guns

If I get a 22 bolt action, I’ll likely need a scope. Most of the models I’m looking at don’t have iron sights. I’ve done some research, but the variety of options for scopes is incredibly broad. Would be happy to hear any advice on how I might go about narrowing down the field of candidates. For context, I’d likely be shooting the 22 exclusively on a range, almost certainly 100 meters or less.

For a nice, but relatively cheap scope I can vouch for the Redfield brand. The 3-9x 40mm scope is about $130 in the US. If you can find that sort of price where you are, I'd take it. In any case, a variable optic is going to work well in allowing you to shoot closer in for beginning practice/zero and further out. There are certainly different brand but I think any 3-9x is a good sweet spot to give you reasonable 100 yard magnification while still being usable closer. You could alternatively get 1-6x which would be more suited to the closer side of things.

Speaking of iron sights, do you think there’s value in learning to shoot with them? I’ve been mostly focused on scoped rifles as I don’t see much value in iron sights for target shooting and hunting. I could see iron sights being of much greater value for home defense, but legally speaking, home defense isn’t really a tenable thing here in Canada. Let me know if you think I’d be missing valuable knowledge / skill by omitting iron sights. As long as with the scope you are being mindful of getting good placement while looking at the reticle.

Learning irons and being comfortable does give you more versatility, but if are only ever going to shoot with limited selection of scoped rifles, I don't think it matters too much. I'll say that for any intermediate caliber or smaller where you might be putting a red dot on (which you could on your .22lr setup though doing that doesn't seem like your intention), in that case there's almost no downside to adding backup iron sights that can look through the red dot's housing.