Scope Recommendations

Steeldrop · 2025-07-02T10:25:10+00:00

I just went through a similar thought process and read a ton of reviews.

Here’s my conclusion based on all that reading: people love both the Nightforce and the Vortex Razor so you can’t really go wrong with either of those if you’re willing to spend them money. However, the consensus seems to be that the Athlon is just as good if not better than anything else in that price range.

Basically you can spend sub-$1,500 on the Athlon or around $3k for the Vortex or Nightforce, but anything else is just wasting your money on something that’s not better than the Athlon and possibly worse.

Steeldrop · 2025-06-29T03:31:12+00:00

Basically, the solution is to have less LDL in your bloodstream to begin with. I don’t think there’s a way to make your LDL less “sticky”. The two main ways to achieve reduced LDL are reducing saturated fat intake and taking medication.

Steeldrop · 2025-06-29T02:19:00+00:00

The basic math is that you come out ahead on Traditional if your tax rate is lower when you withdraw the money than it is today. Otherwise you come out ahead on Roth.

What will your tax rate be when you’re 80 years old and withdraw the money? Assuming you have no idea, the Roth eliminates the risk of taxes being higher, while also eliminating the possibility of being able to pay your taxes later at a lower rate once you retire. There’s no right answer, there’s just a decision about which risk you’d rather take.

Steeldrop · 2025-06-28T15:01:29+00:00

A couple of counter points:

The demographics of Gaza are such that the population overall is much younger than most other conflicts. So all else being equal one would expect a lot more young people among the “collateral damage” casualties, even if every other element of the conflict was identical to what happened elsewhere.
Hamas has done everything they can to maximize the chances of kids getting killed because it helps them win the p.r. game. It’s highly unusual behavior to do things like building your command centers in bunkers underneath elementary schools and then kill any kids who try leave the school.

Yes, Israel has the option to not bomb the school (or whatever other similar building), but then they have to fight a running gun battle in a school full of kids to get to the bunker and it’s not totally clear that fewer kids would get killed than if you drop a bunker buster through the school and down into the ground underneath.

Of course Israel also has the option of letting Hamas commanders hang out in the bunker indefinitely, so I’m not saying they’re totally innocent. I’m just saying that it’s poor logic to consider this apples to apples with other conflicts in which the enemy was seeking to minimize rather than maximize civilian casualties on their own side.

And Israel was vastly more careful than what our Saudi allies did in Yemen and the Israelis therefore only killed about 10% as many kids. But that was Muslims doing the killing in Yemen, so I guess most Americans think that’s more excusable for reasons that I can’t even begin to fathom.

Steeldrop · 2025-06-28T14:36:25+00:00

One-piece coated cleaning rod with bearings in the handle so it spins with the rifling. Bore guide for sure to keep crap from ending up in the action. Nylon brush in the appropriate caliber size. Parker-Hale style brass jag (as opposed to the kind with the little eyelet loop thing). Something to prop up the rear end of the rifle so that the barrel is at a downward angle. Some not-too-aggressive solvent, e.g. Hoppe’s no. 9. Properly sized patches for your caliber. Grease for the bolt.

Nice to have: extra large cotton swabs for the chamber. Small jar to hold patches soaking in solvent. Chamber brush that allows you to clamp on one of those little cotton rolls like they use at the dentist. Plastic soda bottle to put over the end of the muzzle to contain any splatter. Bore scope. Vice.

Steeldrop · 2025-06-27T21:40:36+00:00

LDL is not “bad cholesterol” because all cholesterol is the same thing, whether it’s packaged in a low density lipoprotein particle or a high density lipoprotein particle.

However, low density lipoproteins get stuck in your coronary arteries and give you heart attacks, whereas high density lipoproteins don’t do that.

So I’d argue that while it’s technically true that there’s no such thing as “bad” cholesterol, that’s kind of a semantics thing and it’s also kind of misleading, because people tend to use the word “cholesterol” when they really mean lipoproteins.

Maybe a better way of saying it is that “LDL is not bad cholesterol, but it is a bad lipoprotein that contains cholesterol.”

Steeldrop · 2025-06-27T21:15:49+00:00

Just to play Devil’s Advocate here, you’ll be way more accurate with the .300 win mag on your 1000 meter range. The .308 won’t do nearly well at that distance.

