Like most technologies, there is an ever moving dividing line between old tech and new tech.

I have scopes on all my rifles, what with being a late phase diabetic and all.   So I pay attention to the higher power, better scopes and I buy a new scope periodically, to upgrade my favorite rifles.

I have always been fascinated with the good scopes, them high magnification $1,500 plus dollar goodies with the 30mm body tubes and the primo special coated lenses and those focus side wheels but I have never had the coins to go play in that realm.

The ubiquitous "technological shift" has come to my aid now, and I have a new scope that I just finished installing on my 30-06.



First, why the 30-06 rifle ???   Using modern powders like Reloader 19 and modern high BC bullets like the A-Max heavies that open up big at very low fps impact speeds you can easily reach out 500+ yards with a 30-06, covering most of the same hunting range that used to be reserved only to the 300 Winchester Magnum and similar cartridges.    

Plus I gave my 7mm Remington Magnum over to the kids because my son in law gently coveted it (good taste there, he and my daughter have slowly scarfed up all my good older guns over the years, mainly so I would have an acceptable excuse to go buy a new one).

MM and Lancer remember the rifle, it has gotten a good bit more user friendly over the years as I got more used to the very very tight target chamber and throat (occasional loading issues with normal reloads) and my scopes all have additional eye relief now as even though it is a bank vault of a gun it still likes to kick your shoulder a bit.   Something about a loose nut cranking on the powder measure, they tell me.

In any case, back to the scope.    It is an AIM Systems 10-40 power scope, 30mm body tube, 50mm end bell with target turrets, a side focus wheel/knob (not the huge thing the early ones had) and lenses that all have the fancy coatings on them.   Because of size of the thing (and a much stiffer neck on the one doing the shooting) I have the scope mounted a half inch higher now so you don't have to crane your neck to get down into the vision zone.  

It is a frickn' huge scope and it adds 2.5-3 pounds to the rifle with the necessary heavy rings and all.   More weight is fine with me as it is a set up to be a "cover an area" long distance gun, I won't carry this one around in the woods, ever.   That is the job of the 7mm-08 five-six pound carry rifle.   The big '06 rifle weighs easily twice that much and sits on a bipod and a 30 pound rear sandbag rest .....   Actually, it is a Savage Police Sniper model, intended for 180+ grain barrier penetration shots.

Lowest magnification level on the scope is 10x now, giving a huge field of view and being perfectly clear.   This is more scope magnification on the MINIMUM setting than I used to have at full power --- most general use stuff will see the scope start out at MIN and likely most NC deer woods shots would require nothing more.

Behind my house is the south 40 where my old garden used to sit (mowed once a year with my riding lawnmower to keep the little pine trees down), then the tall trees start in at around 100 yards.   I bore sighted the new scope on a clump of colorful leaves in a small hardwood at the start of the tree line and I was plumb amazed when I looked through the scope to adjust the cross hairs to bore sight it.  

I can see the little veins in the leaves at 10x .... that is plumb amazing to me.

OK, that was 10x  --- cranking the puppy on up was like using the Hubble space telescope, you see deeper and deeper into the woods and then you start looking for the gaps with nothing in the way so you can focus still deeper.  That side focus wheel is both very neat and very NEEDED, lemme tell you.

Out MM's covered concrete slab porch is a grassy 350 yard area with a 500+ yard hill cresting behind it.   Just using the mil dots (no fancy calculations and target turret fiddling) you could pop any deer you could see out there with this gun.   And count his tines.  And check his head for ticks.

https://www.amazon.com/AIM-Sports-JXPFM10405OG-Illumination-Parallax/dp/B00EZ...



The fat 30mm body makes the scope look smaller -- it isn't small at all at over 16" long.


Watch out for lower prices as the old 1" tube version is still out there, selling out a little cheaper both on Amazon and on other sources.

MMRanch wrote on 11/16/18 at 08:33:07:


Oh please come here.....
You can sit on my deck and bag one of these blacktail pest.
I've bucks to 5 points, and doe's, which is a legal take here too.
You have to wall everything, if you want to grow anything, ARG!

Wow , That must be for a really slow bullet/shotgun slug !

I started buying straight 4 power scopes and use the distance from the 5 mil dot to the next 5 mil dot to calibrate distance , but it been so long since I've done it , I have forgot how big one mil is ?    Is it one inch at 100 yards at 4 power ?     So , a 10 mil space would be 10" @ 100 yards @ 4 power and/or 10 mils = 20" @ 200yds , 30"@300 etc.?

I might have to go look that up before I try anything beyound 300 yards with my 243 Win.   I'm pushing a 70gr. Varmit bullet at 3,500 fps and best I remember a 200 yard -0- means 3-4" low at 300yds and 1" high at 100yds.

I"m glad you got me thinking about that before I got myself into a 450 yard shot situation.      

Sometimes I think : It might be better just to grab my old peep-sighted 30-30 and sneak up to with-in 150 yards of what ever I'm after. ???

raydawg wrote on 11/16/18 at 08:49:10:


You live on an island......they are confined and can't get away!

https://shop.opticsplanet.com/aimsports-jxpfrl104050g-10-40x50il-rf.html?_iv_...

$73.92 is the current best sale price I can find on this scope (or have ever seen).   That is 50% off and makes up a fairly compelling deal right now.


Makes you curious as to how low it will actually go ......     Amazon still has it for $118.99




Final thoughts,

...... you can't live up to this scope unless you have 300-500 yard shots available to you .....  

....... and you will be shocked at just how poor a "shooting platform" human beings actually are even when using a bipod and a good steady rest rear bag set.   We cause most of the group size error that you see on the target because even the act of squeezing the trigger moves the whole gun.


Main downside to the superscope is the field of view shrinks according to the magnification used and the scope magnifies (and shrinks the field of view) mightily.   While I find the lowest 10x setting to be very usable and useful, it has nowhere near as large a field of view as you got when using an old 3-9x scope at its normal 5-6x midpoint range.  

When you crank it on up, the field of view shrinks accordingly and at the highest magnifications is a relatively small somewhat dim field of view.  You settle the gun on the target at 10x then dial up the magnification to what you need while you are looking at the target impact point.

A subtle point is that the mil dot reticle is etched on the second focal point lens instead of the first focal point lens, so your mill dot distance calculations will only apply correctly at 10x as the reticle does not grow / shrink with magnification changes.

I find this to be no real issue for me as any calcs I would do would be at the 10x "carry magnification" range anyway.   10x is plenty of magnification for any offhand shooting and I can't see going for maximum magnification as a dim field of view isn't my style (although for checking the group size on white background 200 yard targets it isn't that bad, really, and it saves a bunch of walking).   In normal non-target use I tend to stop around a 20x dial up normally anyway since much more than that tends to get excessive,