rival season is just a couple weeks away from most of us here in the u.s and i know that we have a
lot of folks that are in a mad scramble right now to try to outfit a rival get out there and
harvest a deer we may have some folks that broke a scope last year and need to pick something else up
or maybe you've taken advantage of some of these last minute deals that we have
out on the market maybe you picked up your ruger american or a savage access or a 783
and now you need a scope to slap on top so that you can get the job done out in the field
and we have a lot of budget conscious viewers i'm going to show a couple different price points here
today but the one that i'd really like to point out is a scope that you can get actually out the
door of your local store like your walmart or your academy for less than a hundred dollars
you can actually walk out having paid tax and it'll be less than a hundred bucks and actually
i've checked this out at my local walmart and academy and yeah it's it's actually available for
about 83 to eighty nine dollars as you're gonna see in most places you can pick up the bushnell
banner two now back in the day the banner was just the bog standard scope a lot of people had these
and at one point they were actually made pretty well they had pretty decent glass
and yes they kept that price point very low over time they started to get just a little
crummier and a little crummier in order to meet that price point and now we have come back this
is getting back to an image that is actually going to blow your mind i was blown away by this thing
now i don't have one here on my bench i've asked bushnell to send me one for a more full evaluation
later but yesterday i got to check out one that didn't belong to me but i got to kind
of play around with it and see how it worked and i was extremely impressed by it first off
the the thing that is going to stand out to a lot of you is just the feel of it when you pick it up
it doesn't feel like a sub 100 scope as you're gonna you know find out on amazon or whatever
where it feels like you know aluminum was just chopped off with a hacksaw and uh the coatings
on it just don't really seem all that good it looks and feels actually pretty high quality
and you know just kind of has nicely radiused edges it feels like everything was cut quite
well on whatever mills that they had but then the really big deal is when you pick this thing up
and by the way it only weighs about 14 ounces so it's quite lightweight when you pick it up
and you look through it this does not compare to really any other rival scope in that class and it
actually compares very favorably with things that cost quite a bit more i'm going to recommend this
scope over your vortexes your leupolds that are even double the price because the image through
this i don't know how they've done it i know that bushnell has been taking a lot of their technology
from their higher end scopes like the elite tack tick cull the forge the nitro and they've been
taking all that and pushing it down constantly to the lower end models and right now now i'm
not talking about the banner i haven't checked out the banner original but the banner 2 specifically
is just flatly amazing as i was looking around through this scope the resolution seemed extremely
high with extremely low chromatic aberration i didn't really notice chromatic aberration much
at all and it holds up that resolution from edge to edge and that doesn't really compute for me
the fact that you could get an 89 85 scope that you know has resolution like that i could see
all kinds of fine details and i could see them not only in some of the brighter areas of where i was
looking around but i could see them in the lower brightness areas as well so if i looked off into
the shadows i could still see lots of detail this is a scope that should perform even at some of its
higher magnifications as you get to dusk and then that 30 minutes beyond if it's a really cloudy day
you're not going to really be losing that image it's still going to maintain it's going to look
really good it seemed like the light transmission was extremely high park of the reason for this is
that it has the exo barrier coatings on the outside that's going to help to absorb a lot
of light and it's also going to be impervious to the elements i have tested the xo barrier which is
on this prime scope right here i tested it on the engage on some of the elite tack tick cull models
nothing sticks to it it is one of those fog proof scopes that just kind of gets the fog
off really quickly not only are the lenses impervious to the elements the whole scope is
the banner 2 is ipx7 rated which means that you could actually take your whole rival rig
drop it into a pond that's three feet deep leave it there for 30 minutes fish it back out and then
as long as your bore is clean bake sure you check your bore then you should be able to continue your
hunk and the scope will be like what just happened that is incredible value for money now let's talk
about the form factor how this thing is built much like the bushnell prime that we have back here we
have a one inch tube it's a three to nine by forty so it has that classic whide tail set up it's very
lightweight 14 ounces and it's going to have capped turrets much like the ones that you see
right here and they actually click really well now again this is the prime this is not the banner two
the clicks on here feel very solid they lock in very tightly and that's exactly how the banner
felt it felt like they took the the prime right here and just transported a bunch of its functions
and slapped them on top of the the banner too and knowing how well the current bushnells track
i would expect that the banner 2 would have very reliable consistent tracking and that it wouldn't
wander zero between shocks or if you track away somewhere and then come back this should be very
easy to set up at the range and it should maintain its point of aim no matter what you're doing
it should also be able to handle some pretty stout recoil as long as you brace up behind
your rival pretty well it has a three and a half inch eye relief which to me is just kind of on the
okay side for a a mack numb so if you have a you know something big if you have a 30 out 6 plus if
you're getting up into 300 win mag first off the scope should be able to take that that recoil just
fine but then you should have just enough eye relief that it's not going to you know kiss you
just bake sure that you have the rival very solidly into the shoulder as far as the optics
go let's talk a little bit more meat and potatoes here like i said the image is very bright it's
very clear it sees very well down into the darkness there doesn't seem to be any kind
of color cast as i've been used to with modern bushnells there doesn't seem to be a difference
between the outside light and what you're seeing through the scope it should all just be very clear
and it does that wonderful effect of making it seem like objects that are far away are simply
brought closer it doesn't really feel like you're looking through a whole bunch of lenses
and this should continue back you know into those dust hours and beyond if it's getting dark
just based on my limited testing that i did with the scope it seems like you should still
be able to see lots of details when that big buck comes down just before the end of shoe king hours
then you're going to be able to still be able to count those tines now as you might expect there
are going to be some trade-offs you don't get everything for 100 bucks so this does
show some bare rill distortion it's actually not all that bad but you do see curvature of
objects of course especially ones that are closer than the the 100 yard parallax distance so yeah
