can we talk about how to use our binos? glassing techniques.

[boom]

i dont put my binos on a tripod. not a real good option for me to mount mine.

i always get comfy, and rest on my pack..back against the pack. knees up, elbows on my knees. i can glass for hours like this.

what i am asking for is: what is your glassing strategy? you just look at "elky" and "deery" looking spots? you break the mountain side up into some Grid pattern?

i posted up that my brother is a fantastic spotter. it is more likely him that will chime in with a "i see a deer!" or "got one!". last year, he blew me away. i was sitting right next to him. we were dissecting a great couse-y looking mountain. he said, "i found one". he directed it to me and i was stunned. it was a big fork, sleeping in a bush. only one antler and half of his face was showing. the deer was barely moving. it was dozing and his head was gently nodding. it's like my brother has bionic eyeballs or something.

i dont suck at glassing..i just want to get A lot better. any tips? we can talk about what binos to get..not a lot of chatter on how to use them once we get them.

thanks in advance.

i'll more than likely eventually give him my binos and get myself something else.

 

[tipsntails7]

I always approach it like I used to a where's Waldo book. I look in the places I think I should see him, if I come up empty I grid it out.

 

[HellsCanyon]

Get comfortable and I check the "bucky" spots first... likely areas where I expect to see animals feeding or moving. I'll also always start close and glass farther away. I can't tell you how many times I've sat down in a spot where I have country for miles and get too ambitious and start glassing far away only to have a deer within 300 yards of my position that I initially missed!

Once I've glassed the bucky spots I start gridding EVERYTHING. Sometimes I'll stop on a ridge top or some natural brake and glass bottom to top, left to right, near to far, glassing slow. It's easier for me to glass vertical and keep track of where I've glassed instead of horizontal. This will oftentimes be when the animals are bedded and that's when I feel I have the best chance at spotting them using this grid pattern.

As far as being able to pick out animals and their parts that's something that people are just better at but can always be improved upon. You can train your eyes to almost "snap to" shapes that your brain knows your looking for. Horizontal lines, forks, eyeballs, faces, ear(s)...etc

Mike

 

[boom]

I'll also always start close and glass farther away. I can't tell you how many times I've sat down in a spot where I have country for miles and get too ambitious and start glassing far away only to have a deer within 300 yards of my position that I initially missed!

Mike

gah!! forehead slapping moment. this is a GREAT tip. thx!

 

[quackaddict]

I know you say that you don't have a good option for using a tripod, but there are lots of universal mounts and a tripod helps a TON for me. After I've scanned everything over, I try to start a checker board pattern by setting the binos in a spot, and looking over the entire FOV(by just moving my eyes, not the binos themselves) a few times before I move them to the next spot.

 

[Yellowknife]

i posted up that my brother is a fantastic spotter. it is more likely him that will chime in with a "i see a deer!" or "got one!". last year, he blew me away. i was sitting right next to him. we were dissecting a great couse-y looking mountain. he said, "i found one". he directed it to me and i was stunned. it was a big fork, sleeping in a bush. only one antler and half of his face was showing. the deer was barely moving. it was dozing and his head was gently nodding. it's like my brother has bionic eyeballs or something.

My dad spots like that. Drives us all nuts.

It's part practiced skill, part natural ability, and partly because even in his mid 50's he's got 20/10 vision.

Yk

 

[Daniel_M]

Good glass goes a long way as well. Luke is a game spottin' machine!

 

[luke moffat]

Good glass goes a long way as well. Luke is a game spottin' machine!

I cheated and got my eyes lasered. Doesn't count! Good glass goes a long ways, but good techinque and knowing what you are looking for is more paramount IMO. I wouldn't consider my Vortex Razor HDs super top tier or anything, but I like them a lot and every bit as good to my eyes as the Swaro ELs and SLCs and Zeiss Victories I had and they are 12 power is 50mm objectives all for less than 28 oz...none too shabby.

Often when glassing an area once I find my first animal to get a definite bearing on size/color of the animal I am after the rest start popping out of the wood work. Almost like my eyes/brain need to be calibrated to that size/color in that given terrain. Just my experience and I'm probably weird like that.

 

[Daniel_M]

Often when glassing an area once I find my first animal to get a definite bearing on size/color of the animal I am after the rest start popping out of the wood work. Almost like my eyes/brain need to be calibrated to that size/color in that given terrain. Just my experience and I'm probably weird like that.

Solid points. I tend to agree. Almost like tuning the eye to the environment for contrast and color. This falls moose hunt was a toughy. Watched a color-phase cow moose, damn near blonde for what seemed like forever in very tall alders. Then like little buds the moose started poppin...10 or so by the time I was dialed in and counting.

 

[SDHNTR]

Tripod is key! One of the best little tid bits of glassing advice I've ever received is to look for horizontal lines. Most things in nature grow straight up, or are bushy and without hard lines. When you find a something definitely horizontal, it's worth a closer look. Yes, it's usually just a log or a rock, but too many times I've seen those rocks or logs grow horns that I likely would have overlooked otherwise.

