A Canadian hunter who was mauled by a grizzly bear died on Saturday, three weeks after the attack near Fort Steele, British Columbia. Sixty-three-year-old Joe Pendry died of a suspected blood clot, according to the CBC.
“…Dad suffered a complication and went into cardiac arrest, the nurses and doctors did everything they could but unfortunately they were unable to revive him,” wrote Facebook user Janessa Higgerty in a post announcing Pendry’s death.
Pendry had been hunting elk in Canada’s East Kootenay region on Oct. 2 when he crossed paths with a sow and her two cubs. He fought back, eventually managing to call 911 and his son for help. He was transported by helicopter to the hospital and later underwent several surgeries to repair his face and part of his scalp that was torn off. He was also treated for a severed finger and broken bones. Pendry’s family set up a GoFundMe account that raised nearly $20,000 during his hospital stay.
“It was very touch and go,” his wife, Janice Pendry, toldCBC News a few days before her husband’s death. “But he’s a tough fighter.”
Because he appeared to be recovering from his injuries, his death came as somewhat of a surprise. He had moved from ICU to the trauma ward and his wife says he was walking and laughing at the hospital the night before he died.
“With heavy hearts and profound sadness, we share the passing of our beloved husband, dad, grandpa, brother and uncle,” wrote a family spokesperson in an email to the Keremeos Review. “After fighting the ultimate fight with remarkable courage and strength, he has now found peace.”
During the bear attack, Pendry managed to fire one shot. The B.C. Conservation Officer Service found a dead grizzly nearby a few days after the attack. DNA evidence confirmed it was the same bear.
Pendry was evacuated by helicopter for treatment. BC Conservation Officer Service
“Joey was a man whose spirit reflected the rugged beauty of the outdoors he loved so deeply,” wrote Pendry’s niece Rachel Wells in an email. “A skilled hunter and guide, he found joy and purpose in nature.”
Pendry was not the only elk hunter attacked by a grizzly this month. Celia Easton of Thermopolis, Wyoming, narrowly escaped severe injury when a charging grizzly pulled her boot off her foot. Because it was raining, Easton had been wearing rubber knee-high boots instead of laced hiking boots.
“Here is this big old sow grizzly with her baby about 20 yards away coming right at me,” Easton told Cowboy State Daily. “I was partly under a tree. She was trying to drag me out from under that tree, but then my boot popped off. My foot came free and that bear just swapped ends and ran.”
Easton has a bruised big toe and a punctured rain boot. The bears involved in that case weren’t injured or captured.
“If that was just the tiniest taste of the power that was in those jaws,” Easton said. “You can only imagine what it would be like if she had really clamped down on me.”
In early September two 25-year-old outdoorsmen traveled cross country to meet in Colorado. One hopped a flight from North Carolina with an archery tag for Unit 81, which lies just north of New Mexico along the eastern flank of the San Juan Mountains. The other drove from Utah in a beat-up Subaru to hunt alongside one of his best friends.
Like so many others who’ve explored new valleys far from home, Andrew Porter and Ian Stasko were physically fit, well-prepared, and experienced in the backcountry. They hiked into the Rio Grande National Forest on Monday, Sept. 8 hungry for adventure. But on the fourth day of their eight-day hunt, they failed to check in with their loved ones at home. Andrew’s fiancée, Bridget Murphy, was starting to worry back in North Carolina. So were Andrew’s parents, Lisa and Greg Porter, who’d made their son promise to check in with them through his Garmin inReach at least once a day.
A photo of Andrew Porter (left) and Ian Stasko during their elk hunt together in Montana in 2023. Photo by Bridget Murphy
“The agreement Andrew has with us and Bridget had always been that if we didn’t hear from him after twenty-four hours, I was going to assume he was in trouble and start calling people,” says Lisa. “He’d always been great about that. So when we didn’t hear from him, I knew something wasn’t right.”
That Friday night, after touching base with Bridget and Greg, Lisa called the Conejos County Sheriff’s Office and asked them to start looking for her son and his friend. The search for Ian and Andrew would stretch on for nearly a week, expanding each day as it progressed. Conejos County Sheriff Garth Crowther says he’s never seen anything quite like it during his 46 years in local law enforcement.
The massive effort was led by the county’s search-and-rescue crew, which is made up of around 15 to 20 deputies, firemen, and other volunteers from the community. But at the peak of the search, there were hundreds more people involved from at least 15 states. These folks joined a number of locals from Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico, who’d left behind their own responsibilities and hunting camps to join the search party.
“I got a call from these guys in Idaho, and they’d drawn tags to bowhunt elk in this unit,” says Blake Crowther, the sheriff’s cousin and the county undersheriff. “He said, ‘My brother and I are turning our tags in. Where do you want us and what time?’ There were dozens of people like that, who were driving down on their own free will to help people they didn’t even know.”
Return to the Scene of the Strike
The October sky is bright blue and sunny when CCSO officers Sergeant Monica Dominguez and Deputy Joshua Salazar set out from the Los Pinos trailhead. A rutted gravel road had brought them up from Cumbres Pass to this portal into the high country, where aspens shimmer in golden waves that wash along the mountainsides. Looking west through a pine forest riddled with beetle kill, they can almost make out the Continental Divide.
From where the two officers park, it’s a short, 1.5-mile hike to where the bodies of Ian and Andrew were found. They know the route; they’d walked a huge swath of this terrain three weeks prior. They parallel the creek toward the bowl of cliffs above, then break off trail to cross above a waterfall. Game trails lead them the rest of the way.
CCSO Sergeant Monica Dominguez (right) and Deputy Joshua Salazar were part of the county’s core search-and-rescue crew that led the operation. Photo by Dac Collins
There, in a strip of pine trees near a meadow on the edge of the South San Juan Wilderness, a piece of flagging marks the last place the two young men had stood. The county coroner Richard Martin determined their cause of death was an indirect lightning strike. He says they would have died instantly, without any pain.
