His test are uncontrolled and statistically incompetent. The results are meaningless. Moreover, the conclusions he gets are statistically impossible and somewhat contradictory to some very well structured tests I have seen. That's the bad part.
The good part is that the scopes he likes to push for whatever reason are perfectly reasonable scopes and should work just as well as other scopes of similar quality. It is not like he is pushing you to buy crap.
In my personal experience, the bulk of problems with good quality scopes shifting come from mounting issues. Most optics companies do not like to tell their customers that they are [bleep] idiots and can't mount a scope, so they simply swap the scope out and take a loss.
Again, in my personal experience, I have yet to see someone in a gunstore who knows how to mount a scope properly or how to tell when there is an issue with a mount or rings. It is not hard, but seems to be well beyond a typical gunstore employee. Now, I am sure there are perfectly competent gunstore employees out there and I have not done an exhaustive survey, but I have yet to see one.
Given that most riflescopes are made by the same few OEMs, often though not always, to a very similar standard, a lot simply comes down to how much QC was paid for both at the OEM and the company's office. For my dayjob, I make some of the equipment used for this kind of stuff. Some companies take it more seriously than others, but competitive pressure is pushing almost everyone to sorta shape up (there are some exceptions; for example, I am not seeing any improvement with Arken so far).
If you want confidence, use a scope that has been out for a bit, have a backup sighted in and ready to go since anything can fail, make sure you use a torque wrench and keep good records.
If you care about zero retention, stay away from any and all QD mounts. If I wanted to setup a particular scope to increase the probability of a failed side impact test, I would put it into a QD mount.
Given that I can not release the results done by the manufacturers (lots of NDAs) and given that I do not have the means to test myself enough identical scopes for any sort of statistical data, for my own personal use I do a very simple thing to deal with infant mortality. Any scope I might go hunting with is subjected to some number of recoil cycles and then lives in the trunk of my car properly mounted on a rifle in a soft case bouncing around for a couple of weeks. If something snuck by QC, it will come out. Beyond that, you are just playing the odds. Anything can break and occasionally does.
ILya
Is that the Vortex paycheck talking? Lol
