I've got one young son and another in the works. With more mouths to feed my wife has expressed interest in starting to hunt too. She is going to need all of her own gear and optics would be a great thing to get knocked out early on! She will need a way to spot me while I'm watching after the kids at base camp while she's up on the mountain.
I have an old pair of 10 x 42 monarchs. Could definitely use a new pair to help me watch/spot elk in Hell's Canyon (Snake River Unit) in Oregon. My AGC Bino Harness would love to have a new pair to accent with the Kryptek Highland Pattern!
I was a competitive smallbore target shooter in my youth. The spotting scope is a early 1970's Bausch and Lomb 20x spotting scope. I hunt the prairie a lot so reasonably good glass is important to my deer and antelope ventures out there. The scope is quality glass and I am accustomed to it. I took a cedar post from the farm store in Utah and fashioned a stock from the post (cedar chosen for strength, durability, weight) and then using a combination of large hose clamps and bedding compound mounted the scope to it with the raised comb of perfect height for me to throw up and be perfectly aligned with eye relief and height. I usually have shooting sticks when rifle hunting so when glassing I just lay the stocked scope on those and have a rock solid base to glass from. I stole the idea from local game wardens who I saw do the same thing from their trucks where they mounted optics to an old rifle stock. I just added some redneckery to the system and custom made a set-up for my purposes.
More than one game warden has been very disappointed to find out the "rifle" they saw me hunting with when archery/ML hunting was actually a spotting scope mounted on an old cedar post. But hey - after forcing them into stalking me and doing their investigation I did get a couple of side jobs making them a cedar post special also!
Range/drop charts are randomly written on the stock with ballpoint ink for all calibers my wife and I have ever hunted with. Sure going to miss that with the new bnocs LOL.
A new pair of bnocs would eliminate about 5# from my kit and update my optics about 40 years!
Edit to add: the big ziptie on the butt holds the sling swivel on, the gorilla glue didn't hold the post last pronghorn hunt so we had to improvise.
My son is rapidly advancing in his hunting skills and he cant seem to figure out which side of the Burris bino's to look through at home but luckily he was able to spot some turkey's this fall for me to arrow.
So I'll start with the honest reason I'd like to get my hands on the Monarch HG's; I drew a great SW Idaho muley rut tag. I'd love to upgrade my Vanguard Endeavors since I'll be working REALLY hard to match or beat this OTC muley I got in 2015:
Now, purely for extra credit, I too can jump on the cute kiddos-limited-budget bandwagon (because its true!). Three boys 5, 3 & 5 mos old:
The 5 yr old is already doing 4-6 miles and 1000+ ft of elevation with me every few weeks :
I really enjoy Rokslide contests! Best of luck choosing the winner and congrats to whomever may get the Monarchs!
As with many, I'm a father of young children on a modest income. 4 boys, all currently 5 and under. They all talk about "shooting deers" and wonder why I haven't gotten that done yet since I've hunted 1 WHOLE fall already ; ].
Much of what little excess budget I'm able to free up ends up going into gear and training for the Law Enforcement agency I volunteer for. We attend an academy and work with full powers of arrest, all with zero agency financing. I love doing it for the opportunity to serve and assist the other agencies nearby, but it is not a cheap endeavor.
My grandfather has been an avid Eastern hunter his whole life, missing last year for the first time since he served in World War II due to age. I've always looked up to him and love making him proud. He knows I hunted last fall, but some great glass just might help me earn the chance to send him a success photo before that opportunity is gone.
Here's a couple images illustrating my current optic situation.
My 3 oldest boys (the baby is just 3 months old now) are seen here spotting some animals in the distance:
A closer look reveals a small cow and a young nanny! (The goat currently provides the milk for my family while the cow is reaching breeding age as 2 of my boys have difficulty digesting processed milk, and buying goat or raw milk locally would cause us to go broke.):
Finally, a close-up of the glass. On the right is literally the best binos I owned for my hunt last season, as you can see, my boys have since dismantled them. In the middle are the pair my wife and I will be taking for her Mule deer hunt as a 2nd if we can't find any to borrow. I believe I've owned those since I was 8. On the left is the set of Celestrons that I grabbed off Amazon for this coming fall for ~$50 as a massive upgrade. The glass seems solid to me, though fit/finish is lacking severely. I assume that is my lack of experience with quality speaking, and fully expect to be blown away by an upgrade in the ~1k tier, wether the contest pair or sometime in the future.
Thanks to Rokslide and Nikon. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be in the running for this massive upgrade and best of luck to all!
First off, I’d like to introduce myself as this is my first post to the site. I’ve been a long-time lurker in the optics forum and just recently made an account. My name is Zach. I’m 21 years old and I mostly hunt whitetails in NJ and Maryland. Over the last few years, my Dad and I have really gotten into birding. We get out a few times a week locally and take day trips on the weekends. This past September my dad surprised me with a new pair of 10x42 Leupold bx-4 pro guides HD’s for my birthday. My dad would never spend that much on binoculars for himself (his only binos are a pair of $100 8x30 Kowas), but did it for me. We’re going on a week long birding trip through 6 states in late September. I love my BX-4’s and am in no need of an upgrade, but I would love to surprise my dad with a new pair of binos before our trip. Thanks for running this contest!
As a young dad with three girls all under age five I could really use these, because it looks like for the next twenty plus years all my hunting gear funds have been transferred into the prom dress/college tuition/wedding reception account . But in all reality I wouldn’t trade any of it.
It’s nice to see a bunch of other guys getting it done on the cheap, I was beginning to think I was the only one who didn’t have the latest greatest. Thanks rokslide for an awesome contest, and may the poorest bugger win!
I think I would make a suitable winner because at the rate I lose stuff in the woods the odds are high you would have 2 winners with one choice, hopefully a RS member finds them wherever I leave them and not some knucklehead.
If I dont win, any chance you do a glove give away? Started last season with 3 new pairs. Now I have a pair and a half, 2 lefts, one right, 3 different weights.
This is my baby and she needs a new glass set so dady can get his second deer ever. Which may be why she was conceived in the first place. My wife is the best.
In may of 2017, I was just minding my own business when my wife popped into the bedroom and said that she was ready to make a baby... I came to a little while later and my wife was still standing there wondering if I was ready. I told her that there was absolutely no way that we were ready and that we needed at least another year before giving this a serious thought. I figured this was a better statement than “I need to go on an elk hunt first”. We went back and forth for a bit, then out of nowhere she starts getting dressed into “something more comfortable”. I wasn’t about to be thrown off by such a cheap trick, so I firmly said “No”. Well apparently the word “No” is exactly what turns women on, cuz she was on me like a chicken on a June bug after that. I held off for as long as I could before I gave in, and apparently “as long as I could” is about 10 seconds.
Fast forward 9 months and I was the proud owner of a 2018 model baby girl. I won’t be hunting this year, and the budget for 2019 is so tight you couldn’t get a greased B.B. up it’s butt with a hammer. I won’t have binos if I don’t somehow stumble upon a free pair, so you folks are my only hope.