Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics What happened to Leupold?

I like Leupolds eye relief and weight.The only one I sent in for repair was one I dropped out of a tree stand and they replaced no questions.I own Zeiss,Meopta,Minox,Bushnell,Weaver,Burris,Nikon and even a Vortex and since I am not a turret twister have had no problems with any of them.I will never own a $2,000.00 scope but buy whats on sale and stay away from buying used.I sight 2 to 3 inches high at 100 yards and am good to 300 plus on hair no matter the caliber.I believe in The KISS theory of shooting.Huntz

MD's veracity and knowledge have been demonstrated far more than yours, far more.


mike r

+1.

Since the quote you copy mentions Mule Deer, I will respond.

I know Mule Deer, count him among my friends, and he’s straight as an arrow with his reporting and comments on paper and in conversation. I’m sure also that is not the standard today, and I also know there is significant pressure to take care of advertisers in articles. I am quite sure that when John Barsness writes or says something it is unvarnished truth.

I take your implied slur on John personally.

Are you having a bad day no one suggests anyone as lying. I just said a magazine writer may not be your best source for PUBLIC information. And I told you why. What doesn’t make sense about what I am saying?

People with leupold problems imagined them, why are you worried about it, keep reading the gun rags it’s clear you believe no one here anyways

watch this video below, this is the crap I am talking about a mark 6 scope is north of 2 grand, so are the problems here imagined???

another fail by leupold

Cumminscowboy, you quoted the question asked by Clynn in which Mule Deer was asked for his take on this topic. Then your comment “worlds worst person to ask for an accurate opinion, a magazine writer because if they say bad things the companies pull advertising.” If that’s not a direct personal attack on Mule Deer I don’t know what is. If you say otherwise, you absolutely don’t make sense.

This is not about Leupold and it’s troubles; this is about an unwarranted attack on a fine and honest guy. And for the record, I have had trouble with newer Leupold scopes, especially variables. I have gone to M8 fixed powers almost exclusively, except for Burris FFIIs and a Zeiss Conquest variable.

GF-
Don't waste another second on cumminscowboy - his waste of bandwidth in the optics forum is without peer.

Sure seems to be the case; well said, SKane.

My experience has been that they are good as set and forget scopes. However, if you are going to be trying a variety of bullet weights or makes, or make a habit of making corrections in the settings then they result in a lot of wasted ammunition. I don't believe I have any newer than 20 or so years so maybe the company has corrected these deficiencies. My more recent scopes have been Burris and Bushnell and they seem to meet my needs better.

Jim

His articles are the only thing I read in the gun rags I take. He is gonna tell you like it is. I won’t take any of them if he retires.

Gentlemen,

Don't let your emotions carry you away. I think cumminscowboy's words were poorly chosen, but I do not believe that he specifically meant to badmouth John. I read it as he doesn't think asking any gun writer for his opinion was a good idea. He believes that writers have to be careful not to speak ill of companies who advertise in magazines where they are published. John just happened to be mentioned in the post preceding his.

I'm sure he will confirm my take on it.

What happened to Leupold?

Simple.... they refuse to fix the known issues with their erector assemblies. Over the past 10-15 years.... maybe even less.... much of the shooting public has come to expect a little more out of their riflescopes... and have a greater ability to test those scopes in the field (or in a children’s playground).

They continue to rely on the Gold Ring and their “excellent customer service”.... which still means a lot to much of the shooting public. Neither of which mean schitt to me if my scope goes tits-up when I dial for a shot at a mule deer buck...

In the end, it seems Leupold has rested on their laurels.... and customer service.... rather than investing in some cost-effective and corrective upgrades.

Agreed....Leupold met the Vortex customer service challenge, but neglected to advance the engineering of internal components. Coupled with a change in component manufacturing to a lesser quality of materials made in China.

These are facts...I personally know the former head of manufacturing and components ordering and the Lead of Leups QC department.

Both, left-retired after 25 years at Leupold in sadness and disgust at the new management initiative of bean counting over quality improvements.

That’s the sad, factual truth of Leupold and dialing scopes. 😎

Bean counters, thinking they are good operational people, have been the death of good companies everywhere. Sad deal though.

words poorly chosen yes I agree. I apologize to anyone if they feel attacked I get fired up too often

Let's get onto neutral subjects like best RV or best truck for towing or best engine transmission combo for towing, or gas vs diesel.

