My next purchase. What should it be?

[parshal]

I'd go for 10's, 12's or 15's in quality binoculars to compliment your existing 8's. If you go with 12's or 15's make sure to get a tripod adapter from someone like Outdoorsmans. Use the 8's for general glassing, the newer binos on a tripod for easy long glassing sessions and use the spotter if you need it. Later, upgrade the spotter. You'll be amazed at what you can see with good quality 15's on a tripod. The 12x50 ELs on a tripod would be very similar as well. You may find you use the spotter less than you think.

 

[luke moffat]

I guess I'll go against the grain here and say that the Nikon Monarchs are surprisingly good to my eyes. The Vortex Nomad is really much more unimpressive than that the binos he currently has. In that same situation I'd put the $1200 towards a new Vortex Razor 65mm spotter and keep rocking the Monarch binos.

Several of my buddy's have them and yes they are not quite the binos that the $1K+ binos I have used (Swaro, Zeiss, Vortex Razor) but they are pretty decent and I find I use a spotter quite often once I find the game to see if it legal or worth the stalk over there and I don't think I could quite pull that off with my Vortex Razor HDs and a Vortex Nomad spotter, but I feel I could with Nikon Monarchs and Vortex Razor spotter.

Though if you are one that doesn't' hunt with a spotter much I'd certainly upgrade your binos. Just saying how I'd roll given my style of hunting, your hunting style may be different.

 

[Rizzy]

I would upgrade your spotter, those Nikon Monarchs are better glass than they get credit for. I have a pair and I use them just as much if not more than my Ziess Conquest HD's. The 8x42 Monarchs are a lot lighter and do better in low light due to the objective(?) I would also agree that the jump from 8x42 to 10x42 is not huge, in my case not always worth the extra weight. The 8x42's will do better both in low and still hunting. I like my 10x42's for scouting when I'm not carrying a weapon or when I'm hunting really big country. But even then, the spotter on 15x works better for really long distances.

Save a few hundred more and get a Razor spotter, it will increase your glassing efficiency by a lot more. I jumped up to the Viper last season and use my binoculars even less now. I scan on 15x through the spotter all the time. The trick to it is to learn to open both eyes when you look through the spotter and it eliminates nearly all the eye fatigue.

In my experience if your spotter is of lower quality than your binoculars, it will leave a lot to be desired in the field. Especially when judging animals from a distance.

 

[JNDEER]

I would say I use the spotter a lot more than my binos for locating animals. But this past season is where I really noticed how inadequate my glass was during last light. Also the nomad is ok at 20x and maybe 40x but it gets real hard to focus above that. I know for sure the binos need to be upgraded which is most likely what I'll do first but a friend opened my eyes to the benefits of using high power binos for extended periods of glassing. The only disadvantage I saw was not being able to increase magnification when needed.

Last light can mean a lot of things. If you are truly wanting to see bone on the head of a deer at what would be timed as the last few minutes of legal hunting light you will need to purchase a bino in that $1200 range or more. Why are you using the spotter to find game more then the bino's? do the bino's hurt your eye's or are you trying to find game at far distances?

why do you need to increase magnification? are you having trouble seeing antlers on the deer or are you trying to count points and inches?

just trying to get a feel for how your using the glass.