Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Sheep guides spotting scope power

Razorhog;
Good morning to you sir, I hope that the day in your part of the world is behaving and you're well.

With the understanding that I'm just one semi-old guy who knows a few of the locals who used to guide and outfit for California Bighorn down here in south central BC.

Our hunts aren't several days packing in, they're in country that's reasonably sporty however so bulk and weight can be an issue.

Last fall my long time hunting and fishing partner pulled one of two hotly contested LEH "any ram" tags on the mountain behind the house, so he, his nephew, the former outfitter, one of the former guides and I all pitched in to see if we could find a good one.

It looks like this.



We went down to the bottom here one day after a herd of rams.



Another place we were looking.



On a couple of the days when we left the pickups at daybreak it was already smoking hot, so the mirage was really bad by 10:00. As well on the top photo we can see the haze from a fire somewhere, since there seems to be a fire somewhere during late summer and early fall anymore.

The reason I mention that is that we couldn't use much above 45X most days and less than that on the really bad days.

For what we had, going off of foggy memory there was a Swarovski, 2 Leupold, Redfield and another one that totally slips my mind, sorry.

Mine is a fixed 25X Leupold straight tube from the 80's and it's wonderfully light, easy to pack and absolutely wasn't enough power to count growth rings on the rams' horns.

There's a few fairly serious sheep hunters here such as mod7rem who I want to say likes Kowa spotters.

If one was hunting Stone or Dall in the north country, they may not have the mirage issues with the heat, but they might have smoke or fog too. As well they're often packing in a whole lot further than we do, so weight and pack space become an issue.

Hopefully that was useful even though it's admittedly limited.

All the best.

Dwayne