Scope options for a big bore

Leupold VX6 or Swarovski. No concerns about recoil here. Buy the best you can afford and preferably with a red dot.
 
I fully understand that acceleration and velocity are not the same Longwalker, but I did not want to get into too much detail ;)

FYI recoil has typically been measured by velocity. See numerous examples of recoil calculators...

In the case we are discussing, the distinction is fairly academic. Since the force of recoil is significantly higher and the mass of the riffle is considerably lower, both acceleration and velocity are measurably higher with the .458 Lott than with the .450/.470 NE.

I do not know how much personal experience you have shooting the fast .300, fast .338, .458 Lott and .450/.470 NE, but I can assure you that after shooting for several decades likely in the thousands of .300 Wby and .340 Wby rounds; in the high hundreds of .458 Lott rounds; and in the low hundreds of .450/.470 NE rounds, subjective experience confirms either, and both, velocity and acceleration calculus. The .458 Lott hits measurably harder and faster than any .300, .338 or .450/.470. In terms of acceleration, typically measured in velocity gain divided by time, I assure you that full weight and full power .458 Lott loads shot in a typical .458 Lott bot rifle, generate recoil that is high among those that gain the most velocity in the least amount of time, and I also assure you that the velocity of the recoiling .458 Lott rifle matters absolutely a great deal when it collides with your initially motionless shoulder :)
 
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PS: of course Longwalker, these "likely in the thousands of .300 Wby and .340 Wby rounds; in the high hundreds of .458 Lott rounds; and in the low hundreds of .450/.470 NE rounds" were by very, very far not all shot at game (I only wish!); actually only a small minority of them were, but for this discussion we are talking shooting experience, not just hunting shots experience, right? :)

Judging by scope issues...

I do not know about you, but I have personally had a crosshair break on a 1.25-4x20 Schmidt & Bender in the lat 1980's on a short and light, hard recoiling, stutzen Dumoulin (Belgium) custom .338 Win mag (which S&B were gracious enough to replace under lifetime warranty with their new-at-the-time 'unbreakable' glass etched reticle); and I have personally had another 1.25-4x20 Schmidt & Bender slide forward ~1/4" into its Alaska Arms rings on a .416 Rigby until its ocular bell rested securely against the rear ring; but I have never had a scope issue with a .300 (Win, Norma, Wby). Similarly, I have seen with my own eye scopes slides in rings, rings loosen on bases, or even bases shear their screws, and/or scopes break, more than half a dozen times with various high grade custom .450 Watts/.458 Lott/.416 Hoffman/.416 Taylor, etc. rifles when I was shooting big bore at least 2 weekends per month with a group of friends in Connecticut in the 1990's for close to ten years... but I do not think that I have ever seen a well mounted, quality scope on a .300 develop an issue. I am obviously not including in this discussion $200 scopes in $50 rings...

All of this to say that empirical scope damage experience also seems to confirm that the fast .40's+ are harder on both scopes and shooters that the fast .30's. Or at least such is my experience, and yours maybe different, which is entirely OK.

This being said, I believe that any high quality modern scope (high-end series of Zeiss, Leica, Swarovski, Schmidt & Bender, Leupold, Vortex, Nightforce. etc.) will withstand the recoil of about any shoulder fired contraption nowadays. The 1980's were different, there was not much of a market for recoil-resistant scopes. Military snipers were shooting the .308 in those days, and most .458 Win were fired with iron sights. Today's market is different: snipers shoot the hard-hitting (on both ends) .338 Lapua and .50 cal (although generally with muzzle brake or suppressor), and there are (tens of?) thousands of scoped .416 (Rem, Ruger, Dakota, Rigby, etc.) and other (tens of?) thousands of scoped .458 (Win, Lott, Rigby, etc.), not to mention legions of various .375 (H&H, Wby, Steyr, Dakota, Ruger, etc.), so there has been enough demand to allow manufacturers to invest in developing scopes appropriate for hard recoiling rifles.
 