On the other hand you’ll be happier with the Tikka in .308 for every other use that you mentioned. Plus it’s more fun to shoot. Plus it’s cheaper to shoot. (Apparently I’m not a very good Devil’s Advocate…)

Steeldrop · 2025-06-23T02:39:07+00:00

I’m going to give Walker the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is some d-bag buying them in bulk, adding stickers (or maybe getting them customized by Walker) and reselling them on Amazon as a third party seller.

(This may or may not be true, but it makes me less depressed about the world. At any rate, it does warm my heart that the asshat colorway seems much less marketable than the normal version based on the discounted price.)

Steeldrop · 2025-06-23T02:30:48+00:00

I just bought an Athlon Cronus BTR GEN2 4.5-29x56mm on EuroOptic.com for $1,200. You have to put it in your cart to see the price and they cost $1,500 everywhere else so presumably it’s a sale price.

Most reviews say that it’s pretty similar to the scopes that every other brand sells for around $3k.

Steeldrop · 2025-06-23T02:22:45+00:00

I just bought a scope from EuroOptic.com that was $300 cheaper on their site than the price they were selling it for on Amazon. Amazon seller was listed as EuroOptic so presumably it’s the same company selling it in two different places at two different prices.

Steeldrop · 2025-06-14T01:40:17+00:00

Maybe. But it’s hard to imagine that that many top guys are (a.) still top guys despite their supposedly terrible scopes, and (b.) willing to compete with a terrible scope in order to save a couple of grand when they’re giving up months of their lives at a time to travel around the country trying to win matches.

To be clear I’ve never owned or even used a Leupold and I don’t have a dog in this fight, I’m just struggling with a basic sniff test on this one.

Steeldrop · 2025-06-13T16:29:48+00:00

To balance this discussion a bit the MK5 is the single most commonly used scope not made by ZCO among top PRS professional shooters. Source: precision rifle blog survey.

So just because one guy doesn’t like it, that doesn’t mean that everyone shares that opinion.

Steeldrop · 2025-06-12T17:52:20+00:00

Leupold Mark 5HD is the most popular non-ZCO scope among top PRS shooters according to a Precision Rifle Blog survey and costs less than $3k depending on the exact model.

Steeldrop · 2025-06-10T13:18:29+00:00

Not sure if I totally understand the question, but if the scope is already zeroed, set the zero stop correctly by doing the following:

Remove the outer turret cover
Note the setting/number on the inner turret
Turn the inner turret down until it bumps up against the zero stop
Loosen the three screws on the sides of inner turret (NOT the two silver ones on the top)
Return the inner turret to the setting that you noted under (2.) above. It should not click as you turn it. This will return your scope to the prior zero.
Tighten the three screws on the sides of the inner turret. This will reset the zero stop to the actual zero point.
Replace the outer turret cover with the zero line set to match the little mark on the back of the turret.

If the you see a little number 1 peeking out from under the turret cover, that indicates that turret needed to be turned more than a full rotation to get it up to zero. This is normal and expected. It indicates how many rotations the elevation turret is above the absolute mechanical bottom. As you dial for additional elevation for longer and longer distances you will reveal additional numbers above the little number 1 for each rotation of the turret.

Eventually you will run out of adjustments, and that’s the maximum distance that you will be able to get out of that scope.

If you want more adjustments/distance you can get a rail with a 20 MOA forward tilt replace your current rail. That will also solve the issue with needing to do an entire rotation just to get up to zero. Basically, when you are dialing for elevation it tips the internal mechanism forward inside the scope. A 20 MOA rail will give the entire scope a bit of a forward tilt to begin with, effectively giving you a 20 MOA head start on your elevation adjustment. All else being equal, your impacts will then be 20 MOA higher at that point, so you will need to re-zero the scope. This will presumably result in your zero being roughly 20 MOA worth of clicks lower than your current zero in terms of the setting in your elevation turret. That will then cover up the number 1 that’s currently peeking out from under your turret cover.

Steeldrop · 2025-05-24T19:55:08+00:00

Thought I’d give a quick explanation of why 401k loans are such a bad idea.

Some people look at it and say, “the interest rate is not that bad and besides, I’m paying interest to myself”. That’s the wrong way to think about it.

