The sun is just peeking over the eastern horizon when the buck appears. You've been waiting for him for more than an hour, and you're ready. You raise the rifle and look through the riflescope, and see...only haze. Something is wrong with your scope, and the buck slips away through the trees.

The truth of the matter is that this kind of optical damage doesn't happen very often. Today's riflescopes are designed to take a reasonable amount of rough treatment. This doesn't mean you can throw your riflescope in the bottom of the closet where it gets kicked around with your boots. But normal use, such as transporting your hunting rifle in the trunk of your car or hiking up and down mountains with it, should cause no problems with your riflescope.

Basic riflescope care is really pretty simple, according to C. "Skin" Brown, vice president of sales for Simmons Sporting Goods. "The scope needs to be stored in a dry area, so you don't have any possibility of rusting," he says. "I would put a light coating of either a gun oil or WD-40 or something like that on it. The biggest thing you have to do is keep the dust off the lenses."

In most instances, manufacturers supply covers for both eyepiece and objective lenses. If your riflescope arrives without covers purchase a set. A number of companies make lens covers to fit every available riflescope. The protection they provide will prevent all manner of dirt and dust from collecting on the lenses, and help keep foreign matter from producing scratches.

"There's magnesium fluoride on the lenses, which scratches easily," Brown says. "This is the light-gathering substance on the surface of the glass." If, despite your precautions the lenses pick up dust and dirt, use a soft cotton cloth such as an old diaper or a piece of lens tissue to clean them. Do not use a paper towel; paper products contain wood fibers, which can scratch sensitive lenses.

"The best thing is to lightly dampen the cloth and gently run it in a circular motion over the lens," Brown says. "Then take a fully dry section of the cloth, and in a circular motion dry it completely. The magnesium fluoride is spun on so that it fits the grooves of the lenses when they are ground, and if you wipe or rub across the lens, it seems to scratch more easily."

He recommends using camera-lens cleaner to dampen the cloth, but advises against commercial glass cleaners such as Windex. "But unless you really put a fingerprint on it, just a cloth dampened with a little water is enough," he says.

If you drop your riflescope, you may damage it. This is the most common cause of riflescope damage. "The most obvious need for care is in the handling of the rifle, to keep it from being dramatically bumped or shocked," he says. "That can knock the scope off-center."

While this may not damage the riflescope, it can severely affect the accuracy of the rifle until you get it sighted in again. "You can bring it back to center all right," Brown says. "It's just that you knock off the kimballing, the thing that holds the windage and elevation on the crosshairs in place. Then you have to readjust it."

The most common reasons you might have to send a riflescope to be repaired are improper mounting or a parallax problem within the riflescope. "If it will not sight in, or it will not zero, it's usually a problem in the parallax," Brown says. "The best way to put it is to say that it's an optical illusion. The crosshairs are actually moving within the product, and it gives you a distorted view."

As far as mounting is concerned, he says, you may get the riflescope in the mounts improperly, or get it canted slightly in one way or another. "Then you don't have enough windage and elevation movement to zero it. Things like that are usually why we get riflescopes returned. Very rarely do we get one for fogging any more. They're filled with nitrogen, which keeps them from fogging inside under adverse weather conditions. But if there's a tiny leak and they lose their nitrogen, then they will fog. Most of these problems can be adjusted within just a few minutes."

This brings up a very important rule: Never, never, attempt to open the housing of a riflescope (or any other piece of optical equipment). The minute you break the seal the nitrogen inside escapes. Not only does this further damage the piece of equipment, it voids your warranty. If you think you have a problem with your product, send it back to the manufacturer. The service department there has the necessary equipment to put nitrogen back in the riflescope once it has been repaired.

"But most riflescopes that come back to us have nothing wrong with them," Brown says. "It's just that the person who bought it did not get it zeroed through improper mounting, or because it just didn't fit the gun they bought it for."

What if you're out hunting and you drop your rifle in the swamp so that the riflescope is caked with mud? Wash it off with plain water, Brown says. "It's waterproof. You can submerge it. A lot of scopes, including ours and Leupold's, are tested for leaks by submerging them. Submerging it will float away the dirt, rather than you scrubbing it off."

There's one other "don't": Don't ever carry your rifle by the riflescope. Some friends of mine learned this the hard way on an African safari. One loaned his .375 H&H Magnum to the other one to shoot a Cape buffalo. The hunter carried the rifle by the scope will doing a long, involved stalk. When he fired he made a bad shot. He hit the buffalo but didn't knock it down and it got away. A subsequent session on the firing range revealed that the riflescope had turned slightly in the mounts and been knocked askew. The hunter still had to pay $5,000 for the animal, so it was one heck of an expensive mistake.

The bottom line is that it's very uncommon for a riflescope to be damaged by normal use. If you leave it leaning against the bumper of a truck and the truck backs over it, then you have a problem. But for the most part, with a little common sense and careful handling, the riflescope you buy today should last you a lifetime.