Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Why so many scopes that suck?

According to the masses...

There are a slew of scopes on the market, but it seems there’s only a few held in high regard. Obviously SWFA has cornered a pretty damn good market share. I reckon Nightforce is unquestionable. Leupold had/has its day and so on.

The art of the $300 rifle has been perfected. RAR, Savage, 783, Mossberg, Marlin, etc. easy to find a rifle and ammo that are plenty accurate.

But when it comes to scopes, there’s SWFA and ???

Are tracking and reliability something new? You’d think that for every $300 rifle, there would be a 1/2 dozen $300 scopes suited to the task.

What gives?

Everything is made in China now . Well not really. I trust some of my Burris rifle scopes to track well enough for my needs. I've shot my AR's with the AR556 and AR762 4.5-14x42 rifle scopes enough at 500 yards and spun the turrets on those to know they track surprisingly well and return to zero perfectly. I even run an AR762 4.5-14x42 on my Tikka Superlite 6.5 creedmoor because I trust it enough to do it's job. I'll generally buy those rifle scopes when they are around $330.00. Prices have been going up on the damn things though, but its one scope I really like and trust to track well... The burris FFII 3-9x40 that I love and have on most of my hunting rifles are not scopes I dial, but they do have the ballistic plex reticle that I have used out to 400 yards. The FFII's have always been very reliable at holding zero and I prefer the reticle over just about any other ballistic or LR reticle I've seen or used. The Zeiss Terra is also a good rifle scope in the $300.00 price range and it also has a good RZ6 ballistic reticle, very similar to the Burris FFII ballistic plex. Again, these are not exceptionally great for dialing, but work great as a "set and forget" because they hold zero and don't wander like some brands.... If I'm going to be trusting a scope to dial spot on the money, I'm going to be using my fixed power SWFA SS scopes and my Nightforce rifle scopes. The SHV line has really impressed me recently. It was made for us hunters, but they dial extremely well. I actually like the MOAR reticle better than my NSX 5.5-22x56 and the glass is just as clear as it's more expensive brother... I'm gettting ready to go and try my new 5-20x56 SHV out on one of my new rifles here in a bit. I'd say, if you want good tracking and excellent glass, you need to step up to the plate and buy Nighforce. If you want sub par (meant to say piss poor) glass with excellent tracking, go with the SWFA SS fixed power for $300.00...

It’s all propaganda. : )

Don’t go saying swfa is the holy grail. The one I have isn’t. I am going to video the image showing it when the tool for it arrives. As well as test some others. The point is they may or may not be squared away. Mine has over 3% tracking error and 2% reticle shift. Want squared away get nightforce. Scope companies make crap because they know most people don’t shoot their guns very often. Then they are able to batch qc the scopes that do fail or actually get used.

In my experience the friction adjustment Leopold's were difficult to sight in because the adjustment were random.

When I moved from Leopold's to better scooes I found my rifles were more accurate and sight in became a breeze.

No kidding! For set and forget the old Leupys were fine. Dialing, not so much.

My absolute favorite of all time is Leupold M8 6x42’s. It’s just baffling that there’s only one “cheap” dialable scope that actually works.

Why is it baffling?


Everyone you meet talks glass, features, and warranty. Hunters have never asked for a scope that mechanically works. The manufacturers has given the market what it asked for.

I think it's fairly simple. The majority of the folks buying scopes don't use them enough to know the difference. Most of the average hunters I know are content to get minute of deer at 100 yards and they bring home their venison, so what's the problem? Lots of POS scopes will do that. If they experience a scope failure how do they even know it's the scope or another factor in their rig? They don't often make the effort to diagnose the problem and most the guys I know lack the skills and experience to diagnose it anyway. The reality is most hunters are not very discriminating or discerning in scope selection. They see the great glass and automatically assume the rest of the scope is awesome too.

Most of the guys I know equate hunting experience with scope expertise and they simply don't know what they don't know. That isn't to say they are stupid, just that they have yet to experience the need to dig into the subject more. I was one of these guys who drank the Leupold coolaid for years, but that came to a halt when I acquired a pair of match 54 Anschutz rifles that starkly revealed scope deficiencies. Even then it took me a while to realize the scopes were inconsistent.

I agree with the comments, above, on the majority of hunters...

Most hunters are just like me, and don't need a scope with exacting-elevation-settings.
Good glass and durability and holding zero can be had for 300-400 dollars.

It's still true, even today, that most deer are killed well-within 200 yards.

No magic here.... I sight my .06 in at 200 yards and go hunting.

Boring, ain't it.

:-)

I had Redfield scopes for 40 years, probably 35 of them. One or two went bad. All in all I’d give them an A. Sold all but two here in the classifieds when I decided to go Leupold. I now have about 40 Leupolds. I have CDS models, no problems yet.

How long does a scope need to last for its owner to consider it a good scope? It will eventually fail some day. If it lasts 40 years, then goes bad, would you curse it and say it was a bad scope? Cshit wears out eventually, don’t it??

That probably works in your locale....

Consider a hunter in the west, he applies for a special tag, it may take ten years to draw that tag. He uses vacation time , travels a couple hundred miles to hunt. The terrain is open, long shots are likely.
Thousands of dollars and years of time are invested. The animal population is low (that's why it is a draw unit)
Would you trust a scope that worked ok and was suspect in terms of reliability? hell no!

Granted they are the minority in numbers compared to the average eastern deer hunter.....

Some of you need to get out more....

Hanco with all due respect, you are full of chit. That many Leupolds cannot possibly get hunted hard and shot for thousands of rounds by one owner.
Besides shooting hogs in a pen is no test of anything.... your opinion is baseless

There are far less Swfa scopes on rifles than you think.So the number of them going down is far less.Nikon and Tasco come on numerous gun packages.With the amount of them out there it stands to reason more will go down.Sort of seemed like an add for Swfa.They are not a major player in the scope market.Here to they are good at their price point but not great.

But, you go lurk on some other big shooting / hunting forums, and there are guys on there, many of whom appear to be very respected in those forums, who have high praise for a lot of the Chinese scope brands. Primary Arms, Vortex, Athlon, etc.

For example, one well respected guy on another forum reports that a couple of higher end Athlons track "perfectly," and that there is actually a little slop in the tracking of the Meopta Optika6. His words, not mine. I think it would be a good bet that some of the scope reviewers on here would disagree completely with those findings, at least on the Athlons.

So what is going on, are there really only SWFA and Nightforce? I'm not trying to stir pots, just genuinely trying to educate myself on dialing scopes. It is hard to figure out what to believe, when so many sources report wildly different opinions.

So one deer tag in 10 years versus a guy that shoots 10 deer a year in his locale.

Following that logic, the guy that gets laid once every 10 years in Wyoming is a playboy, the guy that screws 100 girls is 10 years is a novice.

When it comes to dialing scopes even the respected brands have problems at times. Plan on using the warranty and do tracking/tall target test on every scope you plan to dial.
The crazy part is at times the cheaper brands dial great... go figure

Laffin ...
Statistics is hard.

Flawed logic.... the guy probably shoots thousands of practice rounds.... long range requires that. Also he doesn't sit home every time he doesn't draw a special tag. More than likely applies in several states and easy to draw units in his home state.
I can guarandamntee you my rifles for woods hunting aren't held to the same accuracy standards as my long range rigs.... you don't know what you don't know... jeesh

Enlightening as usual....