Interesting article on BSA and Hi-Lux Scope
 

Ive always regarded BSA and Hi-Lux as somewhat K-Mart Blue Light special scopes but this one gun writer seems to have nothing but praise for them.

The things that make you go HMMMMMM


http://www.namlhunt.com/mlhunt9.html

No thanks! In my younger days I thought I was being practical and prudent. I settled for Tasco's and Simmons, the Tasco did last about 4 years before failure, the Simmons failed me on a hunt in it's 3rd. year! I'd put the Hi Lux and BSA in the same category as the Trashco and SIMMONS, JUNK! With the price of good glass and coatings, they CANNOT POSSIBLY put together a good scope for the price they sell for!
I spend too much time and money hunting to go cheap on the scopes!

True dat!!!

I have a real problem with this part of his story.

First the gentleman says

"We began preparing for the hunt well in advance, deciding which pieces of equipment to take along and, most importantly, sighting in our muzzleloaders"

Then he states the following

"Jim's CVA Optima rifle was ready to go, as we had just completed our tests on it with the Hi-Lux scope. However, we needed to sight in the CVA Accura with its Nikon Monarch scope. Jim used this scope on his Ibex hunt in 2010 and just recently mounted it on the Accura. After ten rounds with 100 grains of Blackhorn 209 and the 260 gr. Scorpion PT Gold bullets, the elevation adjustments on the scope failed. The elevation knob turned, but nothing happened inside the scope. Talk about bad luck, with less than five days before leaving for Texas and we experience scope failure. "

5 DAYS BEFORE LEAVING FOR TEXAS? "THATS WELL IN ADVANCE"??????

I don't know about you guys but if I am going on a out of state hunt..one that I have planned for weeks/months in advance I am darn sure my equipment is dialed in weeks/months before the hunt.

I read most of the members post on here and the great majority of the regular posters that have their act together have the kits together well in advance to hunting season. With only a bit of fine tuning or zero conformation right before the season. A great deal of the members have back up equipment dialed in ..in the event of a catastropic failure.

So this scope gets pulled off a gun he has not hunted with since 2010 on a Ibex hunt. What sort of conditions was the gun hunted with during that time? How was it transported after the hunt? How was it stored? Was it bumped hard during transportation or storage?

It seems like to me that someone is taking a stab at Nikon and trying to promote BSA and Hi-lux to me.

i do know of one dealer that sells BSA scopes. Quite frankly he is in it for the money and could care less for the customers but they are high profit for him. He says he can't make but $10 on a $400 Leupold Scope because everyone watches the Online Cost of those but on BSA scopes they are so cheap no one watches the price on those. He says if they are cheap enough they buy them.

He also has a very high return rate on them. No problem he says. He just swaps them out and gets instant credit with his distributor. He sells as many as 10 a weekend.

Not a great way to do bussiness but it is one way to make a buck.

The older Japan manufactured Tasco scopes were excellent optics.

Sounds about right. The larger companies (not naming any names here) have some pretty complex corporate/distributor networks and it can make it hard to do business. But I could go to a half a dozen distributors within the hour and have a box of cheap BSA scopes shipped to my doorstep on Monday morning.

People buy cheap stuff all the time, which is good if you're a seller just looking to make money, but I don't understand the point if you can't stand behind the product you sell. If I experience a high return rate on any product, that means customers are unhappy, and I won't continue to stock it. There's a certain amount of integrity that I believe is essential to customer satisfaction, and if customers aren't happy, I'm not happy.

That's why you won't see BSA optics anywhere on my website.

I did speak with one of the guys at Hi-Lux when I was out at SHOT. Nothing really jumped out at me as excellent (then again I didn't spend much time tinkering with scopes at their booth). But I did like the idea behind their USMC sniper scope reproductions. I think it's a cool product.

There were tons of optics companies out there that claimed to own their own factory and manufacture their own products. So out of three booths with identical optics with different markings, which one is telling the truth? Probably none of them. The Chinese are making rifle scopes in 2014 like they were making everything else in Walmart during the early 2000s.

And 5 days being "well in advance?" :hit:

+1. And just about everything I see currently coming out of Japan is closer to European-built than anything else, at least in my opinion.