what power spotting scope?

[hillbill]

im in the market for a spotting scope. mostly it will be used for sighting in rifles at my backyard range. im getting tired of walking back and forth looking at targets and want to make sighting in a gun a little quicker also.what power scope do i need to be able to see say 223 bullet holes at 100yrds?are the varible spotting scopes good or should i stick with the fixed power ones?

[Graybeard]

It's not the magnification so much as the quality of glass and size of exit pupil that determines that. I've seen .223 holes at 100 yards with a Bushnell 2-6 handgun scope. But a more direct answer is 20x is plenty to at least 200 yards if it's a quality scope with large objective. If you get the cheap low dollar scopes no amount of magnification will be enough as they just don't have the quality to do the job properly.

My spotting scope is a Bushnell Elite 20-60x80mm and I've looked thru a lot of spotting scopes but have yet to see one to match it.

[diggler1833]

Unless you are shooting on a black target, any (decent) rifle scope with I'd say, 6x or more is going to show you your shot holes.  You definitely will see the holes at 10x and above.  The rest is pretty much as Graybeard said.  A lot of guys are quick to skimp on spotting scopes, even more so than rifle scopes. I'll say that for sure that a "wallyworld special" $100 spotting scope won't pick up near as much as a good quality one will.

Personally I'd look into something with a range of 10 to 15 power on the lower end and 30 to 60 power top end.  I used a fixed 20x spotting scope in the Corps in matches with good results.