Figured I'd ask you folks since I'm still new to this sport/hobby. I'm looking to buy a decent scope for my 243 and will eventually transfer it to a 204 whenever I pull the trigger on the new purchase.
I mainly hunt across farm land and pastures, usually in low light and not very favorable conditions.
I've looked at several scopes but just not educated enough to make a good decision.
budget is $300-350 but may go a little more if it means much better quality.
Thanks in advance for any and all opinions/advice

There are some pretty good scopes out there for that kind of money, but I would do some research in one area before you buy one. The reason I say that is because I used Leupold scopes for years and then due to my financial status I couldn't buy all Leupolds and started buying Tascos. I have shot them for the last 15 yrs. No biggie right, wrong. At least for me it wasn't. What happened was this.

Most Leupolds have an average eye relief of 4". All of my Tascos had 3" eye relief. This is where I had a hard time adjusting back to a Leupold. So I did some research and found out that Nikon had the closest eye relief of 3" in the upper class scopes. Solution. I now shoot Nikons and love everyone of them. My .243 has a 4-12X40 Buckmasters and my 22-250 has a 4-14.5X50 Monach on it. For most people they might be able to adjust to the difference in eye relief. I had a hard time. That's how I remedied the problem. Again, just my two cents.

Buckmaster is a good scope for the money, if you can find a used Sightron SII or SII Big Sky (and you should for that $$), buy it.

These are sweet scopes. Will be my next purchase for a long range gun. www.hawkeoptics.com/ri...er-30.html

Can get them cheaper if you shop around have saw them around $350

Jason

Leupold... There's a reason folks compare to 'em.

You guys are funny. Totally off the subject of spending 300 to 350 money, I just read an article on the cheaper scopes rated the Simmons scopes the best for inexpensive scopes. Mine is a 6 x 21 that I like for prairie dog shooting. If I were just hunting coyotes I wouldn't get such a high mag scope. Plus you can buy Simmons scopes with a cool Predator Quest logo on them. Good is cool, but cool is cool too.

Dunkin and Jake both don't like the long eye relief of the Simmons, but I'm so big I can't get my face close enough on my rifle with a regular scope so it is fine for me. It must be mentioned that I'm probably 8" taller than Jake so it would go to reason that our eye relief needs are totally different.

I've shot enough to know there are lots of opinions about scopes. Most of my shooting is done a extremely close range with the air rifles. Some of those scopes are built like tanks to handle the double recoil.

On Thanksgiving one of the kids that came grabbed my Gamo Whisper and wanted to shoot it. I was going through my safety briefing when he said "I shot this last year remember", so I let him shoot. The next thing you know I hear him yelp and I see blood all over his face. Sure enough he put his eye up against the scope and cut a gash large enough to need a butterfly bandage to close it!

I have Konus scopes on my .243 and my 204. No complaints. Good scope for te money I think.

Thanks for all the great advice fellas, keep the suggestions coming. Some of these brands i've never heard of.
I'm still reading and trying to learn as much as possible

I know a lot of guys are sold on the major brand names that they are familiar with. However, you really need to check out Hawke Optics. Yes, we sell Hawke scopes but there is a reason why we sell only Hawke optics.

RedHunter LLC is not an advertiser here (yet) but let me relate a brief story. Several years ago my business partner (John Hunter) and I started a company called Red Hunter LLC.

We attended the big Shot Show to look over product lines and decide what brands of goods might be good for predator hunters. When it came to optics, we wanted quality, features and value. We looked at every manufacturer in the entire industry and after close examination, we chose Hawke. It is a British company and they sell more scopes in Europe than any other manufacturer. More importantly, there is a lot of bang for the buck.

Here is a quote from a customer, "Just went prairre dog "Hunting" last week end in AZ! It was too cold and windy for the little fellows to be really running, but some brave souls came up for the shooting.
I was trying out the new Hawke Binos my wife bought me for my birhtday and they are grest.
The only problem is, when you let them down and look out to see where to shoot you can NOT believe how far you were looking!
They are so clear I did not get any eye fatigue while using them for hours.
I did have the record shot for the weekend @ 350 yards down hill with a 10 mph cross wind.
We had taken a couple of long distance shots to dope the wind and when the dog popped up I had great confidence in the shot placement.
Down to the second line in the Hawke SR6 reticle and held off to the wind on the 10 mph dot!
Bang, headless Sage Rat @ 350! I can't say enough about the Hawke BINOS AND THE SCOPE. "

"Just got my hands on a new hawke sidewinder 30 tactical 6.5-20x42 on my ar-10 .308 and hit the range. I havent heard or seen alot on this scope so figured i would give my opinion and a range report. I have always been a firm believer of you get what you pay for and in this case i would with no hesitation say you get more than what you pay for. After putting in the order to redhunterllc and recieving hands down the best customer service i have ever recieved in dealing with an optic or and online order period my scope arrived for face to face action. Now normally using higher end optics like NF, leupolds, etc i didnt know what to expect when i went with am optic that was $400 compaired to $1.500. But right out of the box i was impressed with hard case that it had arrieved as soon as it came out of the box i went over all the goodies it came with and went straight out side to get a little face to face action checking the clarity of the glass,the illumination,focus,turret clicks and locking abillity etc. Looking through the glass i will honestly say the clarity and light transfer is better than any leupold i have ever owned and is compairable to NF. The locking turrets are a nice touch as long as you get them nice and tight when you zero it in, they can be a little tough to get locked back in place and the clicks are a little soft for my liking. The clicks are soft but loud enough to hear very easily while trying to adjust. Illumination is very nice with the 5 different brightness settings in both green and red and the focus knob is right behing the illumination wheel witch i had no problem adjusting either with out having to put the bigger focus wheel it comes with. So now to the range it was a nice cold windy and rainy day but figured if it couldnt handle the bad weather then i didnt want it. So after getting the scope mounted i zeroed in at 100yds and shot 50rds to get the scope and bbl warmed up. After that i took it out to 300 and to 700yds to really test the tracking and turrets. Shooting a few shots on steel at 100 i went straight to the 300rds and 10 shots straight rang steel with minor scope adjustments, so then i steped it out to 700 witch for me was moving up 19minutes and it didnt go 10 straight but it hit as much as i could with the wind and rain. After a few shots at 700yds i dialed it back down to 300 and it was dead on then back to 100yds and shot a 5 round group to see what it could do and to my suprise it had no problem producing sub groups cope is more than capible of running with the big boys in the optics industry and is suitable to do anything weither its predator hunting or target shooting or big game hunting a hawke optic will stand up to the challenge. I hope this helps any bodys hesitation in a hawke since theres not alot of info out there or experience but i will say for sure they blew me away along with redhunterllc and there will never be a leupold on any of my xmas list again they have been replaced with the hawke...
here are a few pics i tried to go through the scope but keep in mind i suck with a camera."

Once I get unpacked, I will be happy to demo a Hawke scope or Hawke binos. We have the best pricing too. I can even set up a group buy for the TN club members.

Sounds interesting, i'd like to take a Look at what you have and see a price list as soon as possible. I'm just down the road from you and will be back in town monday. Thanks

I have 2 Hawke scopes. Got a Sport HD on my 10/22, does great, the only knock is the eye relief becomes critical on the highest magnification, but for less than $60, I can live with that.

Got a HAWKE Eclipse 30 3-12x56 on my 6mm, no complaints, good glass for the money. . .