To answer my own Q, just spoke with Burris CS - said not shipping until end of February. To be fair to the lashing I gave MDT earlier today, it doesn't matter if I love the product (XTR3) - they dried up the market for XTR3's in Nov, missed the Xmas season, and will have had a ~4 month product gap by the time these hit dealers. Management is so poor you have to wonder how they stay in business.
I wonder what happened to sitting on the shelf ready to ship? I was bummed when I sent my check, thinking that waiting for my check to clear was going to really slow my scope delivery down, but I guess not.
I also will not be kind if this product is not perfect. That's the problem with higher price point, I expect more for my money. I overlooked things I didn't like on the xtrii and xtr3 because I figured for the price I paid I could live with it, but once you go north of $2k I expect more.