And even with all the nasty weather and lack of light combined with the slow aperture of this lens, I was getting great shots

Even worse in my opinion is the lack of a smooth, front-mounted focus ring, which I find fairly important in a long zoom.

I don't miss the lack of a VR.

Only gripe is the lack of autofocus on my D3200, but that's an issue for the camera body itself and not the lens.

The lack of tripod mount on the lens makes it difficult to use on a tripod

and if I were to fault it all it would for that fact and the lack of a tripod mount

But neither will the more expensive lens produce a better image, at least not without opening it up and taking advantage of its expensive larger aperture, which the 70-300 lacks.

the aperture to f8 or f11, the images do get sharper but aren't as sharp as in the 70-200mm range

yes the camera loves light and in low light the results are not near as good as when in full sunlight

[a good nikon camera bag, an extended warranty for your camera as well as for the lens..]

I will tell you in decent light or tripod situations this lens is just as sharp as the 70-200 f/2.8 (stopped down one stop from wide open) in the 70-200 focal range on my D700 and just as sharp at all aperatures (once again in the 70-200 focal range) on my D90.

(I have knocked off one star because the sharpness breaks up as you approach 300mm)

I would not let the camera decide what to focus on at that zoom though, like another person said it would probably be the kiss of death with all of that shaking going on, or the camera totally confused as to what what to focus on, since it will focus on perhaps landscape when you want a bird's eye where the bird is on a branch in focus