icebear
Sako-addicted
The same is true in photography. Outside the studio, fixed-focal-length lenses are an endangered species, except for special-purpose lenses. They have pretty much gone the way of Kodachrome. (I still have my Nikon F and lenses to go with it, but I'm a dinosaur.) The move to zooms is partially because the quality of zoom lenses has increased so much in the past 30 years or so. This is also the case with scopes; back in the day people had real worries that variable scopes would break or lose their seal and ruin a hunt. These days, that's not an issue if you have a high-quality variable. But for most shooting, most of the time, most shooters hardly ever touch the power ring. Personally, I can go either way. I'm happy to put a fixed power scope on a rifle if it's appropriate, but I'm not going to turn down a Meopta 3-12x for $500 either.