Q&A for Leupold Mark 5 Field Evals

[Skerhunter]

Or just a really weak scope lol. In this case it was a bit of both the stock bounced off the ground and I felt like an idiot.

I really only gave my 2 cents because it seems like guys are falling into two camps on this test. The first camp is denial, they claim the only ones that have issues are the ones form tested and their scope would never display such issues. If they don’t do that they claim he’s biased or tested wrong. The second camp completely dismisses the scope all together because it can’t survive a 36” drop. I don’t blame the second camp, no one wants a wondering zero or scope failure. This scope wins too many matches to say it’s completely unusable.

I provided my experience because I’m somewhere in the middle of those two camps. I owned an nx8 4-32 when I bought my mark 5 and after being behind both of them I sold my the nx8 because to my eye and use case the mark 5 was drastically better. I’ll unfortunetly have to baby the scope a bit and check zero frequently which isn’t ideal but I can’t deny the fact that it’s been a great scope for the past 3 years. If my main want for a scope in the future is absolute bomb proof I’ll probably pick up an ATACR or read through more drop tests and choose a scope that passes.

I want to see some of these tests done on thermal scopes!

I don’t think thermals would hold up well to this drop test. I think a lot of them would be damaged/malfunction with repeated drops. But you can easily test a thermal yourself for normal field use and I do. Usually when dropped they will be off enough to cause a miss, but will return to zero on the second shot. I have seen multiple do this after falling off a tripod or being dropped in the field. Doing stuff in the dark is always a struggle. I evaluate my mine by simply bouncing it on the butt - like a 6-12” drop between shots to make sure my mounts are tight (common issue) and check zero after bouncing around in the truck.