Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats GreyBull Precision?

I first heard of you because of your association with Best of the West, which is why I know you used, or at least your company used our guards and a lot of them, all in stainless.

WGM, nice shooting sir, and post.

Dave7mm, nice info on barrels, about to break in my 2nd Bartlein

Now speaking of optics Dave, I'd appreciate your 'Cliff notes' if you will on scope preferences in your experience, just a few lines if you don't mind, for my knowledge and if you feel better to PM, that's fine. If you want, thanks again for the post.

Learning more each day, great stuff, loads of experience.

From Terry Cross on Snipers Hide:

I apologize in advance but I have to rant for a second.

I have always been a huge, huge Leupold advocate. They were always my benchmark for quality, innovation and U.S. workmanship. I own an awful lot of their product and continue to use it regularly.

However. . . . In the last few years, I have seen a change in the way Leupold does business and delivers product to the market. As they have grown, they have embraced many less than admirable traits that seem to define too many parts of American businesses. While their pricing has been steadily increasing at a faster rate than inflation, their quality has dropped. They are still capable of producing a sharp, repeatable optic but not as dependably.

My biggest aggravation with Leupold is the fact that less than 5% of their product line that can be legally stamped "Made in U.S.A." and I'm not even sure that those few are !!! What started out with a few of their Wind River imports has blown into an all out effort to prostitute their name brand for a dollar.

I just received 18 RX-4 range finders, 18 Tactical 10x50 Patrol Binoculars and 18 Mk 4 LR/T 4.5-14x50mm TMR Illum. scopes for a package deal I have to ship. This is pretty much suppossed to be their better gear. Guess what? Range finders "Made In CHINA". Binoculars "Made In China". Scopes have no country of origin marked on the packaging, instructions or product. Call back from Leupold informs me that the scopes are assembled in Oregon but so many of the parts and sub-assemblies are made over-seas (mostly China except for some of their lenses)that they do not qualify for the Made in USA stamp!

I can assure you that sourcing their components and products from China has dropped their costs very, very dramatically while they have continued to raise market prices. You know, honestly, it isn't even the price/profit thing that burns me. It is the fact that they chose to move their sourcing and manufacturing (I do consider "manufacturing" and "assembly" two different beasts in this instance) out of the country and specifically China. Why couldn't they keep most of their production here and just up their pricing 10%? Jesus, I could drop my selling price and triple my profit on freakin Pod-Loc kits if I used components from outside the U.S., but I refuse to go there. Guess that is why I still drive a 10 year old truck.

While they may still have satisfactory product performance and at least attempt innovative ideas occaisionally, I believe that they are straying from their roots, pumping a ton of money into foreign factories and putting yet another hole in the bottom of the lifeboat that retains at least a small fraction of our ability to domestically support our police and military logistics in the event of any serious conflict. I remain firmly convinced that we shall sorely curse the day that we wake up and realize that we need to raise our military to a task only to find out we have cut off our own legs. I aim this statement not only at Leupold but other textile, steel, electronics and molding industries based in the U.S. You don't just start that [bleep] back up inside the U.S. borders overnight.

I will continue to use my original Leupold products but I shall migrate away from giving their company blanket support. I will, instead continue to give more and more support to companies that take risks, accept slightly lower margins and consciously make the effort to strengthen our own economy and workforce. As you purchase your gear or spec out the equipment for your agency bids, please consider more than F.O.V. and click value.

I would seriously love to debate the execs at Leupold in front of their Board about some of this.

DISCLAIMER: I know that some out there will have personal budgets at home that restrict your choices to imports and I totally respect that. A non-US product is better than no product at all in some cases.

DISCLAIMER #2: Yeah, that was more than a second. Sorry.
TC

Answer from Lowlight on Snipers Hide.

Amen,

Every year they seem to get farther and farther away from what made them the company worthy of the reputation they have, which I personally feel is no longer warranted.

The shear number of them we see problems with is staggering, on military weapons systems no less. They seem to be completely out of touch with the shooter, all shooters, Civilian, Law Enforcement, and Military.

Unfortunately people still flock to their products based on the past reputation, regardless of the fact their current products don't hold up to that standard.
LL







From Lowlight on Snipers Hide:

So what do you tell the guy who traveled 1200 miles to take a class.. he paid $1500 for the class, plus rental car, hotels, meals, and by the first day it fails... now he goes from what he thought was a solid optics with a stellar reputation to being the guy holding up the class while we run up, get a new scope for him, usually I am pulling one of my NF off to switch it for him. If you want to play the one up and working, the NF I use is heavily used, my S&Bs too, and guess what, of all of them, with more combined rounds than I can count, and only one scope has ever gone back for repair. They well worn and definitely show signs of use.

yes, other brands fail, but not nearly with the frequency as we are seeing with Leupold. it's every week in some cases, and even in the military classes we have Nightforce on the unit rifles next to Leupold... but I don't see the NF failing nearly as much, it's stark the reality of it, especially when you see more than 1 or 2 a week.

It's easily 20 to 1 when you compare the Nightforces on the line with the military units, this last class had 4 Leupolds on the line, 1 failed the first day, the remainders where USO, NF, and S&B... Do we see others fail, sure but not nearly as much.

If you want to start a generic scope failure thread go ahead, but don't be surprised by the results. Facts are what the facts are, in a class of 15 Leupolds on the line I expect and account for anywhere from 2 to 5 scopes to go down, I don't figure that with the same number of NF on the line. Its closer to 1 per every six months of classes, not 1 for every six people.



dave

To those who are trying to put a cat into this dog fight-
OK, so if you aren't hunting the land in which this guy hunts, ain't buying or have bought one of his guns that has an issue, or your way of hunting, life or liberty isn't affected by this guys business then why do you give a rat's a**???

Just asking???

Personally,


I envy all you guys who get to hunt such heavenly places like the midwest and western states. I envy all you guys who have rifles that make mine look like a red rider bb gun.

But if you ain't screwing up my family, pissin' on my house, twisting my religion, shafting my job or hammer dickin' up my hunting land then I'm simply going to let the guy make a living how he sees best? Pursuit of happiness right???

Again, just asking... Seems like so many have a burr in their saddle but really trying to figure out how your dog got in this fight.

I'm not taking any side either, just making a statement of the obvious to be honest.

If the guy is or isn't a jack wagon then why not just move on to things that make you happy...

Come to friggin' think about it, why the h*ll am I even worried about this???

I think I'll take my own advice and go read/post about things I like and want to learn about or share with folks.

Wasn't the army still using a fixed 10x on their sniper rifles back in '87? I pretty sure Marine Snipers were using a fixed 10x Unertl from the 80's until 2005? Don't recall them needing side focus or adjustable parallax.

... he could chuck a stock savage into a 2x4