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

Guess the What is all that matters for me. Different strokes.

Tikka 695 7mag SwaroA 3-10x42, 160 accubonds, 150 yds sitting off of sticks, dead steady rest. Shot this big buck to pieces. Notice the bullet holes. I've never won Camp Perry but I can dang sure hit a volley ball at 150 yards with a solid rest. Took 4 shots to finally kill this buck, last one after I tracked him down to 30 yards. Swaro was shooting 13" right, 9" high, erector was history.

Johnny, do you still use Swaro scopes?

I've had similar experiences with the Z3 Johnny!

Only have two of them left. One I had Swaro change the parallax and it sits on a .22lr
The other is one with the Euro built in rail mount system. Have that on a .22wmr but contemplating putting it on my Rem 700 Ti 7mm-08 and see how it holds up.

🤣🤣🤣haha Ol uncle Johnny!! Damn nice buck buddy!!!

These discussions are ALWAYS the same. "I've had several Leupods fail. They're junk and I won't use them anymore".... VS..... "I've hunted Leupolds all over for decades and never had a problem". Nobody knows why any scope fails. Nobody knows why one brand is or may be better than another. Nobody ever pulls any scopes apart and tries to figure out just what the weak and strong points of one brand over another are. Until somebody does, it's all just conjecture and luck of the draw or lack thereof. I've even read of Nightforce and SWFA failures right here on these forums. With SWFA's it seems the 1-4'X's are more prone to failure than any of the others. I'd think the internal components would be the same acroos the line. You roll the dice and take your chances. While some may be less prone to failure than others, none are 100% foolproof. That's the way it's always going to be with anything mass produced and made by human hands.

For the record, several pards have scared me so I ordered a nightforce for my 22 creed.... 🤣🤣

I’m not replacing any leupolds though

Negative. Love their binos, not their scopes. My two hunting pards that hunt those muleys with me out there BOTH had 1" Swaro's crap the bed. I sold mine as soon as Swaro fixed it.

[quote=Sheister]Sure glad I stocked up on popcorn early. I'm not quite sure when this became the Blackheart show, though? Talking about shooting lever actions and open sights on a thread about scopes and scope failures? And on it goes- time to get more popcorn....

ya i just made a second big bowl of popcorn too ! i still like Leupold scopes , but most bench shooters win with Nightforce scopes , no one wins or uses a rifle with open sights or a lever rifle . > SO W.T.F. does anyone bring up and brag about some old Wincester lever rifle with open sights ? its about what happened to Leupold scopes ?

Safariman ain't the only guy here who asss shoots deer!

Haha for sure!!! 🤣🤣

it can happen with any brand.....you shoot good deer.......bob

Cuz if you're that worried about scope failure you can always man up and use irons dipshyt.

I had a Leupold VariXII 3x9 fail me on an African trip. Gut shot a Big Blue Wildebeest from about 300 yards. I had planned for problems and had QR rings on the rifle and changed out to my spare scope and kept hunting. Determined I was the culprit as we were bouncing around in the back of the bakkie, I had bumped the scope a couple times against the roll bar and bent the tube. When we caught up to the Wildebeest a couple miles and a couple hours later, it was under a bush in the shade stomping and scraping with his foot just like you see a bull do when he is getting ready to charge. I had a hard time seeing it because it was sunny and my pupils were pinpoints looking into the shade. Took a few seconds to focus enough to see the animal and was unnerving as hell shooting at a pissed off bull Wildebeest not being sure of my scope. Lucky we were close enough I was able to drop him in his tracks with a frontal shot. He is my grandson's favorite trophy to look at....

Bob

Are you saying the Leupy with the bent tube failed?

Damn nice deer. This post, blackheart's posts, and my own experience all lead me to an observation: lots of animals are killed without even using a scope, and probably even more are killed with scopes that don't have precise, consistent adjustments and scopes that shift zero some. For people who rarely take shots over 100 yards at deer-sized targets and bigger these things are not such a big deal. My muzzleloader shoots 3" groups at 100 and the size of the groups has never been an issue for me. When I hunted back east, I almost never took a shot over 100 yards with any kind of rifle so accurate repeatable adjustments and zero shift meant very little to me. I'd just re-zero before the season and go kill some deer.

It wasn't until I moved out west and started shooting at longer ranges with accurate rifles and handloads that I even started paying attention to accurate repeatable adjustments.

Just an observation.

Yes, it was the "failure". It was also the scope I finished off the Wildebeest with. Changed the scope when we got back to camp...

Bob

This is right on the money. The exception for me is my varmint rifles. Still I rarely get shots much past 300 yards in the rolling fields where I hunt. I have shot plenty of woodchucks at 250 - 350 yards over the years though and expect my rifles/scopes to perform at those distances. Those rifles are wearing Leupold, Weaver and Nikon scopes right now and they've performed well on my .223's and .22-250's over the years.

AC,
I’ve said this several times. What in tarnation prevents Leupold from gutting a swfa ss 6x and having the same erector mechanism built with the same materials. Add a zero stop, put vx3i glass in budget scopes and VX6 hd glass for higher end sellers?

Maybe ILya or Form could answer this question. I’m sure Leupold’s shelves have a massive investment of current parts here in the US.

Maybe they should run through their parts inventory. Change all there marketing information both in print and online, then introduce the new guts to the hunting/shooting market.

Someone with an MBA in business accounting will explain the loss in revenues changing out parts and new tooling is cost prohibitive.

“Patents”, maybe the reason....

😎

Been down that road with that exact combo. I bought a Kimber Montana from a reputable forum member, he sent me pics of the targets and everything then I put a new VX3 3.5-10x40 on it and then after 3 days of frustration going back and forth to the range only to realize that it was not the Kimber that was the problem, it was the new Leupold. I was so pissed I couldn’t see straight. Just read my frustration in this thread! I’ve sent my share of Leupold back for problems just like below but a new scope on an unproven gun makes things screwy, had me guessing all kinds of chit that could be wrong with the Kimber. How in the hell is a guy supposed to have confidence in a product like this?

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...-poor-bedding-kimber-montana#Post8546270