Q&A Leupold VX-3HD 3.5-10x40mm

[PNWGATOR]

Sincerely makes you wonder why Leupold doesn’t devote the necessary engineering and manufacturing energy and dollars to develop and deliver a trustworthy product.

Trijicon does.

SWFA does

Nightforce does.

Why not Leupold?!

I’d LOVE to give them my riflescope business on all platforms, but until their scopes matter…

 

[Rob5589]

Sincerely makes you wonder why Leupold doesn’t devote the necessary engineering and manufacturing energy and dollars to develop and deliver a trustworthy product.

Trijicon does.

SWFA does

Nightforce does.

Why not Leupold?!

I’d LOVE to give them my riflescope business on all platforms, but until their scopes matter…

Probably because they are deeply ingrained in people's minds as a quality product. Until their bottom line is hurt they'll be no change.

 

[PNWGATOR]

Probably because they are deeply ingrained in people's minds as a quality product. Until their bottom line is hurt they'll be no change.

Crazy, isn’t it?!

 

[Reburn]

Crazy, isn’t it?!

Its not crazy. Its emotions.

The gist is you go to a job where you trade your life for money. What else would you call your time? Its pieces of your life. You take that money and buy a product. People have a hard time when they figure out they wasted some of their life and bought a junk product. #1 that they bought junk and #2 that they made a bad / uninformed decision.

People have a hard time staying I F---ed up and move on. For me I care not at all about my scope and everything about the hunt I'm on. So for me the name on the scope or the rifle or the headstamp means exactly nothing to me anymore. Its just a tool like a hammer or a cresent wrench. I wouldnt keep a hammer that couldnt hammer a nail. When you drop a gun by it sliding down a wall onto carpet and then shoot a deer in the ass at 100 yards in front of all your bankers on a guided hunt you will reevaluate what your doing.

 

[Kurts86]

I have a theory that there is an industry or company standard protocol for testing scope function and durability such as an ASTM document. My guess is that document is very heavy on recoil tests and gives little or no attention to side or top impact testing. The engineers design a scope to meet a standard criteria and if it passes it’s OK regardless of field testing.

I went through this recently. I work in consumer goods manufacturing and we designed a product to multiple standard test procedures and 2 months after beginning manufacturing we realized the test did not show real world issues based on how the product was handled/used.

Fixing the mistake took a massive amount of money and time. Professional and department reputations were bruised. It took a couple of months for certain groups to give up the argument that it passed the paper test so there are no real world issues.

In reality Leupold probably knows their business condition and if they can keep getting 4.5/5 starts or better on their scopes sold at Bass Pro and their profit margin is good why improve the product by increasing material and labor costs to make a more robust erector assembly?

 

[ElPollo]

Many skip right over the fact that many of these scopes can't simply ride in your pick up without losing zero

I’ve personally had this happen with a different Leupold scope and scopes from two other manufacturers. I am continually amazed at how many scope that otherwise seem to get good reviews aren’t even durable enough to make it TO the hunt, much less THROUGH the hunt.

 

[slatebuilder]

This has been interesting and enjoyable to read through. All of our hunting rifles are zeroed at 200 yards, they all have Leupolds of some sort on them. The number of times that I have gone to the range with a rifle that was dead nuts at 200 yesterday, only to find the group has moved an inch or 2 one way or another has been pretty frequent. I always chalked it up to my own ineptness in one way or another. I am curious to try something different and see how it works out.

 

[atmat]

This has been interesting and enjoyable to read through. All of our hunting rifles are zeroed at 200 yards, they all have Leupolds of some sort on them. The number of times that I have gone to the range with a rifle that was dead nuts at 200 yesterday, only to find the group has moved an inch or 2 one way or another has been pretty frequent. I always chalked it up to my own ineptness in one way or another. I am curious to try something different and see how it works out.

That was always my story. It’s a bit of a drive to my nearest range. My wife would ask me why I always needed to check zero before hunting trips, and I told her just in case it was off. She’s say “yeah but you spent like $1,000 shouldn’t it work?”

That’s literally when I googled and found this website.

 

[Mountainrancher]

That was always my story. It’s a bit of a drive to my nearest range. My wife would ask me why I always needed to check zero before hunting trips, and I told her just in case it was off. She’s say “yeah but you spent like $1,000 shouldn’t it work?”

That’s literally when I googled and found this website.

It’s funny how it can take a complete outsider to look at it and say that a thousand plus dollar product should world correctly all the time. If it was any other product the average consumer would probably notice themselves but the “gotta check zero before season” mindset is so deadly ingrained in hunters they can’t see past it.

 

[sickles107]

I picture product dev groups at Leopold sitting in a room.

Engineering: "what about a beefier erector system?"

Warranty: "yeah that would be nice"

Marketing: "cant swing it billy, we need to save money because we have 400 scopes to pass out to influences each year, and need to stay competitive with weight specs. Plus my grandpa has killed 100 deer with that system, doesn't need updated. But what we could do is change the last letter of the vx3 product every other year to keep people on their toes and THINK we changed the erector system"

Management "yeah let's do the letters thing"

 

[Justin Crossley]

This has been interesting and enjoyable to read through. All of our hunting rifles are zeroed at 200 yards, they all have Leupolds of some sort on them. The number of times that I have gone to the range with a rifle that was dead nuts at 200 yesterday, only to find the group has moved an inch or 2 one way or another has been pretty frequent. I always chalked it up to my own ineptness in one way or another. I am curious to try something different and see how it works out.

This is most people I know that use Leupold scopes, and used to be me.

 

[justinspicher]

Great, now I’ll never be able to sell my Luepold scope…..

 

[atmat]

Great, now I’ll never be able to sell my Luepold scope…..

Local is the answer haha

 

[cmahoney]

Great, now I’ll never be able to sell my Luepold scope…..

I have been surprised what you can get for a sub par scope on eBay


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[SDHNTR]

Sincerely makes you wonder why Leupold doesn’t devote the necessary engineering and manufacturing energy and dollars to develop and deliver a trustworthy product.

Trijicon does.

SWFA does

Nightforce does.

Why not Leupold?!

I’d LOVE to give them my riflescope business on all platforms, but until their scopes matter…

Why doesn’t EVERY scope manufacturer do that?

 

[Diced]

Obviously I'm not sure how precise these #s are but it shows why they probably don't care about any of this. Very few people use scopes hard enough to cause failures. So why would they dump a bunch of money into r&d to appease us. They'll just keeping talking about their sale and military contracts.

 

[Reburn]

Obviously I'm not sure how precise these #s are but it shows why they probably don't care about any of this. Very few people use scopes hard enough to cause failures. So why would they dump a bunch of money into r&d to appease us. They'll just keeping talking about their sale and military contracts.

You missed it bro.
They will lose zero riding on a padded seat. It doesnt even need to be used hard.
Hunters just chalk it up to it being normal for a zero to shift and the need to rezero.

 

[Diced]

You missed it bro.
They will lose zero riding on a padded seat. It doesnt even need to be used hard.
Hunters just chalk it up to it being normal for a zero to shift and the need to rezero.

I'm sure they do. My point is that it doesn't matter to them.

 

[Reburn]

I'm sure they do. My point is that it doesn't matter to them.

One day it will.

 

[sbaker0029]

Definitely makes you wonder how many people just think that they can't shoot that well because of all the "fliers" and "I pulled that one" due to zero loss and not bad shooting.

I know personally there has been many times that I've had a solid rest and super steady holding dead nuts center target and ended up with a couple shots off by an inch or so in any given direction. Chalked it up to my shooting capabilities being poor but in the back of my mind knowing there is no darn way I pulled that shot.

I