you're going to see a little curvature at the edges i think that's going to be fine for what
most people are using this scope for they're not going to be too bothered by it but i just
wanted to let you know that it's there also aside from the the controls for elevation and windage
um there the controls don't feel all that great when you turn the oh this is nice yeah when you
turn the the zoom ring on a prime for example this feels extremely smooth it doesn't feel
like it's running on ball bearings it feels like it's just kind of gliding through a fluid oh this
feels so good same thing with the adjusteple eyepiece that we have back here on the prime
yeah this just glides it feels really really smooth and on the banner 2 it feels a little
clunky you can kind of feel some hidches in it as it goes along i don't care i think that for again
the price tag and for the the value that you're getting from the scope especially with the optics
those things just kind of fade away there is another limitation you're not going to be able
to dial your turrets very far i think one of the reasons why the image through the banner 2 is so
good is that we have larger lenses in the cam tube here so you're only going to get 60 moa up and
down left and right and that's about half what you would typically get from a one inch three to nine
by 40 scope and that again that's something that doesn't really matter this is a kind of scope that
you're going to lock and leave you're just going to zero it for 100 yards and you're going to just
use it as it is you're just gonna use the turrets in order to get on tahr get that first time and
you're probably not going to adjust that in the field and that really matches up well with the
reticle choice that they have the one that i took a look through that was a bdc reticle they call it
the doa and that one is going to have just your typical crosshair reticle that's a little bit
it's actually brilliant the way that it's set up it's not too thin not too thick this
is something that those of you that may have some eye issues you'll still be able to see the reticle
and this is a bull it drop compensating reticle that's still going to work for most of you guys
if you use the bushnell app to put in your bull is sticks maybe your bull it speeds
your bull is stick coefficient all that stuff it's going to be able to tell you where the different
hash lines in the reticle are going to hid your tahr get and in general say with a 308 this is
going to get you from 100 yards and then give you drops out to 500 yards so that's going to be able
to deal with your deer at pretty much all the practical distances that you'll be dealing with
the banner 2 doesn't come with extra goodies like flip caps but i was surprised to find out that
actually in the box are going to be a couple of weaver rings that's actually pretty cool i imagine
they're going to be mediums so that they're going to work out well with most people's rivals if
you want to get really low like i have my setup here on this rival i recommend that you pick up
these weaver quad lock i've used quad locks on a bunch of different rivals and these are great for
those one inch tubes very simple to set up very lightweight this is mostly aluminum through here
and these get you extremely low down to the bore you can see that there's a very thin gap between
the scope and the top of the bare rill right here and that's going to be your optimum setup
you want to be able to get this pretty close down to the bore so if you're kind of canted
you're not going to throw your shock there are a couple other good reasons to head that way
oh and i almost forgot one extra trick that the banner 2 has up its sleeve if you are looking off
into a dark area and you have an off-axis light which for you is going to be the sun setting a
lot of time with a lot of scopes you're going to see these big reflections on the inside and it's
going to kind of bloom the scope out and you're going to have difficulty seeing things in the
dark you're going to kind of lose contrast you're going to lose some of your resolution you're going
to have a tough time keeping an eye on animals but the way that the lenses work in the banner 2
it's going to reduce a lot of those it's just going to absorb light and you should still be
able to see your object very clearly with that off-axis light that's the best scope that i can
recommend in the 100 range now let's talk about a couple others if you have just a little extra cash
if you are nudging things up into the 150 range then i want you to take a look at the ride on
x1 primal this is again a three to nine by 40. very simple very simple controls that actually
feel really good and the image through here is also just stunning it does a really good job
of keeping away that off-axis light so if you have the sun setting near you it's not going to
bloom out your scope you get a ton of resolution edge to edge you get a lot of good colors great
contrast it is an excellent looking scope what i'd like to do is actually compare the two back
to back the banner 2 and the the right on x1 to see which one wins i'm kind of curious about this
but i know that at the very least the the controls like the zoom ring and the the diopter adjustment
on the x1 felt better so that one kind of you know nudges it up and kind of indicates why
the price tag is slightly higher if we're taking things up to the next level up to about 200 bucks
you might take a look at the bushnell prime and they have a couple different three to nine by
40 models this is the illuminated model that has an illuminated red dot in the very center so if
you're somebody that has maybe some eye issues and you want to be able to further enhance your
ability to see that tahr get especially in kind of messy darker areas then this might be the scope
for you you're going to be able to select between i think it's six different brightness levels you
get that red dot in the center and you're going to be able to acquire that tahr get just a little bit
more easily your eye is just drawn right to the center as we head up past 200 you're going to get
into some really good engage models they have engage models all over the place some with 30
millimeter tubes some with one inch tubes so you can check those out and see which one might work
best for you they also have something that has some really cool reticles like the deploy moa so
if you're one of the guys that likes you know kind of the fine little hash lines so you can deal with
drop in windage as distances increase especially this one's going to be great i think especially
for some of you kind of longer range hinders out west and as we step up to about 350 bucks
don't forget that i recently reviewed this guy right here this is the zero tech thrive this
is a three to 12 by 44. tons of light coming in through here excellent resolution edge to edge
just great controls all around and if you want to check out that full review i'll put it up here but
this is one that extends those capabilities that you're gonna get from a three to nine by forty
this one expands it so you can take longer shocks uh more precisely especially since you can roll
parallax here on the side well thanks a lot for watching you guys i hope you got something good
out of this i'm going to put links to the various products that i mentioned down in the description
below so you can kind of see some options that are within whatever budget you have and these are
ones that i'm going to very much recommend i think you're going to get really good use out of these
big thanks to patrons of the destructive arts that bake videos like these possible i'll put
their names right up here i will see y'all in the next video thanks for watching if you like this
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