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Leupold VX6 or Swarovski. No concerns about recoil here. Buy the best you can afford and preferably with a red dot.
I'm with ya.
Going with a Trijicon RMR in a QD mount for my 416RM as my DG set up.
Planning on hunting Cape Buffalo on foot and limiting shots to less than 100 yards.
I'll see how I like it vs the Z8i 1-8x24 I'm putting on the 375H&H.
 
I'm with ya.
Going with a Trijicon RMR in a QD mount for my 416RM as my DG set up.
Planning on hunting Cape Buffalo on foot and limiting shots to less than 100 yards.
I'll see how I like it vs the Z8i 1-8x24 I'm putting on the 375H&H.
I bet you’ll wind up wanting the Z8. Best of luck on it. Good fun setting up a new gun.
 
I bet you’ll wind up wanting the Z8. Best of luck on it. Good fun setting up a new gun.
It remains to be seen how spoiled my eyes will feel looking through the Z8i, then going to a red dot.
The Z6i is on my radar as well.
We shall see...
 
The Z6i is on my radar as well.
This makes a lot of sense BeeMaa ;)

Ah... but the old "7" rule...

With a 24 mm straight tube objective, the Z8 1-8x-24 will have a 3 mm light bean coming out of the ocular at maximum magnification (24 mm objective divided by 8x max magnification = 3 mm light beam). This is not even half the 7 mm typical human pupil opening.

This is where the "7" rule came from. For a scope to deliver as much light as the human eye can use, its objective diameter must be 7 times its maximum magnification. This is why for the longest time, when engineers still had a say in product design, typical German scopes were 1.5-6x42 (6 * 7 = 42) or 2-8x56 (7 * 8 = 56) (y)

I am not sure the "7" rule was ever widely discussed in the American market, and I would speculate that most AH readers, aside from our German and a few other European friends, may never have been exposed to it...

What this means for the Z8 1-8x24, is that the 8x magnification will not be very useful except in full broad day light. Mathematically, anything more than ~3.5x magnification will start loosing light with a 24 mm objective... Granted, with 92% light transmission modern glass, it is nowadays less important to respect the "7" rule, but it is still very relevant :)

Besides, I am not really sure what use there is for 8x magnification on a .375 H&H typically used to shoot rather large animals at rather moderate ranges ;)

It seems that the Z6i 1-6x24 offers everything, and more, a straight tube scope should offer, and I personally would buy one without a second thought before they disappear off the market, over a Z8i 1-8x24, and I would redirect the $$$ difference toward another another piece of kit or the next safari budget (y)

Just my $0.02 :)
 
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I've read much on the various aspects of light and optics, but I find the theories expressed differ from my empirical observations. I have a binocular handed down to me that was made in 1949. It is a Bausch & Lomb Zephyr 8x30. According to the formula it should have an exit beam of light measuring 3.75mm. What I find incongruent to the formula is that in virtually total darkness- moonlit night or similar low light situation I can look unaided, back in the day I had eyes capable of reading the bottom line of the eye chart, 20/10 or some such; but I could see less of the stuff than when I looked through the binos. In every situation I could make-out much more detail with the binocs than without. Which seems to me, according to the formula, should not be the case.
 
This makes a lot of sense BeeMaa ;)

Ah... but the old "7" rule...

With a 24 mm straight tube objective, the Z8 1-8x-24 will have a 3 mm light bean coming out of the ocular at maximum magnification (24 mm objective divided by 8x max magnification = 3 mm light beam). This is not even half the 7 mm typical human pupil opening.

This is where the "7" rule came from. For a scope to deliver as much light as the human eye can use, its objective diameter must be 7 times its maximum magnification. This is why for the longest time, when engineers still had a say in product design, typical German scopes were 1.5-6x42 (6 * 7 = 42) or 2-8x56 (7 * 8 = 56) (y)

I am not sure the "7" rule was ever widely discussed in the American market, and I would speculate that most AH readers, aside from our German and a few other European friends, may never have been exposed to it...

