I'm amazed at the Leupold horror stories. I have used Leupold scopes, in particular the 1.5-5X Vari-X III for years with never a bobble. Does anyone know what the nature of the problem was? Saying the scope "fell to pieces" is not very informative.

My objection to European scopes in general is best illustrated here: http://www.egun.de/market/item.php?id=2654715

The scope mounted on the rifle completely overpowers it, and if that were not enough, there is an even larger scope waiting in the wings. I have no idea what the eye relief of these behemoths might be, but the way they are mounted they are almost guaranteed to come into contact with the shooter's forehead.

My .458 Winchester Magnum and .450 Watts bolt guns both have Lyman Alaskans mounted, and my .577 bolt gun has a 2 1/2X Noske: nothing like 1930's technology. What those two scopes have in common with their contemporary Zeiss Zielklein, other than the 22mm diameter bodies, is their extreme light weight (8 oz. in the case of the Noske and the Alaskan, and 10 oz. for the Zielklein), which offers the least resistance to heavy recoil. A scope like those pictured in the eGun auction represents an amount of weight (mass) which is guaranteed to put a terrific strain on the mounts used in combination with rifles and cartridges generating significant recoil.

Would the posters with bad experiences with Leupold scopes please give precise descriptions of what went wrong and what the circumstances were?