Scope Bumper Scope caps

[WCT3]

Those are much quicker/smoother than I expected. I thought you would have to pull them off, then move them up and then you can let them go.

 

[RockAndSage]

I caved and ordered a set of these to go with my S2H scope. Having broken the seal, so to speak, I went ahead and got a set for my SWFA 3-9x and 6x.

I am curious to see what makes a set of these better than fifteen sets of the Butler Creek bikini types.

Night and day difference, it'll be instantly obvious just how different they are. The only drawback besides price is that they take a little time to break in for smooth opening and closing, which I think is covered above or in another thread.

On the personal experience side, I really dislike having an obscured scope, and have always tried to make the see-through caps work. To the point where I even priced out having a set of Leupold Aluminas machined out to have a lens inserted in them, back when I still had a few of those scopes. But Butler Creeks have largely been the only game in town besides cheap chinese ones off Amazon, which I've also used. The problem them is they just have a hard time enduring the field, the truck, the gun case, the pack-in, pack-out, etc. Butler Creek caps just never hold up for me more than a few months of actually doing stuff with them that involves being more than a half mile from the truck. They fall off, break, open up, get wonky, etc. I gave Tenebraex a try (which is its own choke-point of a price-point), and still not really happy. Water and dust still got in somehow. But even separating out the see-through vs obscured style of caps, they all still seem to have a hard time staying closed all the time.

To be fair, I haven't had a lot of time on the Scope Bumpers in the field yet, but they're a different animal than the others. Each is a one-off production from 3D printers, and they do take time to break in. But they're also substantial, and definitely 'feel' like they're meant to last. The assembly itself goes onto the scope tight (at least mine do), and the design also makes it pretty hard to have them accidently open in the field. Form's reviewed them on here somewhere, and he said his kept water out while hunting coastal Alaska and its rains, which is a pretty solid rainproofing situation. Not sure it's the same as driving torrents that suddenly hit in Virginia, but that was actually what sold me on first trying them, obscured view or not. I'm mostly concerned about the various types of problematic dust out here in NV, so if it keeps rain out it'll keep dust out, in theory. So far, so good.

 

[AlaskaRed]

I haven't seen the Vortex Defender scope caps mention much. Last year they survived 4 hunts without a hitch. I zip tied the rubber on and some electrical tape would work even better. I'm pretty sure there were 40-50$ for the set. My only problem with them is condensation on the eye piece during inclement weather. I'm not convinced yet scope bumpers fixes that issue either. Still the scope bumper is definitely more compelling than breaking butler creeks this winter. Broke some on my predator AR snowshoeing this winter. This was after miraculously finding it in the snow on my way back on the trail the year prior.