Maven RS1.2 Failure?!?

[SDHNTR]

Nightforce Digillum is great.

Agreed

 

[KenLee]

Nightforce Digillum is great.

Reticles are waaaay too busy for my liking

 

[5811]

I guess I dont know where or why people use illumination during daylight, can anyone illuminate, I mean enlighten, me on that?

If I crank my maven up to see the illumination when its light out, I see the bleeding. But in twilight if I turn the illum on low, I get the perfect hint of glow I need and no bleeding, which seems perfect to me.

 

[KenLee]

I guess I dont know where or why people use illumination during daylight, can anyone illuminate, I mean enlighten, me on that?

If I crank my maven up to see the illumination when its light out, I see the bleeding. But in twilight if I turn the illum on low, I get the perfect hint of glow I need and no bleeding, which seems perfect to me.

Because thin reticle on low magnification FFF scopes are almost invisible???

 

[Kjc103]

I guess I dont know where or why people use illumination during daylight, can anyone illuminate, I mean enlighten, me on that?

If I crank my maven up to see the illumination when its light out, I see the bleeding. But in twilight if I turn the illum on low, I get the perfect hint of glow I need and no bleeding, which seems perfect to me.

I have only ever used illumination in low light (dawn/dusk). I’m in Arizona though. Maybe in more overcast places people use it on darker days?

 

[Chris in TN]

Noob here weighing in with an opinion nobody asked for:

The best form of reticle illumination (in an optic for sport hunting in daylight) is to have a design that doesn't need it.

 

[SDHNTR]

Try hunting bear or pigs (black animals) at last light in heavy background cover.

 

[JGRaider]

Noob here weighing in with an opinion nobody asked for:

The best form of reticle illumination (in an optic for sport hunting in daylight) is to have a design that doesn't need it.

Great idea, but a little out of touch with reality.

 

[SDHNTR]

And that’s what’s frustrating about this Maven. Obviously the engineering/tech for making a well functioning illuminated reticle is out there and is relatively common. Most scopes get that part right, even crappy ones where the rest of the scope doesn’t work. The hard part is building something robust and reliable. Maven/LOW evidently got the hard part figured out, but then botched the easy part. It makes no sense to me.

 

[JGRaider]

I've had way more scopes that "work" over the past 50 years than ones that "don't work". Guess I'm very lucky.

 

[Chris in TN]

Great idea, but a little out of touch with reality.

I disagree. I've used SFP reticles all of my life at first/last legal light (35 years of whitetail hunting with hundreds of evenings spent watching deer in food plots at/after legal light ended under all weather conditions) and there are absolutely SFP designs that are 'good enough'. I'm not saying they're ideal, but they are 'good enough' that reticle visibility is sufficient to make a shot on a very poorly lit target, and any further artificial illumination of the reticle comes at the cost of reducing visibility of the target behind it. You don't need a perfectly visible reticle, you just need it to not be the limiting factor, i.e. at the last moment of legal light on the darkest cloudy day, I don't need to be able to see every detail of a reticle, I just need to be able to know where it is in relation to a target I can barely see. The goal isn't perfect visibility, it's just 'good enough to hit that rapidly darkening blob over there'.

I scribbled this in MSpaint. It's not perfect but it's the direction I'd go down if I were a scope maker trying to make a non-illuminated FFP reticle sufficient for low light use without being too big at higher mag in better light. The bottom plane/half of the horizontal crosshairs are thick for low light; the top planes/halves are flat with windage hashes.

I'll also concede that there will never be a perfect design. But I do believe that it's possible to make a FFP reticle that is usable in low light without being cluttered at high mag.

(Also, the less erector zoom you have, the easier this task is; a 4x-16x scope with a usable FFP reticle will be easier to achieve than a 2x-20x, and I would argue that a 4x erector is 'enough' for the ideal hunting scope and 5x-6x-8x-10x erectors are not truly needed)

 

[Nine Banger]

We're legal here 1 hour after sunset.

