Steiner Predator 8 3-24x50 review
Had this scope for a couple months now and have given it a good bashing throughout the roar, so with such little information about the scope online I thought I'd write up a little review.
I purchased the scope to go on my 20" T3X aspire 7mm rem mag acting as an all rounder capable of both being carried through the thick stuff (supplejack and leatherwoods are everywhere around here) while still being able to punch out to longer ranges, so this scope was ideal with the 8x spread of magnification.
Out the box it's built well and looks the part. The first thing you notice that's different to other scopes is the turret, it has a removable clear outer sleeve with four inner rings, one with non numbered 1/4 MOA lines, and three other labelled 2, 3 and 4, which you rotate to line up with your drop chart so that you can quickly dial to those ranges. I didn't find this very useful, although I like the concept I feel they didn't execute it very well. I have instead written a numbered MOA strip and stuck it around the three rings, and slid the clear sleeve overtop. It would be very easy for someone to make a custom turret for this and it would simply be one laser engraved ring. It's quick and easy to set zero and reset the zero stop, takes a few minutes and one allen key. I do wish they used the Burris style turret where you lift the turret to unlock it before turning, as more than once this has turned itself while bashing through the bush, however with the zero stop this is a minimal issue.
I would have to commend it's build quality after a slip in the hills resulted in my whole body weight slamming my rifle scope first into a big rock, aside from a bit of bare metal it had no impact whatsoever and held zero.
Optical clarity is the main reason I've been wanting to hold off on writing this review, as I really wanted to put it through it's paces. At 3x zoom for up close bush hunting it's excellent and has the effect where when you look through the scope at first light and the image appears lighter than it does with your naked eye, that combined with the illumination (various light levels) and it's nice and wide field of view, it makes for an excellent bush scope (albeit a bit bulky compared to a true bush scope).
As for longer ranges I found that I was able to count points on stags at around 600m by about 10minutes after dawn, and in ideal conditions I was able to do the same right up until 30 minutes after sunset. The image is crisp and clear all the way to the edges. As you step up the zoom level the optical clarity remains excellent all the way up to around 18x zoom where after that you notice the image starts to flatten sightly and the colours pop less, similar to how my Burris Signature HD 3-15x44 would do at around 12x zoom. In cases such as animals on farmland or on gravel slips where there is good contrast between the animal and it's surroundings I find 24x zoom to be good however in cases where they are in the bush it can make the image too flat and so I prefer to zoom out a bit.
The eyebox gets a bit sensitive at higher zoom levels which is another reason I prefer to dial back the zoom a bit, but from my experience with other scopes this seems to be pretty standard and even more so with 8x scopes. The parallax adjustment works well although the numbers are a decent bit off, at 100m I need it set to around 160m for there to be no reticle shift.
Overall I'm quite happy with it, if anyone is local and wants to have a look through it I'd be more than happy to meet a reputable member somewhere.
