I used my 4-20 atacr exclusively for hunting. Crop damage mainly. Whitetail deer mostly 100-600 yards. Only doe so ID was important to me. Here’s what I learned with my venture from 4-16 atacr to 4-20 to 7-35
The 4-20 is a decent optic and depends what you want to do for long range hunting. There’s a big difference in optics when you run them during the daytime or approach “last light” shooting scenarios
When you have to play at an optics high end of magnification limits the image really starts to suffer. Depending on the glass will depend on how much. So assume you’ll give up some of that zoom in low light. So a 4-20 optic on 20 won’t look as good as say a 7-35 atacr on 20 power in the same setting.
If you’re taking long range shots in hunting scenarios then things like positive ID, positive ID of you’re target animal among others as they move and ability to spot hits/misses and follow up shots are more important. In low light an optic like a 7-35 atacr will be more useful on 20 then a 4-20 on 20 in low light.
I currently use or have used rifles for this hunting equipped with Burris E1 4.5-14, Burris XTRII 5-25/4-20/3-15, Sightron SIII 6-24/8-32, NF NXS, NF ATACR 4-16/4-20/7-35, ZCO 527. I now use the 7-35 atacr and ZCO 527.
This of course would depend what you’re hunting and what your rifle specs are. But I prefer scopes with more magnification than needed for ID and light gathering compared to their lower powered counterparts for what I do.
Creeping up on 40 kills between coyotes and deer from 600-1200 yards for reference. This is what I’m basing my experience above on
I didn’t think my 4-20 was much of an upgrade over my 4-16. The glass wasn’t next generation or anything like that. If I was going for a compact platform for a hunting rifle I would just get the 4-16X42 atacr or step to the 4-20 ZCO. I didn’t think the 4-20 atacr size was worth the optic quality upgrade.