In ag fields I can see a regular reticle for the first 20-30 minutes after sunset then if I choose to continue, I turn on illumination. The Nightforce digilum glow is perfect; the Maven bleeds even at the lowest setting.

In the forest I would probably turn the reticle on at sunset.

I think a lot of western hunters don't know that white-tailed deer are more nocturnal than crepuscular in the southeast. You might catch a button buck or some resident does out before sunset but all other activity happens at or after sunset. There is no morning hunt in my AO; the deer are like vampires. If you see a deer in the morning it got pushed or made a time management error.

 

[Chris in TN]

Try hunting bear or pigs (black animals) at last light in heavy background cover.

I've never hunted either and have no personal desire to, but can see where illumination could be useful there. I just don't think it's a case that would make me, as a deer/elk hunter with no interest in hunting black bears in black woods, insist on an illuminated reticle for a riflescope. And even then, generally if it's so dark you're struggling to pick up the reticle, adding light inside the scope just makes it even harder to see the target itself. There might be scenarios where you can sacrifice a tiny bit of target image quality in exchange for that little red dot of reticle visibility, but it's something that is exceedingly rare for deer/elk. I do have wooded deer stands I hunt in the evenings if the wind is right, and have had deer walk past me at the very end of shooting light, and have yet to be able to see a deer clearly without being able to see the crosshairs well enough. I'll also concede that I probably subconsciously choose more open stand sites for late evenings.

 

[Chris in TN]

We're legal here 1 hour after sunset.

What state? I honestly didn't know there was a place in the US where you could legally hunt daylight game an hour after sunset. My comments certainly wouldn't apply there.

 

[cuerro viejo]

We're legal here 1 hour after sunset.

In ag fields I can see a regular reticle for the first 20-30 minutes after sunset then if I choose to continue, I turn on illumination. The Nightforce digilum glow is perfect; the Maven bleeds even at the lowest setting.

In the forest I would probably turn the reticle on at sunset.

I think a lot of western hunters don't know that white-tailed deer are more nocturnal than crepuscular in the southeast. You might catch a button buck or some resident does out before sunset but all other activity happens at or after sunset. There is no morning hunt in my AO; the deer are like vampires. If you see a deer in the morning it got pushed or made a time management error.

Might be time to switch to thermal.

I’ve never had an issues with a maven with in LST. Not sure what state has a 1hr after Sunset but too each their. I can tell you that my Swaro’s arent even good an 1hr after or before Sunset without artificial light. Maybe in a full moon, but that’s about it.

If I’m hunting exotics or hogs that late. It’s thermal

 

[cuerro viejo]

What state? I honestly didn't know there was a place in the US where you could legally hunt daylight game an hour after sunset. My comments certainly wouldn't apply there.

The google says Carolina. In his case sound like he needs a 6x56mm swaro

 

[Nine Banger]

The google says Carolina. In his case sound like he needs a 6x56mm swaro

5-25x56 ATACR is good for first hour after sunset for the entire time.

2.5-10x56 Trijicon Accupoint with the green triangle is awesome too but it dials in MOA.

30-60 minutes after sunset is a 150yards and in game out in an ag field. In the forest you're toast 30 minutes after sunset.

I'm interested in testing a ZP5 in these conditions but I'm waiting for a kinda beat up used one to hit the market.

 

[Chris in TN]

The google says Carolina. In his case sound like he needs a 6x56mm swaro

Ah. Sounds like there's a market for a 'Carolina special' scope with an illuminated reticle. And maybe a solar powered streetlight to put in your food plots. I wonder if that would be legal?

 

[cuerro viejo]

Ah. Sounds like there's a market for a 'Carolina special' scope with an illuminated reticle. And maybe a solar powered streetlight to put in your food plots. I wonder if that would be legal?

We have those in Texas. Google - Slow Glow. They are legal here for Non-game animals. Kind of on your honor system

 

[Mike D Texas]

Reticles are waaaay too busy for my liking

MIL-R is workable for me.

I still prefer a dial for illumination instead of the push button though.