 

[fatrascal]

My most important hunting tool is my optics. When cutting weight off of my backpack the optics never get cut. The tripod is part of the optics. If I don't have my tripod then there is no reason to take the optics. If you can strap a backpack on you then you should always have your optics and tripod. Even if your backpack is just a small camelback pack. I've hunted with several people who have more ability at spotting game than me with their bino's but when I put my bino's on a tripod everything changes. I call it the equalizer because with a tripod I'm just as good or better than they are. Just like a 250 pound man can beat the crap out of a 125 pound man. But if you give them both a gun everything becomes equal.
There are some good tips up above. Here is another one. If I'm glassing with someone who is a better glasser than me I use a little trick that gives me a chance. When we get set up to glass I'll watch my buddy to see which direction he is going to glass. If he glasses high, I'll glass low. If he glasses right I'll glass left. That gives me a chance to look in a spot before he does. Obviosly he is going to glass the most bucky looking spot first and you will be looking in the less bucky looking spot so he will still find the game more often. But your success rate will go up.
One more thing, did I mention a tripod? Lol. The tripod will also allow you to effectively steady your bino's and you will spot game much longer distances. Even your eagle eye brother can't steady his bino's like your tripod can so you will find deer out there at longer distances. One last thing. After the initial quick scan to find what is obvious slow down a little and do another scan. Then slow down again and really look hard. Then slow down and pick everthing apart. Especially brush, shade etc.
I know its kinda frustrating to glass with people who have that natural ability to find game. I swear I bet one of my friends could take a pair of coke bottles and find more game than me but when I started using my equalizer tripod I became competition for him. Goodluck and I'm sorry for harping on the tripod thing.
P.S. Use a tripod, ha ha.

 

[mallacootasmoothie]

Bringing this one up top again as im interested to hear more on this subject.
I don't carry a spotter and have just started glassing from a tripod. Using a tripod has been an absolute game changer and I am now seeing things that I never would have seen before! The improved ability to pick up movement has me spotting more deer than ever.
I usually start glassing an area with a quick freehand grid, binos then go onto the tripod, do another grid, working right to left, panning across and using all of the FOV. Then I really slow it down and pick apart the shadows and gaps between trees.

One things for sure! The tripod comes everywhere with me now. It even has multiple uses, what more could you want?

 

[fatrascal]

mallacootasmoothie, sounds like you've got a pretty good thing going. But imagine this. You've taken your bino's on the tripod and have effectively glassed a beautiful canyon and have found plenty of bucks but they just aren't what your looking for. But then you spot something moving about twice the distance as your effective glassing range but you just can't tell if its a deer or an elk or if it has antlers. Now you have to pack up your equipment and hike about a half mile closer to get a better look at the animal. Ok, so its a deer and yes, its a buck but you can't tell how big it is. So you hike another 200 yards closer only to find that he is a 23 inch crab clawed 3=point and not what you want. Now just think, if you would of had a spotting scope you would have been able to sit in the same spot where you first saw the buck and take a really good look at him and decide if you want to pursue him or not. Many people,including myself, use the bino's to spot game and then switch off to the spotter to evaluate the game. But most people will go further than that. After glassing everything with bino's on the tripod they will switch over to the spotting scope and start over glassing the whole area again. Most bino's are 10, 12 or 15 power. Most spotters will start out at 20 power and will zoom to 60 power. Now you have at least doubled your glassing distance and in most cases tripled it. With a spotter you can look into the shadey spots more effectively, under trees and rock cliffs. Everything you looked at before is much bigger now. Now you can see the deer leg sticking out from around that bush at 30 power that you missed at 15 power. That deer antler sticking above the willows at 50 power that you missed with the bino's. So you are more effectively glassing the spots that you've already glassed with bino's and then glassing double to triple the distance of the bino's. The advantage of the bino's is that you can use two eyes which causes less fatigue and we are just plain used to using two eyes. But giant binoculars are very expensive so one eyed spotters are used instead of two eyed spotters.
So spotters can do what bino's can do but at much longer ranges. fatrascal.

 

[Carolina joe]

Man, you just made me want a spotter really bad......I'm serious.

 

[HellsCanyon]

One thing I've noticed personally over the years is that I am not seeing as many deer when I "grid" as I used to a few years back. I used to not glass up very many deer when I'd first start glassing but when i'd slow down and start my grid I would pick them up. Seems like it's gotten to be the opposite the last 2 years or so. I'll pick up a much higher ratio of deer just scanning than I do my grid work. Still always do it but can definitely tell I've trained, my eyes better over the years as well as my instincts.

Anybody else notice somethin similar?

Mike

 

[Hardstalk]

One thing I've noticed personally over the years is that I am not seeing as many deer when I "grid" as I used to a few years back. I used to not glass up very many deer when I'd first start glassing but when i'd slow down and start my grid I would pick them up. Seems like it's gotten to be the opposite the last 2 years or so. I'll pick up a much higher ratio of deer just scanning than I do my grid work. Still always do it but can definitely tell I've trained, my eyes better over the years as well as my instincts.

Anybody else notice somethin similar?

