A Personal Favor

[Alchase]

All my hunting rifles have Leupold VXs on them.

[Magnum_Willys]

Sent my VX6 7-42 back for turret locking up.   Now its starting to get sticky again.  Hmmm want to buy US but...... might try the Mark 5 as one last try before going March or Nightforce NX8.

[BigGoonTuna]

Most of my rifles wear Leupolds, because they have good glass and I appreciate their light weight and classic appearance. I’ve never had one fail or shift it’s zero in my own experience.

However, if I was in the market for a dialing scope like all the cool kids seem to be these days, I’d probably look elsewhere. Aside from an old M8 4x32 I have, none of the Leupold scopes I’ve owned have had really consistent adjustments. Sighting in is a game of trial and error, they usually take a couple shots to settle in.

Again, for my purposes this isn’t much of a concern, once my guns are sighted in, I don’t touch the scopes much. I have a Meopta on my .270 that if I were to move the elevation up 4 clicks and right 2 clicks, my point of impact will shift exactly 1” up and 0.5” to the right at 100 yards the next time I pull the trigger. With a Leupold it’s more of a suggestion.

[jrebel]

Nightforce and Leupold get my vote. 

Nightforce Optics, Inc. is an American manufacturer of high-end telescopic sights, spotting scopes and mounting accessories, based in Lavonia, Georgia with factory headquarters in Orofino, Idaho.

It appears their lenses are sourced from Japan.....best I can tell. 

[buckfvr]

When I looked this all up before, it came down to sand.  The very best sand for optics is found in Viet Nam and Europe/Germany.  So of course it seems Schott glass is what most euros use and Japanese glass is what all others use.  The way they get away with saying made in usa is because they are entirely assembled here and only raw lenses come here to be ground and coated by folks like Leupold and a couple others.  Otherwise some of the cheaper scopes just buy the ready to go lenses and roll with it.

When Bushnell bought out Bausch and Laumb that accounted for a significant amount of one source Japanese glass.  Its been a while since I researched all that but I think I still got the gist of it correct.

Only a trained eye can see the difference between good glass and really really good glass.  If you opt to spend less on your scopes, the machining technology used for the adjusting and aligning of lenses and the turret mechanisms is what suffers ( also lense coating process).  On paper, only the very best scopes survive a 30moa tracking test.  All scopes have an inherent + or - that shows up more and more as you dial further.  Nothing man made is perfect, high end scopes come closer than mid range scopes.  They all track great out to 400 yards and fall apart the farther you go, faster or slower depending on quality of scope.

[bman940]

I have been using Meopta's Optika6 3-18x50 FFP scope for almost a year now. I have over 500 rounds of 6.5 CM under it and I have taken it to 827 yards with zero issues. The glass, quality control and function are all impressive on this optic. Throw in a price under $750 and you have a real winner.