RE: Which of these three scopes would you choose?
Here' s the scoop. These boards are all full of people that have quite a bit of shooting experience. Almost all of us have owned a scope that has failed. If you haven' t - you probably will.
I' ve always been a Leupold fan, still am. However, I' ve broken 2 of them in the last week. One was used pretty heavily for quite a few years hunting. The other was a BRAND NEW Vari X III 1.75x6. Yep $382, and it lasted less than 20 shots on a .45-70. That is by far the quickest failure I' ve ever seen. It never did zero in. I turned the windage click about 20 times and it didn' t even move. The Verticle adjustment caused it to go down and to the right. All in all, not happy with this purchase. However, I am not about to tell you that you shouldn' t buy a Leupold because this one busted. It can happen to ANY of them!
I thin k the same thing goes with Zeiss. I have one on a .270 that has had several hundred rounds of ammo though it. No problems yet!
BTW, $500 is a complete rip off for a 3x9 Conquest. I paid $389 for mine.