Leupold lost their way for a bit there, but the stuff I have seen coming from them lately has been pretty good. I liked VX-6HD and Mark 5HD. Can't say I am terribly impressed with anything below VX-5.

VX-R has an interesting illumination system, but the rest of the design is the same archaic system they have been using for the last thirty years. VX-Freedom and VX-3i are also somewhat spiffed up versions of the same things they had for a long time. To me, it looks like everything below VX-5 is sorta skating along on what is left of Leupold's reputation, but higher end stuff is legitimately competitive.

Nightforce makes a good product, but I think a legion of their fanboys exagerrates how bullet proof they are. NIghtforce has a service department and it is as busy as anyone elses.

I've seen pretty much everything go down at one time or another.

On the issue with gun writers and print media. I talked to some print media people a decade or so ago and they wanted to put a lot of restrictions on me, so I politely declined and went on my own way.

Earlier this year, the folks from Guns and Ammo reached out and asked me if I want to write a piece for their new Red Dot magazine (it has been out for about a week now) and a few of the other special edition issues later on. Naturally, we had a conversation about advertisers and restrictions, since that is not something I am wiling to compromise on. Basically, the way my arrangement with them works is that we pick a topic, they give my a word budget and a deadline. I can not use bad language, but aside from that, I am free to write the way I see fit and their editing is extremely light handed. I can live with that.

I havn't the foggiest idea if it is the same with other magazines and other writers. I can only talk about my personal experience and to me it looks like they are less worried about advertisers than they used to be. Or more worries about sales. Or maybe I talked to the wrong people ten years ago. The people I am working with now seem like honest brokers.

ILya

In general, there are fewer writer-restrictions due to advertising in most magazines than there were a decade ago.

Have been in the magazine writing business for over 40 years now, and when I started making a living at it there was relatively little pressure from any magazine to mention advertisers products favorably. (That included the fishing market, where I also wrote for many years.) In fact, the bigger magazines had a policy much like newspapers: There was virtually no contact between the editorial and advertising departments. The editors tried to put together a magazine people would want to read, so the advertising department could tell manufacturers how many people would be seeing their ads. In fact, there wasn't much opportunity to mention products in feature articles back then, because they were mostly stories or how-to, not product oriented. The product stuff went into columns, but often in a more general way than today. A flyishing article, for instance, might discuss the advantages of graphite fly rods, but there wouldn't be much (if any) mention of specific brands.

Eventually, however, a relatively small gun/hunting publisher figured out they could sell a lot more advertising if the articles prominently mentioned advertisers products. Eventually this resulted in "stories" where a hunter slid out of X brand sleeping bag in the morning, pulled on Y brand clothes and X brand boots, then grabbed his ABC rifle with a DEF scope and left his GHI tent.

This worked for quite a while, and eventually many of not most advertisers came expect not only ads but feature-article coverage. But a lot of readers grew weary of it, one of the reasons for the decline in readership (along with TV and, eventually, the Internet). This is why, in recent years, the trend has been backing away from such stuff. You can't sell as many ads if there aren't as many readers buying the magazine.

As for Leupold, I still have quite a few, but mostly scopes at least a decade old, and the majority are M8 fixed powers, which for certain kinds of hunting are excellent. As an example, have had a 4x M8 on my lightweight 9.3x62 for around 15 years now, and it simply never changes POI. Even their variables almost never used to break, but since 2010 I've had to send so many Leupolds (both fixed and variable) that I eventually printed out a stack of repair forms so they'd be on hand.

To be fair, I haven't tested many of the higher-priced scopes Ilya mentioned, partly because I've been testing other brands, since there are so many new scope companies these days. Would like to try some, but in the past half-dozen years just about all the folks I knew at Leupold have either retired or gone to work elsewhere. Plus, I'm not writing about optics as much in general, especially after I "semi-retired" this year by cutting my paper-magazine schedule in half, and one of the casualties was an optics column. (Though it feels I'm still working almost as much, probably because of writing more for riflesandrecipes.com., which keeps growing.)