I gave my friend an old Rem 40X in 6ppc I worked on this winter. Yesterday, he talked me out of a 36X Leupold benchrest scope. Having never seen one before, he was impressed. I still have a 36X and it's really nice. My new 45X competition series is nice too. All of them are sharp enough to read the targets at 100 yds. Our club is on a river, and we were looking at bugs landing on the targets and could tell they were small stone flys. That's pretty good, I think. I have a LPS that's a lot brighter and is sharper, but it's only 14X and it's a 56mm lens (different ball game). I've got 4 Leupolds and 2 B&L 4200's and all of them are nice.
I also shoot iron sights, most of which are peep sights. I shot my Supermatch M1A and my 40X Rangemaster the last trip to the range and I'm waiting for front sight inserts for my Redfield Olympic right now. It's fun, but I can't see very well. I'm 20:200 in my aiming eye and glasses only get me to about 20:60 so the target is always a big blur I have to aim at the center of. With a scope, I can get a sharp picture of the target which I like.
Having said that, the benchrest community has 3 bones to pick with Leupold scopes. 1. Canted Crosshairs. 2. Lash in the Parallax adjustment. 3. Inconsistent Windage and Elevation clicks.
There is discussion that quality control has gone down, but problems and all, a Leupold 36 or 45 power competition scope is a thousand bucks and to get better, you've got to go up another $400 to a Nightforce (which is a lot heavier) or another $1500 for a March.
Here is a prime example.. you note the deficiencies in the L scopes. And note the competition... I don't know about others but when I was in competition, I shot almost every weekend, often both days. Traveled often 2-3 hours one way for one of those days. Spent long weekends and vacation at regional and state competition and then left out on a 27 hour drive to Camp Perry. All of that pales if I was shooting a scope and decided to be cheap to the tune of 400 or even an extra 1000 bucks.
We can keep Larry Root and all his idiotic blabber and user names on here, but we can't get Ralph back..... Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over....
