Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics How important is alpha scope glass for your hunts ?

Nightforce and Schmidt Bender on my predator guns... The Duk of death and I are big buds now LOL

"Duk I says." Little Bill Dagget. As Fuqked up as California is, they do allow us to run up to a 12 volt light at night for predators. No night vision though.

Nice...I have a couple S&B scopes. One is also on a predator rig - 20 Practical.

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I don’t know if you need alpha glass but you definitely don’t want cheap entry scopes. Especially some of the rifle scopes combo .
You can get lots of scope from 250-500$ now days.

I consider myself a pretty good shooter, but not a very good hunter. That said, I have spent enough time hunting to realize that use cases are different for different people. Someone that hunts a corn field, sage brush, farmland, rolling hills, SW desert, or alfalfa may have a different set of needs than someone that hunts deep, dark, hellholes.

I'm sure Beav knows this, but "dark timber" out here in the PNW and elsewhere is something that you literally have to see with your own eyes to believe. I don't know where he hunts, but the "hills" can be dang near vertical and they aren't tiny. I'm not talking rolling hills of the NE or SE portions of the US. More like straight up and down, and jagged. Not mountains per se, but a thousand or more in elevation. It gets "dark" well before legal sunset in those holes and only gets worse. And it's literally a rainforest. Luckily, shooting distances are short.

In contrast, you can get out of a hole and hunt clearcuts that are literally lit up by moonlight, just like a crop field, or desert landscape. I've seen a lot more hunters lurking those areas, but there are plenty of tough bastards out here that dive down into those hellholes after deer and elk.

So will a scope that works well in sage brush or crop fields, +/- 30 minutes of sunset, be good for dark timber? I don't know, we'd have the try them. But it's funny how people assume their open field use case applies to someone that is in near darkness well before legal sunset.

I had one experience in Eastern Oregon near the breaks of the Snake River where I assumed that it would be more open country hunting, compared to the coastrange that I am used to. And it was, in terms of the landscape. But the deer and elk still bed in the ribbons of timber. Those ribbons are in the crevasses of the landscape. That timber can be as thick, or thicker than anything in the coastal rainforest of OR. In other words, you aren't making much progress on foot.

That hunt turned into cat and mouse in dark timber right around legal shooting hours, which is +30 minutes of legal sunset. I had a Viper 2-7x on my rifle. I found mule deer in the timber at dusk, but I couldn't confirm antlers. I had to use my $300 binos which were plenty for the conditions. Then raise my rifle. Then not be sure it was a buck. Sling the rifle, and look through the binos again. Then shoulder the rifle. The deer were milling around in the timber.

I think everyone gets the point. After that I experience, I was really interested in Mule Deer's scope tests. Especially his low light tests. Based on that, I bought a few Leupo 6x42, just for the performance in lowlight, but I don't know how much better that scope would be in that situation, as I don't know how the Viper 2-7x compared. All I knew was that the Viper wasn't nearly as good as $300 binos.

The best general purpose scope that I have used in low light was a Kahles 2-7x.

I did learn a hard lesson a few years ago when I took my son in law hunting for his first time... walking back to the truck we took a detour through a strip of timber I knew the deer liked to hang out in close to sunset and it was about 30 minutes before then so we sneaked in and stopped every few feet to glass around and check the shadows for deer waiting to head down into the canyons just a couple hundred yards away.

I put my Leupold binos up and looked around and when I scanned across a dark shadow under a heavy fir tree I could see a big four point looking back at me- but just barely. I slowly put my binos down on the harness and brought up my rifle and looked all over for that deer with my 3-9 Leupy on my rifle and couldn't make it out to save my life... looked through my binos again and there it was, but just barely made it out... if my binos had been attached to the rifle I could have had a dandy deer that evening, but my scope just wasn't up to it in the same light conditions... I'm pretty sure most scopes wouldn't have been in that situation and I run into that situation more often than I like to admit....

