Hi Roy, as no one’s responded I’ll kick off despite not having relevant experience of the Hawke Endurance scope. I had some Hawke binoculars for a while and have a scope, so can give general advice. Others can get more specific about certain scopes. The standard advice here is to try before you buy, especially with spotting scopes. They’re very tight tolerance instruments due to relatively short focal lengths for the apertures (to keep them small). This leads to a fair amount of variation between individual scopes of the same model. So people here will ask to look through maybe 3 of the same scope in a shop and walk out with the sharpest one or none if there are issues with all of them. The Hawke Endurance scope sounds a good place to start. Testing it out you’ll get a sense of weight and size and optically how sharp it is across the zoom range, the field of view both true and apparent and how it changes when zooming and how easy it is to fine focus. Try lots of other scopes as well. Basically it’s absolutely worth spending loads of time in a store trying out different scopes and if you find one that meets your needs and impresses you optically etc in the store, whether it’s used or new and regardless of make and if the price is right, then get that scope. Even the same model bought online to save a few quid may not perform so well and ultimately leave you disappointed. Similarly if the demo model they show you works best ask for that, don’t be tempted to walk out with the new untested unit they’ll suggest. Test it first.
And that’s it really. Best of luck and hope you have a store locally you can visit.
