Leupold's last great hope....(Tactical market)???

[SHIVAN]

Its understandable why some people hate to see others eat a filet mignon when they decided to a sloppy joe, because after all in theory they both get the job done...right?

Again, not talking about Leupold's massive overall empire...just that wee little piece called the "tactical" segment....please leave out the discussion about the various good non tactical leupold stuff you own. Thanks

I'm sure Uncle Sugar, and various LE agencies, had the pick of the litter for various optics purchases, and you still see quite a lot of 3.5-10 LR/T, Mark 4 10x, MR/T aka TS-30, etc on professional rifles. There always seems to be a disconnect with the latest trending on internet forums, and what you see on History Channel showing up @ the annual Ft. Benning International Sniper competition. Sure you see some teams with S&B optics, but my eye picks up more than a lion's share of Leupold.

I think S&B, USO, et al are wagging the dog with their extended and ever changing offerings. Convincing professional shooters that they need to have X features, and if they don't have X features, they are sub-standard. This applies to their competition with all other manufacturers, not just Leupold.

So Leupold is following suit and making optics to compete and fit specific requests. That's great and will augment their overall success within their vast empire optics to fill needs of a wider range of hunters, professionals/gov't shooters, bird watchers, golfers, etc.

"Last great hope"? Hardly.

[SHIVAN]

Oddly enough, I just have these in my photobucket account because they were good hi-res pics, I have a couple others with NF and S&B scopes too. All perfectly adequate optics for trained professional shooters, despite the marketing that you have to have zero stops and a FFP reticle in order to make kills at distance.

[ALCOAR]

Those are some really fantastic shots...some of the best military in action shots Ive seen in some time

I am certainly not trying to bust your balls as this seems to be a back and forth thing...I just think you are taking this thing personally and viewing my topic in a much broader context than what I intended it to be viewed in.

Statements like despite having z stops, High speed turrets, FFP, etc.,.. the Leupold is essentially a NF, USO, or SB minus all the marketing and internet cool guy thing, are just plainly wrong. This is just not the case, those three optic companies and their LE/Mil optics with the most cutting edge technology and building methods are significantly better in the actual field than a yesteryear MK 4.

No doubt about it, a MK4 is a nice optic that served well in the past and sure it would serve well in the future, however its just not up to the same level as the current offerings from NF, USO, and SB. So nobody every said that the MK4 in the past or the few still being culled out in the inventory are beaters or didn't do a good job.

I can only really speak as to what NSW currently uses and that is almost if not all NF mixing it b/t both NXS Compacts, and the NXS 3.5 w. F1. They have not used MK4's as the standard in some time.

[SHIVAN]

...the Leupold is essentially a NF, USO, or SB minus all the marketing and internet cool guy thing, are just plainly wrong.

Never my claim. RIF.

The context in which that was initially opened up, was that there were 200 million sportsmen who would never ever need such things, and for which Leupold had optics to cover that, and have for decades. That would include optics on fighting weapons, worldwide, in the military and various LE agencies.

The fact is the subset of people who actually need those features is pretty small, and pretty finite. I qualified it exactly in that way and made no assertion that Leupold's without those features were the same as NF, S&B or USO with them.

As I said, somewhere along the way the optics company started wagging the dog a bit.