Scanning for clues beneath the scraggly pines, they find no burnt tree trunks or other obvious signs of a lightning strike. Martin says the burn marks on the bodies, which were caused by electrocution, were sufficient evidence for him to draw his cause-of-death conclusion. Andrew’s inReach was also found in pieces in his pocket; it had sustained more damage than a drop or fall would have caused. But the spot itself, at just under 11,000 feet of elevation, is puzzling in a way. It’s exactly the sort of place a hunter would have sought shelter during a high-country lightning storm.
A piece of pink flagging marks the spot where the two men were finally found. Photo by Dac Collins
“They were on their way down to their vehicle. I just know it,” undersheriff Blake says. “And in my mind, they did what they’d been trained to do — or at least what people are supposed to do in a lightning storm. They got into a patch of trees. They weren’t under a single tree, or on a ridge, or in a low spot.”
It was sunny too, but colder, on the morning of Sept. 13, when Blake drove into the mountains to start the search on his own.
Kindred Spirits
Andrew and Ian were born and raised in Charlottesville, Virginia, where they grew up fishing, camping, and exploring the Piedmont’s waters and backwoods. They played Little League together and graduated from the same high school, and they both attended college at James Madison University. That’s where their friendship cemented.
“Ian was just a leader, an initiator of adventures. And he was always an adrenaline junkie,” says Missy Sirch, Ian’s mom. “He started out climbing trees, and then moved on to other things he wasn’t supposed to be climbing.”
Ian Stasko balances atop a rock face in Virginia. Photo via Instagram
That included the stadium lights at the high-school baseball fields, and the local mall, which Ian and a friend scaled for fun. (In his defense, he did tell his mom they were going to the mall.)
Dylan Stasko wasn’t at all surprised by these antics. She says her older brother’s outgoing and magnetic personality made others want to join him in the outdoors. Ian and his sister also spent time on the Carolina coast many summers and, like any real thrill-seeker with access to a beach and a fishing rod, Ian became obsessed with catching big sharks.
“There was this one time, when me and my mom had been waiting for like an hour and a half at this spot where we’d dropped him off on his paddleboard,” Dylan says. “He finally paddled up and he was sunburnt to a crisp, because he’d hooked up with this 8-foot bull shark. So he was basically getting dragged around, just holding on for dear life … and at one point, his rod snapped.
“He’d flagged down a boat [to bring him back], and by the time we saw him, the tops of his feet and thighs were purple,” Dylan laughs. “He was so pumped about it.”
By the time Ian entered JMU and joined the same fraternity as his hometown friend, Andrew was already seeing Bridget. The two had met in class during the second semester of their freshman year. For their first date in Charlottesville, Bridget met Andrew’s parents at the Porter’s home for dinner, then Andrew launched an old red canoe on a nearby farm pond.
“I thought it was just dreamy,” Bridget recalls. “I also thought it was kind of funny, because of how much effort he’d put into getting this big canoe down there, and we were just catching these little bass. But it was more about him [paddling] me around and just being out on the water. He was sincere. He did things with a purpose.”
It would be the first of many such outings together, as Bridget introduced Andrew to deer hunting during college. She says he was more reserved than Ian, which is part of why the young men got along so well.
“There’d be this huge party going on at the frat house, and the two of them would be in the kitchen standing over this huge cast iron skillet. They’d be there cooking venison and potatoes, planning their next big adventure or talking about the essence of life.”
Ian (left), Andrew, and Bridget hunted elk together in Montana’s Rattlesnake Wilderness in 2023. Photo by Bridget Murphy
She remembers a few of those deep conversations when the three went hunting elk together in Montana’s Rattlesnake Wilderness a few years ago. After graduating in 2022, Bridget and Andrew had moved to Missoula together. They each bought their first compound bows there, and Andrew was learning all that he could about Western big-game hunting. Stasko joined the couple for his first-ever hunt that fall, in 2023. After a week of eating tag soup, he was ready for another helping.
“So, last year he came up, and they went bowhunting together in the Crazy Mountains for a full month. Ian didn’t have a tag. He was there to help Andrew scout and [hopefully] pack out a bull, which just shows the level of dedication they had to each other,” Bridget says. “They were unstoppable … I could barely keep up with them. And that’s why I didn’t go this year.”
The Search Begins
A fresh skiff of snow covered the ground when Undersheriff Blake Crowther arrived at the Rio de Los Pinos trailhead the morning of Saturday Sept. 13, the day after the hunters had been reported missing. A game warden with Colorado Parks and Wildlife had confirmed that Stasko’s Subaru was still parked in the last place Porter’s GPS unit had pinged: the trailhead parking lot, at around 10,000 feet above sea level.
The search for Andrew and Ian was based out of the Rio de Los Pinos trailhead, where their vehicle was found. Photo by Dac Collins
Blake knew from his brief conversation with Lisa the night before that the two hunters weren’t supposed to be out until Tuesday, Sept. 16. But when he peered through the hatchback window, he saw a pile of gear still inside.
“I could see backpacks, and what looked like sleeping bags, stuff like that. And something just didn’t feel right,” he says. “It had been storming on-and-off up there since Wednesday.”
Blake hiked up and off the trail toward where he thought two hunters might go — above the creek and up into the bowl that surrounded the broken meadows. By the time he’d climbed a couple miles, though, the weather was already turning. Afternoon thunderclouds had poured over the Divide and they cracked overhead as he hiked down.
Blake’s first call was to Sheriff Garth, who was already out in the national forest for Saturday’s muzzleloader opener. Garth had been hit by the same storms Friday night, and after hearing Blake’s concerns, he quickly broke camp and drove to the station in Antonito.
Both Crowthers grew up in Conejos County, where Blake and Garth have hunted and fished “since we were peewees.” They’ve seen the San Juans in all their glory, and they’ve gotten lost in the thick of it — when fog and sleet and screaming winds make navigation all but impossible. They’ve also found and rescued plenty of people over the years.