What this means for the Z8 1-8x24, is that the 8x magnification will not be very useful except in full broad day light. Mathematically, anything more than ~3.5x magnification will start loosing light with a 24 mm objective... Granted, with 92% light transmission modern glass, it is nowadays less important to respect the "7" rule, but it is still very relevant :)

Besides, I am not really sure what use there is for 8x magnification on a .375 H&H typically used to shoot rather large animals at rather moderate ranges ;)

It seems that the Z6i 1-6x24 offers everything, and more, a straight tube scope should offer, and I personally would buy one without a second thought before they disappear off the market, over a Z8i 1-8x24, and I would redirect the $$$ difference toward another another piece of kit or the next safari budget (y)

Just my $0.02 :)

I'm going with the Z8i for the 375 for the simple fact that my 5x Leupold is not enough for me at longer ranges.
I consider my 375H&H to have an effective range of 300 yards on most PG.
At that distance with my aging eyes, I need help that 5x can not provide.
Not that the Z6i isn't good, but I questioned the price for getting just one more power of magnification.
With the Z8i I can always dial back to 6x if I so desire and take full advantage of the 7 rule.
 
We all have our own experience, and our own experience is our own reality, not to mention that no two of us have a pair of eyes built exactly the same.

I've read much on the various aspects of light and optics, but I find the theories expressed differ from my empirical observations...
Regarding the "7" formula Ray B, I have personally used for close to 40 years (and continue to use) a pair of Zeiss 10x40 BGA binoculars. I have always found them perfect for my hunting purposes, including a fair amount of night hunting in winter as legal in Europe. Their light beam is 4 mm wide. I really never understood why a friend of mine carried the twice as big, twice as heavy, twice as bulky Zeiss 8x56 BGA at night, until I used them, side by side with my 10x40 for a couple hours on a moonless night... The "7" formula does not mean that optics with light beams less than 7 mm in diameter are not good, it simply means than they transmit less light then the human eye is capable of using.

To appreciate how much difference there is between 8x30, 10x40, 7x42 and 8x56 binoculars, or in other words 4 mm, 6 mm, or 7 mm light beams, there is only one method: use them side by side at nightfall or night. It is not very easy because few of us own a large number of high quality binoculars... But another and much easier way to experience the impact that a wider light beam has on crepuscular vision is to use a variable scope and progressively rotate the magnification ring up and down. It is quite an enlightening experience (pun fully intended) that cannot be appreciated until actually tried :)

And, truth being told, this probably does not mean much in America where hunting is limited by legal sunrise and sundown hours. The need for that wide 7 mm light beam is much more acute in Europe in countries where nigh hunting is allowed. It therefore makes sense that German makers focused heavily on this, while American makers generally ignored it.

I'm going with the Z8i for the 375 for the simple fact that my 5x Leupold is not enough for me at longer ranges. I consider my 375H&H to have an effective range of 300 yards on most PG. At that distance with my aging eyes, I need help that 5x can not provide. Not that the Z6i isn't good, but I questioned the price for getting just one more power of magnification. With the Z8i I can always dial back to 6x if I so desire and take full advantage of the 7 rule.
Regarding magnification BeeMaa, I suspect that a lot of it has to do with acquired taste, rather than visual acuity. For the last century hunters (and military snipers) used 4x and 6x fixed scopes with perfectly satisfying results. The first major "revolution" was the quasi elimination of fixed power scopes for variables scopes. It happened in Europe in the 1970's I would say. Not sure when in the US. Maybe before? And it is only over the last two decades, since the early 2000's I would say, that magnifications have increased dramatically. Does it make shooting easier? Apparently a lot of people think so. How much is enough? Apparently enough tends to never be enough, if one observes market trends. The four scopes currently in the Zeiss flagship Victory product line are a perfect example.

upload_2019-12-25_12-7-17.png


Maybe I am a prisoner of my own paradigm and too rigid to change old habits, still owning a number of Zeiss and Schmidt & Bender 1.5-6x42 scopes, but I genuinely do not understand what purpose a 20x or 35x BIG GAME HUNTING scope serves. Sure they can be cranked down. I wear 1.5x readers as I type this, so my eyes are not as good as they used to, but I have never felt the need for more magnification than 6x for big game hunting even at 300 yards, although I do own a number of variables that go to 10x because it was what the market offered when I bought them.

