The Gun Counter

I took a buddy of mine out hunting this season as a guest on my hunting lease. He had a great time even though we had a technical issue when he saw a big 8 pt on our last evening of hunting.

He now has the bug and wants to replace the Broke ass scope that was on his .300 Winmag. He really liked the Nikon Monarch with 50 mm objective lense on my dad's rifle.

So the first question.
Why is this http://www.opticsplanet.com/nikon-monar ... 0-bdc.html $70 more than

this http://www.opticsplanet.com/nikon-monar ... 0-bdc.html

It would seem that they are basically the same scopes except for the magnification profile and I would think the higher magnification should be more expensive.

I would be suggesting the non BDC reticle.

Second question.
He has a rough price range of $500 and is a brand new hunter, relatively new to guns so he is relying on my judgement on what scope to buy. Are there any other scopes in this range that would be better for the above need. Return to zero or adjustable turrets are going to be beyond what he will likely need for a scope that will shoot deer from 20yds to an occasional 300 yd shot if he feels comfortable making it.
The main focus is on large objective lens, great glass, big exit pupil to extend hunting those extra 15 minutes and at least a 9x zoom.
thanks

It's weirder than you think:
the higher mag. scope also comes standard with a side-focusing parallax adjustment, which ought to make them more expensive (and using what is probably Nikon's MSRP, it does).

What I suspect is in operation is that the traditional layout scopes are selling just fine, but that this retailer is overstocked on the ones with the side-focus widget, and have thus compensated those prices downward to move product and unload their surplus inventory. And/or Optics Planet is responding to internet price pressure from someone in such a situation. Like Bass Pro Shop.
Prices at the Bass Pro website showed a similar $80 mismatch, in favor of the higher-magnification whiz bang model, which normally retails for $100 more rather than $80 less, than the lower power model.

Link

FWIW, I would jump on them, with the offered Nikoplex reticle (noted as "NP" on the OpticsPlanet site), as Nikon scopes have always seemed to me to excel over everything but vastly higher-priced Swiss and German optics at low light abilities. Sometimes, a deal is really a deal.

Nota bene that if you wanted the BDC option, BP doesn't charge extra for it.
Cabela's wants $100 more for the same scope, and Gander Mountain doesn't even carry the 50mm objective 4-16X NP model.

(The retail sales gene dies hard, and everything I know I learned from Edmund Gwenn in Miracle On 34th Street.)

thanks. I assumed it might be something like that, but didn't see that as making sense.

I don't like the BDC. They need to be caliber and load specific to do any good. My scopes tend to move around, so I would rather have a plex or mildot / moa hash reticle.

For my buddy a moa hash reticle would be the best but they are super rare, so standard ole crosshairs it is.