Winchester is a good (or bad) rifle! Bushnell is a good (or bad) riflescope!

I took retirement from my firm to teach statistics to bright young students at a large State University (East of the Mississippi River). For some class discussion I have prepared notes quantifying “absolutely certain” statements about products made both on this site and on a certain popular optics site. No identities were used, nor was any description of any of the websites or products involved, as far as the classes knew it could have been statements about shoes, tires, or sunglasses.

I am a hunter and shooter. I support our Second Amendment rights and am an NRA Life Member.

It has been surprising how many “Me and my buddy had one once” comments were made that end with a conclusion that all similar products are either good or bad. Many of these statements were made by some self proclaimed expert (reviewer) that had seen only one example of a product when they pronounced judgment on entire product lines.

This is similar to person “XY” who finds a penny on the sidewalk in Philadelphia, and then finds another one on the sidewalk in the next block. XY then deduces that there is a penny on the sidewalk of every block in every city on Earth. As XY is “absolutely certain” of this fact, XY now claims to be expert in all matters of currency, sidewalks, and cities.

This has been fun talking about hunting and shooting. There are more reasonable guys on here than there are guys that are full of beans, but I doubt that I will stop by to chat as often.

Winchester is good.

Big Uncle,

We need more guys like you to balance out all of the BS.

Also, we need more "regular" guys, who are not full of themselves !

Everyone just gives their opinions. Sometimes it gets out of hand. That's when the fun starts. If we all agreed on every single thing, this place would be even more boring. Don't be so thinned skin and take it all with a grain of salt. Would you rather someone not give their opinion??? We all have a right to our opinion, no matter how wrong we may be.

In the recent "Remingtom Is Going To Die" thread, I got in to some PM's with a fellow member. He couldn't stand that I thought it was all funny. When I said I had a new Remington 700, he kept referring to me as a Remchester fan. I couldn't make him understand, that I like them all.

If somone is arguing their opinion, it is unfair to ask them to stop. If they are not breaking any rules, just chime in how you feel and give your 2 cents.

Just like it would be unfair for me to ask you to stop whining. You have the right to whine, no matter how silly it seems to me.

As a person who engineers products and controls manufacturing processes and studies the statics and out of box fairlures, I have to say your correct.

I work in the optics field, and no two pieces are equal. They just have to meet a specification that I and a vendor comes up with.

Most people do not understand this. We have one customer that got two bad pieces, and all the sudden they yell that our stuff sucks. Then we have to go thru this long process of explaining yields, and QA. Where the other customer says we are the best thing since sliced bread. Customer two buys litterly thousands of pieces. Customer one buys handful.

Same here. Problem is scopes and guns are quite expensive. We as a consumer get one bad product, all the sudden we are quite hesitate to purchase another no matter how many people love them. Because getting permission from big mama to get an 800 dollar scope can be quite a feat. So, you really can't blame the folks on here that says, "my buddy and I", etc.

Seriously? someone actually PM'd you over it??

Yep!

There are good and bad products in all companies. Its funny how someone can get one bad product, or hear of a friend- of a friend -of a friend that got something bad and thats it! XY is junk!
Granted, for the most part, "you get what you pay for!" Especially in the field of "glass," good lens alone costs more than some complete scopes do. However in guns, most of todays guns "off the shelf," shoot pretty decent, and better than the average Joe can shoot to begin with!
To me there are about 4 classes of products, cheap stuff that most of the time doesn't hold up well, theres good value, theres really good value, then theres "over kill" that is way more costly than will ever be needed, or that 95% of the shooters will never be able to be good enough to utilize.
I'd say, get the best "value that you can afford!" With the time, money and effort that I put into hunting, its not worth gambling the chance of a lifetime to cheap stuff! But at the other end of the spectrum, its like the guy that shows up at #1 tee box with 5000$$$ clubs and gets the tar beat out out of him by a guy with a used mix-n-match set of clubs!

It would be nice to have enough money to have tried them all out and be so knowledgeable on all the products out there. I've had Remingtons and Winchesters and they all were decent rifles. But I couldn't tell you how a new one shot in the last 10 years. Maybe things have changed. But we have entered the mass production era on everything and it all goes to the cheapest bidder unless you start talking custom products. So I'm sure there's a lot more of the so called lemons out there than there was in the past. But there's been a lot of improvements in rifle company's too.

I'd hate to have be someone starting out in todays shooting world with all the options out there and not have a clue where to start. Not everyone is going to be able to afford to put $2000.00 into a starter rifle set up and expect superior quality just a statement not a fact. And you can't edge out personal preference and rifle design in itself. Some people just don't like certain rifle designs or actions. Bells n Whistles can sure deplete your pocket book fast. Not to mention having any gunsmithing work done because the rifle isn't quite what you wanted in the first place.

I would suggest to all young or new shooters to enroll in some local shooting club or program and politely ask if you can shoot someones rifle a few times just to find out what kind of rifle or product you like before spending all that money and being disappointed. I've been disappointed a few times after coming home from the gun shop but they made good trade guns later on.

I bought Bushnell scope about 10 yrs. ago,mounted it on my marlin 336 and never used the gun until a month ago.3 boxes of ammo later and $90 lighter in my wallet the gun still wasn't on paper.
This is the 2nd bad Buhnell scope I had,niether of which were highend Bushnells.
The reason I bought another one after the 1st bad one was because of their excellent customer service. They repaired both scopes free,only had to pay the shipping.
My point here is I will give a product a second chance if the company does the right thing by me if i have a problem.
If I'm not satisfied with the service provided, if I have an issue, then I'll never buy the product again.

While out of the 4 brands of scopes I've owned over the years Bushnells were the only ones I had a problem with, they rectified the problem with minimual cost to me.So I'll continue to patronize their product.

Agreed Jerry,

Not to make this a scope topic but your right in less than 8 years I've had three Leupold's go down and they had no problem replacing them all. One was a brand new scope straight from the factory. It happens.