Bob

Jason,
In coastal timber for elk, I’m using either open sights on a lever gun or a lightweight Browning BAR MK3 with a Leupold VX3 2.5-8x36 scope. Both, to me, have advantages. Running shots on bulls in dense timber, I prefer open sights and shooting with both eyes open.

If we’re heading into timber with pockets of small clearings/wallows and meadows, I like my scoped BAR. The 2.5-8x36 is a pretty decent timber optic at reasonable yardage inside a canopy of Doug Fir.

As you stated, it’s unrealistic to claim one size fits all the types of hunting environments for optics, rifle chamberings, or even boots...With that said, my personal experience, especially hunting elk on pub-land on the Coast, is optics rule, both in scouting with long glass, scanning the hunting ground with bins, or in a scope.

I always have to assume, other hunters have done the same leg work I’ve done, to scout up bulls before opening day. Because of the competition, and the inherent seriousness found in people during bull hunting, any advantage, is a good thing.

In contrast, me sitting over a shooting bag for 10 hours shooting ground squirrels or p-dogs - my scope optics are not the same quality as my big fur rifles. They’re good, helpful, and easy on the eyes for extended lengths of shooting. But the glass isn’t tier 1 stuff. For me, it’s perfect for that type of hunting I’m doing.

I believe that since I’ve been on both the unlucky end of having game shot out from me, and also the winning side of taking animals before others had the opportunity, mostly due to optics. I would encourage anyone who hunts public land with OTC tags to consider what I have found helpful by upgrading to a solid performing scope with glass good enough that a person can transition from the bins to their scope in low light and watch heads until you can hit the go button.

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PS

I hunt the Wilson Unit exclusively for elk the past 43 years....Damn, I’m getting old !

I used to run Leupold stuff in the 80's until I found out about Kahles/Swarovski... The good stuff is all i use on my rifles now since then. We can shoot for an hour after sunset legally so the quality really works here... if you have bright sunny conditions, any old scope will work.

No...I just like nice toys.

just as long as your spotlight works right

illuminated turrets rock......

Never needed a spotlight. After reading these types of discussions on here for years I think some of you fuggers are blind as a bat and few could use iron sights effectively if their lives depended on it. And btw scopes do work much better than iron sights at night with a light. I know that from years of coon hunting and predator hunting. I started out deer hunting with an iron sighted Mossberg 500 slug gun when I was a kid. A few years later got a Winchester 94 .30-30 as my first deer rifle. I killed deer every season for years with those two before I ever used a scoped rifle. Anybody who really needs a scoped rifle to kill deer and seriously can't get the job done with irons either ain't much of a hunter/shooter or is blind enough they should stay the hell out of the woods for everyones safety..

This is another example of someone’s really small world colliding with reality.

JS,

Post a few pics of that work rig you used for culling Roo’s for 15 years. That set-up is the epitome of what a working rifle and optic looks like.

Also, what is the rifle, barrel and scope ? Barrel looked to have been replaced - which wouldn’t shock anybody after years of daily service.

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How so ? Keep in mind I've killed deer in the open in excess of 300 yards with iron sights and under heavy hemlock/spruce/pine canopy on cloudy days at sunrise/sunset.

Isn't that the truth.....

You mean to tell me there is someplace you simply can't kill deer between sunrise and sunset and manage to get within 300 yards to do it ?

I’d assume you consider yourself a lame ass hunter since you didn’t sneak to 10 yards and kill all these deer with a long bow?

Blacky,
You know, that I know, your hunting environment doesn’t require tier 1 glass. Same for a lot of other hunters around the country.

Hunting terrain and styles of hunting are different due to locales, conditions, and more importantly, an individuals style of hunting they prefer.

The thread is about glass and whether there is value and benefits to upgrading or not.

You adequately covered the reasons why for you, and other hunters like you, probably don’t need the improvement in glass.

Just saying dude...

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I have killed deer with bow and gun at 10 yards and less. That has nothing to do with this discussion. You want to tell me exactly WHERE IT IS that you can't kill deer between the hours of sunrise and sunset with an iron sighted rifle ?