Only mixed reviews I have seen concerning Leupold scopes have been the three hundred million posts comparing them with Zeiss Conquests. In these posts their optics were brought into question. I only remember one reply where they had a problem with the scopes reliability. I have used and abused Leupolds for many years on all sorts of rifles and never had one fail to recoil and I don' t think one should expect any quality scope to have a problem with recoil. Saying all that the Rifleman is a clone of the old VAri-x II and should have no problem handling any recoil whatsoever short of maybe a 458 lott ... While not great optically it will prove to be one tough mother.