This whole discussion makes me wonder… if one scope fails are they all going to fail, or are scopes like cars? One guy has a truck that goes 300k miles without an issue and another guy has issues as soon as it leaves the dealers lot.
I would say it depends. I’m sure there are some scope designs that are right on the edge of working correctly, some of those models will seem to do well and some won’t. Some are so far below that line that they will have nearly a 100% failure rate. Some are built so they have as close to a 0% failure rate as possible. None have a 0% failure rate.
I define failure as an observable loss of zero, not returning to zero in dialing even once, or in not dialing consistently. I don’t care about illumination going out, or a grease spot inside the lens, etc. Those are annoyances, they aren’t catastrophic.
I’m still shooting the same rzr LHT. I haven’t zerod since 2019 when I bought it and I routinely shoot out to 600-1000 yards. No POI shifts at all. I have a hard time calling the guys on here liars that are saying they haven’t had issues for multiple years because I know my experience. Double digit animals killed from 50-835 in 3 years, 1000s of miles in a case, multiple accidental drops ect.
I 100% believe in forms tests and this isn’t a dig or a question about his test or expertise.
Just a thought that’s crossed my mind many times.
I believe you. Just as I know there are people with Leupold Vari-X 3’s that haven’t lost zero. I had several over the years that worked solidly- until they didn’t. Clearly there are some scopes/models that are just pure trash. But there are some that are in between, maybe you get one and for what you use it for it seems to work, or maybe you get one and it doesn’t. Maybe the one seemed to work fine until you started shooting more or asking more from it, etc.
The issue is that if a scope has low failure or problem rate, then the chances of me getting
that scope are very low. However, if that model/line has a high failure rate, then the chances I get one are higher. One can go back and look at my posts over the years- I stated that Leupold, Vortex, Zeiss, Swarovski, etc. scopes have high rates of failure when actually used, shot, and tracked. What are the odds if that isn’t true that I get two Mark 5’s back to back that have shifting zeros? Or the VX3 here that behaved exactly as I said they do.
I think we’re seeing a new category of scopes that previously only some Sightrons and Weaver T series were in- scopes that track and adjust well, however are fragile and do not take bumps and field use well. My guess with seeing quite a few LHT’s is that they may be in this category generally, along with a lot of the scopes being used in PRS. The LHT is a PRS scope with all of the weight taken out of it- something has to give to achieve that.