I had a decent scope go bad on me last year (wasn't a Swaro), and it went bad slowly. My groups started opening up, even with loads that had worked nicely in that rifle. It was a relatively new rifle, and I somehow ignored the fact that it had been shooting quite well with certain loads, so I started trying to develop new loads. That didn't work too well, but I just kept loading and shooting. I burned up a lot of several powders and boxes of bullets and primers, and vast quantities of bore cleaner and patches and I got nowhere. I would not even consider that the scope could be bad. I switched out the stock and that didn't help. Then one day I had to just see if maybe the scope was bad, so I swapped it out with an old Bushnell I had that I knew was still good. The rifle, with several loads started shooting great. Geez...the scope was bad. Bottom line...just go ahead and swap out the scope and you can eliminate one significant variable (or solve your problem). Don't be like me and not want to swap them out because it's a lot of trouble and a pain in the tail. Just do it.
