best all round hunting scope advise please

[Aeroman]

Good advice up there and I'll add my 2p as well...

Rather than cover the same ground as trodden by Shady and Sparky et al. and say "look through as many as you can and go with what suits you, sir" I'll give another take...

People change their rifles. Some more frequently than others, but with new developments and such, people will upgrade to the next gucci bit of hardware. Advances in rifle hardware have been progressing quite quickly of late but I'm not sure that scope technology will. If this is so, then quality optics will be just that. Quality.
I work to the principle of getting as much scope as you can afford and buy the scope once, as I've changed rifles over the years buying and selling, but not bought too many surplus scopes as once I have a scope i am happy with, the rifle wearing it may change but the glass will stay. I've aqquired scopes as combos with rifles I've bought, and given some away to various causes, and mounted others on other rifles I have kicking around.

To recommend a scope now, i can tell you what I would be looking for and what I have that does the job, and why. But ultimately we go back to what "suit you sir!".

Depending on the type of hunting I'm doing....
I would be looking for.
Good light transmission
Reticule I'm comfortable with.
Forgiving parallax error (seems to vary from scope to scope a little even with the same model)
Magnification range not too great, which seems to help with the above...

DMP 4-16x56 Mildot IR. 30mm tube, Sidewheel parallax. Good build, sturdy, mine is one of the really early ones, so Jap optics IIRC. Does the job but relatively heavy. Turrets and sidewheel exposed to knocks, but repeatibility is excellent and is forgiving to me getting my eye position slightly wrong.

EB Sniper 10x42 Mildot. Sidewheel Parallax. Bombproof build, though turrets and sidewheel exposed. Medium weight and goes a good 'un.

Bushnell 6-24x40 4200 Mildot. True Mil at 12x mag. Used one of these for HFT for a couple of years to good effect. Not too heavy but yery long body tube, and front parallax which is more awkward for hunting if you adjust your parallax. Not very forgiving to mispositioned eye. Sam uses the 5-15x40 Legend which is shorter, lighter weight and does the job just as well.

Runing out of time, but i may include a few more when i have time