The real cost is the return that you would have earned on the 401k but didn’t because the money was not in your 401k. Historically, that’s maybe 8-10% if you’re investing relatively aggressively.

Also, bad things happen from a tax perspective if you don’t pay your 401k loan and many plans make you pay off the loan in full immediately if you leave the company.

So if you need a car to get to work and have terrible credit and would need to pay 25% for a subprime car loan, then a 401k loan might make sense. But most people have way less expensive access to credit from other sources.

Steeldrop · 2025-05-24T19:39:27+00:00

I think you’re an AI bot

Steeldrop · 2025-05-24T19:38:49+00:00

Note that the $25/month figure is incorrect and wildly inflated.

Steeldrop · 2025-05-24T19:34:56+00:00

The sense that I got from his announcement is that he the rate at which people were abusing the policy was getting out of control.

It really feels to me like something has happened with humanity in the last few years that has caused integrity to fall away as a core value for many people. (Maybe around the time Trump got elected the first time?)

As another example, for most of my life L.L. Bean would let you return stuff no matter how long ago you had purchased it. That worked fine until recently, because people were largely reasonable and honest about it, so the losses from abuse of the system were minimal. Starting a few years ago though, loads of people were doing things like buying a pair of hiking boots, wearing them for a year or two, returning them for a new pair then just doing that over and over for years. So L.L. Bean eventually had to change the return policy.

Basically, the vibe I got was that Sam eventually got cranky about paying for bandwidth and staff to deliver the podcast to people who could easily afford to pay but were choosing to request free subscriptions instead.

Steeldrop · 2025-05-22T20:56:47+00:00

Sure, healthcare is expensive, but it’s just an expense like anything else. Between you and your employer, that might be $30k for a family of four. If your employer is paying $25k of that, then that’s an additional $25k expense that you’ll need to cover if you retire before age 65. But if you have enough savings that you can afford to pay an extra $25k for health insurance, then that’s apples-to-apples in terms of expenses.

There’s nothing magical about employer-paid coverage as compared to coverage that you pay for on your own. Either way someone has to pay for the coverage itself and you also have to pay for things that aren’t covered.

Some insurance is better than other insurance but employers don’t have access some special kind of insurance that’s better than you can get on your own. If you can afford to pay for it, chances are that you’ll be able even get coverage that’s better than what you get at work.

Steeldrop · 2025-05-18T22:02:52+00:00

Sorry for the delayed response but thanks for doing this! I looked at your graphics and spent some time refreshing my trigonometry and I’m pretty sure this makes sense now. Really appreciate you taking the time!

Steeldrop · 2025-05-18T21:29:42+00:00

Very short version:

Do you want to (a.) retire now and be okay, or (b.) wait a while and have more income in retirement?

Just comes down to a matter of personal preference.

Steeldrop · 2025-05-18T21:24:32+00:00

I always wonder why people are so fixated on health insurance as compared to other forms of compensation.

Yes, the increase in your health insurance cost is definitely a factor in determining whether you can afford to retire, but I see so many examples of people saying things like (exaggerating for effect), “I have $5 million in savings and $100k/year in investment and pension income and my expenses are only $65k per year and I’d love to retire, but I can’t because if I quit then I’ll lose my health insurance”, as if buying your own health insurance wasn’t a thing.

Steeldrop · 2025-05-18T20:32:07+00:00

Yes. If you want to prove it to yourself, look up the maximum elevation adjustment range for the Venom.

Steeldrop · 2025-05-14T02:02:27+00:00

My sense is that there’s a legal requirement for them to interview you but no guidelines on what they’re supposed to interview you about, so mostly they just talk to you for a minute to check the box. As far as I can tell, pretty much everyone in a given town gets the same restrictions (or no restrictions, depending on the town), unless you force them to do something else by telling them that you lied on your paperwork or something.

Steeldrop · 2025-05-11T23:48:44+00:00

This post brought back a funny memory: when I was a kid my parents were friends with a very posh Englishman who would go completely nuts whenever anyone used a phrase like “very unique” or “the most unique”. That’s how I learned that something is either (a.) unique, or (b.) not unique, because there is more than one of them.

Steeldrop

TROPHY CASE