Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Let's talk about compact glass

To bad we can't always have conversations like this without a b!tchfest ensuing.....

Doc you need to try this product best bino system I have tried yet takes all the weight off your neck and shoulders plus protects the oculars when not in use. Optic Belt, http://www.delnorteoutdoors.com/faqs.php. I have the 10x43 Bushnell Elites 23 ounces,great glass for the money, you can have you cake and eat to with these. Just my opinion lots of luck on your goat hunt.

Oldlogger

I have been using a Swarovski EL 10X42 for all of my hunting for 6 years.

It is a little heavy, but with a binocular harness I hardly notice the weight at all.

That being said, if I had it to do over again, I would probably try a Leica Ultrvid(sp?) 8X32-I may still one of these days...

Don,

guess I'll be the exception


I do use 10x25's on high mtn. hunts and leave my Classics at home.

I don't have anyone to carry a spotter for me and would take mine if I did, I don't want to wait my turn to look, I want to look NOW to see if it's a ram or in your case billy I want to go after.

the reason being I make the trade off is weight pure and simple.

for a 2-3 day jaunt I take the classics, heck I wasn't even hunting and just hauled the Classics to the bottom of the Grand Canyon while carrying a 60-70 lb. pack.

the weight of the 10x25's is nada around my neck and in a shirt pocket during the approach. I see many white rocks, sometimes single or paired ewes and lambs or sub legal rams on the way in to get where I think the big boys are hanging out, but you never know when you'll see what you're after on the way there.

but most important in my mind is the weight on the way out, if I take a sheep, I'm going to be god awful heavy, that's when you realize how much the ounce counting pays off, not on the way in, ime.

pard looking to save weight as well, used the Zeiss 8x32's one year and got very tired of asking me on the approach to confirm what he was seeing with my 10x25's, next year he had his own 10x25's.

granted when arriving in the country I believe I want to be in, and setting up to do serious glassing, I miss my 10x40's, I've used them so much they are like a favorite pair of jeans or boots, they just fit. but it's a trade off to make.

as mentioned a spotter (and for that matter a rifle) is on my amex list, I ain't going without either. I've gone hunting twice where we only took one rifle to save weight, but it wasn't my lh handed rifle that got left behind. I'll haul the weight of my rifle and my spotter.

so I use the spotter more in a way I sometimes use it for regular hunting. After a quick general scan with the compacts to pick up the obvious, I set up the spotter, break out an eyepatch and pick the country apart on 12x. the eyepatch is worth the negligible weight to me so that I'm not in constant wink mode and saves me the headache of such. If you don't want to haul the eyepatch a headband or bandana can work too, but I like my eyepatch.

not saying it's right for you or Brad or others, but it's the system that works for me.

and certainly not trying to convince you of anything, you've enough experience now to make your own choices in regards to this stuff, it ain't going to be your first rodeo.

just thought you might want to see the other side of the coin, even though it's dissenting from most others views expressed here.

doesn't mean they're wrong, just wrong for me and the way I hunt in high country.

I've got full confidence you'll make a good decision what works best for you. Randy

I HAD several of those wonderful calendars as a boy in the '50s and the Indian ones as well, but, they were pitched when the year changed. I would LOVE to have a Goat one now, the GN ran into my home town and we used to walk the tracks to fishing spots and hunt Grouse along them....back in the "good old days" when kids with guns were a common sight in my hometown and they WERE NOT immigrant gangbangers high on dope.......

Someday, when I move back "home" to the Kootenays, I would like to hunt there again, but, now "yuppies" and "yuppy puppies" cruise the old right of way on expensive mountain bikes and don't like people hunting as they moved there for "atmosphere" and "wilderness".........that's likely to stop me.......