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Spotting Scope

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Iowa1

New Member
I have a ten-year-old Bushnell that is due to be retired. I am going to buy a new spotting scope within the next couple weeks and I'm looking for input if anyone wants to give it. I mostly use it for glassing deer on a window mount, often in low light conditions.

I am not going to spend over about $500 and hopefully less than that, but you know how that goes if I find exactly what fits my needs.

Thanks in advance.
 
Check out The Sportmans Guide web sight because they have a Nikon Sky & Earth 20X60X80mm on there for $399 and I had to pay over $600 for mine a couple years back when they came out!
I love mine and have had no issues.
Later, T$
 
I just bought a used(like new condition) Nikon Spotter XLII 16x48x60 for $330.00. Im very pleased with it. I see they have them in camo new in the box for $369.00 sells at cabelas for $500 web page
 
I have a Bousch & Laumb Elite 20x60x70mm that is very nice and runs in the $500 range. When I bought it I was struggling with the portable vs good light transmission thing and decided to go with a mid size, thus the 70mm objective. I actually carried it for exactly one day at 13,000+ feet in the Medicine Bow national forest before I abandoned it due to weight/size issues. So much for that plan. 99.9% of the time I use it on a window mount and for that purpose I wish I had just gone with an 80mm heavy weight scope for the light transmission and resolution ability. In theory a bigger objective lens will always have a higher resoultion capability, all other things being equal, and aid in light transmisson. This scope does a very nice job and is a big improvement over the 15x36x50mm Bushnell it replaced though. I have used the Nikon Fieldscope 60mm quite a bit and it is a very nice scope also, though above what you want to spend.
I would just love to have a big Swarovski or Leica scope but I cant justify the huge price tag. The problem I see with the big $$ scopes isnt the scopes themselves, but atmospheric conditons. Most of the time it is either too humid or your fighting so many heat waves (even on below 0 days) that no scope is going to give you a perfect picture no matter how much you spend. The law of diminishing returns and getting what you pay for both apply in optics. Still, I think for window mount usage you are smart to go with the biggest objective lens size you can afford in a good scope.
There are alot of bird watching sites that have really extensive reviews of binos and spotting scopes. One I have used alot is www.betterviewdesired.com . One thing I have noticed on those reviews is that a scope with a fixed power eyepeice almost always out performs one with a variable power. I almost never use mine past 20x or 25x because the image degradation exceeds the gain in maginification in all but perfect conditions.
 
I agree with Timberpig's point regarding fixed vs. variable. I had a 15-45 variable power that got stolen a few years back. I replaced with a fixed power 20x Nikon Sky and Earth model because like T-Pig I was almost always around 20-25x when I was using my previous variable and the higher mags were just not that good of sharpness in low light.

Another place to shop prices is a electronics/camera/video warehouse in NY

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/
 
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