Two points to add, if you shoot a Vortex scope or are in love with Vortex please quit reading:
1) I see tons of “famous” hunters using Vortex. I guarantee a large portion paid nothing of extremely discounted prices.
2) Our local police academy that qualifies 1800+ officers a year had to ban Vortex products because they had a failure rate in rifle schools way North of 50%.
Vortex has/had an extreme spread of product quality and they have a solid high end scope but like has been said before there are other options I would trust more on a hunt of a lifetime.
I don't trust any scope, you spend enough time on the internet and every single manufacturer has had devastating failures that have ruined hunts. Every single one. I sure as hell don't trust the lower model lines of any manufacturer, I've had Leupold, Zeiss, Swaro all go bottom up when it mattered.
I gotta say even though I've steered clear of Vortex my entire hunting life I do currently have a 3-15x42 Razor HD LH on my hunting rifle right now and its a pretty dang nice little scope that has performed flawlessly.
I've become so scope paranoid due to failures that I can't trust anything out there. I'm making myself swallow my fears and using this Razor for a couple years, if it performs maybe I'll stop waking up at night sweating from a nightmare of a missed elk due to scope failure.
Its just such a tight line to walk when we are looking for good glass, light weight, and durability. Those last two are generally counter productive to each other.
And to your point about the celebs, I'll be honest, Rinella using Vortex made me more comfortable with this new scope than if he didn't use them. I even noticed a couple episodes where they are using the exact scope I have. If it works for Steven an Janis then who am I to complain haha.
My sad diatribe is over now.
