Man, talk about a thread derailing....lol
For me personally I can honestly say that in 35 years of use I've never had a leupold scope let me down. What do I mean by that, well I've never missed or wounded or made anything less than a clean, quick, ethical kill because of my leupold scope shifting zero enough to matter out to 400 yards.
Does that mean I've never missed, hell no I'm not saying that. But when I have missed I've confirmed that indeed it was my own shooter error and not my scope.
Now fwiw I don't dial and I don't shoot long range, if I did maybe I would be more concerned, maybe not I don't know.
But seeing how my own track record has never convinced me to throw away my leupolds I guess I'll just keep killing shit with them.
I think my biggest issue on this forum is how 90% of people on here love to bash leupold and praise those 3 other brandsas though they walk on water.
Let me just say if the general population felt the same as the folks on rokslide then leupold would have either went out of business decades ago or started copying nightforce a long, long time ago.
That said I still plan on keeping to my word and bouncing a leupold or two up and down my shitty gravel road and posting targets as to how they hold up come summer time here in montana
Fwiw I have and do own one nightforce scope. Actually bought it as a result of reading Forms tests. I think it's a hell of a scope but it still hasn't convinced me to sell my leupolds
Anyway I'm done here for awhile. Heading to hunt talk , I'll check back in 2 or months
Not to pick on you, but this is a perfect illustration of the problem.
1) they work for a lot of people—thats clear. Whats not clear is what the takeaway message should be from that. I think we need more info to put that into perspective before that becomes relevant info to this conversation. We dont all have the same needs, and we dont all use our equipment the same way.
2) most (not all) of the people ready to die on the leupy hill readily admit they dont shoot past short range—in this case 400 yards would be considered very long range by most hunters (remember the numbers of hunters in the east and midwest, individual states like Pa and Wi sell more deer tags than the entire population of some western states). A 2moa shift is probably itrelevant at 100 yards. But would a sub-100 yd hunter buy a scope that they knew had decent odds of losing zero by 2moa? Probably not.
3) the zero-check is not quantified or tracked, at least not that anyone else can see, so its rarely (never?) possible to say if the methodology would have registered even a significant shift. Was this a perfect zero within 1 click, determined with a decent-sized group at a measured yardage, both before and after? Or was it a 1 or 2-round minute-of pie-plate zero “about an inch and a half high” sort of zero, or was it something in between? We never seem to hear the details.
4) “I dont shoot long range”. Ie I am not concerned about error that might be significant for someone else, either in reality or in aspiration. Yet I’m willing to defend equipment that its not clear how methodically or thoroughly I have actually vetted it. “Good enough for 200-yard deer hunting” is not what people are talking about, especially when there are pretty good alternatives.
5) “if the general population…they would be out of business”. See point 2. The “general population” shoots at a 100-“ish” yard range once or twice a year, does not track their zero from trip to trip, shoots a single 3-round group at most, doesnt put a lot of effort into mounting, and their zero is often 1-2moa off from where they think it is in the first place, and thinks having to adjust zero every year is normal. And they shoot their deer at 40 to 80 yards, maybe 150-200 if they happen to have access to ag land to hunt. This IS the problem…regardless of whether leupold scopes are great or crappy, the “general population” wouldnt know it. It’s true that if all those people thought this way scopes might look different—but they DONT think this way. I shoot at least once a month at a public range and see 4 or 5 people doing a shitty job of zeroing or checking zero every single trip—its far and away the norm. Its the RARE person I see zeroing or shooting in a way that would even allow them to track or even resolve a 2moa shift. And regardless of whether its a large-enough error to matter most of the time for most people, does anyone think joe average would keep buying a scope that they knew would often be off a small amount? I dont. This rationale makes perfect sense, but it simply doesnt provide any evidence to me one way or another about an actual problem.
Bottom line, if it works for you and you have vetted it, KDWYD. But if you havent actually tracked it in a methodical way, why defend it if you dont know? And if you have, theres a whole lot of people who’d love to see that, so PLEASE show us. Its a challenge—Ive been burned three times out of four. I know some will hold zero, I had one that never lost zero. But I still had three that didnt hold zero, and that wasnt from dropping them. But if other people can track their zero methodically and SHOW that it doesnt shift periodically, at some point we see enough scopes so we can see something of a trend, and if it looks like very few shift I’ll readily eat the whole serving of crow that Ive personally dished up. If for no other reason than getting pleasure out of showing how wrong the leupy-haters-club is, Id think more folks would be motivated to show it with evidence.
I am genuinely looking forward to all the zero tracking posts that I hope are forthcoming this summer.