icampbell87
FNG
Hey everyone.
There's not much loudness out there for leica binoculars, so I wanted to post something.
Ages ago, in the 20-teen's, I worked on a large hunting ranch out west. This wasn't a part time ranch, it was 365 days a year focused on hunting, primarily deer. Game cameras, deer study programs, water work, glassing A LOT, documenting cull's, trophies, relatives, counting fawns, and, of course, guiding. Oil men, celebrities, politicians, top end clients. Multiple b&c.
So, you can guess that the family had the option of any glass they wanted, on rifles and binos to be able to fund an outfit like that. They chose Leica Geovids, the 2009, later 2016 versions. They cycled in some Swaro, Leupold, Zeiss, but those always ended up going back to the safe and not getting used. Those were good glass as well, obviously, but nobody believed they would hold up to the same abuse (true or not), not to mention everyone appreciated how damn good the leicas were, dark to dark, and the rangefinder worked great. They ooze build quality, and the rangefinder works well.
Reading reviews and uneducated comments online, you'd assume these optics were inferior, barely better than 500 dollar pairs, and I promise you nobody who ACTUALLY USES binoculars for a living would call the optics inferior (only the kind of people that get new binoculars constantly and do more internet reading than using in the field). They are damn clear, bright, great depth, comfortable, and damn impressive. As someone who spent hundreds of hours glassing per year, for half a decade, professionally in all conditions, they are worth the coins and I wouldn't spend more on glass. When the animal could be a cull buck or a b&c trophy with several broken tines and cause you to lose tens of thousands of dollars or lose your job, you don't use inferior binoculars. We had to judge down to a few inches of antler, and they enabled that. Now, you can argue the weight factor for backpacking, as we did not backpack with them, never carrying them more than a few ridges or day hikes. But that is the only fault we noted, they are STOUT at a solid 33oz.
They had around a half dozen of them, mostly 10x42 with a 15x56, as well, these binoculars rode on the dashboard of ranch trucks all year long, no case, a couple had half of the lens covers. These trucks did around 20,000 miles a year on horrible roads and were beat to death, windows down all spring, summer, fall. These binoculars had the roughest life imaginable. Caked with dust, beat to death, falling off the dash to the floor multiple times per day, even falling out of a window sometimes. You'd throw then up on a half-open window and kill the engine to glass at an ear flick or animal sighting, grab them and glass over the hood, over a tree branch, put them on a lanyard and take off onto the mountain.
They were used heavily, as in daily, all year long. When done, they were flippantly tossed onto the dashboard, dozens of times per day, as we already trusted how tough they were and never thought about it. We'd wipe the lenses on our shirt when they got dusty and keep trucking. They blasted dark areas with light, helped us analyze antlers, and were treated the same as a knife or flashlight. Every once in awhile in the summer you might get some distortion on the armor, but nothing major and no functional issues.
They never failed on us, in a professional capacity, while being used in all 4 seasons, all kinds of weather, generally abused and never treated with kiddie gloves.
You can find the 2016 version around 1-1.2k online, the 2009 version down to 700 or so, and would highly recommend them to anyone looking for top quality glass with a rangefinder built in.
Years later, after being out of hunting for 15 years, I decided to get back into it. After research, I decided to stick with what I knew and got a pair of 2017s Geovid-r 10x42's and I'm enjoying them as much as I did way back when. They hold up. and they fit in my harness after some adjustments.
To summarize, there are always better optics out there, worse optics, lighter, etc than whatever you're looking at, unless you go through 5 pairs a decade trying to keep up with the Jones and try new stuff, which is also fine. But older quality glass from the big makers hold up, and you don't have to spend 15-2500 to find the game you're looking for. The classifieds section here is a gold mine. Yes, I'm nostalgic , but I'm not missing enough to worry about.
If you can't find them with these binoculars, you can't find them with the latest top end Swarovski, either
Try older Swaro, Leica, Zeiss and enjoy life!
