Thinking about buying a rifle scope?  Here are some things to consider.

   First off, a scope will not make you shoot more acurrately.  But it does do two things that make hitting the target a bit easier.  First, it enlarges the target in you view.  Second, and most important, it allows you to focus on your target in a single focal plane.  The image of your target and the crosshairs of the scope are a 2 dimensional image, like a picture.  When you sight on a target with open sights, your eyes must try to focus on the target, the front sight, and the rear sights.  Actually, your eyes, no matter how strong or young, simply cannot focus on more than one distance at a time.  So you usually focus on the front sight, with the target and rear sight slightly out of focus.  So a scope aids you in sighting and seeing.  And you can't hit what you can't see.

   But what type of scope should you buy?  Should you get a fixed or variable power?  And what size or quality level?  In my opinion, it is hard to beat a good fixed power scope of 4 or 6 power with a 40 or 42 mm objective.  Fixed power scopes are inherantly tougher (less moving parts) and brighter (fewer lenses to reflect light).  Also you need not worry about missing a shot because you are fooling with the magnification adjustment on the scope instead of taking the shot that may only present itself for a moment. But most of you will opt for a variable power scope.  Let's face it.  We here in the US of A always think that more is better and biggest is best.  The most popular variable power scope is the 3-9x40.  3-9 is the magnification range and 40 is the objective lense diameter in millimeters.  There are other sizes that are becoming populars.  The 3-9x50, 3.5-10x44 and 4-12x50 are being seenmore often.  These are useful scopes and I own several.  But I rarely crank up the power to the highest level, unless shooting at paper from a rest.  Trying to keep a rifle steady while you are drawing a bead on a deer, with your scope's power turned all the way up will amplify every heartbeat, every twitch, and every little movement that your body cannot help but make.  In my experience, 6X is about the highest I crank my scope up in a hunting situation.  But say you have chosen you scope type and power level.  What brand should you buy?  Well rather than choose a brand for you to consider, I will tell you what makes a scope a good scope and what makes a scope a great scope.  We used to mantain that only European scopes were of high quality.  And it is true that scopes from Germany, and Austria have been and still are for the most part, high quality.  But there are other scopes made in countries like USA, Japan, Korea, Romania, Russia, even China that are of very good and even the highest quality.  First off you need a scope that is water proof and fog proof.  A water proof scope also keeps out dust.  Nowadays, even some of the cheapest scopes are weatherproof.  Next consider the glass.  In the old days, scopes had no coating on the lenses.  So when light hit the surfaces of the lenses, it was reflected by as much as 50%.  This means that the view in the scope was half as bright as the light outside of the scope.  Then (during the war I believe) Zeiss came up with a magnesium Flouride coating on the lenses.  This allows less light to be reflected resulting in a brighter image.  Some of the best scopes (the Bushnell Elite 4200 comes to mind) have light transmission levels as highs as 94-95%. There 4 types of coatings: Coated, fully coated, multi-coated and fully multi-coated.  Coated means that some, but  not all glass surfaces are coated. Fully coated means that all the of glass surfaces have one layer of coating.  Multi-coated means that one or some (but not all) of the surfaces have multiple coatings on them.  And fully multi-coated means that all surfaces have multiple layers on them.  And the more the coatings, the better the light transmission; and the more expensive the scope.  The cheapest fully multi-caoted scopes run at least 150 bucks.  The most expensive run 1800.  You can get a decent scope that is fully caoted but if you can afford it, go for fully multi-coated. Finger adjustable tuurets make life easier when sighting in.  Some scopes have an objective that is adjustable for parralax.  But this is usually not needed on a hunting scope. There are very good scopes out there in the $200.00-$300.00 range from Leupold, Bushnell, Nikon, Burris, Weaver ETC.  The are some decent scopes around $100-$150.00 from some of these makers and also from Simmons, Tasco, Barska, Nikko etc.  European scopes start at about $400 and go up to almost 2 grand!   An old hunting buddy of mine used to mantain that you should spend twice as musch on your scope as you do on your rifle. So buy the best you can afford and you won't be sorry when that difficult shot presents itself