Review: Burris Eliminator 6 rangefinding riflescope

Let’s not beat around the bush; the Burris Eliminator 6 is a serious piece of gear. It’s filled with features designed to extend the effective range of shooters, and all within a package that is built solid, is simple to use, and looks the part. With its in-built rangefinder and clever reticle, it’ll work out your bullet’s trajectory and tell you where to aim.

People familiar with previous models of the Eliminator will be pleased that the 6 looks like a proper rifle scope, and a hefty one at that. With a 34mm main tube and 52mm objective lens, this optic weighs 850 grams, which is only about 35 grams more than previous models. It’s in the ballpark for an optic designed to be used at extended ranges and it’s impressive that the package is much more streamlined and aesthetically pleasing, while building further on the rangefinding capabilities.

Burris Eliminator 6 review — The optics of the Burris are very good, and have been improved because the old yellow tinge has been removed

For a scope with a 34mm tube like this you need a decent set of rings, and Beretta supplied the Burris ones with this scope. They come with plastic spacers in them that allow the pressure on the scope to be distributed as evenly as possible.

Further to this, the spacer kits allow you to choose from a few different sizes so you can build some extra elevation (up to about 40 MOA) into them, if you desire. The capabilities of the scope and the distances I shot didn’t call for this, but it’s something to be aware of if you really want to reach out and touch things.

The adjustment turrets have generous caps on them that are easy to manipulate. You have 40 MOA of range for both elevation and windage, which is more than enough for most rifles. The main thing to note here is that the clicks are in 1/8 MOA, allowing you to dial in the most accurate zero possible. We will cover this more later, but essentially, everything this scope does is reliant on your zero being spot on.

A final handy feature of the turret caps is a QR code under the top. Scan this with your phone and it will bring up the manual for the scope, saving the need to carry it with you or remember where you’ve kept it.

The magnification ring is fairly stiff but easy to manipulate. 4x gets you right down to a level that is usable for many stalking situations, and getting right up to 20x should see you shooting confidently out to the sort of distances this scope allows you. I was right up at 20x for some of my sighting in and 100m group purposes, but found shooting out to around 400 metres felt a little easier winding back to about 15-16x to give myself a bigger field of view and be able to call my hits on steel targets and animals.

The X177 reticle is in the second focal plane (SFP). For what seems like a scope with a lot going on, its reticle is very intuitive and I never felt that my sight picture was getting too busy or complex. There are clear marks for both elevation and windage holds, and the built-in ballistic compensation makes picking a spot very simple, with the appropriate mark on the reticle being illuminated after securing a range on a target.

The Eliminator has new, improved reticle with more aiming points. Data is displayed at the top

Burris states that the different illumination points within the reticle offer a total of 177 aim points, with 1/5 MOA of precision. While that sounds complex, it just means there is a greater potential for accuracy, and all you need to do is hold where the red dot appears.

Just for fun, I ranged some steel targets and then changed the magnification after the red light appeared on the elevation post and the dot moved up and down in real time according to how I wound the scope. Very cool, and good to know that you wouldn’t lose your mark if you suddenly felt the need to adjust your magnification in the field after you’d already ranged your target.

The parallax adjustment starts at 25 yards and goes out to infinity. The ring feels good to turn and I found getting the sweet spot easy, even on hot, hazy days. I took a bit of time to get used to the eye relief but I believe that was mainly to do with the rifle having a lower comb and this scope sitting higher than others I’m used to. Once I got there, it was easy to shoot confidently.

The quality of the glass is also fantastic and Burris claims it has been able to do away with the yellow haze of previous models that was necessary to have the reticle work properly. I have limited experience with the older models so can’t comment with authority, but I can say that the glass in the 6 is clear, and with no hint of colour.

Of course, the real power in this scope is the ballistic compensation. A quick glance at the left turret will show you three buttons. The largest is what you press to get a range on your target, and the other two are simply to adjust brightness. I’ll admit I was a bit intimidated when I first saw three buttons, but after reading the manual and using them at the range and in the field, it couldn’t be easier.

The scope also comes with a remote button to range your target, that can either be fixed somewhere convenient on your rifle, or kept on your person. I didn’t feel the need to mess with this a great deal but it’s definitely a strong feature, as holding the rifle and scope steady while pressing the side button to accurately range a target might be difficult at extended ranges.

With only three buttons to mess with on the scope, most of the work needs to be done within the Burris Connect phone app. Again, I thought this would be difficult, but with a quick glance at the manual and 10 minutes of mucking around at the shooting bench, I was good to hit targets well beyond what I’d ever done previously.

Connecting the scope to your phone is as simple and pain free as connecting any other Bluetooth device. From there, you just enter the data of your load or cartridge, as well as the units you want your scope to display – distance, temperature, wind, elevation, etc. I was using some Remington Premier Match factory loads that I got from Calibre Country in Tamworth for a good price, and it shot well out of this rifle using a different scope so I knew I wouldn’t have to muck around. I made a profile on the Burris Connect app with the bullet type, weight, BC, muzzle velocity, and various environmental factors.

Once I’d populated all the fields, I simply uploaded this profile to the scope using the Bluetooth connection and it was immediate boom-ding on steel targets out to about 385 metres. Of course, the effectiveness of the scope is entirely dependent on how robust your zero is, and the accuracy of the data you input. I was confident my velocity was accurate as it was an average of over 20 shots, recorded on my Garmin Xero C1 chronograph. The factory loads are also very consistent, having a standard deviation of around 6m/s (20fps).

The heads-up display (HUD) when looking through the scope has up to 10 data points that may be useful to you — things like distance, temperature, energy of the bullet at that distance, battery life and a cool feature that indicates whether you’re sitting perfectly level or not. The sight picture is generous and I never found it cluttered, despite so much information being available, but many of these data points can be turned off easily in the app if that’s your preference.

While having to download an app and upload data to the scope might seem like too much work for some, it can really be as simple as doing that job once and leaving everything as is for a long time, unless you decide to change something about your load, obviously. Once you’ve uploaded your data into the scope, you don’t even need to have the phone stay connected, so that’s one less factor to think about when hunting. The Eliminator 6 also takes in environmental factors such as temperature, barometric pressure, and the incline that you are shooting on (if any), so you can be confident that once you’ve made the initial setup, you can go between many different conditions and environments and know your scope will be on the money.

With great power comes great responsibility, and it would be easy to become over-confident with the sort of capability this scope offers. Burris’ slogan for the Eliminator 6 is ‘Train Far, Hunt Responsibly’. You don’t need me to preach to you about how far you should be shooting or hunting, but this scope without a doubt makes achieving seriously long distance easier than any other scope on the market.

For people who that appeals to, the Eliminator 6 is a no-brainer, but that sort of quality and convenience attracts a price tag of $4799, which is up with some of the highest Euro offerings. A little more dough for that sort of convenience is something I can see people being very tempted by.