With washington now allowing 1x and having a utah general muzzloader deer tag last year I set up three muzzloaders last summer with three different optics.
I put the leupold red dot on a .45 cal lrx and could consistently get good hits at 300 yards on a 10 inch gong with decent conditions lighting and further in ideal conditions. Manipulating the brightness on the dot was key to precision shooting.
I ended up killing a buck in Utah with this setup at 110 yards.
I set up one 50 cal with the vortex 1x 22 and one with a traditions 1x32 I bought used. You already understand the limitations of the vortex so just for comparison sake I was shocked at how much better the tradition was in the tunneling category. That little bit bigger objective even with a 1inch tube made it seem far superior to the vortex. Add that with finer crosshairs and I liked it much better.
To my eye the tunneling created by the vortex makes it seem like a target is almost smaller where as the leupold and traditions didnt give that feeling.
Coming from shooting a peep setup for several years All 3 offer better light gathering over open sights but are still unlike a magnified scope in their ability to gather light at dusk. I shot the buck in challenging light conditions with shade, deer colored rocks and setting sun and it took a lot of concentration to deferentiate everything even at such a close range. Any standard magnified scope even on 3x or 4x woulda made it easy to deferentiate the view. I guess the take home to me was much like a peep the light and your eyes are a major limiting factor to range and low light abilities.
I currently prefer the leupold but I too am hoping to see a 1x offering from a reputable company. I'm hoping for something with a 30mm or large tube with minimum 32mm objective and repeatable dialing.
