Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Elk binos

What brand and magnification for elk hunting. Thinking 8 x42 or 10x42 for glassing on a mountain out into the parks? Like to stay in 1000.00 or under?

Don't think you could go wrong with tract toric binos. I like my 12.5x50. For the money, hard to beat

Magnification is subjective. I have 8s and 12s. But 10x would probably be the jack of all trades

Would be slightly more, but call Doug about Meopta B1 Plus in 8X. You’ll probably never want more.

10x42 Meopta for me. Been using them for about 5 years. No plans to change yet.

Yup…. Those too.

8 x 32 or 33 is perfect IMO. I prefer over the 42 objectives by a wide margin.

I have some Swaro EL 8.5X binos but I rarely use them outside of really thick areas. For normal elk hunts, I totally prefer 10X or higher, often 15X for both casual scanning of something that catches my eye and for sitting down and really tearing a mountain apart.

Higher end Meopta, Zeiss or Steiner have been good for me. For a 1 grand ceiling, looking on the used market may be needed.

Meopta Meostar 8x32s are my favorite!

If I were to only have one binocular, and extended glassing was in the picture, I’d probably pick 10’s.

That would be boring though.

This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If your budget stops at a grand, this is the best answer

IMO could not disagree more, would take a 42mm over a 32mm 10 times out of 10

Thanks guys. Ill keep my eyes open and see what I can find.

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For the kind of elk hunting I do (in the mountains/backpacking) I'd always take a quality 32mm over a 42mm ten times out of ten. And actually, I prefer a good 8x32 over any 42mm for any kind of hunting, birding or wildlife viewing.

Me too……..

I've used Nikon 8x32's and Zeiss 10x40's in the past and am currently using German made Minox 8x42's. I paid less for the Minox than the Nikon and Zeiss and they are optically superior to both. I prefer 8x over 10x for still hunting which is most of the time for me. If I were doing a lot of spot and stalk hunting, I'd likely bypass 10x and go straight to 15x with a tripod.

Kowa Genesis 8x33 are hard to beat for the $

I use 8x32 Victory and wouldn't trade for anything but another 8x32

I use 10x32 and have for all kinds of hunting, including elk. On optics, you pretty much get what you pay for.

Some have reported the Tract binos are great but I don't own any. I have Swarovski, and Leica but they're spendy. Below that price point I have a discontinued pair of Styrka 8x42 that are great, but I love the Nikon HG binos at the 1k price. I have a pair of Leupold Santiums but they're not brilliant to me.

The great thing is that we have a lot of choices this days and the lower end optics are better than ever. You get such bang for your buck with more choices these days.