Vortex Razor HD - 2014

Kirby,

Thank you for taking the time to post! Very well said, in fact better than I have in the past!

This has been beaten to death, and until you do it, it is hard to understand.

My feeble attempt to explain why 40 MOA bases are beneficial for ELR shooting.
40 MOA base with SS 5-20 - The Optics Talk Forums

- Dave


Its awful easy to get turned around, twisted and headed in the wrong direction when trying to figure this stuff out in your head to put in type!!! Believe me, I sit here and have to think and rethink it before typing it down and even then, I have been know to get things bassackwards!!!:D We are all human. Most of us know what we want to say or type, sometimes it works out, sometimes it comes out as a cluster. NO matter, its all good and we all have stuff to offer and help out.

Its good to read posts from normal guys which we all are, just brings us closer together knowing we are all in the same boat, just love to shoot and hunt!!!

Pretty sure your explination was just as good as mine!!! BY the way, how do you like that 5-20 with some more time behind it? That scope keeps calling to me to give it a try!!!
 
I will try to be as polite as possible and in no way am I trying to insult you in any way but there are a couple points that need to be made here in regard to your comments above.

1. Your 243 AI is in no way a 1700 to 1900 yard rifle so in YOUR case, your right, you have no use for a scope like this other then its potential to have great optical quality, great consistency at any range.

2. If you have never heard of anyone needed 34 mils worth of vertical adjustment, you really need to educate yourself and see what we are doing these days at some true long range shooting. This is LONG RANGE HUNTING, not NORMAL RANGE HUNTING.com

You need to realize the playground your playing at. There are hundreds of us on this site alone that use all of this adjustment range and then some OFTEN.

You also need to realize that any scope system will be at its peak optical performance in the middle 50% of its adjustment range. 75% of the center of that adjustment range is likely good enough that you will never be able to tell a difference but if you have to adjust to the outer limits of a scopes adjustment range, you will see the difference in optical quality as well as how forgiving the scope is as far as eye position for full field of view to some degree or another. This is also effected by the overall quality of the scope but all are effected to some degree at the outer limits of their adjustment ranges.

So, if you have a 30mm scope tubed scope with 70 moa of total adjustment range, at the outer limits of the effective range of your rifle, you may have to adjust your scope out of its optimum optical range of adjustment.

Now, that is not to say that most will notice the optical change when a scope is out of their optimum adjustment range as far as optical quality but the larger the scope adjustment range, the larger the window of optimum optical quality in the adjustment range.

So by you saying you have never heard of anyone needing a scope like this..... I suggest you do some more research and see what is actually happening today in the Long range and Extreme Long range shooting sports. Its quite amazing whats going on. In fact, often times, even with scopes like this, we need 40 or even 60 moa canted rail bases and we even then reach the limits of vertical adjustment ranges.

I have even used adjustable rings that have a built in 150 moa of adjustment on a 40 moa rail base with a scope that has +120 moa of vertical adjustment and in some situations, its a perfect combination and certainly needed!!!

Just wanting to do some polite educating so you understand what some are doing out in the Extreme Long Range shooting fields....

Looking at the 243 AI for example, say you are driving a 105 gr berger VLD with a BC of roughly .55 G1 to 3100 fps which is pretty standard load for a 243 AI with this bullet weight in a long barreled rifle, with a 100 yard zero, you will need a dial up of around 68 moa at 1800 yards which will be the limit of your supersonic velocity at around 3500 ft elevation. That means that to be able to dial up to that 1800 yard zero, even if you have a 20 moa rail base, you will need a scope with at least a 100 moa total adjustment range since in a perfect world, if your rifle is zeroed at 100 yards, it should be as close to its mechanical zero as possible.

That means you have 50 moa of adjustment range on the top half of your scopes adjustment range after zeroing your rifle. Add in your 20 moa rail base and that gives you 70 moa of usible adjustment range. So in your case, you need a rifle with 100 moa of vertical adjustment range to get your rifle to dial up to an 1800 yard zero.

