This past week I was able to take out the Kidd squirrel gun, sight it in, and shoot some squirrels. I quickly learned that the scope I chose had some very limiting factors.

Scope : Leupold 3-9x33 EFR

1. FOV was horrible
2. Crosshairs were FINE. Against a target grid they became washed out on anything higher than 3x. And the slighest glare or obstruction when shooting at squirrels made them hard to pick up.

I like the weight of the scope, but I'm thinking a firedot or similar is probably warranted. I still haven't decided between illumination vs a different reticle.

Would a SFP scope help with disappearing reticles? I am not too educated on all the FFP vs SFP differences.

As an aside, when we got good shooting conditions, the rifle put 3 shots that could be covered with a dime.

quote:

Originally posted by OttoSig:
Would a SFP scope help with disappearing reticles?

Yes. A second focal plane reticle does not change size with the magnification setting. But for that reason, using a calibrated reticle for any purpose will be accurate at only one magnification.

That said, the Leupold 3-9 EFR has a second focal plane reticle, so if it’s too fine for your purposes, the only solution is a reticle that’s coarser or—perhaps—has the illumination capability. Fine reticles in such scopes are probably common because of the assumption they will be used for shooting at small targets. That is something Leupold has advertised in the past.

Any scope that does not have a reticle with MOA or milliradian calibration marks will usually have a second focal plane reticle because there is no advantage to a FFP without them.

Pros and cons.

That EFR has adjustable parallax, which is great for shooting tiny things at backyard ranges. It also means you have to focus the reticle and the target with different knobs. Did you mess wih the parallax and eyepiece focus?

It's hard to find nice AO scopes that arent HUGE like my SWFA 6x40.

Maybe you can send it to Leupold and have them change the reticle. It's worth the effort for a nice scope like that. Airgunners put EFR's on very high budget spring-gun builds.

quote:

Originally posted by DoctorSolo:
Maybe you can send it to Leupold and have them change the reticle.

Will Leupold do that now?

Their “custom shop” that used to be the place that did such work has been closed for years, with no indication I’ve been able to find that it’s going to be opened again.