Practical Rimfire Scopes

We recently had the pleasure of helping out at the recent Precision Tactical Rimfire Challenge held in South Australia and we’ve regularly been asked after the event about affordable and suitable practical rimfire scopes. It was a fantastic event with over 50 shooters showing up to compete despite the 50 degree heat and we encourage anyone in SA to attend, just email ptrimfire22@gmail.com or checkout the facebook group here We have some footage (minimal as we were busy RO’ing the event) here: Playlist

Preview:

To be suitable for practical rimfire a minimum parallax setting of 10 yards is absolutely critical, as a number of competitors found during the event, having a parallax setting that started at 50 yards simply didn’t cut it with some having more issues with the closer targets than the ones further down range! The lowest possible minimum magnification and the largest possible field of view is desired when there are multiple close range targets and even moving targets. Next requirement is first focal plane, second focal plane scopes are more than capable but when there are multiple targets at varying distances, never having to think about what magnification your scope is on can help keep you focused on doing what you need to be doing… hitting targets! For example a rabbit warren stage where you switch from small moving targets up close to a ‘sitting’ rabbit target at 250m, practical rimfire scopes with a first focal plane reticle will enable you to rapidly acquire the correct holdovers regardless of what magnification you are on so you can just grab the magnification bell and crank it without checking its final magnification setting. Having consistency between turret and reticle is an absolute must. Mixing Mils and MOA is only going to cause issues and with mils being a bit faster than MOA there is a tendency to use mils for these styles of competition. Its also metric and very straightforward so its the system we prefer and recommend. Finally, for the longer distance engagements having a max magnification of 14x or higher can really make those precise know your limit style stages a lot easier! Finally, they have to be affordable, for example, while all the 40mm tube IOR scopes have parralax down to 7m (with most actually being able to focus down to 5m…5m!!!) but they are geared towards other roles and they may fall out of what most people would class as affordable practical rimfire scopes.

So what are the choices?!? Precision Defence Industries offer 3 options for affordable practical rimfire scopes, all made by the wonderful team at Athlon.

If you have any questions or want any further information on any of the scopes listed feel free to send us an email or give Bourney the engineer a call directly on 0438893966. We get the Talos in irregularly but will happily order one in for you otherwise we try and keep the 2.5-15×50 Ares in stock and also have rings and bubble level packages available, Check them out here

Our Setup: