You also need to consider that with a hunting scope, you are not spending hours looking through it. You will spend far more time looking through binoculars. Hunting riflescopes are for lining up a shooting solution. You might spend a minute or two looking through a riflescope vs hours on end through binos or a spotting scope. That is one of the big reasons I got rid of a Nightforce SHV on a hunting rifle and put a Viper HS on instead - it was a lot of scope and although the glass was fractionally better it simply didn't make any sense for hunting, even out to 500m the Viper HS gave up nothing I could notice.
Having amazing glass on a target scope make s a lot of sense, that's why S&B, Kahles, Tangent Theta, Razors, Mark 6's, etc are built for looking through for hours on end and why you see them on the line at shooting comps. It's just not as big a deal on a hunting scope. The Vari-XIII was a fine hunting scope in its day - the VX-3HD is an awesome hunting scope today. I wouldn't feel underscoped in the field with either of them (in fact I have a few VX-3HDs on hunting rifles today).
Everyone keeps harping on "good glass" in this forum, but reality is it doesn't really matter on hunting scopes. If you aren't shooting to 1km or staring through it for hours on end, it just doesn't.
Having amazing glass on a target scope make s a lot of sense, that's why S&B, Kahles, Tangent Theta, Razors, Mark 6's, etc are built for looking through for hours on end and why you see them on the line at shooting comps. It's just not as big a deal on a hunting scope. The Vari-XIII was a fine hunting scope in its day - the VX-3HD is an awesome hunting scope today. I wouldn't feel underscoped in the field with either of them (in fact I have a few VX-3HDs on hunting rifles today).
Everyone keeps harping on "good glass" in this forum, but reality is it doesn't really matter on hunting scopes. If you aren't shooting to 1km or staring through it for hours on end, it just doesn't.
