Spotting scope help needed please

[Ben Denise]

Hi Guys,

I have been tasked with the job of procuring a spotting scope for our club.

The brief is it needs to be able to see .223 holes at up to 200 yards relatively clearly.

Knowing nothing about spotting scopes I though I would ask on here for any advice as to which makes, power and price range I should be looking at?

Cheers. :)

[The Gun Pimp]

Cheapest decent spotting scope I know of is the Nikula sold by Fox Firearms for about £295 in it's own (pretendy) Pelicase. It's as good as my Kowa cost three times as much.

Yes, there's plenty for under £100 on Ebay but honestly, most will struggle with 22 holes at 200 yds.

If you're near Diggle, come and check one out.

[Ben Denise]

Thanks for that, and the offer of a visit. If I'm ever up that way I'll pop in.

[andrew375]

I have a Celestron, and I can easily resolve .22 holes at 100.

But resolving the same at 200 is going to be real challenge without spending serious money. Most 'scopes we see on target rages are either Optima or Kowa. Look for EDS (extra low dispersion) glass. What you are going to be concerned with is resolution and light transmission and that is to do with lens quality, material, design and manufacturing, all that comes expensive. To see what I mean look through one of the scopes sold by ALDI every so often. At 20x just about adequate for 25 yd. crank up the zoom for 50 metres and things get too dark and fuzzy for anything meaningful.

The fact is that if you spend £300 on something not up to the job instead of £700 on something that will then you will have wasted £300 rather than saved £400.

Also, amongst the best places to buy high end optics are bird watching forums. I've seen several instances of £800+ spotting scopes bought off twitcher forums for a fraction of their value.

[Oddbod]

Look at some of the Vortex offerings.
I have a 15-40x65 Sandpiper & have no problems seeing .224 holes at 200m.

[froggy]

You can find some Optolyth on ebay fairly cheap.

[Ben Denise]

Many thanks for all the advice gents, I will get researching. :)