Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Low Light

The arguments for a scope is the proposed advantage that they give in the 1/2 hour time period (pre dawn, post dusk)that seems to be the shooting times most States hold to.

Query: How important is this time frame in havesting a trophy. Is it overwhemingly enough to overide a ghost ring/post sight as a rifle sight option?

IMO it extends past that time period although that is a consideration. I think the time period during which a deer/elk is a blurry outline goes past any 30 mintues. And any time of day, a animal in dark shadows or against a dark background can be very hard to evaluate.

All rifle scopes (those with magnification) help you see better. You can't shoot it unless you can see it clearly.
I have two small game and one big game hunting rifle equipped with peep sights. But all of the rest of my big game rifles, the ones that get used in over 90% of my hunting situations, wear scopes. Allowing me to see further clearly when the light is bad is one of their biggest attributes. E

Most mid-pack scopes will usually give you enough light to make a shot during legal shooting hours IME. A ghost ring or irons will limit you, especialy at any significant distance during dusk/dawn.

I don't see well during these times, so I pack some binos along so I can accurately judge a buck's rack and determine if he's a shooter or not.

I have hunted with iron sights and could clearly see the animal thru binos but was unable to take a shot because of the lack of light. So it can be a limiting factor, especially in woods with alot of canopy or on overcast days.

Best,

JM.

A scope is vital in western Washington. The forest is very thick and we nearly always have rain and clouds during hunting season, so we can have low light conditions all day. I grew up shooting a peep on game and in NRA Service Rifle and Smallbore matches, and I used them on various things in the military. I understand and respect what they can do, but my tests show that scopes have a definite and undeniable advantage.

Scopes have another advantage in forest--they let me slip a bullet through an opening in the brush better than I can with a peep. One year I saw a little blacktail trying to sneak off of a hilltop. She was doing a good job of keeping brush between me and her, but I saw that she would pass behind a large forked tree about 40-50 yards away. I put my crosshairs in the open fork and waited. I saw her head pass through the fork, and I fired when I saw her ribs. She only went a few yards.

I love peep sights, but I would not have tried that shot with one.


Okie John

Most of the trophy class animals in my neck of the woods are virtually nocturnal.

I have taken deer,and elk at last light when a really good scope is a necessity.

Consider it in terms of light admitted into your eye and illuminating the retina.

By itself, or with iron sights, the retina is struck by whatever light passes through the aperture in the front of your eye, the iris. Say it's 7mm in diameter fully dilated.

Now let's compare that to what you get from a scope with a comparatively small 20mm objective lens. Set just below 3x the exit pupil of the scope will be 7mm, just like your dilated iris. But in that 7mm beam will be the light admitted by the 20mm lens and concentrated by the scope, minus losses incurred in passing through the lenses.

A 20mm aperture will admit about 8.16 times as much light as a 7mm aperture. So even with a conservative 85% light throughput for the scope there will be nearly seven times as much light concentrated into the beam coming out of the scope into your eye than there would be entering your unaided eye.

So the object you're viewing will be brighter and three times bigger with the little 3x20mm scope. And most people use larger scopes than that when they're concerned about the edges of daylight.

If you are ok on passing shots, irons are fine.... I"ve shot deer with irons that we shot, and BARELY enough light left to see the sights clearly(the target or deer you don't have to see clearly, its the front sight thats important anyway)... and we were over half a mile from the truck, tagged the doe, went to get the truck, got it over to the deer and loaded her, picked up all our gear and got into the truck and still had at least 15 minutes or more of scope light left, though it would have not been legal shooting hours for some of those minutes.

Add in overcast days as mentioned... you can be out of business before you even see the first deer depending.... BTDT more than a few times....

An intesting question about scope advantage......and it's not as important as you might think. There is no doubt that a scope sighted rifle will allow you to take shots long after any open sight is rendered useless by darkness......this is a FACT. However, what is not so clear is just how important those extra 30 minutes at daylight and dark really are.

I am lucky in that I began keeping very detailed records about game I shot from the age of 13 or 14. With more than 250 deer taken and recorded, this can be a valuable tool....as well as quite interesting to look back on.

