Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Which 15x bino!?

15s are a philosophy, a way of hunting, covering ground with your eyes, finding animals otherwise not seen. Byproduct is you can observe animals and their movements/habits, also covering a large area scouting. I've sat and watched multiple herds of deer from one spot all day, watching them eat, bed, move with the shade, water, try to keep bugs off them, play, hide when a cat or human gets close, and feed again in the afternoon.

Nobody starts out with 15s being any good, self taught is the hardest and most quit. That was me. I returned to it a few years later and made myself 'see' the pattern. That was the middle 90s. If you can glass with someone experienced it'll advance the learning curve much faster.

I didn't glass with another glasser till '08, didn't know where I stood, I have an idea now.

The mind has to learn to see the pattern. Like where's Waldo, at first it'll take hours or maybe never unless someone points him out. Soon you can pick him out faster until it's easy.

At first glassing, you only find the same easy animals you did with 10s or 8s, out in the open or moving. You can see those animals farther out now.

The magic is when you find a bedded one, maybe the flies are around your ears and you notice a movement 800yds under a tree, it's a buck flicking his ears from the same bugs.

Or just the shape of a head, or back or legs in tree or antlers sticking above grass. You may have to stare at it for minutes till it moves a few inches to confirm... animals you would never find hand holding.

Pretty soon you sweep an area quickly for easy animals, then start investigating every shadow under bushes working in grids.

Anyway, size doesn't matter, I can see birds at half a mile easy. The hardest animal in az are coues deer, they blend in on open slopes, elk are lightning bolts and pronghorn are even more so. Mule deer are hard but have more black and white that stand out, javalina are short and can disappear in ground cover.

Terrain should be long and at least some open areas.

15s won't work in thick stuff close or far. I don't use them archery elk hunting where I hunt.

Now we could sit together all day on a mountain and discuss what we are seeing in just that one local, and not cover all the pros and cons and different scenarios. It's a large subject well beyond what bino to buy.

Here's some examples of glassing...

Coues deer



Water pond in a high wilderness bowl...





Mule deer flats...