HuntingNet.com Forums - Help me decide on a scope in the $200

Quote:

ORIGINAL: skeeter 7MM

npaden, I am nottrying to be a bearhere butit is common sense not to point a rifle at an unidentified target. It is a site device, intended for the purpose of shooting a target not for identification.Use binos or other unloaded devices for such decision making tools on whether to cover the distance between you and the game.

Yoursaying your the only one who hunts in eastern montana??? If you can't identify if the deer is big enough how can you postively identify what is beyond the deer? How would you like to be binos up and see a rifle pointed in your direction by a hunter who happened to be viewing an animal in line with you but didn't happen to notice your where even there???Control your muzzle means ensuring it is pointed in a safe direction at all times, yesthis includes horizontally and brings in another golden rule with firearm saftey know your target and beyond!! Safety first, these are not toys!

I realize you are preaching saftey first and I am pretty good about saftey and I realize there are always areasthat I canimprove in. I've just never been one to carry a spotting scope with me when I'm hiking 5+ miles back into rough terrain. Sometimes I will bring binoculars, but sometimes it'sjust me and my rifle. I'm not talking about sitting on a ridge line and scoping with my rifle looking for deer or elk. I'm not using my scope tolook at a big gray rock trying to figure out if it is a deer or not.

What I'm talking about is that little extra magnification might be able to tell me that the obviously nice buck is a 4x4 without brow tines or if it does have tines to make it a 5x5.I personally don't think using your rifle scope to determine whether it's a 4x4 buck that I'm going to pass on or if it a 5x5 worth taking is a saftey issue. Even if I had my binoculars with me, I don't think I would mess around looking through my binoculars to look for brow tines if a big buck comes into shooting range, I will use my scope and if I see the brow tines I'll be ready to pull the trigger. Heck, we had some old 3x fixed power scopes and I shot deer at 200 yards that I thought was a nice5x5 and it ended up being heavy beamed3x4. I don't think it was a saftey issue that I didn't know how many tines were on the deer when I shot it though. I think being sure of your back drop is a huge saftey issue and I am very happy to be hunting open prarrie vs. woods for that reason especially.

Anyway, I hope the Nikon Monarch 4-12x ends being a a good scope. I'm now looking at the Nikon Monarch 1200 rangefinder and a checking into a decent spoting scope also.