Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics WTF's wrong with Burris??

There are things I like about Burris scopes, but damn...it's hard to find anything new from them with a good old plain duplex reticle. Everything has to be some fam-dancy ballistic reticle or something with hash marks all over the field of view. Someone at Burris has gone off the deep end, if you ask me.

Its not just Burris, most of the manufacturers are doing this.

I'll chime in.......

I can like mil-dots, mil-hash, mil-quad, whatever. Or a straight up duplex reticle.

But the BDC stuff seems more complicated than just a straight up MOA or MIL based reticle. The fact that most of these scopes are second focal plane would seemingly complicate matters further.

I guess advertising that you have a mark on the reticle so you too can whack deer at 600 yards with your .270, .308, 7mm, etc. markets well on the outside of the bubble pack at Wal Mart........

For instance the Vortex BDC is not hard to use if you zero and calibrate on the highest power. 9-10x is Plenty for a 300yard shot on a deer sized target. On my Vortex 2.5-10 Viper HS the bottom 2 "hash" markes came out fairly even on my .223 with my velocity. Have I ever used them in a hunting situation? No. Totally unnecessary on a hunting scope imo. To me anything over a 300 yard shot while hunting is marginal. Target shooting 1200 yards is no thing with a FFP and my Dope sheet.

4x is plenty for deer at 300.

A ballistic reticle is no harder to use but has so much more to offer that manufacturers would be silly to limit their market by offering plain duplexes

Just ignore the hash marks if you don’t like them

Maybe it’s the Eurotrash influence since Burris is owned by Beretta.

Consider the possibility that at some point actual sales of the multi-point reticles began to surpass those of plain duplexes. In that case, they are just following the market in order to make money. Just a guess, mind you. I often wonder the same thing about Ruger and their choice of 16” barrels on so many models of bolt actions where say, 20” IMO makes more sense.

I too prefer a plain duplex for most hunting, but find the multi-point version handy for some things. I definitely like the ballistic plex in the FFII better than the E1, but the E1 has dual bias springs, so I’m a bit torn.

It's the fuuking Chinese!

Generally scope companies (like other companies) offer what sells best.

Which is why plain crosshair reticles faded away after every company started offering some sort of "plex" reticle, relatively few "gloss finish" scopes appear anymore, and new fixed-power scopes become rarer every year.

Cmon man

I'm a diehard luddite and have a firm belief that the three best reticles for hunting are the Duplex, German #4 and the German #1. This season I put together a longer range coyote hunting rig to target that space from 200-500 yards. I put together a midweight 20P shooting 40gr NBT's and a 2-12x40 scope with a Ballistic reticle. Shooting off my stool and tripod keeping them in the chest of a coyote at 500 is pretty easy, only wind is the Bugaboo. At 2x I'm covered from my shoelaces out to 200 and beyond that there is plenty of time to turn it up to 12x and then the ballistic dots with a 200 yard zero are dead on at 300, 400 and 500. I'm liking this set up.

The 1-4 and 1.5-6 scopes will make up a the mainstay of my coyote battery but I will keep this rig in my truck for those spots that just might need it, it will open up some areas that I have driven past.

Capitalism is funny that way.

Jack O'Conner and Bob Hagel used to think so.

These corporations have gnomes deep in the bowels of corporate headquarters, with high foreheads, thick glasses, and pocket protectors full of pens and pencils, and computer readouts that know what you are likely to buy...before you do. Market research to nth power. And if you don't think you need what they are peddling...they will design an ad or video clip, info-mercial that will change your mind. You didn't know you needed a 30 mm main tube did you? You didn't know you needed a Picatinny rail did you? But you did, because they made a scope that wouldn't span a standard length action. You didn't know you needed a scope with a 5X multiplier did you? You didn't know you needed a 56 mm objective lens for shooting after nautical twilight? And so it goes.
If you disagree with my analysis, fine, but just look at the bidding competition and prices on Ebay for instance, for plain ol', plain ol, scopes with a reputation for reliability.

If it doesn’t suit you don’t buy it. The Ballistic Plex reticle has been around way before any Burris scope was outsourced offshore.

PS: ^^^^^^^^ what flintlocke said. ^^^^^^

Silly me. And there I was thinking I actually had a mind of my own......

Burris customer service sucks - been trying to get a replacement screw for a set of Signature rings for a few months , bought new rings now . I'll sell these if I ever get the screw - this and other things with burris = no more burris anything for me .

I would imagine that the 'fire members are, by and large, the one's least swayed by marketing gimmicks, partly because of age and experience, although there is a small group on here that thinks a proper hunting rifle is requires a 2 1/2 pound sniper scope. Potsy's last sentence, see his post, is a classic and is just what I am talking about.

That's kind of funny. I just checked Ebay and found a lot of plain ol' scopes not selling, and the minimum-bid prices weren't all that high.

I buy, use and sell a lot of plain ol' scopes. Have several old Leupold M8s on various rifles, along with fixed-power El Paso Weavers and some Bausch & Lombs, including the externally adjustable models. In fact, just purchased a non-adjustable 4x Leupold Pioneer, with adjustable mounts that fit a pre-'64 Model 70 Winchester. What I've noticed, especially on the Campfire Classifieds, is the prices for such scopes dropping over the past several years--part of the reason I often buy them to put on older rifles.

But I sure don't think they're "better" than a Burris Fullfield II, which I've been using since they were made in the U.S., before Burris supplied the same machinery to a factory in the Philippines and taught their workers how to use it. Unlike many of those older scopes "with a reputation for reliability," they're actually sealed against moisture, and have far more reliable adjustments, plus better glass. And gee, even new I can get them for an "affordable" price--with a lifetime guarantee.

I also know a bunch of people "deep in the bowels" of the corporate headquarters of scope companies, including the sales and marketing departments. Can't remember one with a pocket protector, though some have pretty "high foreheads" due to typical male-pattern baldness. And I also haven't run into many that don't use their company's scopes a LOT.

The other reality, of course, is that the vast majority of new riflescope sales anymore are for target models, since the hunting market keeps shrinking and target shooting keeps increasing, even in the U.S.--which is the biggest consumer of hunting products in the world.