Undersheriff Blake Crowther (pictured) and his cousin Garth Crowther grew up hunting the same unit that Ian and Andrew were in. Blake still hunts there every fall, usually with a traditional bow. Photo courtesy Blake Crowther
Between the Continental Divide thru-hikers and all the other recreators who flock there, Conejos County gets hit hard with search-and-rescue calls. The sheriff’s office responded to 38 of those calls in 2024 and, as of Oct. 7, another 31 so far this year.
“This summer has been terrible,” says Garth. “And now it’s rifle season we’re dreading. Because people are on edge after all this, and I guarantee you that if someone is five or ten minutes late coming home, we’re gonna be getting a call.”
In a typical search situation, Garth explains, he and Blake can usually sort it themselves, or with the aid of the local SAR team and maybe a single helicopter. By the evening of the second day, though, the two officers knew they would need more help.
Final Messages
Greg and Lisa Porter say their son had a quiet and gentle charm about him that drew others in. Andrew was also a craftsman. During the pandemic, he spent his lockdown at home building a cabin in his parents’ backyard.
“He had just the kindest soul, and he was so easy to get along with,” Lisa says. “So even though he was very quiet, I think people just naturally gravitated toward him because he was so approachable.”
Andrew and his twin brother, Ryan, were born to move. Lisa says they were climbing out of their cribs by the time they were 13 months old. As they matured, along with their older brother, Matthew, they threw themselves into traditional sports, but Andrew always seemed more drawn to outdoor adventures.
Andrew Porter kneels beside the whitetail buck he tagged in Montana while hunting with Bridget Murphy. Photo by Bridget Murphy
Discovering hunting with Bridget only fueled his fire, especially during their time together in Montana, when she was attending grad school. And while Andrew never killed an elk with his bow, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Bridget remembers one fall where they hunted every single day of rifle deer season, and he finally tagged a buck on the last evening. He told her it would be his last harvest with a gun — he was going all-in on bowhunting.
“We went trout fishing up there in the Yaak Valley together during the summer of 2024,” says Greg, Andrew’s dad. “But as we were fishing, he kept wanting to check out these meadows — he’d run up a mountain just to see what was up there and look for sign. So, I was kind of laughing at him. I said, ‘Are you out here scouting? Or are you fishing?’ … And he said to me, ‘I just love being out here. This is what I live for.’”
Bridget and Andrew got engaged while living in Montana, and before they moved to North Carolina together. Their wedding was scheduled for May 2026. Photo courtesy Bridget Murphy
By spring 2025, Andrew and Bridget had moved to Asheville, North Carolina, to continue building a life together. They bought their first house and planned to marry in May 2026. For obvious reasons, a fall wedding was out of the question.
Before accepting his new job as a project manager for a home builder, however, Andrew had told his boss he planned to take a good chunk of September off to bowhunt elk out West. He had drawn a Colorado nonresident archery tag in April, and began planning his hunt. He knew Ian would be game before he even asked.
If Andrew was the planner in their friendship, Ian was the philosopher. Dylan says her brother was constantly thinking and talking about this idea of collective consciousness — the shared beliefs and perspectives that help unify society.
Ian Stasko with a big flathead catfish he caught from the James River in 2017. Photo via Instagram
“He wanted to change the world,” says his mom, Missy. “His capstone [in college] was how to find solutions to the climate crisis by changing the world’s conscious evolution. He was continuing to work on that idea, and doing a lot of writing, when he was out in Utah.”
Holding a day job and saving money were more secondary concerns, Missy jokes. That is, until Ian’s truck broke down a week before his elk hunt with Andrew. Instead of fixing the pickup, he found an old Subaru with a failing transmission and paid $1,400 for it. Missy says that car “probably should not have made it to Colorado.”
But the Subaru did — all the way to the Los Pinos trailhead. Bridget got a text sent from Andrew’s inReach late on Sept. 7: “Made it to the end of the road.”
After spending a night near the clunker, Andrew and Ian hiked into the basin above, where they pitched camp and hunted for a few days. Andrew was even able to FaceTime Murphy briefly a few days before he died, while they were glassing from a ridge.
“The call was only 59 seconds, so it wasn’t really a conversation,” Bridget says. “But I’m so glad we had it, because I could tell how happy he was with Ian up there. He was smiling, and I could hear Ian in the background, and at one point he said, ‘I want to show you this.’ He flipped the camera around, and it was this big, beautiful meadow on top of a mountain.”
Bridget continued to get daily updates. But on the afternoon Sept. 11, she and Lisa received what would be Andrew’s final messages. He said they’d gotten soaked by storms and were headed back to the car to dry out their gear. He also let Bridget know they’d found a herd of elk and had a close encounter. The two buddies were feeling more confident than ever that they would kill a bull.
A view of part of the basin that Ian and Andrew were hunting in the Rio Grande National Forest. The area featured pine forests that surrounded a series of meadows along Rio de Los Pinos creek. Photo by Dac Collins
Bridget thinks Andrew and Ian slept in the Subaru that night. Search crews would later learn that the two bumped into other hunters a nearby trailhead Friday morning. Andrew and Ian told the hunters about the elk they’d seen near Los Pinos, and they were back at that same trailhead by the afternoon.
“I think they just went out for an afternoon hunt, which is what we’d done together before,” Bridget says about that fateful day in the mountains. “They’d seen a herd, we know that. And they would have left all of their heavy stuff, and just taken what they needed to shoot a bull and bring back the first load of meat. And then I guess the storm came in.”
Historical weather data for the region shows that a series of thunderstorms hit the eastern San Juans sometime around 3 p.m. Friday. The storms brought heavy winds, rain that turned to snow overnight, and lightning.
