A Date with a Hot Swede

[scook]

They cost more, but Leupold makes excellent scopes. They are made in the US with the exeption of the glass which, for pretty much all scopes comes from 2 or 3 places in the world. They are absolutely the most durable - the abuse testing they go through is remarkable. All of their scopes, from the lowest to the highest cost, go through the same testing and are the toughest you can find.

My understanding is that Vortex and even Nikon optimize their glass to give the best performance under department store lighting, so if you compare a Leupold, Nightforce or Ziess (Ziess have the best glass of anyone, even very slightly better than Leupold) with a Vortex in Cabela's, you'll like the Vortex. You buy it and get into the field and don't have the high quality scope to compare, so you don't realize you bought an inferior product.

You can't go wrong with Leupold - they are one of the very best in the world and stand behind their products. You can offer a good warranty by selling a product that costs almost nothing to make and replacing it freely or make an excellent product that almost never has a problem and really standing behind it like Leupold does.

A friend of mine won a Weatherby 300 mag rifle in a drawing and has Spare's problem (gun safe is full) and gave it to me about 5 years ago. I finally stashed enough money away and will put on a Leupold VX-6, 3-18 TMR (tacticle milling reticle - like a mill dot, but with thin
hash marks instead of dots that cover too much of the target). It's good for ranging targets of knownmsize and for hold over 2nd shot correction or leading and windage compensation. I could have bought a cheaper scope and been using the rifle, but the Leupold is definitely worth the wait. It's an accurate rifle and the VX-6 will be good for 1000 yard target shots as well as much closer but still long range hunting (if I can ever find time to get back to doing any hunting).

My 2 cents worth.