Help Needed: Dedicated Hunting Scope

[Greenbeard]

Hi All,

New user and relatively new rifle shooter. I’m looking for a dedicated hunting scope that will top everything from a .50cal muzzleloader to a Tikka 6.5cm to (hopefully) a custom 280ai build, that will be used primarily for deer species including whitetail in New England forests to (again, hopefully) mule deer and elk out west. I took my first buck last fall with an Athlon Ares BTR Gen2 4.5-27, which I had bought for long-range target shooting, and I was to upgrade to a dedicated hunting optic. I’m looking right now at the following options:
- Trijicon Credo HX
- Maven RS1.2
- Nightforce SHV F1
- Toric UHD
My budget is around $1-1.2k, and lower/upper magnification should be somewhere around ~2.5-4 to 14-18. My preference is FFP for a do-it-all hunting optic, but it seems like FFP reticle leave a bit to be desired in low light at low magnification.
The two most important factors to me, as a newish hunter, are low light performance and durability. Any thoughts about the options above, and are there any others I should add for consideration?

-Tenaciousjeebs

 

[KYFRED]

Are you looking at moving the scope between rifles? That seems like a lot of work and most would probably advise against the practice. I would save a little buy once and cry once. You can look in classifieds and find 2 decent scopes for that price range or wait a bit, save a bit and but 2 nicer scopes. There are a lot of sales out there too. Reticle is really shooter preference for me. I am older at 60 and too many lines just blur. I have liked Zeiss for some time and prefer keeping magnification to a level that I am not messing with a dial for distance and focus. Just me, but I do not shoot as much as I'd like and want to limit things to aim, trigger. Then again, I could be wrong on all of this.

 

[Greenbeard]

Are you looking at moving the scope between rifles? That seems like a lot of work and most would probably advise against the practice. I would save a little buy once and cry once. You can look in classifieds and find 2 decent scopes for that price range or wait a bit, save a bit and but 2 nicer scopes. There are a lot of sales out there too. Reticle is really shooter preference for me. I am older at 60 and too many lines just blur. I have liked Zeiss for some time and prefer keeping magnification to a level that I am not messing with a dial for distance and focus. Just me, but I do not shoot as much as I'd like and want to limit things to aim, trigger. Then again, I could be wrong on all of this.

I was looking at the conquest v4, it’s in the same price range, but it failed the drop tests pretty conclusively. I know that’s not as important in a dedicated hunting optic as it would be in more tactical scopes, but I don’t want to be constantly thinking about babying it. I kinda wish I had never discovered the field evaluations, but what’s done is done.