The Search Grows … and Grows
Lisa flew to Denver on Sept. 13 and met Bridget and Greg, who flew in early the next morning. They drove south to the trailhead, which had turned into incident command headquarters. Missy and Dylan Stasko, who hadn’t been getting Andrew’s inReach messages and weren’t as in the loop during the hunt, started traveling Monday and arrived early Sept. 16.
A quick clip of the trailhead where searchers gathered, courtesy Dylan Stasko.
By then, the sheriff’s office had tapped the New Mexico State Police search-and-rescue teams, along with crews from La Plata County, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and the Forest Service. These agencies brought horse teams, dog teams, and drones, and they joined forces with local outfitters and guides, who’d brought up their own horses to help. Small businesses from the closest towns of Chama and Antonito delivered food and water in shifts.
“Just the way that people were supporting us, and the love and generosity, it was incredible,” says Missy. A family in Chama insisted that she, Dylan, and Ian’s two roommates stay at their home during the week of the search, and the family fed them dinner each night. “For me, with everything going on in the world right now, it was this beautiful demonstration of humanity, of people just being there for one another.”
The Rio de Los Pinos trailhead serves as an entry point into the South San Juan Wilderness. Photo by Dac Collins
The search crews spent each day combing a 5-mile radius around the trailhead as helicopters and planes flew overhead. They walked through deadfall, up drainages, and over scree through some of Colorado’s roughest country. But the hardest part, according to local law enforcement, was having to hang it up each evening.
“Our shortest day was 14 hours, and most were 18-hour days,” says Garth. “But it was the same feeling every night, and we kept saying to ourselves, ‘What more can we do? We gotta find these boys.’ That stress wears you out much faster than the physical part of climbing mountains.”
Bridget was also moved by the locals’ response. But the clock was still ticking by the end of the day on Sept. 15, and she felt like they needed more help. So she logged onto Facebook and made a post: “URGENT PLEA FOR PEOPLE ON FOOT IN SEARCH.”
“I just thought it could do something. I did not expect it to take off as much as it did, or as fast as it did.”
Bridget’s cry for help resonated, and the post caught fire, especially on several hunting pages. By the next morning, Tuesday Sept.16, there were additional cars at the trailhead, all driven by people who’d seen Bridget’s post. She then made a follow-up post, offering a $10,000 reward, and by that Wednesday, the place was packed. (Few people who turned up ever asked about or mentioned the monetary reward.) A private pilot from Wyoming had brought his helicopter down, and a group with a mule team had driven from Texas, fueled entirely by local church donations — just a couple examples of the overwhelming response they received. The sheriff says they almost had too much help at times.
“We kept saying to ourselves, ‘What more can we do? We gotta find these boys.’ That stress wears you out much faster than the physical part of climbing mountains.”
“It was beyond belief,” adds Blake, who estimates that around a third of the volunteers were spurred by Murphy’s posts. “I have lists and lists of people, agencies, and private companies who came out. That’s not mentioning the people we had in reserve … and I wish I could thank them all individually. Everyone, from the solo person who showed up to the ten-man teams, was important.”
But even with all the horses and hounds, and the high-tech drones and choppers, crews spent five long days and sleepless nights desperate for a development. The sheriff and undersheriff, meanwhile, were putting immense pressure on themselves to bring the families an answer.
“You always try to keep that faith, but it affects you seeing them hurt, and their hopes getting thinner and thinner,” Garth says. “And the two of us, me and Blake, we have sons around that same age. They’re always hunting, always out here in the mountains. You look at all that and realize: These could have just as easily been our own boys.”
A Sliver of Peace
Thursday morning — now a full week since Andrew’s last inReach message — broke calm and clear, with even more activity at the trailhead. The Colorado Search and Rescue Association had brought more resources from around the state, and Garth was now having to hold volunteers back just to keep everyone safe. There were more than 140 people out looking in the forest that day, along with dozens more at incident command trying to keep the search organized.
“The mornings and the evening were the worst. I’d be trying to take a hot shower, and knowing that they couldn’t, that they could be out there freezing in the woods … I just felt so helpless, and our minds were our own worst enemies, coming up with every scenario possible,” says Bridget. “But at the same time, it was heartbreakingly beautiful. Seeing all these good people coming together to get them home.”
Andrew and Ian’s bodies were found in this strip of pine trees at around 10,900 feet of elevation. This spot is 1.5 miles from where their vehicle was found. Photo by Dac Collins
A team of CORSAR professionals mixed with civilians were the ones who finally ended the search. They’d been assigned a new chunk of terrain on the far side of a ridgeline, so the team took the most direct and steepest route out of the creek toward the ridge above. There among the pines, they stumbled upon the two camouflaged bodies in the grass.
Blake would realize that night after looking over his own GPS tracks that he’d walked within 125 yards of the bodies on Saturday, the first day of the search. Sgt. Dominguez had walked within 52 yards of them. And for several days, until the cause of death was announced as lightning, Dominguez was distraught. She thought she’d missed her opportunity to rescue the men.
When people are dealing with unexpected or traumatic circumstances, well-meaning supporters often talk about finding “closure.” But Andrew and Ian’s families say there is really no such thing when the body of someone you love is brought out of the woods.
Bringing them home, at least, gave the families a “sliver of peace,” Bridget says. The cause of death announcement also squashed the baseless theories that had been floated in previous days by online commenters: that Porter and Stasko were somehow unprepared or unable to survive the conditions they faced.
“I guess it made us realize that they didn’t do anything wrong,” Lisa says. “They were just tragically unlucky.”
Ian (from left), his mom Missy, and his sister Dylan on a beach in the Carolinas. Photo courtesy Dylan Stasko
Dylan, too, says the fact that Ian and Andrew were struck by lightning raises a whole different set of existential questions about how they were taken and why. Questions that her older brother might have liked to chew on.
“[Ian] was always fascinated by entropy, and just the randomness of the universe. So it feels extremely ironic at the same time,” she says. “We were also thinking about the fact that they’d been dead for six days, and they still brought all these people together who were focused on a common goal. That was the thing he had always envisioned, this idea of collecting people’s consciousness.”
