The recent Leupold hate is hard to fathom. I have filled several freezers with meat and have a shelf of silhouette trophies that I earned using their scopes. No failures ever in a few dozen of their scopes, over 4+ decades. Is this all very recent production?
I don’t mean to discount anyone’s personal experiences, but it’s difficult to match up based on my own.
As a long time Leupold fan myself, I used to have an almost religious sort of respect for their products until about 2006. That is when I first saw the problems start. A couple of my friends, who are very well respected high end rifle makers noticed the same problems about the same time. At first, I really didn't want to believe it and plodded along as any good choir boy will do. Then, between 2009 and 2013 or so I had five of seven new Leupold's have problems retaining point of impact. Four were VX-III's and one was the much touted FX-II 6x36, which gave up the ghost during a Dall sheep hunt in Alaska. When I shot the sheep at about 350 yards, I noticed the bullet impact was about 6" to the left of where it should have been in dead calm conditions. Sure enough, when I got home the POI had shifted about 1.5" left of where it was when I left for Alaska and the turret had a weird crunchy feel when you turned it.
At one point, I had three Leupold variables lose POI on a 300 Wby over the course of about two months. This was handy, as it saved me on postage when I crammed them all in one flat rate box to send in for service. It did cost me a lot of expensive ammunition though.
Nowadays, I pretty much stick with NF, Schmidt & Bender, SWFA SS, and if I need to go light, older Leupold M8's. I do have a newer Burris Fullfield II that has been holding up well to 300 mag recoil. Can't say it's a scope I would put on a nice custom, as it is pretty grim in the looks department, but it has been pretty tough so far.
