I was hunting deer in the Dakotas 5 years ago, equipped with a 270 WSM topped with a Zeiss 2.5-10 x 50 Victory scope. My buddy and I decided to put on a 2-man drive, where I sat in a meadow overlooking some scrub brush around 400 yards away. I had a 3-legged chair and trigger stick bipod and got set up, got comfortable, and ranged different landmarks, expecting a longish shot. I'm pretty sure I would have had my scope set to at least 6 or 8 power, but can't really remember. Anyway, my buddy started in to the brush, crunching a plastic water bottle to make a little noise. All of a sudden from my right, in a direction unrelated to the drive, around 70 yards away, a big 12-point whitetail came trotting into view. He saw me about the same time I saw him. I jumped up and the trigger sticks went flying, right around the time the deer shifted from second directly to fifth. Fortunately there was about 50 yard or so of clear area before a small ravine. I don't recall having much trouble acquiring the deer in the scope. I followed it for a bit and got one shot off before it disappeared into the ravine. Having a low confidence level of hitting the deer, I waited for my buddy to finish his drive. He showed up and we went to the spot where I last saw the buck. I didn't see any blood. I went up out of the back side of the ravine and decided to make a small circle to try to find a blood trail. I took a couple steps, looked to my right, and there it was, piled up in a thicket. It was a very exciting and lucky day for me. The scope setting didn't cause me any problems at that distance, but I can definitely see that a lower power setting would have been better. One thing to do though is to practice bringing up a scoped rifle to instantly acquire a target. Being comfortable with your rifle is probably important than having a 2 power or 6 power bottom end.
