SWFA Scope Scale Discussion Thread (2009)

Sitting in a stand shooting at whitetails in all kinds of light is probably 90% of "big game hunting" these days. For that a big variable of any make is probably going to stand up on a .243 or 7mm magnum, or whatever, for the relatively few shots taken each year. And that is 90% of big game hunting in North America today. I would even hazard a guess that some shots are taken a few minutes on either side of legal light.

Originally posted by John Barsness Al,  Evidently we have a friend in common, Steve Timm.   I am right with you on the durability issue. I have seen the judgment of scopes swing completely from reliability to "what can I see?" in the past 15-20 years.  JB

Al (and Roy),

I have roomed and shot and philosophized with Steve more than once, and we are pretty much on the same wavelength. We even laugh a lot! Karen is a great gal as well, and when my wife Eileen and all of us have gotten together it is the same thing.

I think few people would disagree that durability / ability to hold POI is the most important characteristic a scope could have, as it is first and foremost an aiming device.  It's expected that a scope is durable enough to serve its intended function, or it's worthless.  However, unless you either have rate of return data from various scope manufacturers, a particular scope is universally notorious for being too delicate, or some sort of test protocol that subjects scopes to brutal punishment, how can you get a handle on durability sufficient to rank that attribute against competing brands?  Who among us would be willing to intentionally punish a scope we just paid up to 1 or 2 weeks' worth of wages just to see if it will fail?  Even if you've had several scopes fail under normal use, how would it be possible to get a representative sampling of that brand/model sufficient to determine with absolute certainty how durable it is?  I don't know very many people who have had their scopes go south on them.  The ones I have seen fail were mostly sub-$100 cheap scopes owned by buddies.  I've only had it happen with one scope myself, and that was over 20 years ago, with a scope that has an excellent reputation for reliability, and I do a lot of shooting.  Admittedly, I don't own any brutally recoiling rifles beyond the recoil level generated from my .300 Win Mag, and most of my scoped rifle shooting is with small caliber varmint rifles and rimfires, which don't exactly challenge the integrity of scopes.  The heaviest recoiling gun I own is a .338 Win and it's never destroyed a scope after a few hundred rounds through it.

Optical quality and design features are just much easier to rank than durability.  Unless you've had tons of scopes fail from a wide variety of brands, how in the heck can you rank all the scope brands 1 - 10 based on durability?  Again, even if you have had a bunch of scopes fail, how can you say with certainty that your experience accurately reflects the status of the brand?  We've all had differing experiences.  The only way I can see that one can get a fair ranking of durability is if one has accurate rate of return data from manufacturers, and I'm certain that information is next to impossible to get.

This type of ranking scale is difficult to do because all of us place differing value on different attributes of different scopes for different reasons.  No matter what the completed scale looks like, few will agree with it 100%.  Regardless, that fact makes the scale no less useful as a general guide.




Edited by RifleDude - April/05/2009 at 22:01

That is probably an accurate assessment Roy..... And very well written thoughts Ted.

Maybe there should be two scales....................scopes and big game hunting scopes.........................