Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics What happened to Leupold?

I should also mention (as I have a number of times before on the Campfire) that many scopes have broken, or been proven defective, on my rifles over years. This is partly because I started TRYING to break scopes in the 1990's, when I was writing my first optics column for Petersen's HUNTING. I did this by mounting them on rifles that generated at least as much recoil energy as a typical .300 magnum with 180-grain bullets at 3000 fps, at least 30 foot-pounds, because I'd noticed that was the level where far more scopes started malfunctioning, and often quicker than they did on lighter-recoiling rifles.

Still generally use a .300 magnum, usually my Heym SR-21, but have also used my New Ultra Light Arms .30-06, my custom .338 Winchester Magnum, and a .375 H&H. All are accurate enough to really be able to tell when a new scope starts going bad (or is bad out of the box), normally within 50 rounds. On occasion one fooled me, shooting fine on one of those test rifles for 50 rounds, then going bad shortly thereafter on another, lighter-kicking rifle, but in general new scopes that fail quickly do so within 50 rounds, and sometimes within 20.

To date I've encountered 19 different BRANDS (not just individual scopes) that failed simply from shooting. Somebody already mentioned that any scope can fail, because they're all man-made mechanical objects. That has been my experience: The scopes that failed have ranged from really inexpensive to very expensive--but some inexpensive scopes have held together very well.

Should also note that scopes that fail to work correctly on a harder-kicking rifle will often do fine on a lighter-kicking rifle, though eventually they may fail again after a while. One example was a really inexpensive dialing scope a company asked me to take on a major hunt a dozen years ago. I put it on my NULA .30-06 and sighted it in, but didn't really trust it so brought the NULA's then-regular scope along. This was prescient, as when I got to my destination the "affordable" scope was not still zeroed, and could not be zeroed. So I put the regular scope back on and killed a bunch of big game.

The affordable scope hung around for a couple years, but then I decided to see if it would work on a .17 HMR. It did, and even dialed correctly! Or at least it did for one rodent-shooting season here in Montana. It went bad the next year--on the .17 HMR--but probably due to too much dialing rather than recoil.

Should also mention that I apparently have more bad luck with scopes than many people, partly because the very FIRST scope sent to me by a manufacturer for testing is often bad. At one point, in fact, I suggested that to upgrade their quality control, scope companies should pick scopes at random and send them to me, as they were pretty sure to be defective....

Anyway, I can't even begin to count the number of individual scopes that have proven defective or broken on my rifles, but it's been a lot. Some I expected, but many I didn't. Generally if more than a couple scopes of a certain brand (or model within a brand) go bad I'm pretty leery of trying more, partly because it often proves to be a waste of time, ammo and barrel life. But yes, just about any scope can break. It's how often they break that differentiates brands and models. When I have three scopes of the same model or brand got bat-crazy, then I tend to avoid 'em.