All scopes are mechanically flawless when they do nothing but collect dust in the safe.
.
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?
Don't confuse your lack of understanding with me being condescending. I was not being critical or judgmental about the individual posters here, but rather was making a statement to get a point across. The point is that there are a couple of reasonable explanations for why some posters experience more scope failures (regardless of the brand or model) than others do. Failures are usually strongly correlated with round count and hard use.
I don't hate Leupold. I don't hate Savage. I don't hate Athlon. These days I choose not to use their products for various reasons, but I do not attach emotion to physical objects. As a physicist, I am used to seeking and debating facts and truth about the universe without interjecting emotion into the conversation. Attaching emotion to facts and physical objects is very unscientific. So I get tired of posters implying that I, and others like me, are zealously looking for opportunities to scream to the world that Leupold sucks.
FACT: IMO hunters, not just target or competition shooters, should practice with their hunting rifles in the off-season in order to be as proficient as possible when hunting season rolls around. Yes, this applies even to the hunter that doesn't shoot game beyond 100 yards. This used to be a commonly held belief among responsible hunters, but seems to be disappearing pretty quickly around here.
FACT: With practice, hard hunting, and high round count comes a higher likelihood of scope failure. IME, on average Leupold scopes are more likely to fail to hold zero than certain other brands and models of scopes, which I prefer due to their increased reliability in holding zero and proper mechanical function.
Now, I never said that Leupolds don't hold zero well enough or perform well enough to meet the needs of many hunters. Some even hold up to a fairly high round count and a lot of hard hunting. Even if the Leupold's erector bounces by 1 MOA between shots, resulting in the rifle/scope being capable of no better than, say, 1.5 MOA groups, that may well work just fine for the needs of some hunters and shooters, as you said. But just because the scope meets your needs, that doesn't mean that it holds zero correctly or is mechanically reliable compared to some other scopes on the market that do hold zero and are more mechanically reliable. There is a difference between being good enough to meet your needs, and working as designed/advertised. The refusal of the Leupold fan club to admit and accept those facts is why these discussions are so common, and why guys like me keep saying the same things. It's not because I hate Leupold or that I care what other people use, but rather that I'm a proponent of the facts.
