A great product from Bushnell Banner, the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 Rifle Scope is a grand addition to the Dusk and Dawn series.
Offering the performance of a scope many times its price, it is a versatile scope that can be used with all manner of rifles and shotguns, with exemplary performance in low light conditions. All in all, a great deal for any enthusiast, offering affordability and performance in a single package.
Review of the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 Rifle Scope
Features
- Great for shotguns (Deer & Turkeys)
- Long-range varmint and target scope, airgun scope
- Parallax focus from 10yd-Infinity
- Magnification: 6 to 18x
- Objective lens: 50mm
Magnification, Field of View and Resolution
The first consideration a buyer has to make when buying a scope is magnification. This is the primary function of a scope, and without a suitable range of magnification, a scope is almost useless. The Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 Rifle Scope excels in this department, offering you a wide range of magnification settings thanks to its variable magnification. You have the ability to zoom in on a target, producing an image up to or between 6 and 18 times its actual size. This offers you a tremendous advantage in the field, because you can bring the target as close as you want, ensuring an accurate shot. This massive range of magnification settings also allows you to adjust another important characteristic of any scope: the field of view.
The field of view is the distance you can see in the scope from right to left, and the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 offers a 17 feet field of view. This might sound low, but this field of view is measured at the lowest magnification setting of 6x and is quite good compared to the field of view offered by other scopes at this magnification. As a result, you can see more of the environment and the target in the scope, which gives you a definite advantage in terms of tracking and locating a target in its environment thought the scope.
To complete the picture, we consider the resolution offered by the scope. The resolution is a great measure of a scope’s image quality. A scope with a great resolution will have a crisp and bright image, with high contrast allowing you to differentiate the target easily the background. And you will be glad to know that the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50, and is capable of pulling any target out of its background for you, making targeting game a sure bet.
Objective Lens Diameter
The lenses are the most important components of any scope, giving it all of their primary characteristics such as field of view and image quality. The Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 Rifle Scope boasts a 50mm. objective lens (the lens closest to the target), bringing it into competition with many more expensive scopes that cost upwards of 300 dollars. A larger objective lens translates into a brighter image by allowing the scope to gather more light as well as a larger field of view rating. This also means excellent performance in low light conditions due to more light entering the scope. However, larger objective lenses also result in a larger scope, which can be tiresome when it comes to mounting and aiming. The Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 achieves a fine balance between image quality and practicality, thanks to the smart construction on the part of the manufacturer, making it a versatile and accurate tool in the field.
Eye Relief and Precision Adjustment
Many an inexperienced shooter has suffered from the injury called scope eye due to the scope hitting the holder above the eye, leaving a nasty cut. To prevent this, manufacturers design the scope such that the image has formed some distance from the nearest lens. This distance is called eye relief, and the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 offers a competitive eye relief of 3.5 inches. This makes it suitable not only for high powered rifles but also for shot-guns, which is a testament to its versatility.
Keeping on the topic of the flexibility of use, the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 comes equipped with standard windage and elevation adjustment knobs. It also has the added flexibility of having allowing you to adjust for parallax, a feature usually found on high-end scopes in excess of 300 dollars. All this flexibility allows you to account for all manner of conditions that you may encounter, and helps the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 to guarantee accuracy in any conditions.
Optical Coating and Water / Fog Proof
Lens quality and coatings play the foremost role when it comes to image quality. All too often, budget scopes might pride themselves on a host of features, but their image quality might leave much to be desired because the cost cutting measures are easy to see in terms of the quality of the glass and the lens coatings. The Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 suffers from no such defects, offering Bushnell’s proven Dusk and Darkness Multicoated lenses which make ensure a bright image in low light conditions where even high end scopes fail.
In addition to the multicoated lens, which prevent image distortion due to reflection, the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 is completely water and fog proof, thanks to its Nitrogen filled cylinder and integrated O-rings which prevent water from entering the scope. Add these features to its shock proof construction, and you have a scope that is unlikely to fail in any conditions.
Optional Accessory Attachments
The Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 is part of the extensive and immensely popular Dusk and Dawn series from Bushnell Banner, which means there are a variety of optional attachments available for them. Popular choices include the Bushnell Laser Boresighter, which allows you to sigh your scope quickly without wasting ammunition. And being a product of Bushnell, it works all the better with the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 scope.
A flip open scope lid is also a great choice, keeping your scope clear from snow until you need it. Then, you just need to flip open the lid, aim and shoot. Butler Creek 10-11 Eyepiece Multiflex Flip-Open Scope Cover
A lot of customers buying the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 Rifle Scope also buy a laser boresight to make it easier to sight the newly mounted rifle scope – Choosing the Best Types of Scope Mounts for Rifles. Specifically, the Bushnell Laser Boresighter
Customer Reviews
As a testament to its greatness, the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 has high ratings on reviews you can find online.
Read more reviews and testimonials about the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 Rifle Scope.
Pros and Cons
Needless to say, the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 is one of the best scopes in the budget range, competing with scopes many times its price and managing to hold its own. Its crystal clear image quality and unbeatable performance in low light conditions make it an excellent choice for hunters, whether they mount it on rifles or shot guns. And thanks to its tough construction and water/fog proof design, you can be sure that it will remain fault free in all conditions. Add variable magnification, precision adjustments including parallax adjustment, excellent eye relief and large objective lens to its list of features, and you end up with one of the best scopes in the market.
Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50 Rifle Scope Pricing
Click here to find current pricing and more information on the Bushnell Banner Dusk & Dawn 6-18×50. Check our other rifle scope reviews to find other great rifle scopes.
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