For Christmas my dad just got me a Rem. 700 and I don't know whats the best scope for it and what power. I want to use it for competition and also for hunting. HELP!!!!!
Despite the scope you get, you've got to have a scope alignment tool and lapping kit to hone those scope rings out. I have gotten better accuracy and repeatability when I used this thing...so out of the 10 or so scopes I have whenever I've installed a scope or reinstalled a scope using the alignment and lapping tool the performance seems to be better.
http://www.midwayusa.com/viewproduct/?productnumber=879712No scope choices from me...just remember the foundation. Good solid rings that you take time to install and try to get a scope with a 30MM tube. Anything I have in 30MM has better performance than similar units in 1" sizes.
Think about it...and this is me surmising, you transmit the light from the front lense to the back lense through a series of lenses on precision mounts, some of which adjust. If the lenses in the middle are bigger, each precise adjustment can be more coarse (larger movement) to get the same adjustment (moa) downrange on the target. So if a 1" tube is built on a machine that can give XX% precision that same amount of precision will be built into the 30MM tube which is about about 20% larger than the 1".
So, my point is assuming that the mount of a 30 mm lense is, let us just use a number .5 inch which is exactly 1/2 the normal tube...then if you have a 30 mmm tube it makes sense to assume that same lense in the light pathway will be .6 inch. So if the coarse adjustment is 0.01 inch you get 50 adjustment clicks but can get 60 clicks out of the .6 inch. These are not exact numbers...and the number of adjustments on either scope are likely the same...it's just the precision of the 30 MM tube is probaly 20 per cent more precise (from an absolute standpoint) than the 1" tube for a given machine's ability to be precise.
Also, the light is bent less in a similar fashion through lenses which have limits of precision and, thereby all things being the same, distorted less.
Do we have a scope manufacturer out here that can say yea or nay to this?
In any case, a 30 MM scope seems to be better than the same quality 1" scope.