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More ›
Let’s get this part out of the way first: Trail cameras are a pain. Batteries die, SD cards get corrupted, settings get messed up, and squirrels trigger thousands of useless images. So why would you make your trail camera strategy more complicated by throwing in cellular cameras, which require network connection and pairing with apps? Simple, it’s because once you finally have the best cellular trail cameras linked up and set properly, they provide you with constant, realtime scouting information that will help you pattern deer.
With that in mind two diehard deer hunters spent the last couple years testing the top cellular trail cams. We ran them in the field and conducted a standardized backyard walkthrough test. Our results will help you pick the best cellular trail cameras for your hunting style and area.
We put each camera through a straight-forward walkthrough test. Photo by Scott Einsmann
We test cell cams both objectively and subjectively. Out of the box we fire them up and connect them to related apps. Then we run each camera through a straightforward walkthrough test. After that we hang the cameras in the field and utilize them just as any hunter would run cameras on a property. We’ve been testing trail cameras for several years now. So we have years of experience with certain cameras, and only a few months of data on other cams. But as we let each of these cameras soak (and as new models come out) we’ll continue to update this story with new info.
The Walkthrough Test
Each cellular trail camera is set to its fastest shooting mode and highest sensitivity. Markers are placed at 10 feet, 60 feet, and 110 feet. Then the tester walks past the camera (left to right and then right to left) at a medium pace at each given distance — about the speed of a rutting buck tromping through the woods.
The walkthrough test is then repeated at night. From there we analyze the results for blank photos, failures to trigger, blurry images, and overall photo quality. The test is meant to measure the camera’s detection range, trigger speed, shutter speed, and flash range.
Field Testing
We set each camera in the field to see how it performed in real world conditions. We set cameras in areas that had reasonable cell service. In the field, we evaluated the camera’s photo quality, reliability, and ease of setup. This included the ability to use each camera’s app to review and sort photos. Over time, we get a sense of the camera’s durability – but this can very greatly from camera to camera (even among the same brands and models).
The Test Team and Locations
Scott Einsmann, gear editor, Virginia
Alex Robinson, editor-in-chief, Minnesota and Wisconsin
For the third year in a row Tactacam is our editor’s choice winner. The new Reveal Ultra has everything we like about last year’s winner, the Pro 3.0, and adds on features that serious trail camera users will appreciate. It has GPS, low and no-glow flash, and live video streaming. It maintains the 3.0’s fast camera speed, good battery life, and easy-to-use app.
The Reveal Ultra can toggle between low-glow or no-glow flash. Low-glow flash means there is a visible red light that comes on when the camera is triggered. The low-glow flash is brighter and illuminates a larger area than a no-glow flash. A no-glow flash emits no visible light and is a completely stealth option. It doesn’t light up a huge area and is best for photos where the subject is less than 60 feet away — scrapes and trails. No-glow is also a great option if you’re using a trail camera for security rather than hunting.
If you need to find your trail camera you can activate its GPS, which gives you a location update every 6 hours. The GPS function works even if the battery is dead or removed for up to 72 hours. That means if you lost your cameras, it gets stolen, or is moved by someone, you’ll be able to recover it.
During the walkthrough test, the Reveal Ultra triggered 100 percent of the time at 10 and 60 feet, but failed to trigger at night at 110 feet. That is above average performance based on past trail camera tests. Between the dozens of Tactacams we have in the field, we routinely see photos of deer captured at 60 feet and beyond.
The photo quality is excellent both day and night. Subjects are captured as they enter the frame or directly in the center. The images are crisp with no motion blur. The low-glow flash is impressive and it illuminates well beyond 110 feet without over exposing objects up close.
One thing I like about Tactacam is their plans are straight forward and fairly affordable. Here’s a breakdown of the different plans they offer.
Plan
Price Per Month
Max Photos
Price for Adding an Additional Camera
Starter Plan
$5
250
$5
Intermediate Plan
$8
500
$7.50
Pro Plan
$13
Unlimited
$12
You can pause your plan and restart it at any time, which is a convenient feature. It’s also important to note that if you want to get on-demand photos, download HD photos, or enable live videos you have to get the Xtra plan, which is an additional $9 and covers all your cameras.
There are a few downsides to the Ultra. In video mode, you can’t view videos right away. The app displays a thumbnail and you’ll need to request the video before viewing it. The live video mode is slower to start up than my Spartan GoLive2. The Reveal app doesn’t have a species filter which can make sorting through photos time consuming. It does have filters for custom tags, weather, date, and time.
I currently have three Tactacams on my lease and 30 more on an out of state property. Alex Robinson, OL’s editor-in-chief and one of the authors of this article, also runs several Tactacams. That’s a large sample size and we’ve yet to encounter a significant issue. I got to test the Ultra before it was released to the public and on the launch date, it started glitching. I used Tactacam’s US-based support line to trouble shoot the issue and quickly spoke to a real human. The customer service representative helped me resolve the issue and I was back in business.
In our experience, you’re not likely to have an issue with a Tactacam, and if you do, they have excellent customer service to help you out.
Moultrie allows you to select which types of pictures are sent
Integrated GPS
Connects to Moultrie feeders
40 MP images
1080p video
100’ advertised detection range
.5 second advertised trigger speed
Low-glow flash
Price: $99
lux:814
lux:154
Moultrie combines a powerful app with smart integrations, a ton of customization and features, a reliable camera, and all for a relatively affordable price. I’ve messed with every major camera brand on the market and I can say with confidence that they offer more value than any other cellular trail cam brand out there. Despite tariff issues in the outdoor products industry and continuing inflation, the fact that you can still get their new Edge 3 camera for under $100 bucks is nothing short of incredible.
