Essential Guide to Choosing Rifle Scope Accessories
Posted by Northtac on on Aug 1st 2022
Essential Guide to Choosing Rifle Scope Accessories
You have finally bought that rifle you have been looking for. Naturally, the next step is equipping your beloved rifle with high-quality optics within your budget.
NOTE: A rifle scope shouldn’t be pricey, but a wise rifleman will spend more for his optics than the rifle he mounts it on.
But, if you thought now that everything was acquired, you were wrong.
The scopes are complicated, precision instruments that get dragged through rain and snow, and dropped on floors or rocks.
That said, rifle scopes are investments worth protecting. Fortunately, there are many manufacturers offering a wide array of scope gadgets and accessories designed to ensure your optics stay protected from the most rugged terrain and inclement weather.
There is a vast variety of rifle scope accessories but the most common include scope lens covers, sunshades, kill flash, scope throw levers, rifle scope bubble level, yellow, grey, or polarized filters, and light protection ocular.
Now, you are asking yourself what's the most important thing to protect your precious scope.
Scope Lens Covers
First, you want to take care of glasses as the critical part of any optics. Keeping lenses clean and dry make them effective and efficient and improves the shooting experience for hunters and shooters alike.
For many marksmen, the most crucial rifle scope accessories are rifle scope lens covers. These handy gadgets may come in different forms and sizes, but the most common types are:
- Lens Caps
- Bikini-Style Lens Cover
- Neoprene Scope Cover
- Flip-Up Caps
Lens Caps
The scope lens caps are usually made of flexible rubber to ensure optimal protection for lenses. The caps are independently tethered and stretched for a tight fit and flip down out of the way when viewing.
These rifle scope lens covers are sold in singles, but like with most covers, you have to measure the exterior diameter of your scope before ordering the lens caps.
Bikini-Style Lens Cover
The Bikini-style lens covers, also called Bikini Caps are pretty self-explainable. The rubber ocular and objective rubber-like caps are linked with two rubber strips, that when fixed on the scope prevent a loss of the ocular or objective cover
Neoprene Scope Cover
Another favorite scope lens protection for hunters and shooters is a protective cover made of elastic neoprene material. Quiet neoprene with a thickness of 3mm provides a perfect barrier against impact and moisture, as well as protects your scope from dirt, snow, and rain.
Neoprene scope cover is fairly basic and easy-to-use scope protection and at the same time the cheapest investment to keep your scope away from dirt, dust, and scratches.
Flip-Up Caps
Without a doubt, the most popular rifle scope cover is flip-up scope caps designed to prevent objective and ocular scratches and blemishes during transportation.
These protective rifle scope lens covers consist of a rubberized flip-up lens cover and a spring-loaded flip-up mechanism. The flip covers pop open at the touch of a thumb assisted by a stainless-steel spring that flips up the cap and locks back out of the way.
While Flip Covers create a watertight, airtight seal, each of them can be rotated to any position.
Like other rifle scope lens covers, the flip-up caps are available with a transparent see-through cover, which allows you to see through the scope.
Sunshade
A scope sunshade is a device that threads easily into the objective to reduce glare and sun reflections off the objective lens. The lens shade works perfectly for anti-reflection as it prevents stray light from entering the objective lens. The sunshades are usually machined from lightweight and durable aluminum with a black anodized finish externally and an anti-reflective inner surface. They may come in various measures (2-, 3-, or 4 inches) and some models may allow for serial connection to create greater length.
Kill Flash
Besides sunshade, adding a kill flash to help further reduce the glare will further enhance the capabilities of the rifle and optics.
Kill flash or Honeycomb is an Anti-Reflection Device (ARD) made of an aircraft grade lightweight aluminum or high-quality plastic material.
The ARD construction with external threads allows you to simply screw it into the existing threads of the objective.
The kill flash anti-reflection devices use a high-tech honeycomb grid material and unique geometry to minimize potentially compromising reflections from the objective lens frontline.
While it prevents detection of the marksman, the honeycomb design also protects the lens from impacts, scratching, sand, and dirt.
Similar to sunshades, the kill flash is definitely recommended if you frequently shoot in bright, sunny conditions.
On the flip side, the kill flash is not suited to use in low-light conditions as its design will reduce the amount of light entering the objective bell.
Throw Lever
For many owners of variable-power scopes turning the magnification up or down is a chore but upgrading your optic with a throw lever will make cranking power incredibly fast and easy.
Very few scopes come with stock throw levers, but the aftermarket offer is plentiful with many different models and styles.
You can afford some of these rifle scope accessories without breaking the bank. Throw levers are machined from 6061-T6 aluminum or some durable custom nylon blend with a metal thread insert for increased strength.
By the rule, you can install the throw levers in a minute or less without removing the scope from the firearm.
Although the magnification ring on quality scopes is easy to turn, the throw lever speeds up magnification changes making changes from max to min in one stroke.
Experienced shooters also recommend using of power lever for more accurate magnification adjustments.
The scope zoom ring lever is particularly suitable for low-power variable optics.
Final thoughts
Whatever rifle scope accessories you chose, you should look for high-quality materials and renowned brands.
These mostly inexpensive and rugged gadgets will protect your lens to the utmost degree from physical damage and provide you with years of dependable performance in the toughest environments.