Were they made in a matte finish as well as glossy? Anyone know what the eye relief was on them? When did Leupold quit making them?

I would think the M8 3X would be quite useful for Africa, correct? Talking Cape Buff.

I would love to find a couple of them, if fairly reasonable.

264magnum uses the 3X in Africa. He and I have traded 3Xs previously.

They reintroduced them maybe 10 years ago in matte finish, not sure how long they were on the market with the reintroduction, but yes both gloss and matte are out there.

The "reintroduction" was actually an FX, with click adjustments, and yes, they did come in both gloss and matte. But they're far rarer than the M8 version, and tend to be more expensive.

I have a FX-2 Big Bore 3x with the heavy duplex on my Ruger RSI 308. Plenty of eye relief and has the best resolution of all my scopes. I can't about cape buffalo.

I had an M8 3X. Sent it to Leupold with instructions to change the reticle to a Heavy Duplex. They called me and told me my old scope, which could have been an M7, qualifies for an exchange to a 3X Big Bore. It sits on my .280. Like it better than either of my FX2, 4X scopes. E

I have a Big Bore 3x on my Ruger RSI 275 Rigby. That scope has enough eye relief on that hard-to-fit rifle. I could have mounted it with two regular rings but I used an offset ring in the rear just to have the mount point a little further back on the tube. I saw somewhere that the eye relief was listed as 3.9" / 100mm while I've seen some hunters guesstimating it was 3.5" / 90mm. One feature of the FX-II Big Bore 3x from their custom shop was that it was a few millimeters longer so it was easy to mount on larger receivers with bigger ejection ports that were often used on African hunting rifles. For an apples-to-oranges comparison, the current 2.5x20 is 8" long while the Big Bore was 10".

The earliest mention I've seen of the 3x20 Big Bore was around 2011. They stopped producing them in 2018. My FX-II is matte. Most of the earlier M8 models that I've seen have been glossy.

Might also mention the 3x Big Bores has multi-coated lenses--and the M8s did not.

But with a 3x20 that doesn't make much difference....

Found an old 3x Leupold and put it on my 30-30 Glenfield a while back. It's worked out real well. Seems to me that I had it on my 375 H&H Number One for a while as well.





A buddy laughed when he saw it, and calls it my "mag light" scope.

Guy

Love the straight tubes on lever guns and also the short tube levers.

The Leupold M8 3X scopes were made in both matte and glossy finishes. The eye relief can vary, but typically falls in the range of 3 to 4 inches. It's best to check the specs or reach out to Leupold for precise details on the specific model you're interested in.