Leupold Mark 4HD -The Most Needed Scope of the Time
This is gonna be short. Leupold launched the Mark 4HD; the scope most needed by the long range community in general! Now, it's not the whiz bang electronic do it all and tie your shoes model you've been seeing pushed by all those used car salesmen at your local shop, BUT it is the scope you need if you don't want to be held back.
I should probably admit that I still own a Mark 4 4.5-14 with a TMR reticle. Yes, I own the original gangster of the long range scopes. It doesn't even have a zero stop. But it works and it works really well because I have the skills and knowledge to use it well. --You can't buy precision and accuracy, you have to learn it. That's a real thing for people who think you can buy your way into this art.
However, YOU CAN BUY A SCOPE THAT WON"T HOLD BACK YOUR LEARNING. And, now you can do it for $1500USD which is pretty amazing even for you cheapskates out there. lol You know who you are. ...A full thousand dollars less than the Mark 5 HD which I absolutely love but I don't always need a Mark 5HD. For example, the school's rental rifles don't need Mark 5HDs when the Mark4HD will do the same thing. My students will be able to shoot 2000 plus meters/yards or bug hole groups at 100 meters/yards with this scope because it has 34 mils of elevation adjustment, high quality glass, etc..
The Leupold Mark 4HD scope has finally done something that Leupold was dumb not to do in the first place and that is to use the tried and true 35mm scope tube! It has been a total pain in everyones' posteriors to be searching for 35mm rings and unimounts to make a 35mm tube work. They're usually much more expensive to mount too. You can get many more options for 34mm tubes such as Warne Scope Mounts general mounting systems.
Which brings me to another point about mounting scopes. DON'T MOUNT YOUR LONG RANGE SCOPES FLAT!!!! OH my gosh, when I see a spicy picture of a beautiful long range rifle and the scope is mounted I want to puke. I want to say, what were you thinking when you bastardized this machine?!?!?!? Why would you not want to utilize all of that beautiful elevation travel and work in the best area of the scope at long range instead of at short ranges. --If you want to know more about what I am talking about you should come to our firearms training courses where we go to great lengths to help you understand what I mean here.
Basically, you need 40 or even better 60moa of slant between your rifle and the scope to get use out of all 120MOA/34MILs of elevation adjustment from this scope. Trust me on this and when you go shooting with your buddies and they run out of adjustment at 800 yards and you're reaching out to a mile you'll thank me...you'll see the light. Speaking of light, I love that this scope comes with an illuminated PR1 Mil reticle. So much can be done with this reticle without it being overwhelming to the new shooter or advanced shooter. It has so much holdover and windage you could shoot targets past a kilometer with a 6.5 Creedmoor just using holdover.
FULL DISCLOSURE There are a couple of foobars in the Mark 4HD lineup.
I don't like seeing scopes without parallax adjustment and illumination options in all their options and unfortunately Leupold cheaped out on a couple of their scopes in this lineup. Notably the 5-25 option and the 2-10 options are missing some key features that people would have liked. The scope turrets lack rev indicators but tha doesn't surprise me and most shooters won't notice or know what they are anyways. Which is why we will be cherry picking the best options out of the Mark4HD lineup to sell and not others. FYI: We will also be adding these particular scopes to our course rental guns in case you are interested in trying one out on a course.
Even with a couple of hiccups in the Mark 4HD lineup it's certainly worth considering if you don't want to drop $2500. or more on another scope with less features.