Thread: Pros and cons of scope magnification.

I started my hunting using vee sights, then apeture sights and did pretty well with them except as night fell. Big step up around 1965-6 to a bushnell 2 1/2 power on my cut down smle. I shot tahr and chamois out to 400 yards with that little scipe. Then went to 7*61 and a leupold fixed 4 power with tapered crosshairs, meat hunting in spare time and really thought I was made! Young eyeballs never needed anything bigger; heck, if the cross was on target or held higher at long range the bullet still went where it was meant to. The 4*32 scope let in maximum light that the human eye can use, mush ad the pecar 6*42 could. Then varie x scope came along and I wondered why I had diffuiculty sighting in low light eith all the extra power.
Took a while understand the light rule of 7; in other words in order to get enough equivalent light to the eye at 10x the big front lens had to be 70mm!
So in low light the best you can get is 8x with a 56mm objective.
So, what is the point of a scope of more than 7 or 8x mag? Most military scopes arent more than 10x, likely for the same reason.
Are we hunters just suckers to marketing hype and not really looking for top grade vari-power scopes in the 2-10* 50 size, or 3-6*44 size?
What are your thoughts?

Funny you mention this. We probably share a similar shooting path, mine from the early 70s and open sights, then scopes in the early 80s. And just today Indug out a couple of older scopes - fixed 4x and 6x to see if I had one that would "dial" (I have, the superb IOR 4x32 from the 90s).

I have quite a few higher powered scopes these days but still use a 3.5-10 for the majority of my load testing and hunting. More power (as long as it's matched with glass quality) is useful for spotting shots on paper/gongs but not much else IMO. This particularly applies when spotting your shots with "deer" class cartidges with a bit of recoil is critical. I'd far rather spend my $$$ on high quality glass in a variable up to 10-12× than an ordinary 16 or 20x. 8f budget allows higher magnification can be usefull for assessing animals, but I don't feel it improves one's ability to place shots.

You've hit nail on head. The higher magnifications come into play in ideal light conditions...that rabbit waaay out yonder basking in the sun sort of deal. The other compromise is field of view...those low powered fixed scopes take a lot of beating...but now my eyes getting older and tired,I need glasses to get best out of lower magnification scopes..so the vary power wins again...

I thibk absilutely top glass with best coating on a vari power not exceeding 2-10*50 or 2-6*44 would be the go for hunting. Spottong use binos.

I have 2 x Leupold M8's 4x still going on my 'main' rifles. I have 2-7's on the other two.


I havnt thought about magnification as a factor for years. I get by happily with a 3x or 4x for hunting, and its good enough for the target shooting I do which is all sighting in or load testing.

I had higher magnification scopes sometimes as well in the past but never used the high end power except for target shooting, so the weight and bulk of larger scopes is not worth their usefulness. I don't dial anything because I don't need to.

To be honest, in the last couple of years I tried a couple of high end European brand scopes, and then sold them because they were simply too heavy.

All of this simply means, that I have very simple needs.

same here my scopes rarely move of three power - for years used a fixed 2.5 leupold on my 742 woodsmaster ( quiet sob for that rifle ) and never thought to much about lack of magnification - would use a high power if I had one on my 22 BSA martini bunny buster but its a different type of shooting - I will replace the 3-9 on it eventually and it will be likely a 3-12 or similar - some bunny shots 10 or 11 would be good - but for my deer work 3 x and binos for spotting

I have believed for long time we are over scoped in nz , nothing wrong with high mag scopes but for hunting I recon 10 power heaps for hunting out to 5-600 yards


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The fundamental purpose of a scope is to put the aiming point and target at the same focal point . . . So your eye can focus on one thing. There are other sights that do more or less the same thing. However magnification is really a by-product.

Originally Posted by buzzmann

I have believed for long time we are over scoped in nz , nothing wrong with high mag scopes but for hunting I recon 10 power heaps for hunting out to 5-600 yards


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Think we just get it into our head that we need to see something bigger for us to make it easier to hit. This has challenged the way I think now, might have to try 10X for some of the longer shooting and possibly shave off a bit of weight in the future.

Have only gone to higher power the last few years, not for the higher power but change in eyesight means the AO is required for clearer picture, doesn't come on many lower powered variable scopes.

The highest power I have on a hunting rifle is 12x ( leupold vx6 ) and that is on my 6x45 which is what I consider my precision rifle .
The others wear variable scope in the 3-9 / 3-10 range , those are usually set to about 4 or 5 power for just walking around.
Once you approach about 14 power you enter into the world of parallax dials etc and while I fully understand and appreciate the intricacies of that , it is an added complication and time annoyance for the type of shooting I do .
The reality is that the now considered old fashioned 3-9 variable scope with a 1 inch tube made by a good manufacturer is a really good scope . Carry it set on 3 -4 -5 power which ever suits you and you still have the option of cranking it all the way up to 9 if time and the situation warrants it .
Now that is for my style and type of hunting , reading many of the threads here and elsewhere I am very aware that time and technology has advanced in leaps and bounds. As a result many are shooting animals that only 20 years ago were “ out of range “ . If that’s your style of hunting then absolutely hang a big high power scope with a huge objective lense and more dials than the space shuttle on top of your rifle . In that scenario you would be foolish not too

I've always been a fan of low power scopes cos for the first 20 years I only ever had a 3X Weaver on the 22-250, and was able to go a bit "better" with my 22 - a 4X Nikko. And they simply worked! It is still a rare occasion when I take or need anything beyond 4X, my go to rifle also wears a 90's 4x32 IOR, amazing glass on those scopes. And amazing field of view too.

And have also always said, good glass trumps more magnification any day! To prove the point, a year or 2 back I was asked to help out at a long range training weekend. We had about 15 shooters all learning the basic's of shooting a long way. At the end of the last day, we all walked to the far end of the range and "hunted" our way back to the mound, engaging targets in typical hunting scenarios, starting at around 250 and right out to 840. I deliberately left my VX5 on 3X and shot all of the targets on 3X, right out to 840.

Im with Buzzman, I think we're overscoped in NZ.

I was at the range the other day with my 308win (1-4x) and my 243win (2.4-12x) There is no way I could shoot the 308win as accurately @100m with the lower powered scope. I would not attempt to shoot an animal at 400m with a 4x scope because I know the error margin would be too great, but that's just me.
On the other hand, 1x is awesome under 30m.

Originally Posted by Shearer

I was at the range the other day with my 308win (1-4x) and my 243win (2.4-12x) There is no way I could shoot the 308win as accurately @100m with the lower powered scope. I would not attempt to shoot an animal at 400m with a 4x scope because I know the error margin would be too great, but that's just me.
On the other hand, 1x is awesome under 30m.

If you select an aiming point on the target you can aim precisely with any scope power, and it's the same with animals. You have to actively train yourself to identify and aim for the vital zone of any animal. I take lots of young guys after rabbits with 22s, and they all start off "aiming at the rabbit" (and frequently miss haha) but once you get them aiming for the shoulder or head it's amazing how their hit rate goes up.

I think it depends on how and what you want to shoot. The modern “high zoom” scopes allow a much better chance of shooting something small allot further away. I just changed down from a 8-32 to a 5.5-22 and that has helped the close range FOV allot which is why I swapped. I did notice the black dot on the board at 100m was noticeably harder to see compared with the 8-32 scope though. I like to see the target very well, aim small miss small. I generally shoot small game with rimfire, if I was targeting large game i wouldn’t be as keen on so much zoom. As for light etc on glass scopes, I’ve gone to digital day/night units so that’s no longer a consideration, is bright 24/7 ��