I have thought about this a bit. I personally would not dial a scope and take a really long shot based on that because the tracking often seems to be a bit off. I saw a video posted on here recently about a 12-yr-old boy with his father’s guidance shot an elk from the prone position at about 1,350 yards, and it went down. Thing is it was his second shot. The father had dialed the scope, and the first shot went under the elk’s belly. So, he redialed it, and the boy shot it again—that time successfully. But the first shot easily could have ended up with a lost gut-shot elk. Not for me.
Some scopes track reliably, and some don't. If a guy is interested in LR hunting (not necessarily exclusively), it pays to figure out which models almost always track correctly, and then use one of those scopes. In the video you're referencing, the boy easily could have pulled the shot a bit, wind could have shifted, the wrong elevation could have been dialed for the first shot, etc, any of which could have caused the first shot to miss. I agree that it's a good idea not to dial scopes that don't have a reputation for tracking correctly (and/or are verified to not track correctly), but there are certain models of scopes that are nearly always mechanically very reliable.
