Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters The obvious solution?

One scope doesn't prove anything one way or the other. If I quit using every brand of scope that broke on me, I'd pretty much be using iron sights. Some break immediately, but others take a while. ANY scope can break with enough use.

In my experience Burris makes pretty darn tough scopes. There was a period in the late 80's and early 90's where some company reorganization caused some problems, but since then they've been pretty darn reliable. Even the "affordable" Fullfield II line is extremely tough. I have a 6x40 FFI that's been on a bunch of hard-kicking rifles, including a .300 Weatherby Magnum and a very light .338 Winchester Magnum. I tend to use it these days as a test scope for new rifles, just because it proven so reliable on many rifles.

Mule Deer - I have that same scope in #4 and have been well pleased with it. For the same price I much prefer it to the VX-1 I no longer own. The softening of the spring seems to jive pretty well with the rifle getting progressivley worse as opposed to suddenly breaking -doesn't it.

I have no problems with broken scopes. Any company can produce examples with defects, and that's why you have warranties. When you have a broken product you send it it and then you can judge the quality of the customer service from that company. Stuff happens and stuff breaks, that's part of life. That's what I mean about being binary.

The problem with this Burris is that it started to go bad slowly and got progressively worse over a period of time. That indicates to me a problem with the materials used or the design of the product, it's not just a bad copy or something that escaped the factory.

We don't know the time period it took to go bad. The original post said: "I have a Ruger M77 in 260rem which has just recently started to play up in terms of accuracy." Only later did he say that he suspected it had been going bad for a long time.

Personally I would have gotten suspicious long before a 1" rifle started shooting 6" groups--and the only suggestion about what may have gone wrong is from some unnamed "optics experts."

Maybe it did start to go bad immediately. In my experience the majority scopes that do break do so pretty quickly, because of some manufacturing defect. But just because HE didn't think it could possibly be the scope, and waited until the rifle started shooting 6" groups, doesn't mean the scope didn't go bad pretty much immediately, and he just didn't recognize the problem.

We don't know, and we really don't know the time period over which it happened. Maybe he can enlighten us further--and maybe not.

I do know that just because one scope breaks--whether quickly or slowly--when thousands of the same make of scope have proven tough is little reason to condemn an entire company's product line. Especially when we still don't know exactly what happened.

The only way to be reasonably sure of any product's quality is to look at the record of the same product over a period of time. Aside from knowing a bunch of people who use FFII's on a wide variety of rifles (along with my own experience with at least half a dozen FFII's over the past decade or so) I know a couple of major sporting goods stores that carry FFII's precisely because their customers almost never have any problems with them.

Bullpucky.

Individual erector springs can go soft over time. It can happen with just about any brand of scope and indivudual scopes within brands.

It sure as hell does not mean the scope design is flawed or entire runs of materials.

IMHO, your anti- Burris Bias is showing here.

Sad.

Well, it's true that the information was less than clear and changed over time. Next we will find out that he always adjusted the riflescope knobs with pliers and a 12 pound hammer.

I've recommended Burris many times in the past as a solid performer with an good price point. I was afraid I might have led some people to buy substandard garbage. (Now to recall all those emails I sent out.)

I just got a 3.5-10x40 Leupold back from being serviced. It was running just fine on a 10/22 when I removed it and placed it on a 700VLS in 308win. While boresighting it, the elevation adjustment did not want to budge at all. I could not have been at the adjustment limits, as it wasn't far off from being boresighted at the start. Once that adjustment turned, it went loosey-goosey and the VLS printed groups of 10MOA or worse. The erector assembly had to be replaced. I'm wondering if the 10/22 action lunched the scope? I've heard that they can be tough on optics, but this was the first modern Leupold I've had go belly-up. I do have a long-tube 4x of theirs that is older than me and it had to go back recently for a loose reticle. It saw a lot of rat-tat-tat on a 10/22 also.

Careful there, FTR. When I made a "Next we'll learn that..." comment about bore brushes, our poster "got the wind up" about it.

However, even though I know your tongue is planted firmly in cheek, it is discouraging to get dribs and drabs if information - and changing information at that - anytime any poster wants a problem analyzed. What may be entertaining in a murder mystery is less than amusing in real situations.

Right you are, RR.

RR; I understand what you are saying and would like to add that what's just as non-productive is when someone posts several factors that may or may not be contributing to a problem, and they all get ignored. Sigh.
I often read answers to questions where the respondants can't possibly have read the op's entire post.
Makes for interesting reading, though. It just makes it hard for us dumb ones to learn anything, but we're used to that.

My apologies gents for the obvious confusion caused throughout this post. I will attempt to provide significantly more detail and specific information next time.

Guys, on another note, if you are tongue in cheek, please put a smiley or something after your post. A dodgey rifle creates the feeling of frustration and those posts can be taken the wrong way otherwise. My apologies for being terse as a result.

Good shooting to you all.

I'm not a gunwriter, but I will go so far as to say that you are not my definition of terse. My ex-wife was terse.


























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