The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

What budget scope would you oomans recommend for 1,000 mard shooting ? What would be a good magnification range? How much elevation adjustment should we look for ?

We thinking of an Athlon Argos BTR 8-34×56 but are open to other suggestions...

What are you shooting at?
Do you work with moa, mrad or both?
What calibre and projectiles are you using, along with muzzle velocity?

Only then can we help out.

By budget, how much under £1000 are we talking?

We'll be shooting at paper, if that is important. So long as we hit it, accurately and precisely, we'll be happy.

We can use MoA or radians equally well.

We'll be using this on a 7mm calibre rifle firing heavy (180 gn) bullets. Around 2,800 fps.

Now, back to the optics...

The budget will be £500 or less

I cannot comment on the Athlon as I've never seen or used one and my other suggestions would be beyond your budget.

Do you expect to see your bullet holes at that distance? At longer ranges, optical clarity is king. Why have all that magnification if your optics cannot produce a good, clear image. I have used a Vortex Viper PST 6-24x50 and an IOR 3-18x42 at 1,000 yards and I can tell you that I much prefer the IOR to the Vortex simply down to the picture quality.

We use Zeiss, Pecar and Meopta scopes on most of our rifles, and would happily use IOR too. However, given the improvements in quality we have heard reported at the lower end of the market, we're wondering if they have now reached a level where they are good enough for our second tier kit. The Athlon range seems to be well spoken of, ditto some Fox scopes. If the quality / cost differential is reducing we would happily take advantage of it.

I know a couple of shooters in the USA who have the Athlon, for the money (£280 over there for a FFP scope) they're more than happy with them :)

Mr Fox's Chinese 8-32's get pretty decent reviews for around half the Athlons UK price.

Badger.
The attached specification sheet is from a Fox scope about 5 years old (obviously you should check whether it's still current), and it shows the maximum windage and elevation possible with each of the Fox scopes. If you want to use the scope on your 7mmRM at 1000 (or more) mards, you need to maximise the amount of elevation built into the scope . . . the 10-40x50 model that I have only has 50 minutes of elevation (or 25 minutes each way), so needed a 20 MOA rail on my 308 to to be able to zero the scope at 1000x.

I can heartily recommend my Sightron 8-32x56 scope. The one with the almost invisible long-range dot.

Triffid

phaedra1106 wrote:
Mr Fox's Chinese 8-32's get pretty decent reviews for around half the Athlons UK price.

I have one of Fox's scopes and whilst waiting for my S&B to arrive I used it out to 900/1000yards; in my opinion well worth the money, I believe they are now about £145. I shot a competition with someone last week (500 yards) who uses one of Fox's scope on a Ruger PR (6.5CM) and is very pleased with the results and will use it next time we shoot out to 800yards.