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

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.


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I’m with Beav and others. I wanna believe and use them but their prices are quite high for optics that don’t work as well as a few lesser priced optics. They are incredibly friendly in pricing to vets and I’d love to utilize their gear but I find them hard to trust.

A Leupold VX3 looks pretty nice on a Kimber of Oregon custom classic in 223 Rem.

Not certain I’d want to drop a ginormous Arken on it.

Laffin

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PS

Yeah, yeah, I hear you all saying, “But if the Leupold is a ‘pile,’ then all you have, Beav, is a nice looker with no capability to locate the target.

…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.

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I’d kinda like to leave this as ol Bob had it. but man, it tests my patience.

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.