JakeC
Well-Known Member
Are you thinking like Amazon off brand cheap? Hope not. I'm gonna pretend you said Under 300 because I feel chatty. It's also pretty hard to look through scopes right now I'm guessing with the import situation. I know you're already into Leupold, but their lower tiers they've added are still good. I had a Leupold VX 3-9 freedom that was really, really great for 230 or so dollars. Didn't dial worth a squirt but it was bright, crisp, and extremely light. If you're shooting a fast bullet at no more than 300y and not doing a lot of fine target shooting that's a slam dunk. Their reticles don't float my canoe but they're worth looking at even though they are cheaper than you're probably used to.
I've looked through some of the cheap burris jobbies and really liked those a lot, I'd probably get one if I needed a 2-300 dollar scope again. Burris has my favorite reticles of all time and a bunch of them are less than 250 right now on Optics Planet. I have a mid-tier burris right now and their ballistics/reticle calibration tool is really fun to play with if you're shooting out there.
Nikon combo takeoffs that turn up used can be really nice and that's the only thing I'd buy near the double digits. Their support is a little more judgemental and they're definitely stiff-arming the shooting market but their glass is NICE. Everyone who looks through my binos gets real quiet about how much they spent on worse optics.
I haven't seen a vortex under 800 dollars I agreed with, but that's a me problem. It's a good company and if you like them, buy them.
Graveline is right, Vortex loves tooting their warranty horn but Burris and Leupold are 100% just as good. Burris has duds due to retooling the entire company but they stand behind them.
KHM is also right, If you can afford to wait there are sales and closeouts that are hard to believe sometimes.
Like others said, you need to decide what your priorities are like max range, magnification, dialing, illumination, parallax, etc. Each companie offers different compromises or preferences to compete in each price range. When I was doing this a year ago I had been target shooting with a fixed 12x and found that FOV limiting at 400, so I thought I needed FFP so I could use a good reticle backed out to 10x. But it turns out finding an elk and going straight from 5-15 to use the holdovers is not hard at all so I really could have gone with second focal plane and got illumination or better glass. These are more choices than you'll have in the range you're at but you get the idea, take a little time to figure out what you need because you can ABSOLUTELY get a scope worth keeping for less than 300 bucks.
I've looked through some of the cheap burris jobbies and really liked those a lot, I'd probably get one if I needed a 2-300 dollar scope again. Burris has my favorite reticles of all time and a bunch of them are less than 250 right now on Optics Planet. I have a mid-tier burris right now and their ballistics/reticle calibration tool is really fun to play with if you're shooting out there.
Nikon combo takeoffs that turn up used can be really nice and that's the only thing I'd buy near the double digits. Their support is a little more judgemental and they're definitely stiff-arming the shooting market but their glass is NICE. Everyone who looks through my binos gets real quiet about how much they spent on worse optics.
I haven't seen a vortex under 800 dollars I agreed with, but that's a me problem. It's a good company and if you like them, buy them.
Graveline is right, Vortex loves tooting their warranty horn but Burris and Leupold are 100% just as good. Burris has duds due to retooling the entire company but they stand behind them.
KHM is also right, If you can afford to wait there are sales and closeouts that are hard to believe sometimes.
Like others said, you need to decide what your priorities are like max range, magnification, dialing, illumination, parallax, etc. Each companie offers different compromises or preferences to compete in each price range. When I was doing this a year ago I had been target shooting with a fixed 12x and found that FOV limiting at 400, so I thought I needed FFP so I could use a good reticle backed out to 10x. But it turns out finding an elk and going straight from 5-15 to use the holdovers is not hard at all so I really could have gone with second focal plane and got illumination or better glass. These are more choices than you'll have in the range you're at but you get the idea, take a little time to figure out what you need because you can ABSOLUTELY get a scope worth keeping for less than 300 bucks.
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