Wich scope to choose?

[awshucks]

Bob, I've fooled around w/ scopes all of my life. Here's what I think. The AO scopes will give a very clear TARGET picture when set at correct range. To get a clear view of the xhairs, one often has to adjust the focus on the ocular end, and most mfgs advise to quickly glance at like a cloud and keep quickly redoing it so your eye can't do the adjusting for ya. On scopes w/o the AO, you often times have to fiddle w/ that ocular adjustment to get both the xhair and the target in focus. There's a sport using air rifles called Field Target, much like archery 3-D, unknown ranges. Most of those guys use high end AO scopes up to 16X and like you mentioned use the AO setting as a range finder. Parallax adjustment, or lack there of can be compensated for if one can mount the stock the same every time. I shoot rh guns left handed, so I have AO scopes on all my rifles. I have two xbow scopes now, a L-zone and a Leupold VX II w/ xbow reticules I got from Danny Miller. I'm sure the L-zone is parallax adj for xbow ranges and have no idea on the Leupold, however both scopes provide excellant accuracy out to 50 yds the farthest I've tried shooting xbows. My only problem w/ either is I can focus them while bench resting and then need to refocus to get a clear picture when offhanding, takes some fiddling to find a happy medium.