For the longest time no matter who the manufacturer, scopes, binoculars and range finders have looked and functioned much the same. That is until just a couple of years ago when Leupold broke out of the mold and away from the pack (to use a few clichés).

The first major innovation that caught my eye was Leupold's RX Range Finders, far and away the most significant advancement in rangefinder technology since their invention. Currently no other manufacturers' range finders come close, but that's covered in another of our field tests. I'm supposed to be talking about the VX-L rifle scope, so let's get started.

The first thing you notice about the VX-L scope is the strange looking objective lens, which is the big lens on the muzzle end of the scope. Instead of being round, like other scopes, it has a crescent shape removed from the lower radius which certainly gives it a unique look. The art critic would ask "is this for form or function"?

Leupold would answer "it is for function". But one has to ask where did this idea come from? Here is how I imagine it happened.

The design team at Leupold love to hunt. But by the time they get out of the office it's already getting dark. So they like to hang the biggest objective lens scope on their rifles that they can, to get best low light performance possible. Of course the larger than normal objective lens means the traditional scope has to be mounted higher above the rifle barrel, which means it's harder to get a good "cheek weld" on the stock and still be able to see thru the scope. In addition the rifle no longer fits in the soft case, and the traditional, large scope catches on all kinds of limbs as the guys stalk through the brush. Then one day, while on a hunt, one of the Leupold guys caught a limb with his over-sized traditional scope, which caused a loss of balance, which caused him to trip, fall and hit his head on a rock. As he lay there with stars swirling around he witnessed a partial solar eclipse where the moon obscured a small portion of the bottom of the sun - a crescent shape. And the idea for the VX-L scope was born.