Just got my hands on a new hawke sidewinder 30 tactical 6.5-20x42 on my ar-10 .308 and hit the range. I havent heard or seen alot on this scope so figured i would give my opinion and a range report. I have always been a firm believer of you get what you pay for and in this case i would with no hesitation say you get more than what you pay for. After putting in the order to redhunterllc and recieving hands down the best customer service i have ever recieved in dealing with an optic or and online order period my scope arrived for face to face action. Now normally using higher end optics like NF, leupolds, etc i didnt know what to expect when i went with am optic that was $400 compaired to $1.500. But right out of the box i was impressed with hard case that it had arrieved as soon as it came out of the box i went over all the goodies it came with and went straight out side to get a little face to face action checking the clarity of the glass,the illumination,focus,turret clicks and locking abillity etc. Looking through the glass i will honestly say the clarity and light transfer is better than any leupold i have ever owned and is compairable to NF. The locking turrets are a nice touch as long as you get them nice and tight when you zero it in, they can be a little tough to get locked back in place and the clicks are a little soft for my liking. The clicks are soft but loud enough to hear very easily while trying to adjust. Illumination is very nice with the 5 different brightness settings in both green and red and the focus knob is right behing the illumination wheel witch i had no problem adjusting either with out having to put the bigger focus wheel it comes with. So now to the range it was a nice cold windy and rainy day but figured if it couldnt handle the bad weather then i didnt want it. So after getting the scope mounted i zeroed in at 100yds and shot 50rds to get the scope and bbl warmed up. After that i took it out to 300 and to 700yds to really test the tracking and turrets. Shooting a few shots on steel at 100 i went straight to the 300rds and 10 shots straight rang steel with minor scope adjustments, so then i steped it out to 700 witch for me was moving up 19minutes and it didnt go 10 straight but it hit as much as i could with the wind and rain. After a few shots at 700yds i dialed it back down to 300 and it was dead on then back to 100yds and shot a 5 round group to see what it could do and to my suprise it had no problem producing sub groups
(5 rond group). After a day on the range of 200+ rounds I would say this scope is more than capible of running with the big boys in the optics industry and is suitable to do anything weither its predator hunting or target shooting or big game hunting a hawke optic will stand up to the challenge. I hope this helps any bodys hesitation in a hawke since theres not alot of info out there or experience but i will say for sure they blew me away along with redhunterllc and there will never be a leupold on any of my xmas list again they have been replaced with the hawke... here are a few pics i tried to go through the scope but keep in mind i suck with a camera.
(trees are closer to 200yds away)
(no tresspassing is 85yds away from house)hope you guys enjoy
