Quote Originally Posted by C Ward View Post
It just makes sense to get a scope with the most usable travel to take advantage of the guns capabilities . With factory 338LM being 6 plus dollars a shot there is nothing cheap in the endeavor so it makes sense to get good stuff up front . It makes the learning curve shorter and a little less steep .
+1 to that! There's nothing worse than buying a high end scope then later determining that your requirements for the system has changed and the scope doesn't have enough elevation travel.

I personally feel the higher magnifications are overrated for two reasons.
1) Atmospherics/mirage blurs the image, and it only gets worse at higher magnifications.
2) Limitations of second focal plane reticles. If your use your reticle for any angular measurements (ranging, wind holds, elevation holds), the graduations change (scale) as you change the power on a second focal plane scope. Even if you don't think you need the graduated reticle now, it sure sucks to later realize that you can only use it on max power (for most second focal plane scopes)

Now on a first focal plane scope (reticle stays to scale at different powers), higher magnification capability is awesome.

You may want to check out the Steiner 5-25x first focal plane scope, they are around $2500 or so. I have one of their 4-16s and it is a quality scope, as is Nightforce.