Mike

I find my self questioning the speed of "gridding" at times. Which I believe is what your referring to. But I also seem to have just as good luck by panning at a semi fast speed as I do leaving the optic in a still position and picking apart twigs for some reason. I think my eyes are doing alot more than I credit them for. I will force myself to slow down because Im convinced Im missing things. In reality I usually turn up the same amount if critters.

 

[PintsOfCraft]

I've never tried binos on a tripod. I've always bounced between grid & scan depending on the context of the moment. I once read an article where a guy (Boddington I believe) hooked up some 20x Porros to a tripod and hunted Sitka. He said that the stereoscopic enhancement was the secret of the system. I do however tire of hauling a huge spotter around and picked up a Leupold compact model to use if I plan on doing a lot of moving.

Thanks for the nudge fatrascal - reading your post will probably cost me a few hundred bucks.

 

[JNDEER]

One thing I've noticed personally over the years is that I am not seeing as many deer when I "grid" as I used to a few years back. I used to not glass up very many deer when I'd first start glassing but when i'd slow down and start my grid I would pick them up. Seems like it's gotten to be the opposite the last 2 years or so. I'll pick up a much higher ratio of deer just scanning than I do my grid work. Still always do it but can definitely tell I've trained, my eyes better over the years as well as my instincts.

Anybody else notice somethin similar?

Mike

I never reall "grid" search. I just contantly look for game here, there, etc. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. If I feel deer are up and sunning or moving I may search faster, but if they may be more stationary I may hold the bino's in an area and check out the FOV before moving to another spot. I don't use a tripod for the binos. I use my knees or a stick to stabilize them. The only time I may get methodical in my searching and really SLOW down is when I feel the deer are bedded. I have gotten fairly good at finding them bedded in shady spots since my bino upgrade.

 

[boom]

mallacootasmoothie, sounds like you've got a pretty good thing going. But imagine this. You've taken your bino's on the tripod and have effectively glassed a beautiful canyon and have found plenty of bucks but they just aren't what your looking for. But then you spot something moving about twice the distance as your effective glassing range but you just can't tell if its a deer or an elk or if it has antlers. Now you have to pack up your equipment and hike about a half mile closer to get a better look at the animal. Ok, so its a deer and yes, its a buck but you can't tell how big it is. So you hike another 200 yards closer only to find that he is a 23 inch crab clawed 3=point and not what you want. Now just think, if you would of had a spotting scope you would have been able to sit in the same spot where you first saw the buck and take a really good look at him and decide if you want to pursue him or not. Many people,including myself, use the bino's to spot game and then switch off to the spotter to evaluate the game. But most people will go further than that. After glassing everything with bino's on the tripod they will switch over to the spotting scope and start over glassing the whole area again. Most bino's are 10, 12 or 15 power. Most spotters will start out at 20 power and will zoom to 60 power. Now you have at least doubled your glassing distance and in most cases tripled it. With a spotter you can look into the shadey spots more effectively, under trees and rock cliffs. Everything you looked at before is much bigger now. Now you can see the deer leg sticking out from around that bush at 30 power that you missed at 15 power. That deer antler sticking above the willows at 50 power that you missed with the bino's. So you are more effectively glassing the spots that you've already glassed with bino's and then glassing double to triple the distance of the bino's. The advantage of the bino's is that you can use two eyes which causes less fatigue and we are just plain used to using two eyes. But giant binoculars are very expensive so one eyed spotters are used instead of two eyed spotters.
So spotters can do what bino's can do but at much longer ranges. fatrascal.

i like!! i do half of this. i just pull out the spotter for a closer evaluation. i never considered re-scanning with the spotter.

i did find one deer once..in the next zipcode over. i gasped, and jiggled the system and never found it again. frustrating for sure. hard to zoom down to pick out reference landmarks for me. i need practice all over.

 

[fatrascal]

Think of it this way. A pioneer is crossing the country to take his family out west to start a new life. If he had only a revolver he would be effective at killing game at short range and could even get close to some big game and occasionally take down a deer or antelope etc. Now lets say that he does not have a revolver but has a rifle. Now he is effective at long range and will most likely be a better hunter because of his capability to shoot further. But at close range a rifle is a bit cumbersome, tough to get out of a scabbard quickly and its a nusiance to try and work with it in your hand or strapped to your back. But a revolver in its holster is out of the way and ready for quick use should a rabbit jump out in front of you and you can do some work with it strapped on your side. So both items have thier place and usage and as a pair of tools make you a much more effective hunter and protector. Singularly these tools work but when used as a pair of tools they shine.
Binoculars are strapped to your body ready for use and its more convienient to pull them out quickly and look at a buck that just jumped up in front of you and is staring at you from a hundred yards and are very effective for scanning and glassing at close range. Then you put them on a tripod and now you can suddenly see clearer, further and there is no shake or vibration. But tough to see and evaluate game at 800 yards. Now you pull out the spotting scope. Not very practical to use at 50 to 300 yards and it takes time to get it out and set it up. But from 300 yards out to 1,500 yards or for some people a couple of miles the scope will show things a bino can't touch. Singularly these tools work but when used together as a pair of tools they shine. fatrascal.