Clarity vs magnification. Help.

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zackstab

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Hello. Looking to shoot up to minimum 600y.
Rem700 sps. Sub moa handloads. Could be better but for the price im happy. Rifle is better then I am.

Now my question. I have 2 scopes im considering using. Vortex viper with bdc. Goes up to 10x. Or a bushnell legend mildot that goes up to 14x.

Obviously the viper has superior glass. Will 10x viper glass be better at 600y or x14 bushnell legend glass. Keep in mind the bushnell has a focus knob.

Thank you.
 
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I have never looked thru either of those scopes but that said shootout way past 600 yards, for me Clarify trumps magnification I use 10-12 power past 1000 yards some times. If you cant see it clearly you cant hit it!. I use Night force FWIW
 
Personally I like lots of magnification and clarity. I agree on the Night Force. Sightron SIII is another good option and less money than the NF. I find I like the 8-32X56 for everything in the 100-1000 yd distance. Some guys shoot much lower magnification; maybe my eyes just aren't good enough. But as accumark said if you can't see it you can't hit it. I would get a higher quality scope. Once you get proficient at 600 yds you will want to shoot farther. It's just the way it works, trust me. It is an investment but a good quality scope will last a lifetime. Swapping out lower quality scopes every other year adds up. Buy once cry once as they say.
 
What about trying both and see what works best for you? I need higher magnification personally, but I'm not always maxed out either.
Depends on what I'm doing. If it's load development I max out. If I have to find targets quickly, during a match, I dial down to what gives me a good field of view, and still see the target well enough.
I shot a 10x Bushnell Elite for my first year, and then spent the next few years upgrading. I found 10x not enough. I went to higher mag Bushnell Elites, then a Sightron SIII with LRMOA reticle which is awesome. Now I shoot a Nightforce 8-32x56.
 
I'm in the bandwagon that less zoom for further shots. Less zoom allows you to better gauge conditions along the flight path, and at the target. Don't put much weight on "shooter location conditions matter most". It won't do you any good going into the long range game thinking like this.

Most scopes have enough clarity provided light is good. We are blessed around great conditions around here though.

As noted, if it doesn't track, it's not worth having it. This alone will cause hours of frustration and thousands of dollars of lost costs.

I've gone down that road already. I can't even really recommend attempting to find accuracy on a "cheaper" factory rifle. Get 1ish MOA, and be done with it. You'll question your loads, your potential, your gear, etc. End of the day it's the rifle. There isn't a "one group is .25moa" and the rest are 1.5MOA. That is the rifle, not most competent shooters. Don't waste your time attempting to get much better on a rifle that's unlikely to produce better ALL the time.

That said, you miss distanced shots by feet in challenging winds. Direct your effort into learning wind calls while knowing the set-backs of the rifle. Wind calls trump rifle accuracy.
 
zackstab said:
Obviously the viper has superior glass. Will 10x viper glass be better at 600y or x14 bushnell legend glass. Keep in mind the bushnell has a focus knob.
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By "focus" I assume you mean parallax. If your Vortex does not have a parallax adjustment then it will certainly be inferior to the Bushnell that does,

Lots of shooters do not understand what parallax even is.

You can sometimes get away with setting the parallax adjustment to where the image appears clear and in focus on the assumption that is where there is no parallax, but this is not necessary the case.

There is actually a parallax and focus balance that must be achieved between the ocular lens "focus" and the parallax adjustment.

Change the ocular focus to suit specific eye prescriptions and it will affect parallax.

Since parallax is specific to the distance, the best way to check parallax is to rest the rifle pointing toward the target without you actually touching the rifle.

Then take a look through the optic without moving the rifle and bob your head up and down and side to side. You will notice the reticle will probably move slightly in relation to the target.

You need to adjust the parallax until the reticle remains static to the target image regardless of eye position in relation to the lens. This can get to be a bit of a trick under heavy mirage so you need to get good at it.

Parallax is a condition that I see even in f class competition where guys just set up and shoot without going through the ritual described above. Then after the event, they talk about the tricky conditions out there to explain their low scores. When all the while, it was just parallax.
 
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The way to get around a scope that doesn't track is to choose a Christmas tree reticle, or at least one with multiple aiming points, like a Boone and Crockett, or a mildot, and use hold-offs rather than dialing in the dope. Back when Bausch and Lomb was a step up from Bushnell, their 4000 Elite was reasonably priced nice clear piece of glass. I don't know if the Bushnell line that replaced them are as good, but until I could afford Leupold, Nightforce, and S&B, I owned more than a few Bushnells, and did some credible shooting at medium long range with them. Sorry I have no experience with Vortex.
 
I'm not familiar with either optic but for precision shooting you don't want a BDC reticle (you said the Vortex is bdc mildot?) but a mildot would do or preferably some sort of mil-hash if possible. A clear piece of 10x glass will get you out to 1000 yards, depending on what you're shooting at (1.5 moa targets are fine). You might want to have a look at the Bushnell fixed 10x scope with a mildot reticle, I can't recall the exact model but someone else will chime in here. It's a well regarded budget scope. By getting a fixed mag instead of variable, you can get a much higher quality scope for the same price. Whatever you get, do a tall target test and a box test to make sure it tracks well and that the click values are correct.
 
rugbydave said:
I'm not familiar with either optic but for precision shooting you don't want a BDC reticle (you said the Vortex is bdc mildot?) but a mildot would do or preferably some sort of mil-hash if possible. A clear piece of 10x glass will get you out to 1000 yards, depending on what you're shooting at (1.5 moa targets are fine). You might want to have a look at the Bushnell fixed 10x scope with a mildot reticle, I can't recall the exact model but someone else will chime in here. It's a well regarded budget scope. By getting a fixed mag instead of variable, you can get a much higher quality scope for the same price. Whatever you get, do a tall target test and a box test to make sure it tracks well and that the click values are correct.
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Yup The scope rugbydave is talking about was/is a Bushnell Elite fixed 10x. It used to be a 3200 series, not sure what they have now, but their website is generally pretty good for data. A very well made , quality scope for the money, usually well under $400. May be more $ now, not sure.
 
I would take clarity over magnification every day. Parallax is very important too, but some of the best snipers the world has ever seen didn't have parallax adjustment on their scopes, and they were limited to about 10X. I would run with the scope that offers the best clarity, shoot and learn, and save until you can get a scope that offers all three, clarity, parallax adjustment, and magnification.
 
peacefrog said:
Yup The scope rugbydave is talking about was/is a Bushnell Elite fixed 10x. It used to be a 3200 series, not sure what they have now, but their website is generally pretty good for data. A very well made , quality scope for the money, usually well under $400. May be more $ now, not sure.
Click to expand...

On sale now for $279.99 at wholesale.
 
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