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I use my spotter as a way to judge a buck. If I cant see antlers with my 15s I'm not interested anyway. For me a straight spotter is 10x better than an angled. Angled is great for steep uphill shots but other than that it takes too long to acquire your target. In Mexico for example I use my spotter to judge bucks sometimes 20-30 times. it is faster to remove 15s acquire target, quick judge remove spotter put 15s back on and continue glassing with a straight.

I just purchased a brand new Feisol 3441S off eBay and it's really impressive. 2.6 pounds ,rated for 44 pounds, plus it extends to 70 inches. Nice quality tripod ( comparable to Gitzo) Anyway, it turns out that the seller has more of them and wants $250 plus shipping. Typical web price is $400-$450. If you are interested, call John at (714) 805-6469 or see his ad on the Orange County Craigslist.

Yes! I actually put the calendar in the store quite awhile ago, but apparently forgot to change the inventory quantity to more than the 0 it was set to from last year's calendar! Luckily a forum member emailed me to ask when I would be getting more calendars in!

yes, it's a result of the new software. I am still working on getting this fixed. It's a just due to some conflicts with old and new software I believe. I don't think it puts anyone at risk, it's just a technical issue. But hopefully will get it resolved soon. I have an SSL certificate for the site, but due to some conflicts it's not recognizing it. Mostly the conflicts are related to a file being referenced with the http:// address vs https:// at the beginning of the file address.

This is is the buck that my hunting partner killed with me this year. The taxidermist doing his euro mount discovered that the deer has upper canine teeth. I know that millions of years ago most ungulates did have tusks, and some species still do but i have never seen this in all of my life. Has anyone else seen this in a deer?

First learn how to locate deer. Get a tripod and a pair of decent 15s. Since your new I highly suggest you take a Duwane Adams glassing class. Write down tons of questions before hand and pick his brain. Spending $300 on his class will save you lots of money in the future. He is a living legend and a heck of a nice guy.

Hunt on top of rim where the big bucks are...

i got some really nice bushnell ill trade you for. ya?

If you look at the photo of the load book, you can see the charge weights, velocities, etc. Compare that to the target photo with numbered shots. Each shot is marked after firing, so you know which shot is which on target. You will see shots 6 thru 12 are all very close to same POI for 343 yards, if you factor out the wind drift. Under 1" or so for vertical dispersion. That shows a lot of potential. But needing to keep.speeds under 3200fps, shots 6/7/8 ( 52.5/53.0/53.5gr) is the range I will be working in. I will start .2gr low @ 52.3gr and go up in .2gr increments this time to .2gr over, or to 53.7gr. Load 3 of each and go shoot them @ 200 yards to see which load shoots best, and has the lowest ES/SD (extreme spread and standard deviation). Meaning most consistent speeds which equals consistency.

Norma brass CCI250 64.0gr IMR4350 185 Berger HVLD 2.208 CBTO 2952fps

Remington 1903A3 30-06 Sporterized. Made in 1942 and carried through Whiskey Whiskey Deuce (European Theatre). This rifle has Nazi's, deer, and elk under its belt. My latest harvest was a 19A Cow. I used 180gr Remington Core Lokt. Leupold VX-3i 4.5-14x50mm scope.

All original pre64 featherweight.... I ain't touching that thing other than maybe a slip on pad.

I think a lot of it comes down to individual style. For me personally, I like my spotter and don't fatigue much at all while on it for several hours at a time. I use it heavily during the late morning and into the early afternoon hours. I find it fast and easy to move from the lowest power for FOV to highest magnification for high detail at will while animals are most dormant. I'll grid the hillside or just one elevation when really slowing down and then hit it with my 10's every 10-20min by hand right quick for anything that has gone on the move. I run an older model angled Vortex Viper 15-45x65 and find a lot of deer with it that get overlooked by my buddies. Absolutely an invaluable tool that often times has me debating whether to leave my spotter or the 15's at home when cutting weight on days I am primarily still hunting. When my left eye (closed eye) starts getting a little twitchy from fatigue, I just switch over to my 15's or 10's. When scouting or out on a rifle hunt, I will have all 3 optics in my pack 100% of the time and rotate throughout the day. To answer the OP - angled all day for me. Whether sitting or standing, I find the angled eye piece easier to get comfortable behind.

