Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics I’m not Bashing on Leupold,,,,But…

…damn!

I have enough skin in the game with Leupold scopes to form an opinion. Not an opinion based on one or two scopes, more like circling the neighborhood of 25 Leupold scopes at one point.

I’ve used their VX6 line for several rifles, and I actually had good success with them. I sold all except for one. I’ve only owned one VX5, still have it. It’s been a good scope but it’s been relegated to the semi-retirement shelf until something comes up for it to ride.

A few of my Leupold’s are VXII variants. The others are variations of the VX3 models, including the newer VX3 HD line.

Recently, I made a switch on several of my varmint rifles that were sporting 1” tube set and forget Sightron’s. I wanted 30mm scopes with turrets. I decided to make a push for lighter weight scopes, buying up four in Leupold VXIII, VX3i and VX3 HD configurations. All 30mm dialers.

After mounting and sighting in three of the four. I found that all three had a propensity of having a lot of ‘deadness or slop’ when using both elevation and windage to correct for sighting in off a solid bench rest…

What I mean by ‘deadness - slop’ is, with the rifle steady, I’m watching for the reticle to move towards a bullet hole in the target for correction. The Leupold’s would not engage and move the reticle when I started to dial. There was this hesitation, more like a pause, with no reticle movement, until I was fully twisting the turrets way past the point when they should have engaged the internals.

All three scopes eventually moved the reticle. But in no way, was it precise. More like crank, crank a little more, then the reticle moved.

You might imagine the feeling of faith this gave me for dialing elevation while varmint hunting. It’s a good thing these rifles are only pointed at ground squirrels, pdogs, coyotes and such.

IDK, maybe they’ll be fine. Lol.

🦫

I'm rooting for Reupold,but sadly they're not rooting or themselves. A somewhat kinda' sorta' "made" in America scope,is a warm and fuzzy notion. Hint.

As arranging POA/POI goes,they ain't in the cards and done it to themselves. Hint.

Just sayin'...............

There are some guys here that have 100 of them and have never had a failure. I've seen pictures of some of them laid out on blanket covered tables. Beautiful rifles (most times remington 700's). They have never had an issue with that rifle platform either.

It's never been difficult to savvy who actually shoots and who don't,if only to the chagrin of Melting Snowflakes the World over. Hint.

As an aside,how are those 108's and the like doing in your 6x45 Krunchenticker upper? HINT.



You CLUELESS Drooling DUMB Fhuqks are a hoot! Hint.

Fhuqking LAUGHING!..............

The reticle should move on the first click.

We test every scope on the collimator to check for backlash and the optic tracks as it should. Most scopes have about 1/2 a click of backlash.

You should solidly bench mount the optics and check for backlash, move the reticle one direction and then reverse.

I do always make the finish move down on elevation and left on windage but that's from having run mills and lathes for so long.

Remember what leupold said on the podcast? You gotta tap the turrets for them to settle. LOL

This is exactly why I started getting rid of my Leupold scopes several years ago. I got so darned tired of adjusting , tapping the side of the scope to get it to move, shooting, adjusting, tapping etc... on just about every Leupold I owned that I just gave up on them. The glass is wonderful IMO, but the reticle adjustments were awful. A tall target test just made it even worse. I think I only have two or three left at the moment and those have been working fine for the moment so they are somewhat safe until I have a problem with them.

Since I have started looking at other scopes and found the Athlon, Arken, and several other scopes I don't feel the need to go through the Leupold carousel any more- even though I would love to see them fix their problems and become the scope manufacturer they could be...especially since their facility is only about 5 miles from my house. The fact they closed their custom shop doesn't help much either since now you can't get custom reticles or other work done there at all... They seem to have a pretty loyal following for the most part in stores, gun shops, Sportsmans' shows, on line, and on the used market so I doubt our complaining about their problems is going to affect them much.

Way to go Beav.......you've just subjected us to another round of regurgitated, decades old, LardassBurns and HomoCamuglia pics.

Reupold is the Biden of scopes. You get what you get and there is NO predicting it. Hint.



Just sayin'.............

JB, that’s been my experience with the VX6’s and VX5. The rest of my Leupold’s had been set/forget.

There’s something odd with these three VX3’s. I typically turn one click back then twist ahead to my MOA setting or the same but in reverse. These scope’s don’t have a zero stop. It was a Wtf moment X’s three.

These weren’t new scopes. They were sold to me by three different sellers, but all looked almost as new.


🦫

I know, I know, JR. 😬 I don’t smash on Leupold. They help thousands and thousands of hunters kills shît.

I just hadn’t had this happen before. I’ve had some set/forget scopes that took some persuading to get them nuanced into zero. But three out of 4 scopes? I had to say something about that.

🦫

Like a lot of companies, Leupold has discovered that investing in advertising and social media "sponsors" yields higher (short-term) profits than investing in design and manufacturing. I'm sure their management team is being rewarded handsomely for doing so, and will be long-gone before the real cost of that path is realized.

I understand your envious.

Then there are idiots like you that claim to have had every conceivable issue.

I can't be absolutely sure, but it seems the problems seem to have started about the time the original owners of Leupold either passed away or retired and the offspring took over the company. Rumor has it they aren't interested in the day to day operation so have handed it over to a bunch of bean counters to operate the business while they live off the profits, but who knows how true that is or isn't?

I have heard a few times that because of the way they mount their reticle tube adjustment springs and adjustment screws, if the grease on them gets thick and heavy after a few years they don't want to adjust easily until the grease gets thinned somehow or you way over adjust to go past the adjustment point and come back, giving the adjustment mechanism a good work out so the grease gets distributed again. I believe this is the reason most guys (like me) tap their scope with something fairly firmly to get the adjustments to "settle in" but this is an iffy fix at best and doesn't always get the desired results . I've actually had Leupold techs tell me to do this to make adjustments when I'm zeroing a scope. I've tried this and it usually works if you go a couple turns of the dial past your adjustment and come back to it, but who wants to deal with that every time you need to make an adjustment? Especially at the price of ammo and components these days?
The tall target test is even more indicative of a design issue that I'm not sure how to get past except to waste even more ammo trying to figure out where it might be after an adjustment, especially if you are starting from scratch and may have to make a lot of adjustments to get to your POI...

What’s funny is you don’t have to spend more to actually own a scope that adjusts correctly. Fugking Laughing !

When Leupold had their technical experts address the forum, they said that their scopes didn't do that, but when they did, you needed to tap on the turrets to get them to work.

If they had any common sense they’d have redesigned the internals to actually work when they came out with all the 30mm and bigger tubes with bigger mag ranges.

Those guys have a future in politics. Deny then say when it happens, you do this. If it doesn’t happen why peck on the turret to fix what just didn’t happen.

Lie with a straight face, then fall back on plausible deniability.

Brandon could take notes. Those guys were good.

DF

Sightron. They make great scopes