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Say you've got a standard carbine, 1103. Your plan is mostly (completely?) indoor range shooting at 25M unless you find an indoor with lanes longer. Maybe once in a great while when the weather and temperature demons cooperate the outdoor range and 50 yards.

You want a scope that's good for rimfire and short to medium range. You can choose anything. Money is no object, provided it's not over about $330 as that plus sales tax is 1.5 times the cost of your 1103, an arbitrary number chosen as the painless limit. Some variance acceptable for the right scope option.

Thanks for any and all input.

I have has excellent results with Vortex Crossfire scopes. Usually can get them for less than 200 bucks and they have been absolutely the best scopes I have ever used. I never had a good Leupold, but I have had the Leupold Rifleman scope from a few years ago, and the Vortex is a way better than scope than that one. I think all my guns have Vortex or Nikon scopes on them. I might have a stray Bushnell, but I would have to check. I have never bought a rimfire specific scope, as I never really seen any point in it.

I was looking at a Bushnell and a Hawke with AO. Hadn't looked at Vortex due to no real knowledge of them. Your positive input has me looking at Midway. They've got the Crossfire II 4-12x40 AO for $190 and a "special offer" of 15% off. Comes to $162 for it. The Hawke is 3-9x40 AO and the Bushnell Engage is 2.5-10x44 with a side dial adjustment rather than AO but does the same thing apparently.

I'd kind of like the pulling back to 2.5 option but it is out of stock at $175 and may come back in stock at the $345 original price. The Hawke is $155, basically the same as the Vortex, so why not reach out to 12x if wanted for same money. Thank you for a good lead.

Out of curiosity, are you near Louisville? I loved eating at Mike Linnig's. Too far from Houston to drop in for lunch and retired so work isn't paying me to drive through Louisville any more.

Unfortunately, yes, I live in the county to the South of Louisville. Mike Lennings is a great place to eat!

My best friend lived about a mile away, about half way between Mike Linnig's and Mark's Feed Store on 31W. We'd usually go to both when I was passing through. That and a diner I don't remember the name of also on 31 with great breakfasts. You'd think in Houston there'd be somewhere as good as Mike's for seafood, and probably is, but I haven't found it yet and lived all my life here, 68 years now.

You ever stopped at Biffs Gun store, or Knob Creek Gun Range? I worked at knob creek for almost 8 years.

No, I couldn't carry in the truck and might have to be x-rayed at any time so never risked it. And never heard of Biffs. More things for my bucket list.

Well, Biff retired, but his son runs Knob Creek Gun Range. They used to have a Machine Gun Shoot twice a year, but they finally stopped doing that, but the range and gun shop is still open. If you go to youtube there are tons of videos about the machine gun shoot.

Whenever I was in Louisville for a job I would always visit a few places, Knob Creek Gun Store (the whole place is fantastic and I tell people to get there it reminds me of some of the scenes in Deliverance ), the Louisville Slugger Factory (I have a Louisville Slugger with my name on it, and I got to watch them making it from the blank to the finished bat - they actually took my measurements to fit it to me) and Ft. Knox (the Depository, the base itself, and most definitely the Patton Museum - especially when the Armored Museum was there). When I got my bat, I took it to the PO on Ft. Knox to ship it and when talking to them the lady at the counter said they ship so many they had special boxes made up for shipping one or multiples.

As for the scope I would also second the Vortex. I have several and they are great scopes. The scope on my Ruger Precision Rifle (.308) is a Vortex Viper PST Gen II 5-25x50mm with the MRAD Reticle and I love it.

Back to any scope, it turns out to be the Vortex Crossfire II 4-12x40 ordered last night from Midway, $189.99 with a 15% promo offer net $161.49 plus tax and free shipping, $174.81 to my door. Between the good words given and the excellent deal I had to go with it. Now I just have to decide which of the two rifles to put it on and figure out what mounts I need.