Spotting Scope???

Until this year i haven’t really even thought about buying a spotting scope. But, w/ the help from Brad and getting me addicted to Buffalo County i can definitely see the use for one.

i’m looking for a scope that has a clear view of a deer up to 1.0 mile away. I will say that price does matter and i’m not looking to spend a fortune. The hardest part is looking thru them in the store… it’s never far enough and when you go outside around a bunch of building it doesn’t give you a “real” idea of what it will do when glassing deer.

Any help will be greatly appreciated

I’ve heard a ton of great things about vortex scopes. I believe that they have a unconditional lifetime warranty and high end glass at low end prices. The only experience I have with spotting scopes is the alpen that I bought when I was in college for around 100$….it’s better than binocs at long range but not by much.

I looked long and hard before i bought mine. the Nikon 20x60x84 was what i ended up getting. I dont know if you could clearly score a deer at a mile away with it as i dont have any where around me that i could look at game that far. If you want to try it out sometime let me know.

Vortex are really nice!

Besides good clear glass, what should one look for in a spotting scope? How do you “size” them?? I’ve always wanted one for hunting out west(SD, WY, MT).

Typically speaking the bigger the lens, the better low light capability when comparing similar glass.

I have a Leupold Gold Ring 15-30×50. I really like it. Sometimes I wish I had the 12-40×60 just for the extra light gathering but it is quite a bit larger in size. If your going to be carrying it around out west then the 15-30×50 is what you want. If your just going to use it from the truck or house get the bigger one. I just checked samplelist.com and they have some great deals on spotting scopes right now.

I’ve got a Burris Landmark 15x45x60 that I picked up used on another site a few years back. Might not be for the backpacker, but from the truck or pod it’s the cat’s meow.

What I need educated on is how does one choose a 12-40 vs. 20-60? I guess it depends how far you want??

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What I need educated on is how does one choose a 12-40 vs. 20-60? I guess it depends how far you want??

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When it comes to choosing a magnification, it also depends on the typical hunting conditions one hunts in. Hunting conditions vary greatly based on humidity, fog, wind, dust, pollen, heat waves etc… and these things will decrease your image quality the more they are magnified. Here’s where a 30X power will be better than a 60X power. However, if you hunt in clear and calm conditions, here’s where your 60X power will give you an advantage.

The other factor is the quality of the optical system. No matter what, the more you magnify – the more the image quality decreases. However, there are some spotting scopes out there that lose very little quality even at 60X. Here’s where the old saying is true “you get what you pay for”. This is where you should invest in your spotting scope.

When it comes to choosing the size of the objective lens, the larger the lens typically means you can see more of the object and the image quality is better. This of couse is assuming you are comparing two scopes of the same quality. However, it is important to understand that a large lens with fair image quality is not necessarly better than a smaller lens with higher image quality. In other words I would go for the quaility of the image versus the size of the lens. There are many types of glass out there that one needs to consider (ED glass, APO glass, HD glass & fluorite glass).

Other things you may want to consider when choosing a scope is the weight (spot and stalk hunting versus scouting from a vehicle), eye relief (if you where prescription glasses or shooting sunglasses), whether it is waterproof of not, if it comes with a protective covering case, and if you want to get into digiscoping (taking pictures with your camera through your spotting scope via a camera adaptor) or videoscoping (same as digiscoping but with a video camera).

There’s a lot of choices out there – so get a budget, find which scopes fall within that budget and do a side by side comparison.

Or i can just borrow Flips from time to time???

Thanks for the input Brad as i look into buying yet another pc of outdoor equipment

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What I need educated on is how does one choose a 12-40 vs. 20-60? I guess it depends how far you want??

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I addition to Brad’s excellent post, two other things to consider are quality of the optics and the tripod your going to use.

Currently the Nikon ED50 Fieldscope is getting rave reviews for a mid priced spotter, with many on the birdwatching forums commenting on how excellent the optics are. This is a very compact spotter available in straight or angled format and which takes a range of Nikon eyepeices

On another hunting forum, a guy there was able to compare that scope with a fixed x30 eyepiece installed with a friends Leupold Gold Ring 12-40x60mm…They could both see .223 holes in the targets at 200m with the Nikon, while neither could with Leupold even when it was set at x40 power.

Now the Leupold is considered a fine spotting scope, and it would probably out perform the Nikon as the light started to fail. The Leupold also has far better eye relief than the Nikon, which is important if you wear specs..

But it does show that quality optics do make a difference more than perhaps the figures for basic magnification and objective diameter suggest.

The other thing to consider if you want a spotter with a max of x60 power is that you will need a very steady/rigid tripod to get the full advantage of it. Stead/rigid usually means “heavy” so the whole set up may not be particularly portable for say a hunter, but might be ideal for range use..

Regards,

Peter

Welcome to IDO Peter and thank you for your wise comments above!

Please share with us the type of hunting that you do in the UK.

Brad,

Thanks for the warm welcome..Rather than hijack this thread, I’ve post an introduction and a few pics in the General Hunting Forum,

Regards,

Peter