Did I do the right thing?

[ACbob]

Yep, good call. Only TV hunting show hosts are qualified to make that shot.

[SaltwaterSlick]

magnification is not as important as objective and tube size plus quality of glass... We all hunted with the standard old Lupe 3-9x40 and thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread... that is until we got into 30 mm and larger tubes with 50 mm objective lenses... BIG difference!!


Oh and, yep, you dun good!

[TX03RUBI]

A VX5HD 3-15 is going to be dang near as good as it gets for low light performance.

[MacDaddy67]

Struck out tonight.

I repositioned my camera to the back side of feeder....

[jamenefee]

Right choice. Good luck he will be back.

[lovemylegacy]

Always know your target. You did the right thing.

[Pistol]

You would have felt 100X worse if you had made the shot and it injured the deer without killing him. You made the right call.

[jer_james]

I think AC said it best - knew what you had to do and did it. Good call.

[stickemhard3]

No shot was the right call. Now make the right call again and buy a new scope.

[flywise]

Yep

[Pedernal]

Plenty of time left in the season, he will be back. You will have a shot and be able to take him.

And without a doubt you made the right call.

[WItoTX]

I couldn’t sleep last night over this scope....

It was great 20 years ago when my eyes were great,,,but **** not now...
I need a 4x20x 50 I think

Good call.

Second, get a better scope. It's not your eyes that are the problem, a 20 year old scope just won't gather light like today's scopes. Anything new is going to way outperform the scope you have on there.

Vortex and Leupold all have awesome options at a reasonable price.

[flywise]

pretty sure if it was that dark then it would have been illegal to shoot....there are legal shooting times

[retrieverman]

You can’t shoot them if you can’t see them.
I had the exact situation as the OP about 20 years ago, and it was the last time I used a crappy scope. By upgrading optics, I probably gain 15-20 minutes of useable shooting light that I was losing with the poor quality optics.

[Jkbow]

Put the gun back in the safe and set up within 60 yards of where you typically see him come out at then fling an arrow.