Recently someone here posted a question about Bushnell scopes for use on a powerful rifle -- I think it was a .375 H&H. Numerous people replied with different advice. One of the most important considerations is eye relief -- on a hard-kicking rifle the eye relief should be generous to avoid having the eyepiece of the scope cut into your eyebrow when you fire the rifle.

I just measured the eye relief of three different scopes that I have on three different Remington 700 rifles. I removed the bolt in each case and measured the distance from the back of the rear reciever ring to the eyepiece of the scope -- this means that the shorter this distance, the farther forward the scope is on the rifle and the longer the distance will be from the scope to your eye.

A Leupold M8 4X fixed-power scope on a .375 H&H Classic -- distance from receiver ring to scope eyepiece is 1 1/2 inches.

A Leupold VXII 3-9 power on a .270 Mountain Rifle -- distance is 2 inches.

A Bausch & Lomb 3000 3-9 X (forerunner of the present-day Bushnell 3200) on a .300 Weatherby Classic -- distance is 2 1/2 inches. The other two are quite OK. This one is marginal because it really puts the scope nearer one's eye than is optimal, meaning that you can get hit with the scope when you fire the rifle if you're not careful.

LE270,



With variable power scopes I suspect that method is a rough and ready guide at best. For instance the Leupold, and Bausch & Lomb variable don't have fixed eye relief so the shooter will has to position his head slightly different at different power settings.



S&B quote constant 95mm (3 3/4") eye relief for the variables which is opposed to the "usual" 80mm to 85mm found on many European scopes. In fact it very comparable to the eye relief usually found on Leupolds.



What I have not done is match eye relief to FOV figures..it would be interesting to see if S&B or Leupold give up much FOV to attain long eye relief.



Regards,



Pete

One weird thing I noticed is that the Leupold VX2 in 2x7 has the longest eye relief of all of their other scopes includiibg all of the VX3's.

I have a last generation B&L Bolvar (about the same a 4200), its a great scope, but lackes eye relief. I had to take it off my 375, it was in my face, my PH shot it, was in his face to. I didn't notice it on the bench, but in the field it was a killer.

I when to a Nikon monarch gold or whatever the 30mm tube scope they make is called, quite a bit better.

PH buddy of mine told me, if the scope comes under the brim of you ball cap it going to get you in the eye on a hard kicking rifle. That was the rule of thumb he went by.