Choosing The Best Tactical Rifle Scope
Many firearm enthusiasts in this day and age are using an optical sighting device or tactical rifle scope on their guns. There is a great reason for making this happen, which is simplicity. Using a scope is a lot less complex than lining up your iron sights. Here is what you need to know about choosing the best tactical rifle scope.
Having the right tool for the job is vitally important. Cartridges and scopes are getting more powerful every single year, and this makes choosing the right scope even more vitally important than ever before.
On one end of your tactical rifle scope you have the objective bell and the objective lens. The elevation adjustment and the windage adjustment are in the center of the scope. Then you have the power ring, the eye piece, the ocular lens and the exit pupil which are on the side that you look through with your scope. Knowing these terms is important when it comes to choosing the best tactical rifle scope, because there are unique characteristics among each of them. If you don't know your tactical rifle scope anatomy, then you are going to have trouble determining which features are the most important for you to seek out.
The main tube for most scopes in America is only a single inch in diameter, which means that they make use out of one inch rings. Some main tubes are only 30 mm, meaning that they use 30 mm rings. There are a number of different base types that can be used to connect the rings directly to your rifle. You are going to need to know what type of base you need in order to find out the height and the type for the rings that you are going to use for the scope that you want, whether they are 1" rings or 30 mm rings.
Scopes do not gather light though most people think that they do, but rather they transmit available light to your eye through the lenses, even losing some light in the process. The best scope is one that offers a theoretical 98% light transmission. Anything that is above 95% in light transmission is considered to be great, though most scopes only offer around 90%.
Another consideration is magnification range. A scope with a 3 to 9 magnification range for a gun intended for whitetail deer is pretty much standard. For mule deer or for antelope, choosing a 4 to 12 or a 4.5 to 14 is not going to be too bad. High power scopes are definitely nice, but in certain situations such as on hot days, they will be rendered nearly unusable because of heat waves and mirage. For smaller animals or for longer range targets, choose a variable range with 6 to 20X or 8 to 25X for the best results. Some other people prefer fixed scopes because they have fewer moving parts and are simpler, so consider this option as well.
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Good stuff.
I find anything in the 20x range can be difficult to use unless bench shooting to long-range targets.
Yeah, at that magnification bench rest is the best firing position other than the prone.