Broke my spotter about 10 days before my NZ hunt. Cabelas rebranded Athlon (junk service from both)
Long story short my oldest bro gifted me Vortex Razor UHD 18x56 the day before I flew out.
Try to keep this short and concise. Some of it relating to 18x vs a spotter and some to the UHD in particular.
Straight away im a fan for a diy backpack hunt into unknow country..
Good: you can see through and into trees/brush that you’d not be able to with 10x Binos
The uhd are bright and sharp and I can sit behind them for hours. This allowed me to glass scrubby guys and pull out animals that pards just weren’t seeing until they moved.
18x allowed us to accurately field judge a chamois buck at an estimated 1400 yards.. it effectively replaced a spotter for this trip.
The lack of bulk and weight compared to a medium size 60mm spotter was handy, and not very often was I switching off the 18x once we got setup for those 2-3 hour glassing sessions. Which is really nice. Swapping from 10x Binos to spotter is problematic at times and can be annoying to see if that blob of matagari is a bush or a scrub bull.
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The bad: for me they are unsteady offhand enough to make them tripod only.
Related to above but they need to be in the pack and you need a smaller 8 or 10x to compliment.
Truthfully, I won’t use them much for my sodak/Wyoming hunts.. 10x Binos on tripod are good enough for everything I’ll need em for.
Eyebox Wasn’t the best.. I found that interpupillary distance was critical and so was head position.
They weren’t that helpful for chamois spotting.. pulled in too tight even at that 1500 yard distance means the mind wasn’t able to accurately discern what I was seeing. I preferred 10x Binos for this. Black and white animals in a black and white landscape the mind is what is seeing animals and not so much our “eyes” picking them out
The UHD have a lot of chromatic aberration or color fringing. Not that great in a contrast ridden and snowy landscape. Whereas my meopta meostars and unreal. Not as bright but man they are top of the heap for tahr and chamois hunting.
18x doesn’t get you off the mountain.. meaning The valley across the river was too far. Not a big deal in huge mountains.. but I could see how in the abarokas or big horns I’d want a spotter.
Not the best write up. Thought I’d share considering I wasn’t able to find much on guys using 18x vs a spotter when researching the idea.
