A New Scope for a New Crossbow
The Original Bunjie (the “O.B.”, LOL) has entered its 12th hunting season, and did a whopper of a job, too by killing a bear and a boar. Pretty good for a crossbow that’s supposed to be retired, I’d say.
The scope on that crossbow is my beloved Twilight DLX from Excalibur. I love that scope. It’s great in low light, has good adjustable illumination for the reticles, and I’ve found that 60 yards worth of reticles is a lot, not only because I’ve never shot past 60 yards but also because when you start adding reticles it gets harder to read.
If you put more words on a page, you either have to make the type smaller or the page bigger, I guess.
Such is modern crossbow hunting. Faster crossbows have inspired shooters to take longer shots, and longer shots require more reticles. Most modern scopes that accomodate crossbows shooting over 400 fps are going to have reticles out to 100 yards.
Bunjie III, the latest addition to the Death by Bunjie family, is a Scorpyd Deathstalker 420. The Deathstalker is a tried, true, and tested model from Scorpyd. The 420 has been around for years (in fact, I think they discontinued it the year we got this one, so it was at the end of its run).
In the thumbnail above, you can see that at that time I was using the Exclibur Twilight DLX on that crossbow. It worked fine on there. I’m a fan of 150 grain broadheads, and that tended to drop speeds down into a range fitting for that scope.
But I still only had reticles out to 60 yards. And, given that the O.B. gets called into service from time to time, perhaps it’s best to leave the Twilight DLX scope on there permanently.
This isn’t a problem, really—I have no intention of shooting a deer beyond that distance (really, even beyond 40 yards) but you can’t really appreciate what this crossbow can do (or learn what it can’t do) unless you have a scope that can accomodate those longer distances!
When I shop for products, I rarely look at the cheapest or most expensive models…I’m more of a mid-range price kinda guy and I wanted a model that had been around a while, too. You know, tried, true and tested!
Enter the Hawke XB30 crossbow scope. I picked up one of these after a bit of research on the various options in that price range. It has reticles out to 100 yards, accomodates speeds from 250 up to 475 (I could use it on anything from the O.B. to the fastest crossbow on the market if I use a 150 grain broadhead, LOL). (Edit: the Ravin R500 has since come out and this scope would only work on that crossbow with heavier arrows to drop the speed down.)
Looks pretty good on there, huh?
It will take me a bit to get used to this scope, but I can say that its been easy to work with in the backyard Crossbow Range. Very similar adjustments to the Twilight DLX (1 click = 1/2” at 20 yards) and the locking speed ring is a bonus. It will take time to get used to the zero being at 40 yards (I sight in at 40, then the speed ring adjusts everything below and above 40) and it will take my old eyes a bit of time to get used to the reticles. But it’s definitely holding up its end of the bargain!
Incidentally, I chose the 2-8x36 magnification option. I figured longer distances required more magnification. I was a bit concerned since most of my hunting is closer ranges, but it appears to be very easy for me to aquire a target at 10 yards out to 50 in the backyard. We’ll be reaching out to longer distances soon!
Edit: since I wrote this post, I can tell you that I went back to the Twilight DLX scope. It was a tough decision. I really, really do like the Hawke XB30, but the extra reticles make the print too small for my old eyes. Plus, I’m not a fan of zeroing in with a 40 yard reticle. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks! For the time being, I want to focus on killing deer with this faster piece of equipment. Perhaps someday down the road I’ll return to this fine scope, but in the meantime I returned it.
