Shoot’n, Fish’n ‘n’ Hunt’n

This problem elephant, a known crop raider with a very belligerent attitude, charged without provocation and was dropped at just 13 paces. The rifle is a .375H&H, a more forgiving calibre for scope use, but had the rifle been a larger calibre, then the choice of scope would have been far more critical.

Introduction

For a very long time, it has been the accepted norm that a dangerous game rifle (DGR) should only be fitted with open sights and not with a riflescope. At first, during the golden age of African and Indian hunting, this was because optical sights were rare and rather primitive. Later, it was because open sights can take the hard knocks, do not clutter up the rifle and, at the ranges that dangerous game animals are shot, are all that you need. Indeed, at close range, a conventional magnified scope can be a huge hindrance.

I used to subscribe to this philosophy but, over the years, two things have changed which have forced me to rethink this. The first is that I have aged, and my eyesight has aged with me, and I just cannot see the open sights clearly anymore. In this problem I know that I am not alone and most of us will experience deteriorating eyesight as we age. The second is that advances in optical sight technology have given us viable alternatives to open sights for DGRs.

While I am now in favour of using optical sights on DGR, let me just make the point that, even when fitted with a good quality optical sight, a DGR should still have backup open sights. Indeed, I believe that ALL hunting rifles should have backup open sights and I am amazed that so many manufacturers cheat their customers by providing hunting rifles without them. Why do I still want backup open sights? Simply because even the best quality optical sight can fail in the middle of a hunt and, if it does, then you end up with a rifle with no sights at all. You can continue your hunt with open sights but squinting down a bare barrel is only viable at extremely close range and not a situation that you want to find yourself in.

I believe, without a doubt, that the best optical sights for DGRs are the micro red dot sights and, in a future article, I will look at the features and advantages that these sights provide. However, there are times when some magnification can be very useful especially when we are talking about versatile DGRs like the various .416s which are capable of taking both the largest game as well as plains game out to moderate ranges. In this article, I will be looking at low magnification rifle-scopes that include illuminated reticules as these are quite suitable for DGRs. All of the points that I will discuss, in this article, are valid whether you are considering an illuminated or a non-illuminated scope, but as discussed in the article Both Eyes Open Shooting, illuminated reticules are just so much better for hunting. Accordingly, I no longer buy non-illuminated scopes and this article is biased towards illuminated scopes.

Now, you are probably thinking that there are dozens of articles on selecting rifle-scopes so what could this article possibly add to the discussion? Well you are partly right and, accordingly, I am not even going to touch on the usual scope-selection subjects. However, I am going to address a couple of vital considerations that never seem to be covered in other articles on scope selection. These are considerations that should be resolved BEFORE you start looking at the usual riflescope features such as optical quality, light transmission, optical coatings, reticule design, etc., etc.

The first issue that you should consider, when you begin shopping for a DGR scope, is the physical size and layout of the scope; what I refer to as the geometry of the scope. Only after you have checked that the geometry of the rifle-scope will suit your particular DGR, should you proceed to looking at all the other features. When considering the geometry of a DGR riflescope, I am talking about:

• Eye relief,
• Length of the ocular housing,
• Diameter of the ocular housing,
• Length of the scope body, and
• Diameter of the objective lens.

Let’s now look at each of these considerations, in turn:

Eye Relief:

Eye relief is measured from the ocular lens to the eyeball. Note that the forehead is going to be closer to the scope than the eye, so short eye relief scopes are just waiting to bite you in the eyebrow!

I find it amazing that so many hunters do not recognize the importance of selecting a scope with adequate eye relief. Further, very few seem to know what constitutes adequate eye relief for DGRs. I am equally amazed that so many scope manufacturers produce scopes with inadequate eye-relief and then try and pass them off as suitable for heavy recoiling rifles.  As a result, I have seen many DGRs fitted with scopes of insufficient eye relief and, all too often, these include expensive, premium brand scopes. I think that part of the problem is that customers trust the brands they are buying and assume that the manufacturer would never produce a scope, and market it as a DGR scope, unless it had adequate eye relief.

The fact is that many rifle-scope companies do not have the expertise to know that their eye relief is inadequate for a DGR. Coupled with this ignorance, and to the detriment of the customer, is the attitude that ‘a sale is a sale’. You should never assume that the staff members of any scope manufacturer, or gunshop for that matter, have even shot a DGR. A lot of these people have never shot anything above a .300 Magnum, and in some cases not even that.

In today’s world, there are too many senior staff, working in optics and firearms companies, who might have degrees in business studies but who are not serious shooters themselves. Accordingly, they do not understand the true needs of their customers. Some of these companies produce scopes based upon inadequate and biased ‘market research’ and with features that are more to do with the whim of their optics engineers than with the customer’s needs. I have worked in the firearms industry for years, and for a large optics company, and have seen this exact situation at first hand.

How often do you read the manufacturers description of their DGR scope and, in that description, they describe the eye relief as ‘generous’ or ‘largest in it’s class’? Well the term ‘generous’ is a code phrase for “not enough eye relief but you won’t know till you have already bought our product’! Other manufacturers completely ignore eye relief in their advertising material, on their websites, and even in their specifications sheets, and it is quite a chore to find out what their eye relief is. Is this a further indication that some manufacturers don’t understand the importance of eye relief?