I’ll start with the camera itself and then dive deeper into the many features of Moultrie Mobile. The new Edge 3 has an improved 40 MP camera, live aim capabilities, a battery life estimator, and is GPS enabled, which works in part with onX integration (but more on that in a minute). There is also a Pro version of this camera that offers more camera capabilities, but at the higher price point I think most hunters should opt for the standard Edge.
This camera performed admirably in our walkthrough testing capturing quality images day and night. However I did have one issue with the app not uploading all photos during the test. Moultrie identified this as a known issue in the app and fixed it a couple days later, but those lost images never did come through. Happily, the camera did capture solid images in the field. My family members and I have been running Moultrie cameras on our deer property in north central Wisconsin for a couple years now, and so far, we have not had any reliability issues.
Where Moultrie really offers bang for the buck is in its app features and integrations. First, you can link your cameras to your onX account. This allows you to map your trail camera coverage in an area and check recent photos (in the onX app) in a logical way that will lead to a sharper hunting strategy.
Beyond that, Moultrie cameras also link to compatible feeders (if those are legal in your area). Moultrie Mobile allows you to sort photos by critter (you can see only bucks if you like), time of day, date range, temp, pressure, and even moon phase. Moultrie already had the most powerful app in the game, and now with the onX integration, it’s even better. The total package is the best deal going.
Triggered at all distances during the day and out to 60 feet at night
Live function works with just a slight delay
Easy to use and set up
Cons
App could be improved with species filters
Expensive
Key Features
Live streaming up to 30 FPS
Multi Carrier Transmissions
96 degree field of view
Infrared flash
Anti-theft GPS
Uses micro SD cards
Uses 12 AA batteries
2 year warranty
Price:
$330
Plans from $16 to $33 per month
I’ve had the Spartan GoLive2 in the field for nine months and its been a great camera. The live works quickly every time and I get great quality videos. The issue I have is that the live video feed can vary in its image quality. Occasionally, it’ll come in pixelated, clear up, and then become pixelated again. I find the live is best used in wide open fields or for seeing animals that are inside 15 yards.
The Spartan GoLive2 showed solid performance in the walkthrough test, capturing all distances during the day and out to 60 feet at night. In the field, it captured coyotes on the move and deer feeding at distances from 10 to 75 feet, with very few blank photos.
I primarily use the GoLive 2 in video mode. The videos populate in the app and are ready to view instantly. The video quality is great, but the flash range on videos is low compared to photos.
Nighttime photos from the Spartan cam. Photo by Scott Einsmann
The technology within the Spartan GoLive2 is impressive. However, the camera itself needs improvement. The camera struggles to find the right exposure at night and during daylight. It most often over exposes images, which reduces detail.
Another issue is the shutter speed is too slow — probably because the camera is trying to use a lower shutter speed to gather more light — and I get a lot of blurry images. A quick software update would probably fix those issues and I hope Spartan releases one because aside from that, the camera has been excellent in the field. — Scott Einsmann
I used the previous version of the Revolver Pro last year and was enamored with the concept. The camera has a 360-degree detection range, meaning it can pick up deer cruising through the area from any direction. It’s the ideal tool for monitoring fields or open hardwoods, especially when there’s not a well-defined trail.
The camera body contains a small motor that rotates the lens to each of the six zones when triggered. When in “360 mode” you get six photos that the app stitches together to provide a full-circle panoramic scene. This allows you to see what triggered the camera, but also everything else around it. You simply turn your phone sideways to scan the 360 view (see my screen recording below as an example of what you’ll experience in the app).
Though you don’t need to use 360 mode if you don’t want to. In walkthrough testing, I found this camera to capture me moving through the area from all directions, just as advertised. This year’s Pro 2 version promises improved durability (the previous version was prone to moisture issues) plus live on-demand photo and video.
This is one of the few trail cameras that can receive photos for free. All you have to do is add the camera to the SpyPoint app by scanning the QR code inside the camera and you’re ready to receive photos. The free plan is good for 100 photos per month. I use it in my low-activity areas, but it would also be great if you are using a trail camera to monitor a property for trespassers.
The cameras performance is OK, but not great overall. I get some motion blur in night photos and the detection range during the walkthrough test was 60 feet (only captured walking in one direction).
Automatically pairs with strongest cellular network
Price:
$120 (plans start at $5 monthly)
The Stealth Cam Deceptor Max was the only camera to pick up detail at 110 feet at night. Photo by Alex Robinson
If you’re tired of scrolling through blurry, low-quality nighttime trail camera images, you should consider Stealth Cam’s Deceptor Max. Last year the Stealth Cam Deceptor handily won our nighttime walkthrough test. This year, the Deceptor Max delivered Stealth Cam with back-to-back wins. It’s essentially the same camera as last year but upgraded with more battery power (16 AAs). Notably, Stealth Cam will soon be offering a rechargeable battery pack that will really add to the utility of these units.
Even in thick cover, the Deceptor Max captures solid nighttime photos. Photo by Alex Robins
As for nighttime performance, the Deceptor Max captured me clearly at 110 feet, even though the advertised detection range is only 80 feet. It’s the only camera in the test that delivered what I consider to be usable nighttime images at 110 feet. This is extra impressive considering it’s a no-glow camera, so there’s no noticeable red flash when it takes night images. Usually low-glow cameras, which emit a faint red flash, have better long-range nighttime performance. We hung our Deceptor Max deep in a bedding area and tethered it to a Stealth Cam solar panel. The hope is that we’ll be able to run it through the fall without having to reload new batteries.
The Bushnell took decent night photos. Scott Einsmann
One of the best buys in cell cams is the Bushnell Cellucore 20 with its 20 MP photos, customizable low glow flash, and easy-to-use app for around $100.
During the walk-through test, the Cellucore triggered at 10 feet with a perfectly centered photo—day and night. The camera didn’t capture me at 60 or 100 feet during the day, but at night it captured a series of five photos of me walking at 60 feet.
The nighttime walkthrough test at 60 feet.
