I recently bought a fixed 6 power Bushnell "Scopechief" off ebay for 28.00 and shipping.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but was very pleasantly surprised.

The logo reading "Bushnell Scopechief 6X Triple Tested" was die stamped into the left side of the turret housing, not merely painted on. The lettering is as sharp as on an pre64 Winchester.

The finish is gloss, and has the same depth and sheen as the early Redfields and Leupolds. There seems to be nothing second rate about this scope. It was made in Japan.

The crosshairs are standard, not duplex, and the reticle is obviously mounted ahead of the erector tube because when you move the turrets, the reticle goes left, right, up and down. It's kind of wierd, but I have a very early Weaver K6 on my old Mannlicher Schoenauer which does the same thing.

The optics are extremely clear, no less so than my Vari X II (a mid 70's make).

The turrets are the friction type like the Leupold Vari X II's have, except that they are knurled on the edges and can be easily turned with your fingers.

I tested the scope this afternoon on my .243 Remington 788, and it tracked and held zero very well.

I don't know the age of the scope, but I'm guessing late 50's to early 60's.

Anyway, it's a very nice scope for the money. I would imagine similar quality these days would cost upward of 200 dollars.

Dan Newberry
green 788

Dan - I've been trying to tell everyone how good the Bushnells are for months now! I remember when the xhairs were fixed in a lot of scopes, but if you got mounts with a little adjustment or a shim here or there and just used the scopes inner adjustments for fine tuning things, you would never know. I can't help but wonder if scopes are a bit stronger for having fixed crosshairs??

Anyhow, if you were wanting a good 6X scope, I think you got it. My only concern now would be that it is still internally sealed. I'd hate for you to go out opening day of deer season to find a scope fogged or iced up inside.

You done good...

[ 08-08-2002, 06:48: Message edited by: Pecos45 ]

Thanks for the reply Pecos45... I didn't think to check it for a good seal now that you mention it. The overall condition is quite good, so I'm hoping the seal is good.

I like old optics for some reason. I normally try to put a "period" scope on every rifle. My 788 is a 1972 model, but I think this Scopechief is a decade or two older than it is!

I do have a windage adjustable rear base, and will do as you recommend and center the crosshair optically and adjust for windage with the base.

Thanks again for the post...

Dan

I have a year old Scopecheif. Excellent optics. Very clear. I have it on my Ruger 300 Win Mag.

I have owned two of the scopechiefs. The first in mid 70"s was a 2.5X8 that was mounted on my Ruger 77R in 7mmRM.The second a 3X9 from the 90's.The first one wpold not hold its zero after about 10 yrs on the 7 mag so I bought a new one it lasted about 6 months. I sent the 3X9 to bushnell as it had a lifetime warranty. They returned it saying the tube was bent which voids the warranty. I sent the 2.5X8 to them and they came up with another excuse about mistreatment of the scope. I will never buy from them again.

I have an old 4x Scopechief on my pre-64 M-70. My father installed it on the gun when I was a kid in 1959. This is a very high quality scope, extremely bright with sharp, undistorted field of view. I also own a 2.75x (on a pre-64 375H&H) and a 6x which I will probably put on another vintage rifle, probably an FN Deluxe sporter in 244 Rem.

OK, well I think we should all keep this Bushnell thing quiet. If the Leopold boys find out what they are missing and how they are paying 4X prices for their optics, then they will all switch to Bushnell. This in turn will drive the price up for US.

Let this just be our little secret.

I have one of the old Scopechiefs in 10X. It came on a .22-250 I bought used. The optics are quite good and it holds zero just fine. Anyone know who made these for Bushnell? Ed

I just remembered we paid about $60 in 1959 for the 4x Scopechief and the M-70 was around $115, not a low price for a scope in those days.

fl3006:

The $60 you paid for a Bushnell in 1960 is equal to $360 today, according to the inflation calculator at http://www.interest.com/hugh/calc/cpi.cgi?D=60&O=1960&N=2002

Makes today's Leupolds look like a bargain and today's Bushnells like chump change, since you can by a 4x Bushnell today for less than 30 bucks (although probably not the quality of the old Scopechief).

Incidentally, the $115 model 70 would cost you about $691 in today's money. I'd say scopes have gotten some cheaper relative to guns in the last 40 years.

Just remembered: I paid $62.95 plus shipping for a 3-9 Leupold Vari-X and $139.95 for a Sako Finnbear standard grade in 1965. Try those two out and see if they're cheaper now or then.

Regardless of inflation, the point I was making about the $60 Bushnell and the $115 M-70 in 1959 is that the Scopechief once was Bushnell's top-of-the-line and a state-of-the-art scope in its day. These old models still compare fairly well with high quality scopes of today and are real bargains now when you can find a used one in good condition. Good quality scopes have always been priced at about half or more of the cost of a good quality rifle.

I have an old Bushnell on a Marlin 336. Twice I have taken it off and replaced it with what I thought was a better scope (once with a Leupold, which I am also fond of). Both times I took the new scope off and replaced it with the old Bushnell because I just couldn't convince myself that the new scope was better.

My first scope was a Bushnell Banner4x32 with Bullet Drop Compensator.I bought it in 1984 and i still have it,but the adjustments doesnt work anymore because of an accident.Its still very clear with good resolution compared to todays top scopes.But the antireflectioncoating is not good.The price was 695nkr,about 93dollars.

