Best air rifle scopes?

S

Silent Shadow

New member
What would be your advice for the best air rifle scope and what magnification power?

The ones I'm considering are Bushnell Trophy, Simmons Pro-Air, Swift in either 6-18x40, 6-24x50 or 8-32x50....

I mean, with the 32x you would see the target's atoms at 50m no? ;)

But I hear it's good for rangefinding with the objective bell...

Silent Shadow
 
If it's a springer, you need to make sure the scope is compatible with springer airguns. Otherwise, the reverse recoil will damage teh scope.

Chris
 
Yeah, they say Swift, Bushnell, and Simmons scopes are made for airguns, or at least can take the double recoil...

Simmons seem to be the most fragile out of the three...I think
 
If you check the bulletin board over @ Straight Shooters.com, you'll see that the folks shooting the more powerful spring airguns swear by the Bushnell Trophy. I've read that it is an outstanding scope, which is DESIGNED for airguns. These scopes have bracing on both sides of the lenses, to withstand the "double recoil" of airguns.
 
Actually, and this will be no surprise to our regulars, Leupold makes the best airgun scopes...

Look for the Extended Focus Range for parallax adjustment. The 6.5-20x 40mm Matte EFR is a dream... they also make the 3-9x EFR..

Almost all the field target shooters I know use Leupolds on their springers and PCPs.
 
Airgun scopes

Airgun scopes need 2 things: Strength to withstand the double recoil of springers, and close focusing. PCPs only need the close focus.

I have Bushnell Trophy 4-12X40 on 3 springers (2 Air Arms and a Beeman/Theoben SLR98.) I love them. I have a Swift 4-12 on an RWS 46. Also very good, but I prefer the Trophy. No problems with any. My RWS ate a Simmins Pro-Air.

I also have a Leupold 6.5-20X40 EFR Target on a .223 Remington 700PSS. The Leupold can focus to well under 10 yards on 20X. When they say extended focus range, they mean it! I do not need the close focus on the PSS, but on sale is was appreciably cheaper than the non-EFR, expecially after having the target knobs installed.... PLUS!, it may move to a PCP when I get one. That will give me an excuse to get one of the new side focus LR models for the PSS... ;)
 
High Magnification!

A quick bit of info on why so many very high magnification scopes are offered for airguns.

There is a type of competition called "Field Target" where shooters hust hit very small kill zones on animal targets set up a ranges varying from 10 to 50 yards. No range finding tools are allowed, so the shooters use high magnification AO scopes to determine range via a focus setting to range calibration. It works best with high magnification.

This competition is very fun and sporting at the club level and overy intense at the national/international level.

Past that, just make sure you get a scope marked for air rifle and if you are not competing, stick with a lower magnification


JPM
 
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