Reorganizing my scope shelves a few days back and got to the 'Test Scopes' shelf.
How many have a known-good scope around and use it on a new/unknown rig? Or to sort out a possible scope issue? Or to do load work with it and then put a more appropriate hunting style scope on?
Good shootin'
-Al
Have been doing that for many years, partly because I had to test so many rifles for magazine articles. This resulted in several revelations, partly due to (at this point) having 20 brands (not individual scopes) fail on various rifles. This was usually due to harder-kicking rifles, but not always. Have had 'em fail on rimfires too--though generally only after the scope had been on a centerfire for a while.
Eventually got to the point where I bought a scope of a supposedly "unbreakable" brand as a tester. It worked great for four years, on a wide variety of rifles, several that kicked pretty hard. (Have generally found .300 magnum recoil results in a noticeably higher scope-failure rate.)
This scope eventually failed to hold zero on a 6.5 wildcat rifle, whereupon I sent it back to the factory. They took a look, and proclaimed the failure was due to me not tightening the rings enough--because they found faint ring-marks in various locations.
Hmm. I would have guessed this was because the scope had been mounted on so many rifles, probably and average of 6-8 a year, not because it had been "slipping."
But they said it worked fine in their testing, and they'd refinish it before returning it to me. What they didn't know is that I record the serial number of every scope purchased--and the serial number of the nicely-finished scope they sent "back" to me did not match the number of the one I'd sent them.
All of this has made me somewhat skeptical, but still have a couple of test scopes that have worked well. Though I am no longer doing nearly as much test-shooting of harder-recoiling rifles....
Regards,
John
