What Magnification are you pulling trigger on!?

Deciding magnification for someone else is difficult; because I’m absolutely convinced that people see magnification differently. A test I did years back with several very experienced friends involved taking a bare low powered variable and cranking it back and forth until the subject was satisfied that what he saw through the scope matched what he saw un-aided, with the other eye for 2 eyed shooters. Inevitably the magnifaction ended up around 3 power. Seems odd but we don’t see with our eyes exactly; those just gather light. We see with our optic nerves and our brains. Our brains stubbornly insist on trying to make sense of things, and since a 2 eyed shooter is getting conflicting information from each eye it makes up its own mind about what the picture in your head is going to look like. For me, low power scopes like 1.5X make things look farther away than they really are, perhaps because I spend a lot of time stRing through high powered oltics. My 3 could well be someones elses 1X; therefore his 4 is probably my 7. The brain is pretty adaptable; if you wore a fixture that turned the world upside down all the time, it will flip it rightside up after about 3 days because you know it isn’t true. Take it off and your naked vision will show you an upside down world, but that will correct back in about the same 3 days
I also believe what you stated is spot on , Dogleg.
I also suspect that from what I have seen at the range, many shooters tend to over scope themselves needlessly and shoot much better with their scopes turned down simply because the high magnification exacerbates every little movement.
Clarity trumps magnification every time in my book!
Cat
 
I figure that the movement is there whether we see it or not, but I get what you're saying. People sometimes fall into a trap of wanting perfection before they dare pull a trigger, don't get it, then jerk the trigger when they briefly see the sight picture they dream of and miss the whole thing. Perfect or nothing comes with a lot of nothing; whereas good enough is always good enough.

Perfection is the enemy of good. :)
 
Usually fire on 4 ... clearest + cleanest view for me with my scopes and all my hunting rifles are .25 moa and better ... however, when taking long shots (over 400 plus) I use the highest power and a rest.
 
Gophers
22LR
2-7x set to 5
<50 yards`

Gophers
17HMR
4-16x set to 8-10x
50-100 yards

Coyotes
243 58 gr Vmax superformance
4-12x set to 12
200-300 yards
 
I have 3.5-10 x40 VX3 scopes on most of my hunting rifles, and carry them in
the field at 5 or 6x. If the shot turns out to be long, one usually has time to turn
up the power if he deems that necessary. My longest kill was taken with a 6x42
fixed power Leupold. Dave.
I set it to 9 when I'm sighting in, then back down to 4 for hunting. I've never needed to magnify more than that - in fact, I find it harder to get on target the more I zoom in.
 
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