As for having an eye relief that is ‘largest in it’s class’, you need to realise that most US scope makers are tailoring their low-powered, variable scopes for the 3-Gun competition market. While the European scope makers are tailoring their low-powered, variable scopes to the ‘Driven Game’ market. Both groups of scope makers then add the description of ‘Dangerous Game Scope’ as an after-thought and because their 3-Gun and Driven Game scopes look a bit like DGR scopes and because they do share some common features, However, they may look like DGR scopes but they do not have sufficient eye relief for the big kickers. The truth is that only a couple of companies actually make scopes intended for DGRs and, sadly, many manufacturers have discontinued the only scopes, that they did make, that were suitable for heavy recoiling rifles.

Having established that most scopes do not have enough eye relief, for heavy recoiling rifles, the next question is how much eye relief is enough? One of the difficulties of determining how much eye relief you need is the fact that every shooter is physically different and we do not all fit, or hold, the stock of our rifle in the same way and, therefore, we handle recoil differently. Therefore, it is up to each individual to determine the best eye relief for their purposes but, hopefully, the guidelines that are included here will help you make the correct choice.

What Constitutes a Dangerous Game Rifle

When we talk about DGRs, we are generally talking about rifles greater than .375 calibre; such as the various .400’s, 416’s, 458’s and all of those calibres up to the .500’s and beyond. We should probably include some of the hotter .375 cartridges, such as the .378 Weatherby, in this group as well. When you get to those levels of recoil, anything less than 100mm, or 4 inches, is way too short and more than 80% of all riflescopes have eye relief distances of well under 100mm. Indeed, I would suggest that 100mm is fine for medium calibres, up to the .375 H&H and the like, but definitely inadequate, for anything with greater recoil than the venerable Holland and Holland round.

To illustrate this point, I recently tried a Leupold VXR 1.25-4x on my BRNO ZKK-602 in .404 Jeffery with Warne QD rings. The VXR has 100mm of eye relief and my .404 reloads are only moderate loads; a little stouter than the original loads but less that modern factory loads. Nevertheless, from a standing position, and with the scope mounted as far forward as the scope rings will allow, I still had the ocular housing touch my forehead on several occasions. It didn’t hurt me but it would only take a brief lapse of attention and I would have received a serious ‘whack’ to the head. As a result, I found myself leaning away from the scope and not concentrating on my shots. I should mention that the stock of this rifle has been made to fit me, so stock dimensions and design were not a factor in this case and my eye was located at the correct eye relief for that scope.

And that is the problem with scopes with insufficient eye relief. You might get away with using them for a while but one day you ARE going to get ‘bitten’ by your scope. If you are taking a snap shot or a shot from an unusual position, perhaps leaning forward over a low branch or similar position, then the danger of being hit by the scope increases. I have ended up with a case of ‘Weatherby eyebrow’, on a number of occasions, even when shooting moderate recoiling rifles, but with scopes with poor eye relief. I got bitten on these occasions because I was shooting from an unusual position or angle, and this problem becomes much worse when shooting a heavy recoiling rifle with inadequate eye relief.

This is what you want to avoid, a very nasty case of scope bite. In this case caused by a scoped 9.3x74R double that ‘doubled’! Even though the scope had 120mm (4.8″) of eye relief, at this level of recoil, it was not enough to save the shooter.

Minimum Eye Relief for Dangerous Game Riflescopes

So what is the best eye relief for a DGR? I believe that an eye relief of at least 115mm (4.5”) will give you an adequate margin on heavy recoiling hunting rifles. 115mm of eye relief, or greater, means that you can take your shots, from most positions, without worrying about getting hurt and so you can concentrate on your aim and not on the danger of being smacked in the head by your scope. Now, I know that there are shooters out there who will argue with that figure of 115mm, and they will say that they shoot with scopes of much less eye relief. However, I wonder how many times their scope has touched their forehead? I believe that many shooters, using inadequate scopes on their DGRs, are just a scope bite waiting to happen. Considering the recoil levels of DGRs, I think that it is only prudent to buy the longest eye relief that you can get and not make-do with a lesser scope.

The problem, however, is that there are very few scopes on the market that actually have an eye relief that is suitable for DGRs. Many of the manufacturers will claim, in their advertising material, that their eye relief is the best for heavy recoiling rifles. However, when you look at the actual eye relief of these scopes, you will often find that it is seriously wanting.  So, my advice to the purchaser, is always take a good look at the specifications of the scope and see what the actual eye relief is and do not blindly accept the manufacturers advertising statements without questioning them.

Indeed, there are almost no illuminated rifle-scopes that have sufficient eye-relief for a true DGR. The only illuminated scopes that truly qualify as DGR scopes, that I have found so far, are shown in the following diagram and, sadly, most of them have been discontinued – what are the scope manufacturers thinking? The number of DGR scopes is so limited that I have even included the only other option, the excellent Leupold VX3i 1.5-5×20 and which is non-illuminated, in this line-up:

This table compares the eye relief of a number of low powered variable scopes. Only a couple of scopes actually ‘make the cut’ as DGR scopes.

One final point on eye relief is that eye relief is fixed by the design of any scope in question. I am making this point, even though it should be obvious, because I recently viewed a ‘how to avoid scope bite’ video that talked about maintaining proper eye relief. Now, they may have been trying to say ‘do not crawl up your stock and get hit for your trouble’, but how they said it almost implied that we can control eye relief – which we can’t. You have to buy a scope with adequate eye relief to start with. This, coupled with a properly fitted stock, should preclude any tendency to stock crawl and getting a ‘Weatherby eyebrow’ for your troubles.

In the next part to this article, I will continue to discuss the factors that affect the ‘geometry’ of DGR riflescopes.

Copyright © 2018 - Robert Pretty - Shoot'n Fish'n 'n' Hunt'n.