Nice to have you on the site.
It sounds like I was mistaken & I apologize for that. It is just your first choice of thread to post in kind of sounded a bit like some of the professional posters that get paid to said both sides of things under different handles on various forums.
If you hang out on the forums here for awhile, you'll probably change your opinion on scopes. While Leupold does make some nice scopes and are very well regarded in the hunting world, in the world of civilian target Precision or Tactical shooting, they are not used as much.
Some of the more prominent names would be for example:
Schmidt & Bender
Nightforce
US Optics
TT
Zero Compromise Optics (whenever they get their scopes finished).
Steiner
Plus lots of new upcoming and value driven companies, each with their own advantages and disadvantages
Like Vortex and others.
Texas is actually one of the best places to buy and own guns. (some other states are really good also)
However it's not one of the best places to shoot them. Since pretty much all the land is privately owned and the little state land is pretty controlled, it's not like up in big sparely populated wide open states north of us where you regularly see pictures on the site here of people basically shooting in the mountains & plains on these wide open beautiful stretches of public land.
If you are going to be heading to the Dallas Safari Club show in January, let me know and I'll try to meet you there.
Or come visit some of the gun stores we have here to see the pretty huge variety of stuff.
Dear W54/XM-388, it's OK. Actually you are right - if you want to be safe you should stay alert and vigilant.
I was afraid that you will report me and I may be banned from Snipershide :-(
Thank you for your invitation. If I go to USA it will be Shot Show. Hope to get there and I'm sure we can have some beer or something stronger together ;-)
If you come to Russia (which is unfortunately much less probable :-( I will gladly meet you.
Most part of the Leupold scopes I sold went to hunters (VX-1, VX-2, VX-3, VX-R series). The last time I sold Mark IV it was 2017. And it was imported to Russia before it attacked Ukraine.
S&B and Kahles makes good scopes but Leupold is more affordable. S&B is too expensive for me personally.
Nightforce lenses are more dark IMHO. Besides Nightforce is assembled in Japan (as far as I know), and Leupold always was "proudly made in USA" for me. Maybe I am wrong, but each man has right to have and use his illusions
Leupold was and is a kind of American legend for me.
US Optics is great, but it was never imported to Russia legally and actually I'm happy that it is almost unavailable in Russia. Hunters do not need it, and it is too expensive for Russian special forces. And I am satisfied with this.
Steiner is great, but similar to US Optics fortunately they never delivered their tactical scopes to Russia. I sold Steiner binoculars and I tested their hunting riflescopes.
I have zero experience with Vortex, but my customers tell me their scopes are fine and equal to Leupold's.
TT and Zero Compromise Optics - unfortunately I know nothing of them.
Maybe nowdays there is a perfect situation with optics (and weapons) in rather aggressive Russia - a hunter may buy a scope for his purposes, but there are no imported tactical scopes for really precision shooting widely available in Russia now. I'm not considering March scopes suitable for military purposes
Let ITAR rule! And let Russians engineer their own optics like
http://nightvision.ru/en/catalog/4 Kind regards
V