USA –-(AmmoLand.com)- The SHOT Show involves a series of fast and furious 40-yard dashes from daylight to dark. You start off the morning attending breakfasts with various companies and then when the doors open the rest of the day is spent running from one booth to another booth. Then when the doors close it’s a rush to fit in 2-4 dinners/happy hours for more meetings. I work out 70% of my assignments for the year there, so I have to hit it hard. I’m lining up Pro-staff deals, sponsors and getting all the writing deals that I can.
Riton Optics
This year noticed a new company named Riton Optics (Pronounced Right-on) that had a booth set up outside of the Media Room so I stopped by and got interested in their products and before long was testing out on their scopes and binoculars.
If you live in brushy country then a 3-9 works fine but out West I have 4-14’s on most of my rifles and a 6-18x or 24x is even better for prairie dog and antelope hunting. So when I found out that Riton had a 4-16x, I said perfect.
Right now I’m testing a Mossberg Patriot Revere and going to be using it this year coyote, hog, axis deer, bear and maybe elk hunting so I went with the Riton USA RT-S MOD 5 4-16×50 scope which should work great.
When you pick one up you’ll notice that is heavier than the average scope that size. In talking to Riton Optic’s National Director of Sales Todd Neice, he told me that is due to the tubes being 20% thicker.
I live in Idaho and on a good week of elk hunting if I’m not falling 6-10 times and two of those will be hard falls, then I’m not in very good elk country. For example, last year my buddy fell so hard he knocked his shoulder out of joint. Idaho has some rough country.
So, for hunting in rough country I understand the theory of trying to make everything super lightweight for when you’re sucking wind climbing steep ridges but I think some trends to get lighter has gone overboard to the detriment of the product. When I fall, my scope is falling with me so I need a tough scope. After talking to Neice, I guess that I can live with a little heavier scope if it makes it more durable.
Before we get into the testing of the scope though let’s give a little Riton history. Riton Optics was founded by Law Enforcement and Military veterans and is an American owned company even though their optics are produced in Japan.
They state that they offer the highest quality optics at the most competitive prices matched with incredible customer service. If your scope breaks, they don’t repair it for you. They replace it with a new one. And they shoot for a 48-hour turnaround time. This is a huge service if it breaks during hunting season. In the spring I’m hunting non-stop for bears and then ground squirrels and then in Sept.-Feb. it’s deer, antelope, elk, hogs, varmints….. There’s no downtime to wait on a scope/binocular repair for 3-4 wks.
Here’s a quote off of their website I like:
“We are dedicated to the pursuit of precision in everything we do. Using only the best materials and most innovative technology, we have created an unrivaled line of optics that deliver on performance and value.
From offering you the best rifle scopes, binoculars and red dot sight for your outdoor, hunting and shooting adventures to providing an unlimited lifetime warranty on every product we make. Riton always put customers first.
Our motto is PURSUIT of PRECISION OPTICS for ALL”. And they go on to say “We promise to make the highest quality optics at a price point that hardworking people can afford. We will beat the competition on quality, warranty, customer service and value for money every time”.
Riton Optics was established in 2013 in Tucson, Arizona. For that new of a company, they are making their presence known fast. They are aggressive.
They have a unique QC [quality control] system. The optics are inspected in Japan at the plant and then 100% inspected when they arrive in America. Then when an order is placed, they are again 100% inspected and repacked.
I don’t know if you’re very well versed in modern production practices but Ed Deming came up with the SPC QA system (Statistical Process Control) which means you only check a certain percentage of your product which is supposed to alert you to any production problems. You then rework the product back to the last acceptable check. Which of course can mean that substandard products can get to the customer. That may not be a big deal if you’re buying a $.49 can of Beanie Weenie’s and it has one less slice of a hotdog in it than you counted on but if you’re saving up all of your hard-earned pennies to go on a once-in-a-lifetime hunt and your optics malfunction, that’s a big deal. Riton doesn’t do SPC. They do 100% inspection.
The reticles have tic marks on them. A tic is 2-MOA’s at 100 yds. at full power. That way you don’t have to stop and calibrate how many clicks to adjust for a long shot. Wide FOV stands for Wide Field of View and means they have a 20% wider field of view. That’s nice.
So, as mentioned above, I mounted it on a 30-06 Mossberg Patriot Revere and took it out on the prairies to sight it in. We bore sighted it with a Sightmark Laser Boresight and then tuned it in. I like the crispness of the scope.
I had been shooting most of the morning testing various loads of Hornady ammo in the rifle and doing some pattern test with Hevi Shot turkey loads so I let Ron Spomer perform the next test to ensure that any deviations weren’t due to me flinching.
We set up a target at 100 yds. We were on a sturdy bench with sandbags. His first shot was on 4 power, the second one he cranked it up to 8x, third to 12x and the fourth to 16x. He obtained the same grouping that I had been getting which proved that the point of impact did not deviate when changing the power.
In product reviews, I point out the good and the bad. The only thing that I see that needs tweaking is the knob to adjust the magnification power needs to have a rougher surface so your fingers don’t slip when adjusting.
I’ve just started testing their 10×42 HD binoculars. I’m impressed with their crispness. More to come on them later after a few hunts and tumbles down mountains.
So, if you’re in the market for a new scope, check out Riton Optics.
About Tom Claycomb
Tom Claycomb has been an avid hunter/fisherman throughout his life as well as an outdoors writer with outdoor columns in the magazine Hunt Alaska, Bass Pro Shops, Bowhunter.net and freelances for numerous magazines and newspapers. “To properly skin your animal you will need a sharp knife. I have an e-article on Amazon Kindle titled Knife Sharpening for $.99 if you’re having trouble”