Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Leupold - why not 'Etched Reticles' in ALL scopes?

Very true E, the etched Leupold reticles look just like the Conquest reticles, wire or electoform, not so much!!!

What I find amazing is that leupold is still able to sell VX-I and VX-II scopes built with 47yo technology.

As to the 47 year old technology,I'm still waiting for soemone to build a variable that will reliably last for a couple thousand rounds at a price we can afford.......most variables are made with hopelessly archaic designs,which are all pretty much the same,far as I know.

One point I was trying to make is that we have lots of really good scopes today, at any price point. For instance the Bushnell Elites. I was hunting a lot with Bausch & Lomb Elites 20 years ago, and they were quite good scopes, very fine optically and extremely tough. But their adjustments weren't the best in the world. Today's Bushnell Elites are better optically, just as tough, have very good adjustments--and cost less than the B&L's, considering inflation.

I have had very good luck with Bushnell Elites--and for a long time, ever since they were Bausch & Lomb Balvars and Balfors in the late 80's, then were B&L Elites, and then the Bushnell Elites. They have all been very tough. In fact I still have a Balfor (4x fixed) from around 1990 that has been on so many hard-kicking rifles I can't remember them all. Just last year I sold a 1.5-6x Balvar to a friend who admired it, and it had been on lots of rifles up to .416 Remington Magnum. As far as I have seen since then the various Elites have been made just as well, and the great optics of the Bal- lines are even better in the 4200's.

I never used a Leupold scope on a hunting rifle until 1990. Before that I used a few steel-tube Weavers (mostly because a lot of people did when I was growing up in Montana in the 1960's), but in the 1980's I started using a lot of Bausch & Lombs, because they had the best optics of any scope I could afford then, and were pretty tough as well. In fact I still have some of those scopes. They were the precursors to the Bushnell 4200 Elites that so many hunters like today, and I have taken quite a few anmals with the 3200 and 4200 (and short-lived 3000 and 4000) Elites as well.


Since I started hunting in the mid-60's I've taken several hundred big game animals, and kept notes on all of them. Exactly 27% have been taken with Leupold scopes, about 3/4 fixed-power Leupolds from 3x to 6x. I have probably taken about as many with the B&L/Bushnell Elites as I have with Leupolds, and have also taken a lot of animals with Burris and Swarovski scopes as well. I am probably as big a fan of any of those as Leupold, and Burris is the only other brand of scope other than Leupold that I've never had go belly-up on me in the field.

Reliability carries a lot of weight with me. I've never thought Leupold had the best optics in the world; even back in the 1990's it was obvious that B&Ls/Bushnell Elites had better optics than the M8's, though there wasn't much difference between the Mult-Coat 4 Vari-X III's and the B&L's. And I never thought Leupolds had great adjustments, though once sighted in they stayed that way, which is more than I could say about some other scopes, including some that cost a lot more. (Well, here I should exclude Leica--though the previous Leica scopes were made by Leupold.)

Lately I have seen some fall-off in the reliability of Leupolds, as some other people have. My wife had a 3.5-10x40 VX-III, for instance, go nuts on her a couple of seasons ago. She sent it back and they replaced the erector spring. But I have yet to have a fixed-power Leupold break down due to sheer use on any of my hunting rifles. I know it happens, but it has never happened to me--or anybody I've been hunting with.


Because of that, I was more interested in testing the new VX-3's new adjustments than its optics, but did test the optics with the reasonably scientific method I've settled on over the years (and which has had some unexpected results). Both adjustments and optics turned out to be improvements over the VX-III.

But it doesn't buy a false evaluation.

I have always had very good luck with the Bushnell Elites, including their previous incarnations going back to the Balvar days 20 years ago. They've always been very good optically and quite tough.

I totally agree about the Bushnell 4200. The have been one of the toughest scopes for a long time now. I have had better luck with 4200's (and the 4000's that preceded them) than Nikons and Sightrons.

You might also consider the Burris Fullfield II's. In my experience they are also very tough.

i get that leupold has good stuff but why zeiss can charge 399.99 for a 3-9x40 with etched reticle standard and leupold is a 170$ option?

i get that leupold has good stuff but why zeiss can charge 399.99 for a 3-9x40 with etched reticle standard and leupold is a 170$ option?

Because they can, buyers just suck up the extra charge without question..