There's not much loudness out there for leica binoculars, so I wanted to post something.
Ages ago, in the 20-teen's, I worked on a large hunting ranch out west. This wasn't a part time ranch, it was 365 days a year focused on hunting, primarily deer. Game cameras, deer study programs, water work, glassing A LOT, documenting cull's, trophies, relatives, counting fawns, and, of course, guiding. Oil men, celebrities, politicians, top end clients. Multiple b&c.
So, you can guess that the family had the option of any glass they wanted, on rifles and binos to be able to fund an outfit like that. They chose Leica Geovids, the 2009, later 2016 versions. They cycled in some Swaro, Leupold, Zeiss, but those always ended up going back to the safe and not getting used. Those were good glass as well, obviously, but nobody believed they would hold up to the same abuse (true or not), not to mention everyone appreciated how damn good the leicas were, dark to dark, and the rangefinder worked great. They ooze build quality, and the rangefinder works well.
Reading reviews and uneducated comments online, you'd assume these optics were inferior, barely better than 500 dollar pairs, and I promise you nobody who ACTUALLY USES binoculars for a living would call the optics inferior (only the kind of people that get new binoculars constantly and do more internet reading than using in the field). They are damn clear, bright, great depth, comfortable, and damn impressive. As someone who spent hundreds of hours glassing per year, for half a decade, professionally in all conditions, they are worth the coins and I wouldn't spend more on glass. When the animal could be a cull buck or a b&c trophy with several broken tines and cause you to lose tens of thousands of dollars or lose your job, you don't use inferior binoculars. We had to judge down to a few inches of antler, and they enabled that. Now, you can argue the weight factor for backpacking, as we did not backpack with them, never carrying them more than a few ridges or day hikes. But that is the only fault we noted, they are STOUT at a solid 33oz.
They had around a half dozen of them, mostly 10x42 with a 15x56, as well, these binoculars rode on the dashboard of ranch trucks all year long, no case, a couple had half of the lens covers. These trucks did around 20,000 miles a year on horrible roads and were beat to death, windows down all spring, summer, fall. These binoculars had the roughest life imaginable. Caked with dust, beat to death, falling off the dash to the floor multiple times per day, even falling out of a window sometimes. You'd throw then up on a half-open window and kill the engine to glass at an ear flick or animal sighting, grab them and glass over the hood, over a tree branch, put them on a lanyard and take off onto the mountain.
They were used heavily, as in daily, all year long. When done, they were flippantly tossed onto the dashboard, dozens of times per day, as we already trusted how tough they were and never thought about it. We'd wipe the lenses on our shirt when they got dusty and keep trucking. They blasted dark areas with light, helped us analyze antlers, and were treated the same as a knife or flashlight. Every once in awhile in the summer you might get some distortion on the armor, but nothing major and no functional issues.
They never failed on us, in a professional capacity, while being used in all 4 seasons, all kinds of weather, generally abused and never treated with kiddie gloves.
You can find the 2016 version around 1-1.2k online, the 2009 version down to 700 or so, and would highly recommend them to anyone looking for top quality glass with a rangefinder built in.
Years later, after being out of hunting for 15 years, I decided to get back into it. After research, I decided to stick with what I knew and got a pair of 2017s Geovid-r 10x42's and I'm enjoying them as much as I did way back when. They hold up. and they fit in my harness after some adjustments.
To summarize, there are always better optics out there, worse optics, lighter, etc than whatever you're looking at, unless you go through 5 pairs a decade trying to keep up with the Jones and try new stuff, which is also fine. But older quality glass from the big makers hold up, and you don't have to spend 15-2500 to find the game you're looking for. The classifieds section here is a gold mine. Yes, I'm nostalgic , but I'm not missing enough to worry about.
If you can't find them with these binoculars, you can't find them with the latest top end Swarovski, either
Try older Swaro, Leica, Zeiss and enjoy life!
