rbernie
Contributing Member
The forward mounted scope provides a very small magnified field of view - you cannot make the ocular and objective lens big enough to compensate for the fact that the scope sits so far from your eye as to render your view through it very 'tunnel-like'. Given this, scout scopes have evolved into low-power optics that sit low on the bore and offer excellent instinctive pointing (much like a peep sight, only magnified slightly) in exchange for their small magnified field of view. This makes them work well in close quarters, since the scope doesn't block your unmagnified peripheral vision the way that a traditional scope does. It also makes them NOT work so well when shooting at medium game that's a ways off (since they just don't have the magnification needed to reasonably target the vitals), or when trying to track moving game beyond fifty or seventy five yards - the magnified field of view is so bloody small that it's hard to keep the vitals of the animal centered in the scope.rbernie, would you mind offering your thoughts on what those "specific environments" are?
For me, any kind of hunting or shooting sport that places a premium on dropping relatively good-sized stationary targets within one hundred and fifty yards or on tracking moving targets at close quarters (halitosis distance) is an excellent environment for a scout style optic. I still-hunt in wooded/scrub areas quite a bit where the average sight distance is less than 75 yards, and my scout-style rifles are superb at dealing with hogs and deer in that environment.
Conversely, when I hit the clear-cuts between the scrub patches and see a deer standing one hundred and seventy five yards away, I suddenly find that the scout setup (and/or my shooting capabilities) starts to fail me. Regardless of rifle chambering or bullet trajectory, I simply cannot shoot a 2.5x scope well enough to keep the bullet within a six inch circle at two hundred yards....