Shepherd Scopes

Does anyone here own or have field experience with a Shepherd brand scope? Experience related Pro's and Con's are appreciated. I own other brands, some more $, some less $. The mechanics of their scopes interests me.

A friend I shoot with a lot has had several in different caliber calibrations and they are of decent quality typical for their price range. They seem to do what they are supposed to do in a mid-range hunting context and he used them to make quite a few decent shots, but they will typically be an approximation.

By 'approximation', I mean that even if the trajectory matches your load relatively closely, there will usually be some small amount of error because every bullet will not share the same ballistic coefficient, and therefore lose velocity at varying rates. The reticle cannot match EVERY load, even if muzzle velocities are similar. As velocity is lost, drop increases and if the rate of loss differs, drop differs, and usually diverges pretty far as range increases. It might be good at 200, 300 and 400 yards, but begin to diverge at 500, 600 and further. The good news is that even this small amount of error is still usually close enough to put deer in the freezer at typical hunting distances.

If your load, by some astronomically lucky twist of fate, matches exactly, you'll be in good shape out to 600 yards or so. Beyond that, atmospheric effects will change the trajectory of most loads enough to create excess error. This factor is independent of scope quality or reticle engineering, so even the nicest scope with the most precisely made bullet drop reticle is subject to increasing error as distances increase. David Tubb's D-Tac reticle is the only one I am aware of that properly addressed this issue.

We have abandoned bullet drop compensation ("BDC") reticles for any distances beyond about 600 yards, and you'll notice most scopes that offer BDC reticles stop at 500-600 yards for the same reason. Simply put, too many variables can stack up either way to make your impact point consistent and shots will be lost.

As temperatures, barometric pressures and altitudes change, drag functions vary and thus bullet drop is modified. At 1,000 yards, a 20o change in ambient temperature will often produce over a foot of difference in drop in the average hunting load. If we combine this temperature change with an altitude change or barometric pressure change, the differences can become more drastic yet. If we already have a little bit of trajectory error, then that too is amplified. I realize 1k is further than we would shoot a game animal, but this difference will be apparent at closer ranges too, albeit to a lesser degree.

Another source of 'approximation' is animal size vs the reticle features. If a trophy buck fits the 500 yard circle and his brisket is 18" and he IS at 500 yards, then a lesser buck with a 16" brisket fits the same circle, he will be closer than you think. The results with ANY ranging reticle is limited purely by the shooter's knowledge of target size. Again though, if we are talking about normal hunting ranges, these ranging circles will beat a wild ass guess every time, and most hunters think they are shooting a lot further than they really are. I have had people tell me they aimed a foot over an animal at 500 yards with their 100 yard zero when the math indicates the animal could not have been any more than about 300 for an 18" holdover ("a foot over" plus 6" down into the animal's body).

TY for the response!