The Cellucore has three flash settings: short range, fast motion, and long range. I used the long-range flash setting during the walk-through test and it illuminated out to 43 yards. The downside of the long-range flash is that close objects will be over exposed. For my in-the-field test, I used the fast-motion flash and it produced evenly illuminated photos with good detail from 5 to 15 yards. It also captured several deer walking without much movement blur.—Scott Einsmann
The Cuddeback Tracks camera did a nice job of stopping motion at 10 feet (left), however night time images at longer range were not as clear. Alex Robinson
Cuddeback is one of the trail camera O.G.s and their new Tracks cellular cam certainly stands out with its two large antenna paddles. Another big differentiator with this camera is that it runs on 4 D batteries instead of AAs, like all the other models in this test. Cuddeback says the D batteries provide more juice and lifespan for the money, which is notable. Anyone who has run a half-dozen or more trail cameras over the course of a deer season knows that batteries and SD cards can get spendy. The Cuddeback is also compatible with a solar panel to provide even longer battery life in the field.
From a performance standpoint, the Tracks camera did OK. It didn’t capture images at 110 feet and it missed me during the daytime walkthrough at 60 feet. Nighttime photo quality was decent. The camera did a great job of stopping motion at 10 feet. However, the images at 60 feet were not crisp. There were stronger performers at this price point, but if you’re a longtime Cuddeback fan and just want one cell cam to get started, this is the camera for you. Initial plans start at only $4 per month. —A.R.
The Stealth camera offers a ton of photo and video options.
Let’s cover the bad news first: During setup the camera failed to sync with the app. I received an error code and called customer service. I spoke with a very nice representative who couldn’t figure out the issue and guessed that I had a bad sim card. After two hours of waiting on hold, I gave up.
Now, let’s assume the bad sim card was simply bad luck and focus on the good news: this camera offers a motherlode of interesting photo and video settings. It has four video resolution options (including 4K) and four photo resolution options (up to 32MP). It also has a interesting option that allows you to shoot in burst mode and record from 1 to 9 images per triggering. Other cameras often shoot three or maybe five images in burst mode.
The Stealth camera triggered at 60 feet day and night. Alex Robinson
In the walkthrough test, the Stealth Cam did a nice job of capturing me at close range and at 60 feet. Though the nighttime photo quality was not as good as other top cameras in this test. It did shoot high quality photos in the field. —Alex Robinson
The Wildgame nighttime walkthrough test at 10 feet. Alex Robinson
Wildgame is known for making affordable trail cameras and at $120, the Terra Cell is right on par with other budget cell cams in this test. However the Terra Cell’s performance wasn’t as strong as those competitors. During the walkthrough test, the camera did not trigger at 60 feet, during day or night. At 10 feet, it did a nice job of capturing me in the middle of the frame, though image quality at night was not very strong.
The Wildgame camera performed better during the daytime. Alex Robinson
On a happier note, the HuntSmart app allows you to sort photos by species and time of day (though it doesn’t present the data quite as intuitively as the Moultrie Mobile app). Still, if you’ve been running Wildgame cameras for years and want to step up to the cellular version, this would be a solid option to hang near a feeder, food plot, or key natural food source. —Alex Robinson
The camera body itself is only part of the cost when it comes to running cellular trail cameras. In most cases, you also have to add a data plan. These plans can range from free to several hundred dollars per season, depending on how many cameras you run and how many photos and videos they capture. Below is a quick breakdown of the cell camera data plans for the cameras we reviewed in each test. If you’re just getting into cell cams, it makes sense to start with the basic plan and then upgrade as needed. Note: all of these companies offer discounted yearly subscription plans, but most deer hunters don’t run their cameras 365 days a year. So for most it makes sense to do a monthly plan and then cancel it when you quit hunting for the year.
Cell Cam Plans Compared
Camera Brand
Cheapest Plan
Details
Most Expensive Plan
Details
Tactacam
$5 per month
250 photos per camera; $5 per additional cam
$13 per month
Unlimited photos; $12 per additional cam
Spypoint
$0
100 photos per month; one camera per plan
$15 per month
Unlimited photos; one camera per plan
Stealth Cam
$5 per month
600 photos per month; one camera per plan
$20 per month
Unlimited photos & video; discounts for additional cameras
Moultrie Mobile
$10 per month
1,000 images and 10 videos each month
$35 per month
Unlimited images & 50 videos; additional cameras are $8 per month
Reconyx
$5 per month
200 photos per month, per camera
$20 per month
Unlimted images; one camera per plan
Spartan
$16 per month
Up to 3 cams & 500 MB of data (approx 1,500 lo-res photos)
$33 per month
Up to 10 Cameas and 2GB of data. (6,000 low res photos)
Bushnell
$10 per month
250 MB per month (approx 2,000 lo-res photos)
$20 per month
1 GB per month, per camera
How Cellular Trail Cameras Work
All the cell cams in this test have a similar basic setup process. First you download an app from the company. Then you set up a plan, load the camera with batteries, a sim card, and an SD card, pair the camera with the app (by scanning a QR code with your phone) and then establish your camera settings. When set in an area with cell service, the camera will send photos (or videos) to the app. Plans for each company are structured differently, but there are usually monthly or annual options ranging from about $5 per month to more than $20 per month.
Cellular Trail Cameras and Hunting Ethics
There is some controversy in the hunting community about using cellular trail cameras to hunt big game (make sure to check your local regulations before buying and using a cellular trail camera). Recently, the Boone & Crockett club issued this policy in regards to cell cams: “The use of any technology that delivers real-time location data (including photos) to target or guide a hunter to any animal in a manner that elicits an immediate (real-time) response by the hunter is not permitted. ‘Real time’ is the key concept. Seeing a photo and harvesting an animal a few hours later, or even the same day, uses this technology to assure a kill. It also takes advantage of the animal, which cannot detect impending danger from a camera. Waiting several days, or even until the following season, to pursue an animal captured on camera is different, and would not be deemed an unethical use of a trail camera.”
