DF--I appreciate the thought. I hadn't really thought about scope weight and recoil absorption. I was looking into it for the reticle and because I want to run a 30mm scope on it.
SM--In all reality for me that gun will never go to another continent for big game. I would like to use it one of these years for a moose/bear rifle. That's about as far as I will ever get to go unless the lottery comes through for me (I'm not holding my breath....LOL). What percentage of the hunters were running Leupolds and do you have an idea of their failure rate. If it was 3 Leupolds out of 4-500 then the failure rate was pretty low. Now if it was 3 out of 20 then I can see a real issue. From everything I have ever heard or read Leupold is pretty good at absorbing recoil it's the repeatable turrets that they struggle with. Another reason I had thought about the ballistic FD reticle. A couple of smaller hold over points that I could try to tailor my load a bit to match.
Reno
I was never a high volume, big time hunting agent, failure rate was, and this is only MY experience, 3 out of about 50. But for guns that took a solid blow from the side in a fall or kicked over incident, the failure rate was about 3 ou t of 10 or so. For me personally the failure rate is 1 out of 5 or so as I have never had a bunch of Leupolds. I have preffered other brands through the years and still do. More so now than before. Trouble often being the location and purchase of a GOOD scope in a gloss finish for some of my high polish, pretty custom rifles. It is often only a Leupold that is available to me in a decent high gloss package. A matte finish scope would take away much of the beauty of, say, my Len Brownell highly polished CM octagon barrel or my similarly high polish blue and wood pre garcia Sako rifles. So, they wear Leupolds and it is the one on the 7mm Mashburn Super that just went haywire on me.
