjustments and the eye relief is such that the scope is set really back of any gun , and therefore has to be sitting ver high other wise the front objective bell is touching the front bridge of most receiver actions.

Another scope would be this one :

https://marchscopes.com/scopes/d15v42ti/ But this one is sfp.
And this one:

https://marchscopes.com/scopes/d15v42fdimlx/

If they had made it in 30mm tube instead, that would have been perfect.

And last, I have an old pride Fowler scope, with a 1 inch tube, in 2x7x32mm with a first focal plan reticle. So yes, 1inch lightweightness in ffp can be done.

I hope that gives you a better understanding, don’t hesitate to come back to me if you want more ideas.