>>2798354You don't want a rifle scope. First off, a rifle optic has eye relief set so you don't put your eyeball up against. This means what when you're using it to observe, you'll just just have to hover the tube in space and hope you can keep the long tube aligned at the right distance from your eye. The rifle optic is also going to make a ton of concessions on form factor because it has to fit in on a rifle. They are typically going to be much longer tube with a smaller lens, and if it's a decent optic you will pay a lot more since they will have some expensive glass and coatings to minimize the issues with smaller lenses. Its also going to be heavier than you think to survive recoil OR you will pay for a better rugged housing.
For this use case, actually observe what professionals and high level hobbyists are doing and then understand why they are doing it. Adapt that to your use case. Door kickers, hunting guides and hunters, mountaineers, etc have access to literally thousands of dollars of rifle optics. Basically none of them use for dedicated observation unless they have a constant, steady position that they may need to shoot from. Binos are the way to go for better focus, detail, light transmission, long term eye strain etc. And most of them are going to be 8 to 10x. At 10x if you wobble a quarter inch the thing you are looking at 100 yards away will hop 5 feet off the mark. Much better to have a clear picture at lower magnification than trying to look through a straw. Decent entry level rifle optics are going to be around 1000, spend half that and get decent entry bino. Vortex does make those too as does Bushnell, Zeiss, Nikon, Fuji, etc.
