Update after using both for a few months...the Athlon is a better hunting scope but the Sightron is much easier to use at the range and for busting rocks and for what I use scopes like this for, I'll probably end up putting these STAC FFP/MIL scopes on a bunch of rifles.

The Athlon reticle (as Stick has said many times) is an awesome practical reticle. The heavy part of the crosshair is about like an old Leupy *heavy* duplex...very thick and very visible in low light even without the illumination turned on.

The Sightron FFP MIL reticle is about like a Leupold regular duplex. Pretty solid out to the end of legal shooting light but getting closer to dark you will lose the reticle, basically like most hunting scopes. Note this still a much more visible reticle in low light than say a Bushy DMR 3-21.

In short...if you want a locking windage turret and a heavy duplex reticle with a heavy center dot...basically a big game hunting reticle...the Athlon is the clear winner. I have one living on one of my Whelens and I'm about to move a second one to a 338WM. The Athlon is also just a nice scope to get behind at 2x. Big FOV and not picky on head position. It's almost hilariously better in that regard than my NXS 2.5-10...if I had to take a shot in a hurry I'd pick the Athlon every time over my NXS 2.5-10, not to mention the reticle is much heavier and easier to use in low light.

Where the Athlon was less perfect was at the range. For shooting targets much smaller than 2moa, it sometimes got tough as the reticle feels like it subtends about 1.5 inches at 100 yards (Athlon says it's .3 mils).

Also, the ilium knob on both my Athlons are so stiff it mostly takes two hands to get them turned on without running the parallax to either infinity or to 10 yards. The reticle is heavy enough you don't always need the illumination but worth mentioning.

The Sightron illumination is pretty easy to turn on. You might bump the parallax knob but you won't run it completely out of focus. The Sightron has less erector travel but with 20 moa bases it'll get you past 1200 yards with most cartridges.

Sightron glass may be (to my eyes) marginally brighter at dusk, but that is mostly splitting hairs. At the same power at both dusk and full dark both scopes wer pretty similar to a several different VX-3's.

I'll keep the two Athlons but I will probably end up owning more of the S-TAC FFP/MIL scopes. They're quite a bit easier to use shooting steel and I only need 15 mil of travel for most of the shooting I do. The zero stop works well and if I need to take it hunting I'll pull the windage knob and tape a cap over it.

Regardless it's surreal to use a $500 scope (in either case) that has parallax adjustment, tracks perfectly, and has a very good reticle for its intended purpose.

Last edited by TX35W; 08/25/22.