$400 scope w/ Horus reticle

[Sumo99]

My buddy is looking for a scope for his M1a and wants one with a Horus reticle, at least 3-9x and for around $400. Anyone know of a decent scope that fills these requirements? I was thinking a Pride Fowler with rapid reticle may fit the bill, any others?

My friend just finished watching Magpul precision rifle video and I'm guessing that they used a scope with a Horus reticle so now he wants one. He's kind of a Magpul fanboy and I think he has a man-crush on Travis Haley.

[brando]

Horus Vision sells their own scopes with their reticles - but the scopes aren't the best quality. They also license their reticles to other manufacturers, but at a price which gets passed onto the customer for about $400. So buying a cheap scope with a horus reticle, your only option is second hand or get one from Horus (even then, $400 is too low).

[brando]

I should clarify a bit - the downside of the Horus scopes themselves is the quality of the optics and tracking. Sub-par optical quality will tend to have distortion at high magnification, can be a bit fuzzy and ultimately less crisp and clear than you get with good optics. For the average shooter, that's often not a big deal and honestly people tend not to care until they run into a roadblock because of it or they spend time shooting with good optics and don't want to go back. Now the tracking issue is a big one and the main reason I avoid cheap optics for the most part - if you can't reliably dial elevation and windage, what's the point? Well, with a Horus reticle it's less about dialing and more about holding. For a .223 or .308 shooter out to 600m, you can zero your turrets and then leave them alone, holding for your targets almost exclusively. This is what I did with my SPR - 100m zero and hold for everything else. Beyond 600m you start to get to the limits of the reticle and have to start dialing.

So the cheap way to do this is a Horus Hawk, for example - not $400 cheap, but still comparatively cheap. A better, but more expensive way would be a Leupold Mk6 3-18x with H59.

[Sumo99]

Thanks Brando. He'll be upgrading from a $100 Eagle Eye scope he got at a gunshow, so I think just about anything at this point will be an improvement

He's much more into just adjusting his holds vs. dialing in the scope for each shot, hence the want for a Horus reticle. Since it's going onto a standard M1a, he's not really looking for sub MOA type shooting, just wants to be able to hit targets out to 400-600 yards repeatedly.

[bruce_ventura]

Your friend can hit targets reliably out to 500 yds with a good BDC reticle (nonlinear elevation marks and windage marks). Burris E1 or Hawk Sidewinder SR6 will fit in his price range. Both reticles are in the SFP, making it easy to calibrate to most center fire loads using the power ring to match bullet drop at 500 yds.


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[FMJBT]

In the Magpul video, they describe how to set up a standard mil dot reticle as a "Poor mans Horus" using the upper most dot as the 100 yard zero point. I've had my AR-10 set up like this for a few years now using a $160.00 Leapers 3-12X mil dot scope. I can normally get first round hits at 450 and 650 yards, and 2 to 3 shots to get on steel (11"X 18") at 1000 yards all without touching the knobs. Being a Leapers scope, I'm actually kind of afraid to screw with the adjustments too much....

Not telling your friend to go out and Buy a Leapers and call it a day, but just let him know that it doesn't take a Horus reticle to do holdovers (Although they really do help with windage).