Monoculars & Small Spotting Scopes

[CaberTosser]

I've been casually looking around at binoculars and spotting scopes and saw one Leupold compact that intrigued me:

http://www.leupold.com/hunting-shoot...x40mm-compact/

Does anyone here favor a monocular to bino's, or use a compact spotting scope like this one instead? At 10-20x this unit seems to go down as low as my binoculars, but has the ability to reach out with the 20x. My current binos are fairly entry level Bushnell's

[bowtech3006]

If your sheep hunting and are looking for minimal weight you might want to walk this road. Just remember when you go to a low objective diameter,single lens optic your loosing twilight factor & the third dimension. You would IMO be better off with a high end binocular. In my experience 40x and up is only good if your paying for it. When you buy high end your paying for the upper ranges of magnification. Hope this helps.

[Salavee]

Cable ... Have a look at Ken-Ray. Fantastic Binos and Spotting Scopes.. and the prices are right.

Ken-Ray Optics.com

[Stinky Coyote]

look at the nikon ed50 spotter with 13-40x eyepiece (not the 13-30x eyepiece), there is even a hand hold case for it, i still tripod mount mine but did think about it at one point, its a 50mm spotter, its tiny, its light (22 oz) and has excellent glass for the money, i've been running it as my lone spotter for years and still can't bring myself to spend on another, i love the little booger

i run leica 10x32 ultravid hd's for bino's...same thing, love my combo, i tripod mount those quite a bit on the leica bino mount for majority of 'sheep' glassing but they still work well around the neck for the journey etc.

if you want to be light then my combo is hard to beat, i don't think a monocular will do well enough at helping you find game to go down that road, the though passed quickly, i'd leave the spotter at home before i'd leave the bino's at home, having stereo vision on a tripod (or window mount) is the ultimate game finder for me, the spotter is for judging/closer looks

Looking through one eye is very fatiguing and cannot be done for extended periods of time. I can't see a monocular being a replacement/substitite for a binocular. Also, trying handhold optics with magnification greater than 10x is pretty well impossible and I'm not sure you could even hold a 10x monocular steady enough for an extended period. I'd call it a gimick.

[V_1]

Originally Posted by Salavee

Cable ... Have a look at Ken-Ray. Fantastic Binos and Spotting Scopes.. and the prices are right.

Ken-Ray Optics.com

Did you mean Zen-Ray? I use 10x mono from Zen and quite happy with it.