I picked up a 4-20x44 Hawke Frontier back in early December and have been using it for some time now. I never see these Frontiers mentioned in the field target results section when it listed the rifles and scopes used, so I was a little leery about using it until I did some testing. As far as general use is concerned, this scope is excellent. The magnification ring, parallax adjustment, eyepiece and illumination are all smooth as butter. The glass is excellent and would compare very well with much higher priced optics. Mine is as clear to the edge as it is to the center all the way to max power. I also don’t notice the scope’s brightness decreasing at full magnification like many others I have tried. It seems to range well and objects snap in and out of focus easily. From what I can tell it’s ranging is repeatable, but I can’t tell exactly how much temperature shift it might have as I’ve only used it from 50 - 70 degrees and it did fine in that range. Mine has the Mil Pro 20x reticle which seems like a popular choice for field target shooters using Hawke. I really like this reticle, it’s the perfect thickness for me and has plenty of aim points for windage and elevation holds. The illumination is also daylight bright if used at it’s maximum setting. I really like that it comes with nice aluminum flip covers so there isn’t any need buying some and trying to find covers that fit well. There are only two things I don’t like about the scope. The turrets could be a little more tactile feeling. They aren’t terrible and work fine. I would just expect a little better here since this is Hawke’s premium scope. I have used a Sidewinder in the past and from what I can remember the turrets felt better on the Sidewinder. The other thing is the diopter adjustment is EXTREMELY sensitive. I have never seen a scope with this level of sensitivity. I wear reading glasses that are +1.75 magnification so my eyepiece is normally backed out to adjust for my eyes. The Hawke has a screw type lock ring which I happen to like to keep it from accidentally moving. When you tighten the ring down the reticle will go out of focus if you move the eyepiece setting any at all. It does the same thing if you barely adjust it, so it’s not the lock ring causing issues it’s just that sensitive. It might not be an issue for those with better eyes but it was the most difficult scope to get the diopter set correctly of any that I have used. The good thing is once it’s adjusted and locked down you won’t need to move it again unless your eyesight changes. One very important thing to note is my scope is one of three models with the 1” tube and the parallax adjustment goes down to 10 yards for these models. All the others with the 30mm and 34mm tube start at 15 yards so they won’t work very well for field target. Mine is also the only one of the three 1” tube models with a marked 16x magnification setting in case you want to shoot it in hunter class. You can use the other two but they will need to be set to 15x to comply with the rules. I hope you found this review helpful and please let me know if you have any questions about the scope.
