Growing up in Nevada, most everyone in my family hunted with a 7mm magnum topped with a Leupold 3-9x scope. In the ’80s and ’90s, that was a flat-shooting rifle combination that was responsible for filling a lot of deer tags for my family. I knew I had to have one to be like the rest of the hunters in my family. In 1996, I purchased the exact same gun my dad owned, which was a Browning 7mm Mag with a Leupold 3-9x scope. That was an expensive purchase for someone who was only sixteen years old.
This setup worked well, but once I moved to Montana in 1999, I really started to research long-range rifle setups. My plan was to build a long-range rifle and then top it with a quality scope. I built a few rifles, but I was always trying to do it as cheaply as possible and was not getting the results I was hoping for. To be honest, if I had just purchased a custom rifle, I would have saved money in the long run.
After a lot of trial and error, I managed to build a long-range rifle chambered in .300 Ultra Mag that was shooting sub-MOA, and I knew that I had to find the perfect scope for it. My wife had watched the gun-building fiasco and reminded me of what my grandpa always said: “Buy once, cry once.” She was right. When it comes to optics, there is no shortcut. You get what you pay for. With her blessing, I knew my rifle was going to be topped with a Nightforce scope.
I have always been a fan of Nightforce scopes due to our military snipers trusting in them and the punishment they put them through. At nearly every shooting school I have attended, the rifles have been topped with Nightforce scopes. It’s hard not to love a company based out of Idaho that has always been dedicated to quality.
After a lot of research on the different Nightforce scopes, I opted to purchase a NXS 5.5-22x50mm. Since then, that scope has been put through the ringer and taken more abuse than it should have. I can honestly say that it has never lost its zero and was worth every penny I spent on it. It may not look as good as it once did, but that scope has never let me down.
One of my goals as a father is to give each of my boys a long-range rifle setup paired with a Sig Sauer KIL08K-ABS rangefinder synced to the rifle and enough ammo to last them for years. With my boys starting to get to the age where they would be moving out, I needed to get a rifle set up with a Nightforce scope on it. Not wanting to go through the whole gun-building process again, I contacted Snowy Mountain Rifle Company, a Montana-based gun shop, to have them build a 300 PRC in early 2023. This gun shoots like a dream, and I’ve been very impressed with it. Honestly, I am having a tough time passing this rifle on to my boys.
With Nightforce continuing to up the game in scope-building technology, I decided to go with a newer model. After a lot of research and using some of the different models, I settled on the NX8 4-32x50mm. This scope fixed the two little things that I did not like about the NXS 5.5-22x50mm scope I had been shooting. First, the lowest magnification was 5.5 power lower than the NXS 5.5-22x50mm, which really helped with those close-range shots. It also had a maximum magnification that was 10 power higher, which was huge when reaching for targets at 1,000 yards. At 1,000 yards, I can see the bullet holes in the paper targets while on 32 power.
We have put this setup through its paces for the last three seasons; the whole family shot it and took a pile of animals. I have been really impressed with the setup and probably need to get another one ordered. The scope has great glass, and the turret was very easy to set up. The ZeroStop is a must for me, as I always rotate my turret back to zero once I shoot an animal or move position from an area I was set up to shoot from. I can’t tell you how many people I have talked to who missed an animal because they didn’t remember to zero their turret. I really like scopes that are a quarter minute of adjustment on the turret, as it allows me to make smaller adjustments for those long-range shots. I keep the MOA turret on the scope—I travel so much that my hunts take place at all different elevations, so a custom-cut yardage turret would not work very well for me.
I really liked my Nightforce NXS 5.5-22x50mm, but my NX8 4-32x50mm has been a lot better of a scope for my western hunting style. I have also used the NX8 2.5-20x50mm, which is a great scope if a hunter is looking for a lighter and shorter model than the NX8 4-32x50mm.
Nightforce released their NX6 line of scopes this year. I plan on testing out this new line in the 4-24x50mm and the 5-30x56mm. It is going to be tough to get me to part with my NX8 4-32x50mm, but you never know until you try.
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