Now, there are not a lot of scopes that offer 100 moa of vertical adjustment ranges that do not cost at least $1000. There are some but they are very few. The NF NXS scopes easily do this but even with them, your at the outer limits of their adjustment range to dail up out to 1800 yards with your 243 AI so again, in your case, your right, YOU have no need for anything more then the best 30mm scopes.

That said, the best long range weapon systems out there, namely the best 338 super magnums out there such as my 338 Allen Magnum have the potential to drive a 300 gr berger OTM out at 3400 fps. In this case, the projectile will remain supersonic out past 3000 yards at my 3500 ft elevation. With a 100 yard zero, I need around 100 moa of adjustment from a 100 yard zero to dial up for zero hold at 3000 yards.

At 3000 yards, the very top end 338 Allen Magnum loads will retain 1100 fps velocity and over 800 ft/lbs of energy. To dial up for this range, with a 40 moa rail on the rifle, one of these scopes with their 122 moa of vertical adjustment range will get there still just barely. So with no canted rail base, you would need a scope with 200 moa of vertical adjustment range to zero at this 3000 yard range as you would need a full 100 moa of vertical adjustment on the top half of the scope adjustment range. There just are no scopes out there that offer this, well that I know of anyway. So if you take one of these scopes with 122 moa of vertical adjustment, they have 61 moa of adjustment range on the top half of their adjustment range. IF you add a 40 moa rail base to your weapon system, that gives you 101 moa of vertical adjustment range, which JUST gets you to 3000 yards.

A 50 moa rail would be even better and a 140 moa adjustment range scope would be EVEN better.

This is where the 150 moa adjustable Ivey rings can really come into their own and allow a lot of scopes to reach out to extreme range. So when you say no one needs a scope with this kind of adjustment range, you really need to do some research and see what we are doing in our sport at the extreme end of performance.

Again, no insults intended but your just starting to dabble into long range shooting performance with your 243 AI rifle. There is SO MUCH more performance out there that many of us are using to full effect!!!

There are a lot of us that NEED scopes like this and if someone developed a 40-45 mm scope that had 200 moa of vertical adjustment, there would be guys lining up to get them as we could use them to full effect as well.

I know you spent a bunch of time typing that but it was all things I already knew, THIS IS THE LONG RANGE HUNTING FORUM, not the long range shooting forum. so with that said there is and aught to be a difference between the 2. no where did I suggest my 243 ai was good to even close to the ranges I suggested. anything much beyond 1000 yards is IMO a luck shot. I will further state that there is no man portable cartridge capable of ethically taking any game animal that would need that much elevation travel. basically if you need that much elevation travel in your long range hunting setup you should not be shooting that far at a game animal! all sort of things come into play, I am all for letting one fly, but at ubber ranges its difficult to even tell where your hitting much less make a shot where it needs to be at that range, 338 whizbang hell even 50 bmg not withstanding.

if you like to shoot to beyond a mile thats a niche use you only get 18 MOA more over a 100 MOA NXS, my point was at the end of the day when you dial that much into your scope 18 MOA doesn't mean much at the end of your adjustment travel. This scope does have a use but IMO a limited one and that was my point. the uses would tend to be on rifles most would view around here is not very man portable. I know some people do it, and I am not a lightweight rifle pusher, my long range guns are 10-11#'s in most cases.
 
if you like to shoot to beyond a mile thats a niche use you only get 18 MOA more over a 100 MOA NXS, my point was at the end of the day when you dial that much into your scope 18 MOA doesn't mean much at the end of your adjustment travel. This scope does have a use but IMO a limited one and that was my point. the uses would tend to be on rifles most would view around here is not very man portable. I know some people do it, and I am not a lightweight rifle pusher, my long range guns are 10-11#'s in most cases.

My XHS rifles come in at 18 lbs and these are the rifles I test at +3000 yards. Certainly very man portable my friend.
 
