Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Leupold hate

Because you are wrong.......

About what? I went 12 hours without saying a word to the little twerp. Look back over the thread. He starts it back after a 12 hr gap and I'm wrong? You have a strange way of perceiving the world.

Leupolds are fine within their limitations..... the alpha glass is the next level, like it or not.
I am a Leupold user myself and love to hate the damn things. But quality glass with accurate adjustments is the shizzle for precision rifle work. And as hunters we should all strive for precision.
Now if you shoot deer at 300 yds or less you don't need alpha, but it wouldn't hurt. Better is better.
Many here get very provincial with regards to their local hunting environment, Blackheart is the perfect example, he thinks a M94 with open sights is the bomb and if you can't kill deer with it you are an inferior hunter, he doesn't understand western hunting with limited tags etc......
So maybe chill a bit.... read and learn... Dingo has strong opinions based on his experience.... I suspect even an Eastern hunter could benefit from quality gear? no?

The fact that you think I have said the opposite of this proves you have not read any of what I said. My basic point being the last line of what I quoted from you above. You post the exact thing I'm saying then tell me I'm wrong. LOL!

Maybe I got lost in the rhetoric?

I know what I need to know to hunt where I do. I know people who are on the Nightforce bandwagon. I have looked through their scopes. My cousin has one. We have hunted together, He can't see to shoot one minute later than I can with some of my scopes. I do over half my hunting with a bow. You want to know the skill I have learned? How to get way closer than 800 yards to an animal without it knowing I'm there. LOL!

Not if by “quality gear” you mean something the size of the Hubble telescope weighing in at twenty some odd ounces in the light side. No, it would not be of benefit.

We are still under 100 pages, go back and read the damn thread.

300 yards for me would be a very, very long shot. In fact, I've never killed a deer at 300 yards. The farthest was about 150 yards, and the closest about 15 feet. I'd have to be hunting a clear cut or a bean field to get a 300 yard shot. A lot of my hunting is on private land wood lots with small (a few acres) of adjacent cultivated fields, or public land National Forests or Wildlife Management Areas. I simply have no need for a high powered scope. Bright yes, high powered, no. And ballistic reticles would just be a major distraction. Some of the scopes I already have are more powerful than I need.

The majority of deer I've killed have been with rifled slugs over open sights or ventilated ribs (we have a lot of shotgun-only areas). I've killed a lot with buckshot. I've killed a lot with .30-30s and .45-70s over open sights and few with scopes. I've killed some with scoped .30-06s, .308s and a few with a .270. But all have been at about 150 yards or less. I don't think I've ever pulled the trigger on a deer with a variable powered scope set above 4X. My 2-10s and 2.5-8s have all the power I need and then some.

I've gotten to where I really need a scope because my eyes have a hard time seeing open sights anymore. A good low powered scope helps me a great deal.

This is the presentation I get 75% of the time. A high turreted $2,000 scope with a ballistic reticle is simply not needed. A 2.5X scope is enough let me pick the individual hairs I want to hit.

Could be of benefit for here in the East, however depending on the opportunity it may not be the best choice.

Finally bought an alpha….SB 6x..,and it does all many say. Adjusts crazy easy and accurate. And mil dots are really cool for sighting in. Bright and clear. But light and nimble on a rifle it isn’t. So here it gets used as a late sitting rifle. And most often that would be overlooking a large grass field.

For walking around here in the wood and things perhaps happening quick and close….the Leupold 3x or 6x with a fat reticle would be a better choice. By far….

I'll swap you a S&B 6x42 with #4 for it if you desire the fat reticle!

Hmmm!!!! Not being all that SB knowledgeable…same scope, just different reticle?

I know you would like the one I have, so if they are we can swap.

I've owned lots of SWFA SS 6x, 10x, 1-4x, and 3-9x scopes, in addition to a bunch of VXII, VXIII, FX3, M7, Vari-XII, etc., Leupold scopes. Your assessment of the lowlight capabilities of the SWFA scopes is not consistent with my experience. The glass in the SWFA 6x and 10x is at least VXII quality, in terms of clarity and brightness/lowlight performance, and the glass in the SWFA HD scopes like the 3-9x is at least VX3 quality, if not better.

Even for a set-and-forget application, my experience has been that clarity and brightness is similar between the VX3 3.5-10x and SWFA 3-9x, but zero retention has been consistently better with SWFA scopes compared to Leups. Leupold scopes certainly aren't the worst at zero retention, and are pretty decent compared to many scopes, but my point is that even for set-and-forget, there are reasons to go with some of the most mechanically robust scopes on the market, like the SWFA line, over something like a VX3. If the increase in reliability isn't worth the price increase to you, that's up to you to decide.

Light and trim is certainly one of Leupold's greatest strengths.

PM sent with info I know.

BobinNH often referred to Eastern Whitetails often presenting opportunities similar to a quick chance on our Grouse.

And a great Grouse shotgun, carries easily and has little excess when brought into action.

The thing about Leupolds is the adjustments.... even the Chinese have figured out how to make a scope adjust accurately, yet Leupold for the life of them can't seem to figure it out

We have limited tags here. The most I can get is 7 per year and only two of those can be bucks. I'd have sworn when I was in Montana you could get four deer tags per year, 2 each for whitetail and mulies ? Plus you guys get to shoot pronghorn, elk, bears too no ? l do really like my model 94's and have killed a bunch of deer with them but my most used deer rifle and probably my favorite is my scoped {Leupold 1-4x20} Marlin 336. This despite having a safe full of scoped bolt actions. What is apparently hard for some here to fathom is stepping off the road into dense forest, still hunting all day and not stepping out of forest again until you come back out onto a road. The idea of thousands of acres of State forest, unbroken except for an occasional beaver pond/marsh is apparently hard for some to imagine. I have probably shot somewhere around 80 deer in the last 20 years. I can only think of one that was over 100 yards and most were inside 60 yards. I have yet to miss a shot opportunity during our legal hunting hours of sunrise to sunset due to any inadequacies of my scopes.

And you ain't going to shoot many from prone with a bipod or resting over a pack here either. You'd best be able to get the job done offhand, quickly, often through a small opening between branches on a moving deer or you're going to eat a lot of tags.

BH...
Montana allows one buck ,either a whitetail of mule deer each year. We can get doe tags, but we need to travel to different hunting units for each one. Since wolves the days of several doe tags in an area is long gone.
When our season opens elk, deer and bear open at the same time, so theoretically you could shoot all three in a day, but that would be almost impossible.
When we head to the woods we could be facing a grizzly bear or a 700lb elk. And the range can be point blank to as far as a person can shoot.
We have millions of acres of mountains with elevations from 3000' to 11,000'
When you head to the mtns you are always prepared to spend a night out, survival is not a game around here.

And a pic of me a few years ago you might enjoy