I hunted for years with subpar old Leupold 10x42s balanced on a trekking pole that I thought were fine, especially because I had a Razor HD spotter to back them up if needed. While I harvested some animals with that combo for years, I found myself over relying on my spotter because my binoculars sucked which then caused me to look for an eyepatch because my eye would grow so tired after looking through a spotter after 20min of scanning.
Me deciding to bite the bullet is a similiar story to
@Carrot Farmer. While I had known about swaros and high end glass since I was a kid, I never thought that dumping that kind of money into optics made that big of a difference until I was hunting with a long time buddy that glassed these deer in brush patch 500yds away that I could not find with my binoculars to save my life. He was using swaro EL 12x50s at the time watching these deer have a party while I stared at a lifeless patch of blurry brush. A lightbulb went off and I wondered how much game I had missed in my years of hunting that could have resulted in previous unfilled tags. I saved and scrounged every penny I could doing whatever it would take to afford better glass. I finally was able to bite the bullet and bought the NL Pure 12x42s a few months after they came out.
A few years later, I wish I could put into words the world of difference in opportunities that better optics has given me in the field but I think if I had to I would render it down I would tell someone that you cannot not kill what you cannot see. I’ve been able to find deer bedded, buried in brush, the flick of an ear… things that would have been a pipe dream with my previous optics. I can sit behind them for hours at a time and the best part is that the spotter rarely gets pulled out of the pack unless I’m field judging a decent buck.
There’s always gear that we want to upgrade whether it be rifles, tents, sleeping bags, clothes…the list goes on and on but all of it is for not if you cannot see the game you are after on the mountain. IMO quality optics should be at the absolute peak of the priority list for any serious western hunter and I wished I had learned that much earlier in my hunting career.
maybe look at upgrading binos and then the spotter