Several years ago we got into a discussion about whether morning hunts were better....or evening hunts. I really didn't know the answer. I knew I PREFERED to hunt mornings, but could recall a lot of nice bucks taken late in the day. I pulled the journals to see what was REALLY true.

What I found was that my gut instinct was right.....some 68% of my bucks were taken in the morning time. Maybe that is because I tend to hunt a bit more in the mornings, but I think it is also the better time to see bucks. Does were basically a 50-50 split, but I don't normally "hunt" for does.....just take them when I want.

I got a bit carried away looking at the journals and actually "charted" what time of day each deer was shot. Surprisingly, the "legendary" first and last 30 minutes of light produced very few deer (8 out of 256 kills....or about 3%).

I killed LOTS of deer in the first and last hour of the day.....but very few in those dim minutes where a scope sight is supposed to be critical. In fact, if you broke it down and only looked at the better bucks killed (8 pts or better....120+ class) the BEST time to be hunting was from 10 o'clock AM to 3 o'clock PM. MOST days if you hadn't killed your buck by 7 AM.....you could set an alarm and nap until 10....and miss very little action (This didn't ALWAYS hold true, so I do not suggest taking those naps while on stand).

Guess this si my long-winded way of saying that in THEORY you give up some hunting opportunities by using open sight instead of a scope.......but in the real world it's just not that much of a disadvantage. At least that's my findings over a lot of years and a lot of deers.

I shot a really nice buck last year with my bow and had barley enough light to see through the peep, but with that said most of the good bucks I have killed were mid day.

Good glass will cover you from dusk till dawn but most of the good bucks in my area are not killed in low light conditions. More are mid day when some hunter goes in for lunch.

Texas Rick,

I'm sure that applies to your area, but will probably have little relevence anywhere else. Here is why, the 256 deer taken includes does, who's travel patterns are much different than those of trophy bucks that the OP asked about. The habits of a 2.5 yr. basket rack 8 vs. a 4.5 yr. old or older 10 or 12 point trophy buck is another matter as well. How many of the 68% were bucks of 4.5 yrs or older?

I never kept a journal, but after sitting here and thinking about the best bucks I've taken, 12 out of 17 were killed at or close to dawn or dusk. 4 were killed around mid-day and 1 was shot around 2 o'clock.

Hunting pressure, the availability/proximity of food sources and availability and proximity of breeding age does influences buck movement.

They move based on their gut, threats in their environment, recent experiences and the drive to reproduce.

These factors can vary significantly from one location to the next, thus the travel patterns will also vary. So you can't apply what happens in one area across the board.

I don't have any statistics, but I would guess that a significant percentage of trophy bucks are killed during hours where daylight is not at full value.

John,

I would have guessed that your deer and mine would act much the same....East Texas and Louisiana. However I agree that pressure, food, ect. can have a strong effect.

By the way....that 256 count WAS bucks only....the total kill is much higher. Trophy buck ARE a different breed. That's why I based the response on bucks of 120+ class or better.

If I had to guess as to why my results were different than yours it is that most of those were killed on a 12000 acre hunting club where the hunter could be patterned easier than the bucks. Just like clockwork.....most go to their stand at (not before) daylight, sit until 9-10 o'clock, then return to camp until going back out at 4 o'clock or so.

That's why more mature bucks choose to move in the middle of the day and those same hunter "patterns" appy to a large part of the whitetail world. The buck "pattern" hunters too. your right though.....may not apply in areas with different hunter habits.

There are too many factors for it to apply anywhere but where it is experienced.

Deer will usually feed 2-3 times a day, morning, mid-day and evening. The times this occurs will vary depending on the factors I mentioned above, ie. pressure, environmental threats, etc.

The distance a buck will travel depends on the availability and quality of his preferred food sources. This also can vary greatly from one location to the next. It is the determining factor that either limits or increases the time spent traveling and feeding.

I mentioned hunting pressure and environmental threats in my previous post. These certainly influence when a buck moves. In high pressure hunting areas, I've seen mid-day and night become very active feeding times for bucks and does. In an unpressured area 5 miles away in the same county, I've seen the traditional feeding times of morning and evening being followed.

