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

You are partly correct. Leupold is the standard in silhouette for a few reasons. Weight absolutely is one. When you need to make 8 pounds 8 oz for smallbore Hunter class you can't hang a 2 pound scope on your sporter.

Otherwise, the more or less standard scope is silhouette is the straight 25X with a 3/8 or 1/2 moa dot. Quarter minute clicks. Weighs 15 oz. You don't need more than about 12 MOA adjustment from chickens to rams, smallbore or high power. And typically it's more like 9.

Who other than Leupold makes a scope to fit those parameters? NOBODY. In fact nobody makes one now at all as Leupold discontinued the silhouette scopes last year. But until recently they made the only real silhouette scope on the market.

And FWIW, every year I see Leupolds fail on the silhouette line. And you bet on 22s. They do get shot 5 - 10 000 rounds a year. It seems every year I need to send one back, in fact just got a 6.5-20X40 EFR back from servicing. The parallax knurled ring detached from the actual parallax adjustment, which is a big hassle when you are focusing every tenth shot for the next animal and distance. And the plug on the bottom of the adjustment turret that is used to seal the scope fell out, nothing like seeing into the innards of your nice fogproof scope and putting electical tape over the hole in the middle of a match and hoping it doesn't fog. That scope is less than two years old.

The year before a 1" 8.5-25X40 failed in the middle of a big match. Zeroed at the beginning of the match, it needed several extra minutes up to hit the target from it's zero verified a few minutes earlier.

One thing to consider regarding holding zero and silhouette. Conditions, mostly temperature, changes throughout the day. It's not uncommon to see your zero change a quarter or half minute. As silhouette shooters, we assume it is conditions changing. If it was in fact the scope zero retention wandering a bit, we would never know it.

Does that mean I don't use them? No, my rifles wear three 25Xs and the one 6.5-20EFR which gets used for dry fire practice in the basement all winter. But it's no surprise when one goes wonky in the midst of a match.

Good post, thanks for the insights and I suspect you have been at it far longer than me (a one match a month guy). I guess this sort of falls into the chicken/egg problem. If Leupold was the only one really serving the silhouette community and they form the majority of the scopes because of it I guess it's natural to see the most failures. I have had an old VX-III have a failed erector but it was after years on a .243 and then thousands of rounds on a .22. Still buying them though.

I've always been a fan of Leupold, their warranty is definitely outstanding. As others have mentioned though, the warranty seems to be used a LOT more these days. I just purchased a new VX-3i 4.5-14x40 CDS, it was pooched out of the box, zero drifts and won't group better than 2 or 3 MOA on a rifle that's proven to shoot 1/2-3/4 MOA with the original Vortex scope and did so again once I remounted that same vortex after taking off the Leupold. Last year I had a pair of binos the eye cup seized up on so wouldn't adjust anymore, sent me a new pair. A slightly older Leupold VX2 scope I had previously bit the dust when mounted on a 7mm RM rem 700, crosshairs started spinning around inside after a few boxes of ammo. A local gunsmith claims that in his career he's had a total of 20 scopes come in that were dead in one way or another, 18 were Leupold, 1 Vortex, 1 Burris.

Bushnell on the other hand, don't get me started. EVERY SINGLE Bushnell product I've ever owned has failed. From scopes, spotting scopes, binos, even trail cams... ALL DIED! Their warranty up here is atrocious too, like 6 months minimum on average... No thanks... Will NEVER touch another Bushnell product.

May have to start looking at other brands more.

I keep on hoping that Sightron will expand on their fixed power target scope lineup with something that has a little less magnification. their 45x45 ED scope is really nice and fairly lightweight. Maybe March will do it as well? Their 2.5-25x42 is not too far off, but it 22ounces, which I think is around 4-5 ounces heavier than Leupold EFR.

With Leupold not paying too much attention to this market and Weaver going the way of the dodo, there aren't too many lightweight target scopes out there for Silhouette.

ILya

Apples and aardvarks. But y’all knew that right?

Isn’t there a leupold staff or 2 that’s a member here?

.

If there is they would be wise to not get engaged in this or most any other campfire thread.

User List Search = Leupold

Search yields three Users:

Leopold
LeopoldOptics
LeopoldOfficial

LeupoldOptics appears to be the only user with any recent activity.

Truth... just wondering if they’re paying attention....

Deer? Bears? Antelope?

Heck, I've had rooster pheasants flush a full 500 yds because someone crested a dune in an orange vest. They seemed to know where the private property fence was too. Maybe if I had a laser tracking 500 yd capable shotgun I might have taken the shot.

Wild things live because they are spooky critters. Humans make decisions on "fair chase" based on their upbringing, experience, and ethics. For some it's a good bit different than others.

Geno

Y'all leave Mr kaywoodie's hats alone. They are nearly sacred.

The rest of that stuff is arguable for sure...... But,

This is a thread about scopes, right?

Geno

LeupoldOptics Forum Signature:

Be Bold. Be Adventurous. Be Relentless. // We do not actively engage in threads or respond to private messages. For customer service help, please contact us directly at 1-800-LEUPOLD or ProductSpecialistLeupold.com.


Profile for LeupoldOptics
From Beaverton, Oregon
Joined 07/02/18
Last Seen 05/20/19

This thread started on 05/17/19. I'm thinking it's a good bet a thread titled "What happened to Leupold?" in the Optics Forum was hard to miss.

No kidding, remember the Tract threads? Disaster.

Most companies do not allow their employees to openly participate on the forums. There are some exceptions to that (Vortex and Burris have active participation on a few forums as do some others), but they all pay attention. And they are good in deciphering who is a hysteric and who offers reasonable feedback.

ILya

I dare any company rep to step foot on these boards...........

....double dog...... It ain't pretty.

Nightforce might make it ok. I'd cry to them about not putting a Forceplex in the NXS line though.....

Y'all know what was different about this Leupold thread from all the others?

Nada damn thing.....

You must not have used any high-end Bushnell products. Their warranty service theses days is absolutely stellar, too.

Reminds me of the Peterson brass thread where the owner jumped in- I warned him it was a bad move but he kept on posting and making things worse.... Leupold would be wise to read but keep their distance from this thread... IMO....

Bob