I've had at least a dozen Leupolds over the years, but I'm not dialing with them for the most part. I've only had one failure and that with a 2.5-8x32 VX3 handgun scope that I had on a .260 Remington Encore barrel. I purchased it new with the new barrel and used it for load development and it worked great. Adjustments were spot on, held zero perfectly. Did a final check before the Minnesota deer season in 2010 on a Wednesday. Right where I wanted it - 2.5" high at 100 yards. Five shots touching. Saturday morning I took it to the deer blind, cased, just as I left it after Wednesday. A nice 8 point wandered out at 150 yards. Rock solid rest. Put the crosshair in the armpit and squeezed off. CRACK! The buck dropped like a stone. I reloaded and watched, as normal. He got back up about 5 seconds later, shaking his head, missing part of an antler. I took another shot. Nothing. He took off. I left the blind and went to find my chunk of antler. Immediately packed up and went to the gun range. Impacts were all over the place. It barely kept 5 shots on a 36"x36" target. I took the scope off and sent it back to Leupold. They said a spring broke inside. They said they fixed it, purged the internals, and sent it back to me. I mounted it back on the gun and went to bore sight it in my shop. I started to twist off the elevation adjustment cap and the whole damn turret came off and I was looking at the inside of the scope. WTH. I called Leupold and told them what happened. "Send it back. We will make it right." And they did. I've been using that scope for over a decade now on the .260 Rem barrel or the .357 Max barrel. Perfect tracking and holds zero perfectly. But it makes me trust Leupold a little bit less. The only scope I've dialed with is a Leupold VX-II that I had them put an M1 elevation turret on, mounted on a Ruger M77 MkII .260 Remington. That thing tracks up and down like it's on greased rails. Always returns to zero and adjusts where it should.
