When I first started submitting content for TTAG, RF told me that if I fed the site’s insatiable maw on a regular basis, I would start getting gear to review. I told my friends at work and we all had a good laugh. But here I sit with my first piece of gear. RF has been gracious enough to send me a Burris Eliminator riding atop his personal Remington 700 SPS [not shown] in .308 with 100 rounds of ammunition. I’m stoked for several reasons . . .

First, I’ve never had the pleasure of shooting a Remington 700. Second, I’ve never shot anything in .308. Third, this scope has great potential to be a really cool toy. And fourth, I get to leave the big city of Austin and head to my ranch for a weekend of shooting.

For those of you who have not heard of the Eliminator, it was debuted by Burris at the SHOT show in 2010 as a replacement for your variable power optic and laser rangefinder. Thanks to the miracles of modern science, you can now have your cake and eat it too. No more digging out the rangefinder, taking a range measurement, adjusting your scope, or figuring holdover. With the Eliminator, point, range, shoot.

And, for less than $900, you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg like you would on the Barrett BORS system. Sure, it isn’t as powerful, but it also doesn’t cost $2700.

I am hoping that it isn’t too good to be true, but it might be. Here’s my plan for a thorough evaluation: I’ll start by sighting-in the Eliminator at the prescribed 100 yards, and then set my 200 yard drop per the manual. Once that is completed, I’m planning to take some test shots at various distances.

Burris says the Eliminator is good at ranging reflective targets out to 800 yards and furry targets at up to 550 yards. I have almost 800 yards at my disposal, so I should be able to test the upper threshold of the Eliminator’s abilities.

Once I feel comfortable with what she can do (and assuming I haven’t keeled over from the heat) I’m going to set up a gallery with targets at various ranges to test the speed and accuracy of this versus a traditional range and holdover method.

If you have any more tests you would like done, please let me know.

Stay tuned for my first range report. I also think I have a pig hunt lined up with my future father in law so I should have some real world tests in addition to my initial thoughts.

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11 COMMENTS

    • Yes. Yes it does. I’ve swapped out the pic until Tyler can send me a glamor shot of said Burris atop ye olde Remington 700. My bad.

  2. A regular, non-sniper type guy would really have to love venison to spend 2700 balloons on an optical ranging system.

    BTW, Tyler, I’ve shot RF’s Remy, and it’s dead nuts accurate. You won’t want to give it back.

  3. I actually enjoy ranging a target with the reticle, then dialing in elevation and windage. OK. Sometimes I double check with a laser. But it will be interesting what $900 will get you. What increments are the drop adjustments?

    • Windage and Elevation are in 1/4 MOA. The little illuminated dots are 1/3 MOA and there are quite a few of them.

      • Actually I meant the ranging and auto compensation mechanism ie every 20 or 25 or 50 or 100 yds are the drop data for, or does it just interpolate between the 400 yd and 500 yd drop value if the range is 460 yd for example.

        • Ahhh…I get your question. I’m not quite sure how the logic works. I’ll try to figure it out before I post my final comments.

  5. I just ordered my second Burris Eliminator to place on a second Prairie Dog rifle. As I have told my friends I will repeat; “I have had more fun shooting with this scope than ANYTHING I have shot in my 50 years of shooting.” And, my friends, that is a whole bunch of things, guns and gear.

    What makes it so much fun? Punching paper doesnt turn me on much anymore although I still appreciate a good shooting rifle and very small groups. Hunting with rifles, shotguns and pistols has occupied my years too. I prefer small game, because I get to shoot more. Varmints has captured most of my time now-a-days. With, ground squirrels, prairie dogs, crows, ground hogs and coyotes being my preferences, the target opportunities appear at various ranges and directions. “Guessing” at the range has always been a bit problematic even though I learned mil-dot ranging in the Marines. The Burris Eliminator has removed the guess and the subsequent misses when you are wrong. Let’s face it, hits are satisfying, misses frustrating.

    The first couple of shots I was hooked. I was aphrehensive of a lower magnification than I was comfortable with and accustomed to on a varmint rifle but that concern never was noticed after the first hit. Pure joy in finding, sighting, ranging, aiming, hitting and watching it all happen and almost every shot mezmerized me. Only after an extensive hunt over several days and a couple hundred targets did I realize it was as close to one shot one kill as this old marksman could muster. And, I shot less than one third of my normal volume for that much hunting.

    Please understand, I like pulling the trigger and even enjoyed missing a ground squirrel, letting him run and “chasing him down” with high volume fire before he found cover. But, hitting him on the first shot out to ranges of 450 yards and watching him fly through the air is too much fun.

    Bottom line is, having this much fun might well be illegal one day. Spend the money, get you one. Not recommended for a carry rifle perhaps, but for my purposes, shooting anything else is much less fun.

  6. Eliminator or Eliminator III?… EvenB’s comments and Tyler’s preliminary review are interesting ‘coz I’m a day or two away from ordering one of ’em and I’m not sure which! Yeah, okay, so the newer offer from Burris is better but it’s $1,500 verses $900 and that’s a lot of bucks ubless you’re the duty officer at Fort Knox…
    So friends, what do you reckon I should do? Go wirh the Eliminator III or be happy with the Eliminator on my much loved Thompson/Center Encore Pro Hunter 270Win?

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