When Burris recently discontinued their first generation 4 x 12 laser range finding scope, I was able to pick one up at an affordable price. I had a time trying to decide which of my rifles to try it on first. I eventually decided on my Colt HBAR 5.56 for a couple of reasons:
1. This scope is HUGE, it would take away from the handiness of one of my carbines.
2. The bullet drop ballistics are based on rifle barrels, and the velocities found by using them,
3. I had recently developed a hand load specifically for this rifle, and wanted to blue print it's ballistic curvature.
First a couple of observations: my shooting that day was a testament on why you should never drink four cups of coffee on an empty stomach and then go to the range. I went at spur of the moment, so the coffee had already been consumed. My groups were, to put it mildly, very disappointing. Also, this rifle made me appreciate how much I have been spoiled lately by Armalite 2 stage triggers. This one will be getting a Geissele when I can afford it.
That said, below is a picture of the rifle with the scope and sun hood on it.
Told you it was huge!
Per manufacturers instructions I sighted in the scope at 100 yards with my hand loads: 21 gr Reloader 15, CCI small rifle primers, 75 gr Hornady BTHP Match bullets. No FTF or FTE, no signs of overpressure. Thanks Night Force for running that load on Quickload.
Below is my sight in target, I am embarrassed to say.
After getting zeroed in best I could, I started the process of programming the electonics.
What the eliminator does, is take a laser distance reading that is picked up by the ballistic computer, which then calculates holdover, and one of 39 orange LED's light up indicating your holdover aiming point. You can see this in the reticle picture below:
Burriss provides a list of the most common manufactured cartridges/bullet designs with the data to program in. As I was shooting hand loads, I had to find the closest approximation, which was Black Hills reloads with a 75 gr hollow point match bullet. As my experience with Black Hills ammo is that it is "lively" I opted for one notch below.
The code for programing is first you put a "1" in, for the distance you zeroed in at, followed in this case by "60" , which is the bullet drop for this cartridge combination at 500 yards, for a programming number of "160". As I thought my reload would be milder, I put in "161". I turned out to be wrong. Below was my first target at 200 yards. Keep in mind I was not compensating for windage.
I reprogrammed for "160", and below was my second target:
As you can see, the scope does nothing to compensate for windage, which was blowing from left to right about ten miles per hour. On the Eliminator III, they have windage compensation dots as seen in the reticle picture below.
Conclusion: The Eliminator, when properly programed for the right cartridge bullet combination, worked out to two hundred yards. My next effort will be to find a 500 yard range to explore it's accuracy limits. Because of its size and weight, 26 ounces, I don't really see a field use for it, except for a situation where you are in a blind shooting at distance targets at varying ranges, like Prairie dog shooting, or maybe stand shooting out west. You aren't going to want to carry it up and down mountains all day. As a training tool, to get better at distance estimation, and better at learning proper holdover for a specific rifle/cartridge combination, I think it will be very useful. I intend to use it that way with all my rifles, to see what the specific needs are for each one. It also already taught me I need to work on my ability to read and compensate for the wind. At the price I got it for, it was worthwhile.