I know some people do it, and I am not a lightweight rifle pusher, my long range guns are 10-11#'s in most cases.
In all honesty, I would consider a 10-11 lb rifle exactly that....a light weight rifle.
I think the only guns I have under 14 lbs are my 10/22 or 9mm integrally suppressed AR.
 
THIS IS THE LONG RANGE HUNTING FORUM, not the long range shooting forum. anything much beyond 1000 yards is IMO a luck shot.

I'm not a 1000 yard shooter yet, but I regularly practice out to 700-800 yards. This makes 400 yard shots seem easy. When I am a 1000 yard shooter, I imagine I'll be practicing out to 1500 yards, maybe longer... lots of wide open desert around here.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I can see long range hunters needing to practice much further than 1000 yards so they can guarantee good hits at closer ranges.
 
I'd love to do a heads up comparison with this 4.5-27 and the Bushnell XRS 4.5-30.
I think I like the Vortex EBR-2b more than the 2c....but that's a personal pref, I still like the H59 better than both of them.

Just in pure stats....
Bushnell XRS / Vortex Razor HD Gen IIPower / Obj Lens: 4.5x-30x 50mm / 4.5-27x 56mm
Field of View (ft@100 yds. / m@100 m): ([email protected]) /
([email protected])Weight (oz): 37 / 48.5Length (in): 10.2 / 14.4Eye Relief (in): 3.7 / 3.7
Exit Pupil (mm): [email protected] / 12.4 - 2.07 (whatever that means)Illuminated NO / YES
 
MSRP on the current 6-20x50 Razor is $2499, most places advertise them for $1999... I got mine for $1700.

Hopefully there will eventually be deals like thus on the new offerings!
 
Pretty sure your explination was just as good as mine!!! BY the way, how do you like that 5-20 with some more time behind it? That scope keeps calling to me to give it a try!!!

Of the nicer scopes I have or have had (Leupold Mark 4 ER/T 6.5-20x50mm M5, Vortex Razor HD 5-20x50mm, and the SWFA SS 5-20x50) I like the image on this one the best.

I like the thicker reticule and illumination since I hog hunt as well. The reticule does not get lost in the brush and the illumination is just a red dot in the center so the target does not get washed out, and I can get it centered fast.

I'm very happy with it and with the price these are going for on the secondary market ($900-$1,100) it is a very good value.

Mine has a solid 30 Mils elevation (actually a little more) which really just adds to the value, it's kind of hard to find that kind of internal adjustment at that price.

The clicks are very positive and repeatable. Plus, unlike one of my other scopes (that I have mounted on an AR-15) with uncapped turrets the
effort needed to rotate the elevation and wind-age on the SS is significant enough that I have not had an instance of accidental rotation like I have on the AR-15 scope.

- Dave
 
Last edited:
I'm not a 1000 yard shooter yet, but I regularly practice out to 700-800 yards. This makes 400 yard shots seem easy. When I am a 1000 yard shooter, I imagine I'll be practicing out to 1500 yards, maybe longer... lots of wide open desert around here.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I can see long range hunters needing to practice much further than 1000 yards so they can guarantee good hits at closer ranges.

just wanted to point out that you cut and pasted what I actually did say to make it having a different meaning that what I actually said. strange.

look if you carry an 18# rifle around more power to you. I don't consider that man portable in a hunting situation. we have a difference of opinion if thats the case. I am not going to carry a rifle that goes much beyond about 11#'s in the mountains. a rifle of this weight will take animals out to as far as I can actually judge a trophy to. my point in all this is when you get to 1500 yards and beyond you can't judge how big the elk your shooting at is precisely you can't accurately tell how big the deer your shooting at is. a 34 mm tube scope just makes your rifle more clunky. if you don't care about carrying an 18# gun around, thats fine but your in the minority. when I hunt generally I am further than a few hundred yards from my truck or 4 wheeler
 
Warning! This thread is more than 11 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.
Top