Great observation here. “Glassing” as we traditionally know it (optics on a tripod) is very difficult with a spotting scope. Glassing requires time behind the glass, stability, and no eye strain. Time is required because you’ll be looking at the same field of view over time so you can let the deer move (even just flick an ear sometimes). Stability is required because a shaking field of view will mask minor movement like the aforementioned ear flick. And no eye strain is required because squinting, headaches and other types of strain will reduce the first two factors. Your time behind the glass will be reduced by headaches which make you take your eye out of the spotting scope to look to look away and stability is reduced by squinting and other micro-adjustments which cause shakiness or at least the appearance of movement. And because spotting scopes are usually heavier than even high-power binos, they’re generally shakier on a tripod than binoculars without any human movement. So although not great for glassing, spotting scopes serve an important purpose. To me, their purpose is discerning objects at the very edges of our binoculars’ capabilities. Is that deer a buck or a doe? Is that object a bedded deer or a tree stump? (I’ve spent many minutes waiting for a rock to move because it looked like a deer through my binoculars. It’s a huge time and effort savings to be able to make the “rock” call before investing all that time watching or hiking to get closer.) For hunters to whom scores matter, spotting scopes are great for counting tines or discerning between a 100 inch buck and a 110 inch buck. Regarding the angled vs. straight debate, there are pros and cons for each and it can come down to personal preference and glassing style. If you’re usually looking up to mountains from the flats, for instance, angled can be great. If you end up looking down a lot, straight can be great. After a great deal of struggle with your exact question, when I pulled the trigger on a spotting scope I went with straight. I like it because I can quickly whip the binos off and put the spotter up without having to move the tripod up or down or change my head position. Plus, it seemed that a lot of my mentor hunters went with straight. So that factored in too. Whether you end up with straight or angled, you’ll get used to it and then cognitive dissonance will kick in and convince you that you made the right choice. 😊 As with any optics though, my one piece of advice is to the buy the best quality you possibly can. At high power, you’ll really notice the difference in quality. As important as this principle is for binoculars, it might be even more important for spotting scopes. Good luck on your quest and let us know what you end up with.

I had one done quite a few years ago, through a local taxidermist. With hair on, it was around $300. I think doing it yourself is a very tedious process.

Had a great youth hunt this year. We deep fried turkey on Thanksgiving day at our deer camp and enjoyed the afternoon around the campfire, filling our bellies. It was a pretty tough hunt this year considering the area was really hit hard during the general season and the rut had not started. Opening morning we glassed up a lot of deer, but could only come up with a small forked horn which both boys passed on. Lots of glassing and hiking with little to get excited about. Friday evening we found another group of hunters in the area we planned on hunting, so we went to plan B to see if we could locate anything before dark. We found a small 4x3 with minutes to spare of shooting light and my 13 year old put the hammer on him for his very first deer. The following morning, I sent my oldest son into an area I hunted as a kid, that has always been a productive area. He located 2 nice bucks, which included a 4x4 and 3x2. After several hours of crawling on his hands and knees through the rocks and cactus, he got close enough to make a shot in the wide open country on the bigger of the 2 bucks and got it done again. He has shot mature bucks the last 3 years in a row. Super proud of both these young men.

3500 fps and a bc over .600 makes the wind calls alot easier.

I wouldn’t click it then

Got me 2

Glad to see you have them in the CWT store, good luck Amanda!

Bump for wildwoody, I think you wanted 11's?