I have a rebuilt older Scopechief 3x9x40,and my son has a Elite 3000 3x9x40,there simply no comparison,both in twilight factor and clear distance.It serves well enough on a back-up.Buy a new 'scope.

The only problem with the "inflation calculator" is it doesn't hold true. Today's Bushnell scopes are mostly well under $200. A comparable Leupold will cost about 2 1/2 times that.

It's kind of a religious thing with me..."Never have a scope that costs as much as the rifle!"

[ 08-09-2002, 07:36: Message edited by: Pecos45 ]

Wstrnhntr, Bausch & Lomb did not make Bushnell scopes. Bushnell, like many others, contracts out the manufacture of their scope lines. Who makes them for Bushnell today has nothing to do with who made the scopes first marketed as Scopechiefs in the 50's or 60's. The scope I have was made in Japan and probably dates back to somewhere around 1962 - 1964. I suspect the Japanese maker was Hakko but I am not sure. Just curious. Ed

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I have one of the old Scopechiefs in 10X. It came on a .22-250 I bought used. The optics are quite good and it holds zero just fine. Anyone know who made these for Bushnell? Ed
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Ed: The OLD Bushnell Scopechiefs (those made from some time in the 1950s up to the early or mid 1960s) were made by Kowa, in Japan. This is the same company which still produces some well-regarded lines of spotting scopes, and other optical gear. The identical scope sights were also sold in some countries under the brand name of ‘Prominar’. At about the same time as Bushnell started getting their scopes made by someone else – I don’t know who - the Prominar brand name disappeared.

Kowa continued to sell this same line of scopes under their own brand name in some countries (though possibly not in the USA) until the early seventies, when production of them ceased. Pity, because in my opinion they were good scopes.

I’ve got four of them myself, of various magnifications and with either Bushnell, Prominar or Kowa brand names on them. I don’t feel any need to replace them with anything newer and supposedly better. They are of the ‘reticle-moving’ type, which can entail some fiddling around with bases and/or rings to get the reticle reasonably well centred, and they don’t have click adjustments, but they have their good points, too. The optics look OK to me, sharper and clearer than some much newer scopes I have looked through, and the adjustments are reliable and repeatable. I’ve never had any of them leak or fog-up on me, despite having used them in some harsh climatic conditions, including torrential rain, snowstorms, and a few unscheduled swims. (I do NOT intend to get into a debate over how these scopes compare with the L brand, or with the S & B, Z, S, H and K brands, either!)

Redrover,

Thanks for the information. I've actually copied and printed it, lest I forget... I'll poke around for a Kowa or a Prominar.

There is a good side to having the reticle outside the erector tube: You can see right away how "screwed up crooked" you scope mount is!

If your mount is so offset that you have to crank an exorbitant amount of windage or elevation into your scope to get it zeroed, it likely won't hold that zero as well as a better centered scope would. This is what I learned from reading a tech article on the internals of scopes, and it does make sense.

I agree that my old Scopechief is optically as good as many scopes on the market today, and is more than adequate for what I'm using it for.

And I like having something a little different. Hell, I've got less than 30 bucks in it! How can that be bad?

Dan Newberry
green 788

I bought a 4X Scopecheif new in 1965 and remember paying $49.95. It had what they called a Command Post, you could pop the post up at will when you felt the crosshairs were too fine. After awhile the post would pop up by it's self from the recoil. This never seemed to effect the sighting of the rifle. Another interesting gadget Bushnell sold was a power booster that screwed into the front end. The one I had raised the power from 4X to 10X. It really cut the light down and a scope of that much power needs an AO.
Pete

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There is a good side to having the reticle outside the erector tube: You can see right away how "screwed up crooked" you scope mount is!

If your mount is so offset that you have to crank an exorbitant amount of windage or elevation into your scope to get it zeroed, it likely won't hold that zero as well as a better centered scope would.
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Dan: You’re right about that. When I have mounted newer, ‘image moving’ type scopes on some of my rifles I’ve still spent lots of time dicking around with the mounts to get the scopes reasonably close to their ‘mechanical centres’, for that very reason. Also because the optical qualities of scopes of that type can suffer significantly if they are cranked off almost to the limits of their internal adjustments. Gotta love these Burris Signature rings, with offset inserts available if the bases, screw holes or whatever are badly out of kilter.

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Hell, I've got less than 30 bucks in it! How can that be bad?
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It can’t be! If somebody offered me one of them in reasonable working order for the equivalent of US$30, I’d buy it in a flash. Even if I had to pay for having it cleaned and re-sealed.

Pete: I, too, made the mistake of buying one of those Bushnell 2.5X power boosters back in the mid sixties. It seemed like a good idea at the time, to provide some extra magnification when doing accuracy testing, but in practice it didn’t work out too well, even for that. First off, it had about a yard of parallax error in it at a range of 100 yards. An optical instrument technician was able to fix that for me, but the optics were still pretty poor, and the windage and elevation adjustments in the scope went completely haywire. Unfortunately, I’ve still got the wretched thing – I can’t think of anyone who I dislike enough to sell it to!

Happily, none of my scopes have the ‘Command Post’ feature. I had heard from others that it was not entirely reliable. Evan

If it works for you then nothing else is required and thats the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say.