Optics gurus...advice

[Flyjunky]

No problem, to be clear the ATC is a great little scope and has an excellent image, it really is just the lack of magnification and light gathering where it falls short for me. Obviously, the ATC is designed to be a small lightweight scope which IMO it is the best one on the market. The ATC does have great eye relief as well and you can actually use it to glass which is nice with the good field of view it has.

I'm headed for another deer hunt later this week and will be taking both the S2 and the ATC, hopefully, I will make a final decision after that.

For what it's worth during the backpack trip my buddy carried the S2 and it ended up staying in the tent a couple of the trips out while I packed the ATC. The ATC was nice to pack but I was also packing my 15 binos on my chest. Had I only had my 10's I probably would have taken the S2, we were also in very open high desert terrain and were glassing a couple miles a lot of the time and I felt like I was way under-glassed once we got up to a good master vantage on top.

Here is a link to a video comparison at 600 yards between the two. At this distance they were both good and had a good image, but when we found animals way out the S2 was a no brainer, the hikes where we had both spotters the ATC spent most of it's time in the pack. If I could only take one spotter I would no doubt take the 82mm over the 56mm.

Thanks, good luck on your hunt