LAST EDITED ON Jul-22-08 AT 09:41AM (MST)[p]I used a Bushnell Trophy on last years elk hunt and was super happy with its performance! It runs on batteries (which I was leery about) but I put a new one in prior to my hunt and packed along an extra.
The Trophy has a number of dots and crosshairs patterns/colors to use. I am colorblind so couldn't see the red. The bright green color was the best for me and stood out the best in low light conditions.
The Trophy is 1x so is legal in Utah. I put my setup through the gauntlet before my hunt and shot every week for 2 months prior to the season. The Trophy and the mount held up nicely and once I had it set it never moved.
I shot last year's bull twice at 218 yards. Although I was confident at 200 yards I was leery shooting much farther than that distance with a critter the size of an elk. My sabots were only dropping 8" at 200 yards so that is pretty good!
One thing you will notice is that you are only as good as your eyesight with a 1x scope! It is very difficult to shoot in low light conditions, through brush/trees, etc. I had a gigantic bull at 60 yards one evening close to dark for about 1/2 hour but I didn't take a shot because I wasn't confident and could barely make things out in the low light. If I would have had a 4x scope I could have easily seen the detail to make the shot. The same thing happened another day. I couldn't see well enough through the trees/brush to make a shot. 1x is like looking with your naked eye and is a definite disadvantage compared to a 4 to 10x scope!
Depending upon the size of the dot and the distance of the animal it can make shots tricky with a dot scope. Obviously the larger the dot the tougher it is to shoot long distance because the dot will cover a large chunk of the body! I had my dot scope set with the finest dot that had a circle around it.
Although I was a little leery at first buying the Bushnell Trophy I was super impressed with how it performed. For the money it may be one of the best dot scopes available? I plan on bringing it along on this years antelope hunt! When practiced up with my dot scope and sabots I very confident I could hit a critter at 200 yards,,,no problem!