Re: Decent $200-$300 spotting scope?
If you can find one, a 50mm Kowa TSN-500 series with 20-40 eye piece are great scopes for the money. I bought mine lat year from SWFA for around $200, and it beats other scopes costing three times as much. When people look through it, I always get comments on how crsp and clear it is compared to their more expensive, larger objective scopes.
Unfortunately, Kowa has discontinued the line, but they still show it on the web site.