aletheuo
03-02-2009, 10:02 PM
edit: Scopes = Rifle Scopes
I was just reading an article by Barsness on 24hrcampfire regarding optics.
Looking Long
by John Barsness
http://24hourcampfire.com/images/binos.jpgMOST BIG-GAME HUNTERS are binocular-illiterate. This may seem odd, when more and more hunting magazines run optics articles and even regular optics columns. But most of these essays deal with rifle scopes, because that's what hunters dream and argue about. Many of these stories claim that today's super-elusive bucks come mostly at long range, or in light so dim the owls are bouncing off the oaks. So every 7mm-08 must wear, at a minimum, a 4-12x variable with a 50mm objective lens.
From what I've seen in the deer woods, a lot of hunters buy this line. And many others spend their lunch hour worrying about how to scratch together $500 or $1000 to buy such scopes. Maybe a tenth that number worry about adequate binoculars. This, to put it bluntly, is exactly bassackwards from the way our world should be.
Over the past 30 years I have managed to put big game from three continents firmly on the ground. Among these have been a number of big mule and whitetailed deer. Just last fall I found an old 3x3 muley in Colorado with the heaviest beams of any mule deer I've ever killed. Back home in Montana I killed a whitetail that brought visitors from all over the county.
Were they killed by the judicious use of 14x magnification and target adjustment knobs? The muley was killed at 300 yards across an aspen draw, and the whitetail in the first five minutes of legal light, under a very dark sky. Both deer fell to 6x magnification, and neither scope had an objective over 40mm. As a matter of fact, in looking over my hunting notes for the past three decades, I have never shot a head of big game with a scope set on more than 6x, even though I've used a number of variables in the 3-9x and 4-12x range.
But good binoculars helped find both bucks--a big part of the reason neither knew I was anywhere near. This seems to be a foreign concept to most hunters. I'd guess 75% carry some tiny compact they bought on sale down at Wal-Mart for less than 50 bucks. Those who carry full-size binoculars tend to use them as extremely inefficient neck-warmers, never lifting their 8x40's unless they've already seen something move. "Gosh, there's a brown, four-legged animal running away. Wonder if it's a deer!"
The trick in using binoculars is to find game before the game finds you. Good glass helps, but technique is just as important. Of the few hunters with really good binoculars, a surprising percentage don't really know how to use them. The spending of $800 does not mean you will see every deer by sweeping the landscape with a Bausch & Lomb broom....
What do you think?
I was just reading an article by Barsness on 24hrcampfire regarding optics.
Looking Long
by John Barsness
http://24hourcampfire.com/images/binos.jpgMOST BIG-GAME HUNTERS are binocular-illiterate. This may seem odd, when more and more hunting magazines run optics articles and even regular optics columns. But most of these essays deal with rifle scopes, because that's what hunters dream and argue about. Many of these stories claim that today's super-elusive bucks come mostly at long range, or in light so dim the owls are bouncing off the oaks. So every 7mm-08 must wear, at a minimum, a 4-12x variable with a 50mm objective lens.
From what I've seen in the deer woods, a lot of hunters buy this line. And many others spend their lunch hour worrying about how to scratch together $500 or $1000 to buy such scopes. Maybe a tenth that number worry about adequate binoculars. This, to put it bluntly, is exactly bassackwards from the way our world should be.
Over the past 30 years I have managed to put big game from three continents firmly on the ground. Among these have been a number of big mule and whitetailed deer. Just last fall I found an old 3x3 muley in Colorado with the heaviest beams of any mule deer I've ever killed. Back home in Montana I killed a whitetail that brought visitors from all over the county.
Were they killed by the judicious use of 14x magnification and target adjustment knobs? The muley was killed at 300 yards across an aspen draw, and the whitetail in the first five minutes of legal light, under a very dark sky. Both deer fell to 6x magnification, and neither scope had an objective over 40mm. As a matter of fact, in looking over my hunting notes for the past three decades, I have never shot a head of big game with a scope set on more than 6x, even though I've used a number of variables in the 3-9x and 4-12x range.
But good binoculars helped find both bucks--a big part of the reason neither knew I was anywhere near. This seems to be a foreign concept to most hunters. I'd guess 75% carry some tiny compact they bought on sale down at Wal-Mart for less than 50 bucks. Those who carry full-size binoculars tend to use them as extremely inefficient neck-warmers, never lifting their 8x40's unless they've already seen something move. "Gosh, there's a brown, four-legged animal running away. Wonder if it's a deer!"
The trick in using binoculars is to find game before the game finds you. Good glass helps, but technique is just as important. Of the few hunters with really good binoculars, a surprising percentage don't really know how to use them. The spending of $800 does not mean you will see every deer by sweeping the landscape with a Bausch & Lomb broom....
What do you think?