What's your best sub $1k scope recommendations?

Hit me with those sweet juicy opinions. Looking for a good scope that I can pay for outright. Would love to stay at or below $600 but open to suggestions.

 

without much info to go on, it's hard to make a good recommendation.
SWFA makes good stuff
a lot of vortex scopes fit your budget
primary arms makes a lot of good affordable scopes
look at used scopes to get better quality at a lower price

what specs/features are you looking for?

 

Good point, I have a 6.5 Creedmoor build and the longest range available to me is a 600 yard range so looking for something that can reach out to that range comfortably. Going out to Utah for a week and I would like to try some 1000 yard shots so it would be nice having something that's easy to learn and adjust.

 

Bushnell and Vortex should have something to fit your budget. We shoot .260 Rem, basically same specs +/-... If you can spend a little more, you get better internals and better glass, and that equals more consistent adjustments and hits downrange. We regularly shoot to 1000 yards/meters and even with our big Nightforces and Vortex scopes we are usually only dialed up to 16x max, the mirage gets too soupy to use any higher power here in Ontario with our conditions. Never shot in Utah, sounds like fun though. Let us know what you decide on.

Like BDSKJChris says if you can find good used, you can get higher quality at a good price.

 

600 yards is an easy goal for a $600 scope. 1,000 yards brings a bit more challenge as glass clarity and quality of any coatings on the glass will be much more important. the rule of thumb for what would be "combat effective" shooting is 1x magnification per 100 yards. keep in mind that combat shooting=/=prescision or competition shooting.

I have a SWFA 3-15X42 FFP with their mil-quad reticle. i paid $600 for it used with an adm recon mount. it works great but i have only taken it out to 300 yards with 5.56 on some 6"-8" targets.

Vortex razor HD series would be a good option but you won't be touching them for under $600.

Primary arms has their platinum series which are well reviewed, but again they are costly. they also have their 4-14x44 ffp scope that is tried and true, with good turret tracking, durability, and if you decide to upgrade would be easy to sell.

buying a used scope would be a great option so check local ads, gun forums, armslist to see what people are selling.

My best advice would be to buy nothing at all and save for exactly what you want. buy once, cry once rather than buy something you will not like and be stuck with and $600 lighter. not to mention you will need a good quality mount to get out to 1,000 yards, which will eat $100-150 of your budget, then the cost of having the scope properly mounted and aligned.

 

I did a bunch of reading a few years ago when I was shooting to similar ranges with my 6.5.
Glass clarity should be your main concern. Higher end vortex and SWFA have good glass.
Make sure your reticle match your turret clicks (there used to be MIL/MOA scopes because MIL was a nicer reticle but MOA is finer adjustment, I don’t think anyone does this anymore).
Get a reticle with an open spot in the center of the cross hair. Your brain will understand where the center is, a filled in cross hair covers a lot of the target at that distance.
FFP is nice, but usually adds $100-200 to the price of a scope. Since your will probably be at full zoom anyways, FFP doesn’t give you much advantage.

 

Great advice. You will want a 20 MOA one-piece rail/mount to get you the elevation you will need. Oh yeah, and go MIL/MIL turrets and adjustments.

 

For reference, this is a steel silhouette at 1050 yards at 24x zoom though a Leupold MK4.
The rule of thumb that that I was told is to spend $1 per yard when it comes to glass. and as HeyWannaTaco mentioned, you will need a 20MOA mount which cost around $150+.

 

another thing that will help you learn your ballistics, reticle, and DOPE would be an app like Strelok-pro, (which is what i use), you can set up a bunch of different pre-sets for each rifle, round, and optic and it will give you trajectories, velocities, shooting solutions at various ranges on both stationary and moving targets. it also helps if you want to figure out the optimal zero for your rifle/you.

 

been here ?

http://www.castlecountry.com/Shooting-Range

 

Never been past Oklahoma (Flew to Cali, but obviously no gun fun there)

 

Already started looking in to ballistics apps, but I will look at that one specifically.

 

primary arms is having a blem sale right now, a lot of the nicer stuff is OOS, but you can get good stuff with a great discount right now.

 

where ya shootin in Utah ?

 

Going out to Moab in May, was gonna look for places near there. Any recommendations?

 

Vortex Viper HS/T
I am in the East but did fine at 880yds in OK for me.
There are quite a few choices and opinions..
SWFA 10X is a pretty stout option as well.

 

Plenty of public BLM property....ask around....I'm sure there is some sort of safe area to shoot

Plenty of tourists too........I'm 2 hrs west of Moab......in Podunk.......

Have 4-5 places inside of 10 minutes to safely shoot anything.....

Have a couple HS-T's.....PST's....all good mid range glass

 

Kind of late response but I’d take a good look at Meopta’s new Optika6 ($600-800) line of scopes. Glass is a tad better than Vipers and it comes with all the bells and whistles for long range shooting.

 

I went with a Primary Arms SLx 3-18 x 50 FFP on my Colt CM65 6.5 creedmore AR. So far, I have only had legs to 300yds on my property, and there are no public ranges in the area greater than 100yds. The optics has held zero without incident, and reviews of this optics have most people happy out to a 1k. At the price point, I could not go wrong. The reticle is a little busy, but once you get used to it, you will be making adjustments to follow up shots without hesitation.

 

This! I have recently just bought vortex, went out on a limb and tried the SWFA 12x after watching some positive reviews on them, for the price I don't think you can beat them. Super clear and the reticle is very crisp.

Edit: I got a great deal on a used 12x mil/mil.. If I were to do it over, I would get the 10x moa version.