Lots of companies make scope mounts for the Model 94AE. I am not aware of any of them that are low enough to see over with the barrel mounted iron sights.
There are a couple companies that sell see through mounts with integrated rings where you look under the scope. They put the scope even higher, on a rifle where the stock was never intended to accommodate even a low mounted scope.
Winchester sold a lot of AEs to shooters who thought they needed a scope on a lever gun. But in practice it has significant downsides:
- any scope is mounted too high for a decent cheek weld, so parallax errors become a big issue unless you keep magnification low. A 2-7x33 is as large as I’d even think about going.
- even with a small scope, mounting a scope ruins the balance and handling of the rifle.
- since you can no longer wrap your hand around the receiver you end up adding sling swivel and a sling, which adds more weight and further degrades the handling.
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Instead, I suggest three alternatives:
1) Have it drilled and tapped for a tang sight. It allows for excellent accuracy and if your issue is age related near focus and seeing the rear sight or focusing on the front sight, a tang sight with its small aperture close to your eye will solve that problem for you.
Marbles make a good elevation and windage adjustable tang sight. Its not as elegant and refined as a vintage Marbles sight or a vintage Lyman 1A sight, but it’s still a very good sight.
2) Williams makes a receiver sight for the later pre 64 Model 94s and the 1964-1982 pre AE Model 94. All of these are pre 64, but only the newest of them (1956) has factory drilled and tapped holes for the receiver sight. The other two are 1950 models prior to Winchester adding those holes a few years later. Winchester unfortunately stopped drilling and tapping those holes on the Model 94AE, apparently believing their own marketing drivel that everyone wanted a scope.
This is the target version of the Williams sight (as I use it for longer ranged plate shooting), but the make a hunter model with screws rather than finger adjustable knobs.
The receiver sight will give you about 90% of the focus enhancing advantages of a tang sight.
3) Turnbull makes a mount for red dots sights like the Burris Fast Fire that sits in the dove tail for the barrel mounted sight.
How to Mount a Burris FastFire Red Dot Sight to Your Winchester 94
View attachment 107294
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Now…if your response is “but I want magnification because….”, rethink it.
The .30-30 is a 200-250 yard cartridge and while the pre-64 rifles and carbines are 1.5 to 2 MOA in that cartridge, the Model 94 AE is generally a 3-4 MOA carbine where its not going to be used on small game, varmints or predators beyond 50-100 yards but is still minute of deer at 200-250 yards. None of those applications require a scope.
All of the alternatives suggested address any age related accommodation issues by either increasing the depth of field for your eye so it can focus on the front sigh, while eliminating the need to see the rear sight, or eliminate to use the sights entirely.
If the concern is durability in the field, alternatives 1 and 2 are not going to break in the field. Number three might but I have Burris Fast Fire III sights on both an Uzi and an MP5 and I have not managed to break one yet. Burris includes a protective see through cover with them.
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