I suggest you either buy the best (presumably Leupold) or work from someone's specific recommendation, or better still, several people's recommendations.Gewehr 98 made in 1898. I don't recommend the brand or the scope I may have just been lucky with the particular example. It happens to be a 4x32 Ruko, a brand I've never heard of before or since. Nothing appears to have shifted in the slightest degree. It's been on the rifle for a couple of years, and fired a few hundred shots so far, many of them jacketed loads of higher than factory pressure. I seem to have found it - but that was just luck, given that I bought it second-hand on ebay for not-very-much, relying on the seller's report on eye relief, strength and optical quality. In my case I'm also a cheapskate, so I wanted cheap glass that could stand 30-06 recoil over the long haul, while having better-than-Tasco optics. That means you can't expect to slide the scope back and forth through the mount to adjust eye relief: what you get will be what you get, you'll only be able to adjust it longitudinally by a quarter of an inch. In my view scout mounts only work satisfactorily with short scopes, and the mount itself will be very short as well if it is going to be strong and rigid. I rejected scopes until I found a close match. FWIW, what I did was figure out about where the back of a scope would be if I made the mount I had in mind, then shouldered the rifle and measured the distance from my eye. Both for scout scopes and pistol scopes eye relief can vary quite a lot, so you need to identify a particular scope that will suit a particular mount. On the subject of scope selection, it is mostly a matter of eye relief, as you say. I'll refrain (with difficulty) from commenting on what has been done to the bolt, but that mount is very, very high and I can't see how you'd use it except on the bench - and even then you might get badly smacked in the chops each time you fired it. Otherwise, you'll need to look at the available scope mounts that go on the rear sight base, and see which one you dislike least.ДЇirst, I detest that set-up in the picture you've posted. You will have a proper rigid scope mount, and you can return the rifle to original condition when you want to. If you just want to be able to use a scope without damaging your rifle, one solution is to buy or trade for a plastic or beater wooden stock, and cut that away to accept a wrap-around scope mount. It is only in the sight base, without affecting the barrel, and it can't be seen when the original battle sight is in place, but it's there, and it's a modification. However this meant drilling and tapping a hole at the rear of the original sight base to match the one at the front. I made my own scout mount by milling it from solid steel, to suit a short 4x32 pistol scope, so the rail is very short and is screwed down at both ends. However if you are satisfied with it, that may be a workable answer. The one recommended above would not suit me, because it is inherently both flimsy and vulnerable. However it requires some compromises somewhere along the line. In principle the rear sight replacement is the least intrusive solution.

To put it in the scout position you can either use a wrap-around clamp mount, which requires the stock to be cut away, or a rail that replaces the rear sight. The rear screws will have very little purchase because the action is thin there due to the cut-out for the locking lug. You have to drill and tap the action, both at the back on top beside the bolt release, and through the front ring above the barrel thread. Unless you want to use a very, very high mount you have to reshape your bolt handle, not just bend it, and replace the original safety with a tang or side type. To put it in the conventional position you have to wreck your rifle pretty comprehensively.

One is to put it in the conventional position directly above the magazine, and the other is to put it in scout position. There are two generic ways to mount a scope on a military Mauser.

Mauser k98 scope mount