The Weaver Scope Thru The 1950’s

The Weaver scope of the 1950s and 60s would be a very popular scope for hunting rifles and to some extent for target shooting. They were a good basic all-around scope that the average hunter or shooter could afford. They were pretty streamlined and not too bad to look at. For most of the 1950s and 60s they were one of the more popular rifle scopes of that era.

WEAVER SCOPE

 

They advertised in 1954 a variable powered scope that was a 3 to 5 power. The adjustment for power was by the adjusting knobs for elevation and windage. It looked like there were three adjusting knobs in place for that particular model. Would be ahead of it time as that look is popular today.

My father had one of those exact scopes mounted on his Savage 99 in the 1970s and it did work okay. They like many of the other scope companies did not really get into the traditional variable style scopes until the early 1960s. By the mid-1960s the rifle scope would become a highly refined addition to the hunting and shooting enthusiast.

In the advertisements of 1961 Weaver scope company was still advertising the KV model in the adjustable power 3 x 5 powers. The Kahles model scopes were advertised in 1961 and did have variable powered scopes in the 2 to 7 and 3 to 9 power and looked very much like the modern scopes of today. Weaver would change a few years later. The Weaver gun scopes were very popular and many of them were sold to the average hunters and shooters.

Weaver Scopes for the budget minded hunters and shooters

Their target scopes were again a very basic style scope, and they primarily had target long-range Scopes in K8 or K10 models for about $60 in 1961. By far the largest selling target scopes were Unertl scopes and Lyman scopes. The 10 power target or varmint scope from Unertl scopes or lyman scopes were listed at $115. So they were roughly twice the money of the Weaver K series target scopes.

So for general long-range hunting purposes or bench shooting, the Weaver scope worked out just fine. But you were limited to the 8 or 10 power, whereas the other companies would go up into the 20 or 24 power range.

The Weaver scope of today are a vast improvement over the old Weaver scopes from the 1950s. By the late 1960s and early 1970s they had developed a very nice line of scopes. They would pretty much dominate the scope mount market for hunting rifles from the 1950s, and onward.

I probably installed more Weaver scope mounts then any mount in all of the years I did gunsmithing. They were a basic good quality and very serviceable mount. I will talk about the mounts in another article.

Weaver gun scopes would be in competition with several scope manufacturers in the 1950s and early 60s like the Leupold scopes and Lyman scopes. The Weaver scopes were a good scope for the hunter that needed an inexpensive but quality product.

They are still made today and are good scopes to have and still made in USA. The Weaver gun scope is still a very good investment.

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