Richie D. thanks for you response.  I thought so too, so I created a test class using 3 different users in the heirarchy.  The test class returns 8710 records for all 3 users.  I created a report with identical criteria, it returned 8710, 5043, and 197 records when using the heirarchy.  

public with sharing class TESTHierarchy {
 public TESTHierarchy()
 {
  List<Opportunity> oList = new List<Opportunity>();
  System.debug('Current User: ' + UserInfo.getUserName()); 
  System.debug('Current Profile: ' + UserInfo.getProfileId());		
  for (Opportunity o: [Select id from Opportunity where Owner.IsActive = true 
    and isDeleted=false and calendar_year(closeDate)>2010])
    {oList.add(o);}
  system.debug(oList.size());
 }	

 public static testmethod void TestH1()
 {
  User tUser1 = [Select id from User where id = '00530000000cDFi' limit 1];
  system.runAs(tUser1) {TESTHierarchy t1 = new TESTHierarchy();} 
 } 
    
 public static testmethod void TestH2()
 {
  User tUser2 = [Select id from User where id = '00530000000dV6y' limit 1];
  system.runAs(tUser2) {TESTHierarchy t1 = new TESTHierarchy();} 
 }    
    
 public static testmethod void TestH3()
 {
  User tUser3 = [Select id from User where id = '00530000000cDE0' limit 1];
  system.runAs(tUser3){TESTHierarchy t1 = new TESTHierarchy();} 
 }
}