Thank you

It all started 10 years ago. When I was growing up, and showed an interest in hunting, my dad grew that interest into a passion. He taught me how to shoot. He taught me how to glass. He taught me how to climb up and over that next ridge to get away from other hunters or relocate the buck that we watched go that way. He taught me how to wait for the right time to make a move on a buck in order to be in a position for a shot. He taught me how to take tasteful pictures of the buck afterwards and how to clean the animal and utilize all the meat that the animal had to offer. My dad is awesome and he taught me all those awesome things. I always hunted with my dad and brothers. My dad was with me on all of the animals I shot...until 2008. In 2008, we had 6 tags in camp. We decided to split up into two groups of 3 to increase our chances. I was hunting with my older brother and my brother in law. We had been watching some good bucks in the area and we made a plan for opening day. Long story short, I glassed up the bucks and my brother and I pulled a double, killing two bucks that were running together. It was awesome because it was the first time my brother and I had hunted without my dad. It was awesome because we pulled the double. We learned a lot and we learned that we were confident to hunt on our own because of how well dad had taught us. Fast forward 10 years. This year, 2018. We killed two good bucks, again without dad present (he drew a different unit with another of my brothers). We did not pull a tenth anniversary double but it was still an awesome hunt. My oldest boy, Tanner and my brother’s oldest boy, Zac had drawn a general rifle tag for Coues deer in unit 32. We have become a little familiar with the unit over the years and both Zac and Tanner have killed bucks in unit 32 previously. We also brought along Tanner’s brother Parker and Zac’s brother, Colton. My dad was also there to help. We got into the unit on Thursday and got camp set up. Glassing Thursday evening only yielded does and some javelina. Opening morning brought high winds and more does. We glassed up about 25 does that morning. We relocated for the afternoon and fought more wind and found more does. Finally about 20 minute before dark I glassed up a little two point buck about 900 yards out. He was not in a huntable spot for the timeframe that we had and we decided to hunt that area in the morning. Saturday morning found us on a great knob that gave us 360 glassing coverage over a lot of great country. My dad had to stop sooner as to not run out of gas in his quad and was glassing other country. The wind was brutal. We were trying to stay out of the wind and also glass stuff that appeared to be out of the wind. We started finding does right away. Then we heard some shooting nearby and found 4 bucks running out of the country while being shot at. Finally around 9:30, I decided to glass a ridge that was out of the wind for the 3rd or 4th time. Within minutes I glassed up 3 bucks about 1500 yards out. We watched them for about 30 minutes until they bedded down within feet of each other. We made a plan to get closer and felt we could get to the 300 yard range. It took us an hour and 45 minutes to close the distance based on the terrain and our 6 man crew trying to not be too loud or get anyone hurt. We left Colton and Parker with some gear under a cedar and moved up another 30 yards to the top of the ridge with Zac and Tanner. As we eased up we relocated the bucks in their beds. We also ended up a lot closer than we had planned. 190 yards. It took us a few minutes to navigate the brush and rocks on the ridge top and get Tanner and Zac set up in seated positions. Tanner’s buck stood and began to feed while Zac’s remained bedded. The plan was for Tanner to shoot first then Zac. After a few moments, Tanner told me he was ready and I told him I was ready and watching the buck. When Tanner shot, I watched his buck do a back flip into a bush and slide out onto the ground not moving. Zac shot next and went just over the buck. The buck came unglued from his bed and stopped. Zac’s second shot found its mark and I watched as his buck made it about 10 yards before crashing! Another double! 10 years after the first one and we had just watched our boy’s pull a double! It was incredible to watch. We had such a great time and of course the success makes it that much sweeter. Tanner’s buck: .270 win, 150 gr Berger VLD, 190 yards Zac’s buck: .243, 95 gr. Berger VLD, 200 yards Sorry for the long winded story, just trying to give it some context.

He goes by many names .. We English speaking folks know him as the Alpine ibex. In Latin, he’s known as the grandfather of all of the goats; Capra Ibex. In his native ranges he goes by several monikers; le Bouquetin the French speaking regions of the Alps of southeast France and western Switzerland, lo Stambecco in the Italian Alps, der AlpenSteinböck in the German, Austrian and eastern Swiss Alps, and Kozerog in Slovenia where he lives in the Julian Alps, the southern arm of Alps proper. To many hunters, he’s regarded as the King of the Alps; Der König der Alpen. I am in this crowd of hunters. He’s a special animal that most hunters are afforded just one chance at, if ever at all, in their lifetime. Permits are extremely limited and very hard to come by. He’s been immortalized in his native range in statues, sculptures, paintings, and writings. Hunters for millennia have looked up from the valley floors on clear days at the highest snow and glacier capped haunts the Alps have and pondered the chance to have just one opportunity to chase the long horned goats that live in those absolute vertical reaches of the incredible range they’d gaze upwards at. I had my opportunity in western Switzerland this past week. I’m humbled to have had the opportunity to receive this rare permit at a time that coincided with my chance to finish my Capra Super 20 (20 different goat species from around the world) I’m thankful, humbled and grateful. It was a hunt I’ll never forget. The Alps gifted me one of its Kings and he’ll forever hold a spot of the highest regard in my life and in my memories from here on out. Having finished my Capra Super 20, I have so many people to thank. Each of you all know who you are. Know that you’re all incredibly gracious good people and I’m a better man for having had the pleasure of you in my life. Thank you all.