Brilliant summary GateKeeper.

I was an optics technician before I was an avid shooter, so many of these concepts are self-evident to me, but I've always been amazed at how many shooters undervalue the optic side of their chosen weapon system.

A point that I'd add is that scopes can be portable between rifles with similar applications, so one scope can serve for several systems as long as they're not needed simultaneously and you don't mind re-zeroing. Of course, this portability also depends on the mounting system to a great extent. I have scopes held in mounts that attach to 1913 rails that I move around from time to time, but the Leupold on my .444 Marlin is in rings, so it stays put just out of convenience.

Cheers,

Murray310