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Here’s an occupational hazard of reviewing rifles: the optics never stay put. Many times, when a new rifle comes in for testing, a scope comes off one of my old favorites, and that rifle goes back in the rack naked. Right now, at least four good deer rifles are standing in my safe without glass, rifles I’d like to grab for an almost daily here on the farm.
So, when a scope earns a permanent home, I take notice. The Burris Fullfield 2.5-10×42 earned one. It rode a Ruger Hawkeye in .358 Winchester to top honors in our Ballistics Best Hunting Rifle article, and it’s the scope I’m buying to put those idle deer rifles back to work.
A Familiar Name, Rebuilt
Burris turned 50 in 2025, and it marked the occasion by rebuilding its best-known line. The new Fullfield has a one-piece aluminum body, metal-on-metal internals, and a reinforced double-spring turret system. Its 4x zoom design makes these the most compact scopes Burris has built.
I have a long history with Burris scopes. Some of my favorites have been the Mini series going back more than 30 years. What’s sold me on the new Fullfields is their better glass and compact design.
The new 2.5-10×42 sits on a one-inch tube, is about 10½ inches long, and weighs roughly 15 ounces. On a classic walnut stock, it looks right. It doesn’t overpower the rifle, and it keeps the balance where a hunting rifle’s balance belongs.
The Test Rifle
The .358 Winchester is a .308 case necked up to .35 caliber. It’s a short-action thumper that hits far harder than its modest velocities suggest. For the Ballistics Best test, the Hawkeye was fed Hornady Custom 200-grain SP. Over the chronograph, that load averaged 2,304 fps with a standard deviation of 9.8, which is outstanding consistency for factory ammunition. That’s roughly 2,350 ft-lbs at the muzzle, plenty for any whitetail, hog, or black bear in the woods.
The rifle wore a Silencer Central Banish 46 suppressor, too. The Banish tamed the muzzle blast and took a noticeable edge off the recoil. A suppressed rifle is easier to shoot well, and the Fullfield never had trouble keeping up.
On the Range
The smallest 100-yard group measured 0.985 inch for five shots. Sub-MOA with a factory-loaded .358 Winchester hunting rifle is a strong result, and much of the credit goes to the rifle and that consistent Hornady load. But, a scope has to do its share. It has to give you a crisp sight picture, track true, and hold zero shot after shot. The Fullfield did all three.
The capped turrets deliver quarter-MOA clicks that you can hear and feel. During zeroing, the adjustments moved the group where they were supposed to, and the scope held zero for the rest of the test, through hot barrels, multiple range sessions, and a lot of handling.
Glass and Low Light
Nobody will confuse this scope with a $1,500 European optic, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise. What it delivers is clear, bright, honest glass that does the job in decent hunting light. At 2.5x, the field of view is wide, about 43 feet at 100 yards, and the exit pupil exceeds 10mm. Throw the rifle to your shoulder and the reticle is just there. Where I typically hunt whitetails, legal shooting time extends to 30 minutes after local sunset. What you won’t get with these budget optics is a sharp reticle during the last 15 minutes of hunting time. An illuminated reticle helps compensate for this lack of clarity. In the last minutes of shooting light, when a buck finally steps out at the edge of a cut cornfield, that’s what counts.
On the range at 10x, the image stayed sharp enough for careful load work at the end of the day, too.
Reticle Choices
Burris offers the 2.5-10×42 with a classic Plex, a Ballistic Plex, and an illuminated Ballistic E3. My test scope wore the illuminated Ballistic E3, and it’s the one I’d choose again. The E3 gives you holdover and wind marks for longer shots without crowding the view at low power, where a .358 does most of its work. The illumination earns its keep in the last few minutes of legal light, as previously mentioned, when a black reticle disappears against dark timber or a buck’s shoulder. A twist of a knob puts a glowing aiming point right where you need it. The illuminated model is worth the extra money.
Points to Consider
Eye relief runs about 3 to 3.3 inches. That’s tighter than some scopes, so mount it carefully on a hard-kicking rifle. The suppressor helped on the .358, but on an unsuppressed magnum I’d want a little extra room. Parallax is fixed, which is normal for a hunting scope in this class. For deer-woods distances, neither issue made any difference.
The scope is covered by the Burris Forever Warranty, which follows the scope, not the original buyer.
Price Check
Prices for the Illuminated Ballistic E3 model, checked October 2026 and subject to change. Buying through these links supports ShootingSavvy.com at no extra cost to you.
Suppressor used in this test: Silencer Central Banish 46 . Silencer Central handles the paperwork and delivers to your door.
The Verdict
The Burris Fullfield 2.5-10×42 isn’t flashy, and it isn’t meant to be. It’s a bright, compact, dependable hunting scope that tracks and holds zero, all a little more than it takes to fill up a diesel pickup these days. It helped a suppressed Ruger Hawkeye in .358 Winchester shoot sub-MOA and win our Ballistics Best Hunting Rifle roundup.
If you’ve got a good deer rifle standing in the safe without glass, like I do, this is the scope I’d put on it.
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