Night time scope set up - Zeiss or Leupold?

[choclabs]

Gentlemen,

I am very interested to have you share your experience hunting with rifle scopes in the night time. Louisiana is having their second year of night predator hunting begining last day of Feb through last day of Aug. and i plan to gear up for it.

Questions:
Non-Illuminated reticle setup:
Know of someone who has hunted with a Zeiss Conquest 3-9x 40mm? How well does the Wicked Hunting Lights (or other brand scope mounted light) produce the reticle when night hunting with a non illuminated scope? Please see the Wicked Hunting Lights mounted on a Savage Predator Hunter Max 1 .223 Rem (See this weblink) http://www.wickedhuntinglights.com/Marksman_Kit.html

Illuminated reticle setup:
Have you hunted with or do you know someone who has hunted with the illuminated Luepold VX-R 3-9x 40mm? (See this weblink) http://www.riflescopespy.com/best-rifle-scope/

The Wicked Hunting Lights website has an excellent live night hunt video with hogs taken at 125-150yards. The rifle in the video is different than the one shown in the picture with the Zeiss scope mounted on it. It looks like the rifle in the video is using a Leupold scope.

So here is my problem, new Savage Model 10 Predator Hunter Max 1 .243 Win. I am down to these 2 scope choices. If anyone has mounted either of these scopes on a Model 10 action, also please let me know what brand of bases and rings combination will allow me to mount these scopes lowest to the barrel/bore.

Thanks in advance for sharing your information!

[limige]

I have an old vari X III 3-9X42. On a bright night you can see just fine threw that scope.

I've heard ziess is not as good but vortex PST rivals the luepold mark V glass.

My next scope will be a vortex.

[Newbee]

Budget permitting , may consider the 50mm version. Illuminated is the way to go for night. I have same rifle and and scope shopping as well. Leupold Site has ring mount finder, but specific model is not clear to me. Our rifle is short action 10 ? Barrel is sportier? Best I could tell was best fit. I would like to get the leupold III 3.5-10 in the III - L model and illuminated. Can accommodate low rings, but pricey. More than the gun.

[choclabs]

Update - I bought the Leupold VX-R 3-9x 40mm objective. It is a GREAT low light scope with or without the illuminated reticle. The reticles do not disappear in low light without the reticle lit up. And the reticles will easily display with any style weapon mounted light. The 30mm tube is a much better size than the 1 inche version. Your eye beleives that you have a much larger window of view to look through. The larger tube diameter gives more distance for the windage and elevation adjustments as well as more area for the scope to use in transmitting low level light. What the illuminated reticle does is give you a distinct contrast when sigthing in on a dark target in low light, such as a black bear or black hog for instance. It also assists in rapid placement of the cross hairs on dark targets or in low light. From what I have found from using the scope is that it is very easy to use the scope after 30 mins past sunset and before 30 prior to sunrise with or without out the illuminated reticle. This gets even better with any amount of moonlight. I have hunted with and shot many rounds at the range over the past 20 years through 2 different Leupold Vari-X III 4.5-14 with 50mm objective, 1 mounted on my Sako .300 Wby and 1 mounted on my .270 Win Sako rifle. I was very impressed with these scopes, however the VX-R has them beat as far as low light transmission capability. After reading many comments from hunters who have much night hunting experience, they state that 5 to 6x magnification power is about all that is useable with weapons mounted lights. So this 3-9x is also an added advantage of not having a parallax setting to mess around with.

[Littlebass]

I own the exact same rifle, Pred Max1 243, and we can night hunt in Texas year round. I have a 2012 VX-2 4-12x40 mounted on my rifle and use the Elusive Wildlife Tech kill lights mounted on my scope. Very small, very bright, and good battery life. My experience is that the green lights will give you near daylight conditions looking through the Leupold, the red lights are not quite as bright and a little harder to pick up the reticle at times but spook coyotes less. Greens work great for pigs. Red better for the varmints, harder to see reticle, but my Leupold is still plenty bright for finding the reticle and identifying/shooting varmints at 100+ yards at night. I have not tried hunting with an illuminated reticle scope/kill light combo, but have a friend with a Trijicon 3-9 with the green dot mounted on an AR. I looked through it in the driveway one night using the kill light and it was absolutely awesome.