Spotting Scope Dilemna

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fish2xs

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THR's,

I have a question for those of you who know more about spotting scopes than I. For reasons I won't get into, I can get a free Bushnell scope. However, I was planning on buying a Winchester scope with a larger lense, and greater magnification for ~$200. I would like to hear your thoughts on this if you were in this position. The $200 won't set me back to far, but I know nothing of the quality of either scope.

Here are my options:

1. Bushnell Spacemaster 15-45X60mm (I can get this for free)

http://www.bushnell.com/products/spotting_scopes/spacemaster.cfm

2. WINCHESTER 20-60x80 Zoom Spotting Scope (this would cost me $200.00)

http://fsguns.com/fsg_optics.html (scroll about halfway down the page)

Please let me know your thoughts.
Thanks!
Phil
 
This is not even a contest. Take the Bushnell Spacemaster. The Winchester is garbage. The Spacemaster is one of the best low cost spotting scopes on the market. Greater magnification can't make up for crappy glass.
 
Agree w/ocabj; go w/the Bushnell. Bushnell spotting scopes are usually higher quality than the price would indicate.

Besides, free trumps $???.?? any day! :D You can always swap your free scope and buy another later if not satisfied.

As to power of spotting scope, you need a large objective lense and high qualtiy glass to take full advantage of higher powers. Anything over 20-24 power is often unuseable in anything readily portable. Have used the 1000mm (IIRC) Unertl team spotting scope which comes w/three different power ocular lenses and we always chose the least powerful eyepiece for clarity. Mirage quite often makes the lower powers the only choice.

Even with the team scope, we found it often impossible to spot .30 cal. bullet holes in the black at 200 yards due to mirage.

My first spotting scope was a Bushnell priced just under the Spacemaster. In an effort to see bullet holes @ 200 yds, I sold the Bushnell and bought a Unertl 22x60mm IIRC (probably three times the cost of the Bushnell); it was a great scope but still missed a few holes in the black @200, so sold it and bought a 25x77mm Kowa. The Kowa is a really great scope, but still no cigar @ 200 yds. That's when the club bought the Unertl team scope. The culprit is mirage. For normal target shooting @ 100 yds, the Bushnell will do anything any of the others will do.

Regards,
hps
 
taliv : hps1, mirage that bad where you live?
Click to expand...

S. Tx. mirage is so thick that is is considered artificial support by some NRA referees! :evil: :evil:

Regards,
hps

PS: Sure would have hated to be on the 600 yd line yesterday; at 5:30 PM it was 99* in the shade on my patio, wind zero to 5 mph and the humidity was 90%. Talk about a fishtail!
 
Hi Phil,
The Bushnell Spacemaster is a fine scope and would be my preference over the Winchester scope even if you had to pay for the Bushnell vs a free Win. If you want something noticeably better than the Spacemaster, might as well jump to the level of Leica, Swarovski, or Kowa. Note that to step up to either of these brands will cost you around $1000-1500. Nikon also makes some good glass but ONLY in the top end items.
Optics is a major hobby for me. My "gun" safe is crowded with cameras, lenses, spotting scopes, and binoculars. Before I climbed onto the Leica bandwagon, I owned a Bushnell Spacemaster. It was and still is a fine reasonably priced spotting scope up to the limits of resolution defined by normal atmospheric conditions. Magnifications above 25-30X have not proved to be useful for me.

Good shooting and be safe.
LB
 
Phil,
If you have a choice of eyepiece on that Spacemaster, I would recommend a fixed power eyepice of 25X. As a general rule, fixed power eyepieces are sharper than zoom eyepieces and also have longer eye relief and wider field of view at equal magnification. More magnification is NOT necessarily better! At or above 20X, resolution becomes more important to me than magnification. Just my .02.

Good shooting and be safe.
LB
 
The Spacemaster is the better scope.

I also would think of it this way. If the Spacemaster doesn't do it for you, sell it on eBay for $150-$175
maybe more. Put $200 with it, and you can now buy
a pretty nice scope for sure. Maybe a Bushnell Elite spotter. I just don't see a way to lose with the free Spacemaster. And I agree with another poster. If it
were $200 for the Spacemaster and free on the Winchester I would get the Spacemaster.

Read this heads up, no BS comparison of several spotting scopes, many costing more than the Spacemaster.
http://www.snipercountry.com/InReviews/SpottingScopes.asp
 
jefnvk has the best answer. Take the free one. If you still want to burn the money, you are not our any more money and have 2 spotter scopes. :)

I bought a $40 Simmons scope a few months ago. Never used one before. Works great for my purposes at 100 or 150 yards. I am sure I would need a better one at longer range, but its cheap and it works.

Please tell me you will not use this to shoot an SKS or something. :)
 
One of the best spotting scopes I have ever seen is the Bausch and Loam Elite series. It's rubber armored and has attached dust covers.

I bought one about 5 years ago when the Kowa was in for a cleaning and once over.

I got the Kowa back, but have used the B&L instead. It's bright, sharp and you can definitely pick out 30mm holes in the black at 200 yds.

The only thing I wish this scope had was an angular eyepiece. Otherwise it is the best spotting scope I have ever used.

No matter how great it is on it's best day, it still isn't better than free :D

Just a thought...

BigSlick
 
I can relate to hps1 and mirage.

Thats why I get to the range early in the morning.

The Arizona sun gets the heat waves up early.
 
Yep, LJ, we may not have the market cornered on mirage in the SW, but we sure have our share! Must not be as bad in other areas, as I always hear folks say they can see .22 cal. holes way out there, but you sure can't if the mirage is up, no matter how good the scope.

As was LHB1 stated, resolution is more important than magnification IMHO.

Hey BigSlick, that is 30 cal. holes, not 30 mm, isn't it? :confused: :D



Regards,
hps
 
Another scope problem we used to have in Corpus Christi was the wind. It compounded the mirage problem by vibrating the scope just enough to impair resolution. We got better vision with 20-25X than with 32-40X because of wind and mirage. It is only a slight exaggeration that we strapped ourselves into the shooting bench to keep from being blown away. The prevailing wind was about 25-35 mph from the South and our rifle range was laid out to the West. As a result, when I shot my rifles in calm wind conditions they usually printed about one minute of angle left if they had been sighted in during normal winds.

Good shooting and be safe.
LB
 
Another poster mentioned the excellent Bausch and Lomb Elite spotters. You may know this of course, but the new Bushenll Elite is the same scope different name.
 
I use the 15-45 50mm "snail shell" and have been amazed at the clarity, eye relief and overall solid design - also lifetime guaranteed. I paid $140 and prefer it over anything I saw up to about $350.
/Bryan
 
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