In tough economic times, it is good to know there are plenty of scope bargains available.

A good friend of mine, who stays in a constant state of financial duress, saved up his pennies, put off the creditors for a month, and purchased a new rifle. He called and asked a tough question of his friend the optics editor.

"Man, I need a cheap scope," he said. "What's the best one?"

I launched into my standard diatribe of how the optic should cost as much as the rifle, and that the scope is probably the most important part of the accuracy equation--all things he had heard and read before. My buddy broke it down, plain and simple.

"Dude, I have $300 to spend, and that's it," he said. "What's the best cheap scope out there?"

With all the bad economic news and fun budgets getting smaller and smaller, inexpensive optics is a subject that needs exploration. Living very near a Bass Pro Shops store, my friend has the distinct advantage of going to a sporting goods store and looking through scopes that cost anywhere from $50 to $2,000. I gave him a list of things to look for and think about, and I hope it will help Shooting Times readers who want good glass at a great price.

It's In The Glass
Scope performance begins and ends with the quality of glass contained within the tube. If the glass is trash, the image you see through that scope will be more of the same. At one time, a manufacturer's ability to get its hands on good glass was the logjam that slowed production and raised prices. The great news for shooters is the proliferation of manufacturing houses that can turn out precisely ground lenses. Factories in Asia are punching out good lenses faster than you can say, "chopsticks."

Onto that glass must go coatings, and these coatings are what really do the work. Coatings cancel out natural reflections that distort images, tune color so that red is red and green is green, and often protect the lens from scratches. Most scopes have coatings simply because they would be almost unusable without them. Generally speaking, the more coatings a lens has, the better it will perform. Tip even the cheapest scope on end, and the lens will have a green, blue, yellow, or red hue. But all coatings are not created equal, and the better the coating quality, the more expensive it will be.

The lens and coating quality test is pretty simple. Pick up a scope and look across the store. If the colors you see with the naked eye are replicated in the tube, the manufacturer did a pretty good job with color tuning. Next, look into a darkened corner and see if you are able to pick out details you were unable to see before peering through the scope. If the image is brighter and more detailed, the coatings are doing a good job of transmitting light. Remember that no optic, no matter how expensive, gathers light. They simply transmit it. How well they transmit it is a function of coating quality.

If the about-to-be-purchased riflescope is variable power, dial the power ring high and low while looking around the edges for sharpness. If the image falls apart around the edges at one end of the power range, you should probably move on to another scope. After all, you cannot hit what you cannot see.