Re: Budget scopes
Yes, you are asking way too much for a sub $150 scope. I don't think you will get a decent one in that power range. The only thing that may work for you is the Center Point 4-16's at Walmart and if it doesn't work you can take it back. I had one for a .22 and it tracked well to my surprise, and it worked well. The only complaint I had was the glass quality kind of sucked, but you can't have everything for $70.
That said if you are going to be hunting with this you'd be much much better off to spend your $150 on a Burris Fullfield II 3-9x40. You should be able to get one on eBay for around that, and it's the best scope I've used until you step up to the Ziess Conquest. While I prefer the 4.5-14x42 you will be paying a lot more than $150 for one. Used ones got for mid $200's and new ones for $300. With either of these you can also send it to Burris later on and have them put their tactical knobs on them for $80.
I'm not a scope snob by any means, and I've used some Simmons, Tasco's, etc and I've had better luck than most people act like they have online, but they won't do what you are asking. I've got an older Simmons that tracks well, but the newer ones I've had since Bushnell took over didn't track correctly, and the last one I had gave up after 6 shots as it had some large chunk of what looked like a huge paint chip floating around inside of it. It's the first one I've had break, but the others still didn't track well. That said, I've had decent luck with most of them if you plan to just zero them and never touch it again. I also think their quality has gone way downhill since Bushnell took over, and honestly, I've yet to have a Bushnell that impressed me. Their one lower end scope I had that came as a package deal was a total POS. It's glass sucked, it's adjustments took either a few shots to settle in, or you had to beat the crap out of the scope to get them to take, but it at least did hold zero once zeroed. I've had a few of the Elite scopes in different flavors, and while I liked them much better, and they had good glass, I still wasn't impressed and it was obvious they were still a Bushnell imo. The 10x 3200 Elite Tactical did track well, and had decent glass. The 5-15x40 non tactical one I had was equipped with slightly better glass and I thought I'd really like it until I sighted it in and realized that the tracking was way off.
