Classic rifle designs don’t change much, but the glass directing their output has been improved tremendously in recent decades, a point highlighted by Leupold. Elements for situational adjustability are one factor. Almost magical advances in managing light are another.
The company, headquartered in Beaverton, Ore., designs and builds all of its rifle scopes there. It has been a clear leader in hunting optics since its founder turned to making such products in 1947. Needs and demands of the hunting market drove the company’s innovation in the field for 40 years then, in 1988, Leupold began a formal cooperation with the military. At the Army’s request, the company designed and built a scope with tactical capabilities and engineered for especially rugged use, a tool now known as the M24. Today Leupold’s optics are used by the Army, Navy, Navy SEALS, Marine Corps and Secret Service, as well as hunters and shooters of every stripe. The latter have all benefitted from Leupold’s relationship with the former.
Tactical scopes, as opposed to Leupold’s original models designed for hunters, include features like reticles that allow for target size measurement, which supports range calculation. They include turrets designed to allow users to adjust aiming points and allow for distance and wind direction much more precisely. By calculating range and estimating crosswinds then turning quickly-adjustable knobs, the scopes’ users may then aim by placing the center crosshair on the target rather than holding over, under or at some angle to the side. Tests show this yields a far more precise result.
The military’s requirement for turrets that could be operated quickly under stress directly produced features now found on hunting scopes. Further, Leupold has learned things about its own products through feedback from military use that lab testing alone can’t reveal.
As a result, modern products atop classic rifles are similar to their predecessors in appearance but are far advanced in their mechanical performance. Those easily-demonstrated advancements may account for half the improved performance new scopes deliver. Degrees of light management are more difficult to quantify, but deliver a considerable amount of “Wow!”
Light management and other optical aspects prove considerably more noticeable than the new elements for adjustability. In the early 1980s, Leupold’s Vari-X models were the dominant hunting scope on the market and transmitted, by the company’s measurement, 92 percent of light and offered an admirably-broad degree of adjustability for sighting in. These scopes were, and remain, very effective and good. However, and it is a large however, what has been achieved optically these many decades on, especially during the most recent two, advances visual performance by magnitudes where the intangibles are concerned. Well-ground glass is still well-ground glass, but advances achieved through chemical coatings of this glass have changed performance for the better in ways that defy written description. Much of this technology is proprietary and doesn’t get discussed by company representatives for competitive reasons, but a user need only look through a new Leupold and a vintage model side by side in low light conditions to be amazed.
For big game hunters, time in the field finding, moving into and holding position may take weeks, but all of that typically focuses on the minutes before and after sunset and sunrise. In most whitetail situations, it’s when everything that’s going to happen happens. Leupold’s optics improve their users’ view of what is happening dramatically, in ways and degrees that vastly improve a hunter’s chance to participate. In Mississippi, legal shooting hours for resident game, meaning anything that doesn’t migrate, are one half hour before sunrise until one half hour after sunset. At this latitude, for example, when the whitetail rut kicks in as much as it does so, sunsets will be occurring in the neighborhood of 5 p.m. On a day when the sun sets precisely at 5, legal shooting hours end precisely at 5:30. That doesn’t mean a hunter can see to safely and effectively shoot at that time though. Deep darkness comes early in the woods, and on any day that is overcast. In the dim light, Leupold truly shines. Classic scopes have always been a vast improvement over iron sights in low light, but that improvement has grown notably since the industry was born. It’s something hunters have to see to believe.
Owners of classic, vintage models of rifles are often classic, vintage models of hunters themselves, carrying all the attendant wear, tear and decline enjoyed by anyone fortunate enough to reach older age. They owe themself the chance to see what they may have been missing.
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