Bushnell R5 series scopes

[Cullbuck]

Does anyone have any reviews on the new(er) Bushnell R5 series scopes?

 

[Kyguy]

Not the R5 but I just picked up three of the R3's that I happened to come across on a steal. One with the DZ22, one with the DOA Quick, and the DOA Quick Extended Eye relief. Haven't zeroed them yet I'm mildly impressed with them. The clicks are pretty good. Everything is smooth. Eye relief is good on all three, and the extended model does indeed have 4"+ eye relief.

I've got a bay window in my bedroom that looks out over the power line clear cut and onto my neighbor's farm fields. I test scopes by blacking everything out but the window in the early mornings or evenings as the sun fades, similar to being in a box blind.

This is probably going to stir some people up, but I could see just about as well for just about as long with those R3 scopes as I could with my Trijicon Huron's and some older Bushnell Tac Ops 5-15 scopes (similar to the Elite 3200). I lost the reticles in the R3's sooner, but they're a finer duplex than the Huron and the Tac Ops are mil-dots with very heavy outer posts. I won't say that the resolution edge to edge was as good, but it was good enough to kill stuff. The R3's are listed as multi-coated, not FULLY multi-coated. They do have the Exo Barrier on the lenses as well. So given a box blind scenario in low light, I can't complain.

Optically, the R5 should be better, because they're fully multi-coated. The form factor on them doesn't appeal to me so much, and I've got no use nor need for side parallax on a 3-9 or 4-12 hunting scope. I'm ho-hum on illuminated reticles at this point in life. Yeah, there's a little advantage there, but if it's dark enough that I can't see a good hunting reticle, then it's 90% likely that it's not legal hunting light either.

Not sure if I'll drop test them severely, two are on rimfires. The extended eye relief is on my Knight Disc Extreme .50 (old Knight, not the current company), we'll see how it holds up. In the last three years it's eaten a Redfield Revenge and an older Leupold 3-9, even though I'm only using 80-100 grains of 777 or a couple of 50 gr pellets.