This all proves my point, which is no two areas food sources are exactly the same, no two areas hunting pressure is the same and as a result, The bucks movements will not be the same.

In short, you can't apply what you see in one specific location across the board, there are too many other unknown factors that have a singficant influence on buck behavior.

Deer move at dawn and dusk. That's a fact. Does move at dawn and dusk and the bucks follow them That's also a fact.

There is no question a scope helps a lot in low light conditions. A good scope helps most. Get a deer moving under heavy spruce/balsam cover and you don't have to be before or after legal shooting hours to have insufficient light to shoot. It can be really dark under heavy cover. It will be harder to decide if the deer is the one to shoot. It will be harder to get on target quickly and be certain enough of what you have in the scope to pull the trigger.

For my money, the scope is more important than the rifle, a lot more important. Nowadays it's relatively easy to buy a reliable accurate rifle for well under $500. Maximizing that rifle's potential is not so cheap.

I'll agree with Texas Rick for the most part. I don't have any records to prove this, but bucks, especially large bucks, are not shy about moving when it's safe to do so regardless as to the time of day. Or not moving at all, if under pressure. If pressured much, and they can't find a time when they can move safely, they have no quams about shifting their range to those areas where they aren't bothered. Due to surviving for a number of hunting seasons, they know just where those places are.
They will go to areas where there is less feed and feed of a lessor quality if they need to. They particularly insist on bedding down to a safe place where they can chew their cud w/o being bothered.
I've hunted deer in really thick places where their are lots of deer and it rains 40 to over 100 inches a year. I've hunted them where it rains an average of 3.5 inches a year. Doesn't matter alot where they are found. When it comes to big bucks, they are, by defination survivors. Therefore they know when and where to move.
Finding a scope that will allow you to make a shot in bad light isn't difficult or even very expensive if you understand a few things about scopes.
The main thing to understand is that seeing further in bad light depends upon magnification. That's because it does, in effect, place you closer to the target. The only other major factor is exit pupil size and your eye's ability to use large exit pupils. That's not tough either. If you don't have enough exit pupil or your eyes don't have the ability to use that exit pupil size, the scope simply won't show you anything if it gets too dark. If you are using a variable, simply turn the magnification down if you can't see anything. If you need to see more, or "better" then try turning the magnification up. Bear in mind that the worse the light, the less distance you can see regardless. E

That ain't what Rick said, that's what I said.

Rick made the statement that his records prove bucks move at mid-day.

I simply stated that his records prove they move at mid-day where he hunts and that cannot be applied across the board because of all the different variables involved.

If trophy is on my mind, damn everyones records, I want a good glass on my stick. So I can see as late as need be or as early as need be on dark days even...

I know of a buck that didn't quite make book shot last winter, that kept leaving a feed pen before light, so they started setting the timer back a few minutes every few days and finally barely killed him... grossed 180 something but did not net.....

Deer don't move at the same times eveyr day. Just like our cattle graze and can be tied a lot to the moon or weather... so while one day they move at daylight or before, the next hunt they might be moving close to noon.....

I like sights, have a traditional muzzle loader with sights and also a Marlin 336 with sights, but the advantage a good scope provides is tangible. When the sun sets, and dusk deepens and I can hardly see into the meadow with my eyes - but the buck just pops out at me through the scope - I know my money was well spent.

BTW, a fixed 6x Leupold with a 42mm obj lens is a dandy low-light scope!

Regards, Guy

I don't think it's that big a deal regarding trophy bucks. I've killed a good number of big bucks for this area and only a couple were in low light conditions. I concure that from 10am till 1pm is a very good time period to be alert.

The BEST time to hunt is whenever you can grab your rifle and go. Telemetry studies show that whitetail bucks, when in the rut, are on the move at any given time and often far from their home range, some as far as 7 to 8 miles, others, closer to home base, depends on doe density or lack of it.

I'll call bullschitt on TR's 256 bucks and keeping records since the age of 13. Scan and post them TR. If you do, I'll offer my apologies in advance to you. And, scopes work for lower light - period.