All scopes are mechanically flawless when they do nothing but collect dust in the safe.
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Your condescension is duly noted, and expected. Here's the way it works with most hunters who use their rifles for whitetail hunting east of the MS. Whitetail is pretty much the only big game ticket in town for those of us in the eastern USA. Most buy a rifle and a couple boxes of "bullets." We go sight it in 2 inches high at 100 yards. It doesn't matter at all if the best we can get out of it is an inch and a half group. That hits the vitals at the longest distance we will ever shoot. That rifle gets loaded onto the four wheeler and hauled to within a couple hundred yards of our stand location. We unload it and take it up into our stand with us. We kill a couple deer each season. We are done with the gun until the following fall, when we confirm that it has in fact held zero.
Those of us who handload may piddle around trying to find an accurate load. Then once we've found it, we don't really need to target shoot. It doesn't take an skill or knowledge to smack a deer at 80 yards.
With both groups, 90% of their hunting shots will be taken before sunrise or after sunset. It can be very dark deep in the woods 25 minutes after sunset. What matters then is light transmission. We need to be able to see the deer and see the crosshairs on the deer. That's where Leupold shines.They flat out get the job done.
Why would I care if the scope can make it to 5000 (or whatever other arbitrary round count renders in reliable in your mind) rounds. It'll never come close to that number. How many rounds does a scope need to endure before it should be considered reliable? At what round count do you take them out of service, or do you use them to the point of failure? How many rounds do you need to shoot per year to maintain proficiency?