Maybe I have the wrong expectations, and maybe I remain influenced from my youth by a lot of night hunting when aiming is done at an area rather than a point, but I certainly do not try to aim at an exact dime-sized point of impact when I hunt, because I know that I will never reach 1/2 MOA precision from field shooting hunting positions - this is just reality - so I have always been satisfied with magnifications that lets me aim at a 6" vital area behind the shoulder around the top of the lower third of the animal body. Unadulterated reality is that most folks - me included - pain to shoot much better than 3 to 4 MOA (3 to 4" circle at 100 yards) standing from the sticks, or from various field positions, never mind off hands (!), so if my crosshair covers a dozen square inches at 200 or 300 yards at 4x or 6x I do not mind. On the other side of the argument, I have never missed an opportunity because I was struggling frantically to crank the power down when I could not find the animal in the narrow field of view of extra high magnification.

Truth be told, 6x or 8x are essentially the same BeeMaa, and I fully agree that I do not see much of a point changing scope to go from 5x to 6x. I do see a major point though, going from Leupold to Swarovski (or Leica, Zeiss, Schmidt & Bender) but I readily admit a bias for German scopes (although Swarovski is actually Austrian).

In the end, and as usual, to each their own :)
 
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I've never heard of the "7" theory. In the case of a variable power optic, a 2-10x40 for example, at 10 power you would need a 70mm bell. If that scope is only dialed to like 6x magnification, will it give that 7mm beam or is it based solely on the maximum magnification?
 
I've never heard of the "7" theory. In the case of a variable power optic, a 2-10x40 for example, at 10 power you would need a 70mm bell. If that scope is only dialed to like 6x magnification, will it give that 7mm beam or is it based solely on the maximum magnification?
I am not surprised (see the above post likely posted at about the same time as yours). I suspect that this was/is something more important to German manufacturers whose clients hunt(ed) at night, than to American manufacturers because of the limitation imposed in the US by legal sunrise and sundown hours.

This is not a theory, this is a physical reality:

upload_2019-12-25_13-31-47.png

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK381/

As stated numerous times in my above posts, daylight is not an issue with any optics such as 2-10x40 scopes or 10x40 binoculars providing all the light the human eye can use.

Things change in crepuscular vision when most pupils dilate to typically 7 mm (for healthy eyes). This is when a wider light beam makes a huge difference.

The diameter of the beam of light will increase as the variable magnification is decreased, this applies through the entire range of magnification. A 2-10x40 scope will be noticeably brighter at nightfall from 2x to 6x than it will be from 7x to 10x.

Try it! I know that this is hard to believe, but once you try it for yourself it will be obvious. Set the rifle comfortably on a rest, look at something that is not under an artificial light 100 or 200 yards away at nightfall, and rotate up & down the magnification ring. :)
 
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I use nightvision behind a standard glass scope and have always used it on lower power, gives an idea on a potentially optimal magnification for low light. Interesting.

I don't use much magnification anymore, I shoot a fixed 1x out to 500 yards in competition. However, of course, hunting live game is a different situation and I usually use more magnification
 
The problem that I have with comparing scopes is that the scopes are attached to rifles, most do not have QD mounts. In an urban situation it leads to frantic liberal neighbors if they see someone across the backyard fence appearing to aim several rifles at some distant object. the logistics of comparing more than just a few by loading the scoped rifles in a car and traveling to a remote area, though not insurmountable, are challenging.
 

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