GOOD CHEAP BINOCULARS!
Over the past quarter-century the overall quality of binoculars has gone up—and the price in relationship to quality has gone down. Well, except for so-called “alpha” glass from the Big Three in Europe. Largely due to exchange rates, the prices for the best binoculars from Leica, Swarovski and Zeiss have gone up considerably in the past few years. I got my Leica Duovid 8+12x42, one of my favorite binoculars, about 10 years ago when the Duovids were first introduced. Back then the 8+12 retailed for around $1300. Since then the real-world price has almost doubled to around $2500, and the top binoculars from Swarovski and Zeiss are in the same price range.
Now, alpha glass is certainly among the best in the world, but quite a few other binoculars come really, really close at a fraction of the cost. The first non-alpha roof-prism that really impressed me was the now-discontinued Pentax DCF WP, which also came out around a decade ago. Made in Japan, the optics were so good that when on a prairie dog shoot hosted by Ramshot Powders in eastern Montana, I asked several of the attendees to look through the Pentax and a European binocular of the same magnification and objective size, and see which one they liked best.
The logos were covered with tape so the test wouldn’t be prejudiced by name-brand. About 3/4 of the testers said they two binoculars were about equal, while the other quarter picked the Pentax. Nobody picked the European brand. At the time the Pentax retailed for around $600, while the Euro-glass went around $1000.
Now, I’m not going to tell you the name of the alpha, because the optics market changes so fast that neither binocular is the same anymore. But I can say that there are even better binoculars on the market right now for much less than $600, largely due to the emergence of Chinese optics.
Now, you probably have some feelings about Chinese products. Most of us do, but the fact is Chinese glass is here, and the companies that sell it are usually American, though some are more American than others. Hawke Optics, for instance, is one of the top optics suppliers in Europe, but has had an American office in Indiana for a number of years. Their binoculars are apparently engineered in Japan and mostly made in China. Another new optics company, Kruger, also designs and engineers all their optics (and even assembles some) in Sisters, Oregon. Their sales office is in California and their “logistics” office in Shanghai.
So, like many modern companies, a lot of these new “Chinese” optics companies are actually multi-national. It’s really rare these days for any company to design and manufacture every part of all their products under one roof. Even the alpha optical companies buy some parts from elsewhere, and in the last year Zeiss introduced a spotting scope they’re having made to their specifications in Japan. Another non-alpha but highly regarded European optics firm has been having their binoculars made in Japan for several years. I can’t tell you which one, due to promising not to, but the interesting thing is the Japanese version is slightly but noticeably better.
This multi-national production has resulted in very fine binoculars at very affordable prices. The 10x43 roof-prism binoculars from Hawke (Frontier ED) retail for around $450, and the Kruger Back Country roof-prism 10x50 I’ve recently been testing retails for less than $300. All have really good glass.
The return of Porro-prism binoculars has dropped the price of good glass even further. Back when I started hunting in the 1960’s, most hunters used Porro-prism binoculars rather than roof-prisms, because their optical system is inherently sharper, and they’re cheaper to manufacture. Roof prism binoculars are somewhat smaller in the same magnification/objective size, a little stronger, and easier to seal against moisture, but there really wasn’t a contest in optics or price. It wasn’t until after the introduction of phase-correction coatings in the 1990’s that roof-prism binoculars started dominating the market.
In the past few years, however, manufacturers have figured out how to seal Porro-prism binoculars. As a result, many darn good and very inexpensive Porro binoculars have appeared on the market. Among the best-known are the Leupold Yosemites, especially the 6x30, a light little glass with very good optics, for a real-world price of under $100.
Some of you are probably thinking: “Well, these optical bargains sound good, but how do they work in actual hunting? Don’t more expensive binoculars hold up better?” Well, maybe, though even alpha glass varies in toughness. In 2009, however, I put several “affordable” binoculars to real hunting tests, after all had been used considerably for local hunting in Montana and held up fine.
The first test was a bear hunt in Alaska, a state not usually kind to any hunting equipment. It started out as a black bear hunt with Stoney River Outfitters. My guide was a young Pennsylvanian named Zack Farmer, who’d just spent over $1000 on a European binocular. My Chinese 10x43, however, was noticeably better, so after I got my bear and flew out of our spike camp back to the main lodge to do a little flyfishing for salmon, I left it with Zack for the remaining two months of his guiding season, figuring that would be a very good test. It held up just fine.
After the Super Cub landed back to the lodge I was informed there’d been a cancellation by a grizzly bear hunter, and the cancelled hunt was really affordable. I was flown out to another camp to hunt with guide Bryce Johnson, and took along my backup binocular, a 6x30 Yosemite. Bryce had an alpha binocular with somewhat more magnification, but it really isn’t hard to spot bears across open tundra, and the Yosemite proved quite adequate, even when my grizzly finally showed up about a mile away. (Here it should be mentioned that Phil Shoemaker, the well-known Alaskan brown bear outfitter and magazine writer, uses a 6x30 Yosemite. Actually he has three, I believe, figuring if one gets accidentally squashed or lost while hunting he’s only out $80, and can re-equip with one of the backups at camp.)
When the opportunity for another cancellation hunt came up later in the fall I took along a Hawke 10x43 Frontier ED. This was a mule deer hunt in Alberta with a company I’ve hunted with several times before for game from waterfowl to moose, Ameri-Cana Outfitters. The hunt was half-price, so Eileen and I could both hunt for the regular price of one hunt—though even at half-price each of our hunts cost more than an average Montana or Wyoming mule deer hunts.
Eileen took her favorite hunting binocular, a Swarovski 8x32 EL, while our guide Ron Carlson had an older Porro-prism Zeiss. The hunt started the first of November, before the rut had really started, and on the fourth day I spotted two good bucks together, close to a mile away across a wide creekbottom. No doubt either Eileen or Ron could have first spotted them, since they both picked them up quickly in their Euro-glass, but the fact remains that the Hawke worked quite nicely—and hunting mule deer on the Alberta prairies is very much a glassing game. We watched while the bucks wandered up a gentle ridge to find a place to bed, then started our stalk. An hour later one of the bucks stood up from some knee-high brush about 275 yards away, and Eileen dropped it, whereupon the other buck stood up, wondering what happened to his buddy, and I shot him.
So yeah, today’s affordable binoculars can really hunt, whether they cost $80 or $450. If you can’t justify spending $2500 for binoculars, or even $1000, don’t feel bad, because there’s some really good glass out there for really good prices.
