Simmons 4X ProDiamond Evaluation
I have four of these scopes, all on muzzle loaders. The oldest one is 4+ years old. All have been trouble free.
Pros: Long eye relief (4+ inches for me) - wide field of view - clear, sharp optics with a wide adjustment range for elevation and windage - light and short - inexpensive. The last three I bought have what Simmons calls a "fast focus eyepiece" which allows you to quickly focus the scope to suit your vision by turning a focus ring at the very end of the rear lens - kind of like the focus ring on binoculars. It's a real nice feature because you can have it adjusted when wearing glasses, then take your glasses off and quickly adjust it for your naked eye. I do that a lot when hunting because I remove my glasses to use binoculars. My oldest ProDiamond does not have that feature.
Cons: You're limited to the 4X power, of course, so it's less flexible than a variable magnification scope for things like evaluating the size of a buck's rack out there at 150 yards. Not a big a deal if you carry binoculars as I do - but still a limitation. It's a shotgun scope, so parallax is set at either 50 or 75 yards (I’m not sure which) rather than the standard 100 yards used for rifle scopes. That means on long shots if your eye is not lined up perfectly with the centerline of the scope you could have a parallax sighting error. But it's so small (an inch or less at 200 yards) as to be meaningless to me. Because it's a shotgun scope, the cross hairs are thicker than on most rifle scopes. At 100 yards the cross hairs cover about one inch of your target. Not the best for fine target work at long ranges (but dang nice in low light hunting situations).
Durability: I have a ProDiamond on a little Omega X7 that develops "significant recoil" with 110 grains of T7 FFFG and 300 grain bullets. It hasn't been able to shake the Simmons loose yet. I also have them on three TC Renegades. When I clean the Renegades after a shoot I put the breech end in a bucket of water, including the back half of the scope, and pump the bore with soap. Haven't had one leak yet.
For most practical hunting situations, if you can’t get it done with a 4X scope a higher power one isn’t going to solve your problem.
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Last edited by Semisane; 01-17-2011 at 09:30 AM.