Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Introduction, the new voice of Tract optics here on the Campfire

Jason,

I'm simply pointing out that people on BOTH sides in this are illogical. Tract is illogical in their statement that all their scopes are built to the same standard, when some are built in one of the top optics factories in Japan (where a bunch of other reliable "dialing" scopes are built}, and others are built elsewhere in Asia.

Many Campfire members are illogical in their belief that because ONE Tract scope failed in Form's test, then ALL Tract scopes will fail--even if they've never seen a Tract scope, whether made in Japan or elsewhere.

Yes, a bunch of people have bought and used Tract Torics and report excellent results with them, over several hundred rounds. Did every one of them do "drop tests"? No, but then most Campfire members don't do drop tests.

I don't when testing scopes, but I do put them on hard-kicking rifles and shoot them a bunch while running the adjustments around considerably. Which is what I did with a 3-15x42 Toric sent for me to test a year and a half ago. The first test rifle was a super-accurate .300 Winchester Magnum, the load 210-grain Berger VLD's at 2950 fps. According to Sierra's Infinity computer, program, the rifle's recoil energy with this load is just under 40 foot-pounds, and a LOT of scopes have broken/failed on my other rifles at 30 foot-pounds.

I started by zeroing dead-on at 100 yards, easy to do when a rifle/load will average 3 shots under 1/2", then performed a tall-target test to see if the clicks were accurate. They checked out, and I used the info to calculate how much to crank the scope at longer ranges.

Then I went to the local range, which goes out to over 1000 yards, on a relatively calm morning so I'd be primarily testing the scope and not my wind-judging ability. I shot it at gongs out to 1000, then cranked it up and down and shot some more at various gongs down to 300 yards. Finally, when the 50 rounds I'd loaded were almost gone. I cranked the scope down to 100, and the rifle shot its typical 1/2" group at 100, dead-center.

Next I put it on my NULA .30-06, another very accurate rifle that's broken several scopes. With the Toric it weighed an ounce over 7 pounds, and I did the same basic routine with 185 Berger VLD's at 2800 fps. This load doesn't develop the same foot-pounds as the 210's in the .300, but due to the light rifle, the recoil velocity is just about exactly the same. The Toric worked the same way it had on the .300.

Then I used it on various other rifles for various tasks from long-range prairie dog shooting to testing new handloads at longer ranges, because by then I really trusted it.

I do this sort of stuff all the time with various new scopes sent by manufacturers. If the scope acts screwy, I ask for another sample, then do the same tests--and if the second scope works I publish the results.

If the second scope doesn't work, I USUALLY don't publish anything about them--though not because advertisers might pull their ads, because 90- of the time the scope company doesn't advertise in the magazine.

Instead, most magazines don't generally run bad product reviews because most readers aren't interested in them. Instead they want to hear about stuff that works. That said, there are exceptions. A couple of magazines have published my negative reviews of scopes, one because the scope was so bad that I turned my review into a running joke.

Only after my review of the Toric appeared in GUNS magazine did this stuff hit the fan on the Campfire. I couldn't believe either Trevor's statements, or how many people assumed that ONE Tract scope (costing half as much as the Toric I tested) failing miserably was "proof" that all Tract scopes were mechanical junk.

Finally I sent my test Toric to prairie_goat so he could perform drop tests, partly because I know enough to trust his testing. He doesn't like the scope much in other ways, but he did the same basic drop-test as Form and the scope stayed zeroed, and the adjustments worked fine, after all the previous testing I'd done.

This coincides not only with my results, but those of several Toric buyers I've been in contact with, partly because some bought Torics after reading my GUNS review. I asked them to lot me know how their scopes worked, and so far they all have, and one has been fired around 900 times on another NULA. (As I recall it's another .30-06, but might be wrong.)

My connection with Tract is they sent me a scope to test--just like a bunch of other companies have been doing, several times a year, for many years. I'm not going to start doing drop tests, but if another Campfire thread like this starts up over some other brand, might send another scope to PG to drop some more--if he's willing.