In reality, I don’t see many hunters using cell cams to capture images of a buck on a food plot or corn pile and then running out there to kill him that moment (though I’m sure it has happened). A more practical, and ethical, way to use this technology is to record consistent data on deer movement and then using those patterns to decide where to hunt. Most of us have limited days to hunt, so picking the prime spot is critical. The best cellular trail cameras help with that.
FAQs
Q: Are cellular trail cameras worth it?
Hell yes. There’s some extra setup and expense required with cell cams, but once you get them dialed they send photos to you real time. It’s hard to overstate how much fun it is to receive deer pictures all season long. Plus, with a smart trail camera strategy, you can pick the perfect places to hunt at the perfect times. There’s much less risk of spooking deer because there’s no need to hike in and check cameras (read our guide on where to hang trail cameras, here).
Q: Do all cellular trail cameras require a subscription?
All the cameras in this test require a subscription. But setting up the subscription is generally quick and painless. It’s all done through each company’s app, and all you need is your credit card information. Plans usually aren’t too expensive ranging from about $5 per month to a little more than $20 per month. I recommend going with unlimited image plans.
Q: How long do batteries last in a cellular trail camera?
This depends on the type of batteries, the activity in the area, and the setting of the camera. For max battery life, go with lithium, select a lower megapixel image, and opt for more delay time between photos (video kills batteries more quickly). In an area with average deer activity, a cell camera will easily last an entire season or longer.
Final Thoughts on the Best Cellular Trail Cameras
The best cellular trail cameras are powerful scouting tools. But they are also incredibly fun to use (after you get through the setup process). There’s nothing like receiving pictures of shooter bucks all week to get you fired up for a weekend hunt. Even when you’re working, mowing the lawn, or watching your kids’ football game, one simple photo can bring you right back to the woods, if only for a moment.
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More ›
It doesn’t matter if you’re hanging from a saddle in big woods or sneaking through the orchard grass along the Milk River, every whitetail hunter can benefit from good glass. We’ve tested just about every binocular on the market at our annual optics test. Here are the top options for deer hunters.
A year after Zeiss introduced its SFL binocular in 8×40 and 10×40 versions, the German brand has achieved a pinnacle accomplishment with 10×50 and 12×50 models in the line, delivering 50mm performance in a 42mm-sized chassis.
The result is a powerful, bright, and extremely well-balanced binocular that is optimized for hunters and birders who value walk-about size and weight but want a little more optical horsepower than a standard 10×42.
The combination of excellent glass, a responsive and tactile focus wheel, excellent ergonomics, and what we consider a fair price for a premium optic earned the Zeiss SFL our consensus pick for Editor’s Choice as the top binocular of 2025. While the award goes to the 10×50 SFL, Zeiss’s 12×50 SFL accrued nearly the same score.
Both binoculars achieve their compact frame and relatively light weight through a redesigned optical prescription that uses thinner, lighter lenses stacked relatively close together in the magnesium chassis. The result is a 6.3-inch binocular that weighs just under 31 ounces. Those dimensions are standard for 10×42 binoculars, but the Zeiss models give users 18 percent more magnification (in the 12x version) and a significantly larger exit pupil in both versions, delivering more light to users’ eyes and contributing to overall image brightness compared to 10×42 binoculars. The 50mm objective lens, with 42 percent more surface area than a 42mm, is similarly capable of delivering significantly more light to the eye.
Manufactured in Japan, the Zeiss’s glass is excellent, with no observed edge distortion or flaring, and testers noted the vivid color rendition and remarkable image brightness.
“A do-it-all, take-it-anywhere piece of gear for hunters, wildlife watchers, spectators, etc.,” noted tester Luke Coccoli.
And tester Ky Idler, who noted some stickiness in one eye cup and some tooling marks in the interior of one barrel, said “The glass is clear. I would not be afraid to glass with this for hours. Zeiss nailed it.”
The open-barrel build and light weight enables one-hand operation, and the balance is excellent, settling in both hands without feeling forward heavy. The fast-focus wheel is especially useful, even under gloved fingers. In fact the SFL naming convention comes from Zeiss’s term for this control: the very Germanic SmartFocus Concept. The oversized focus wheel turns from close focus of 6 feet to infinity in just 1.4 turns of the wheel.
The rest of the unit has the features you’d expect: a good tripod mount on the front hinge, right-barrel diopter control, and three-position eyecups. The SFL is covered by a transferable warranty.
Of the two units we tested, I prefer the 10×50. The wider field of view makes images seem more panoramic, and the 12×50 version has just a little hand-shake unless I lock my elbows in. But for users who stabilize their binos on a tripod or other support, the 12×50 offers just a little bit more reach with the same vibrant, bright image.
With the addition of the 50mm models, Zeiss’s SFL line now includes an 8×30, 10×30, 8×40, 10×40, 8×50, 10×50, and 12×50.
The 10×50 and 12×50 SFL models retail for $1,799 and $1,999, respectively. It’s an investment, for sure, but we think between the optical performance, ergonomics, and disruptive design, the Zeiss SFL is an heirloom-grade binocular that will produce years of satisfying viewing.
Calm down, settlers. I hear your roars of discontent that we have named a $644 compact binocular an Outdoor Life Great Buy. That’s a lot of money for relatively little glass. But hear me out. First, there wasn’t a lot of competition for the award this year. There were cheaper submissions, but they were optically inferior to this bright, tight little unit. And this binocular from a direct-to-consumer company punches way above its size. Add the lifetime warranty and versatility from whitetail stands to turkey vests to every truck console in America, and this is the binocular you will reach for above all others.
We’ve tested the big brothers of the 8×32 in previous tests, but this configuration hits a sweet spot. Its image seems like it was delivered by a big 10×42, but the small frame of the 8×32 fits in places the larger chassis doesn’t.
Then there’s the tight build of the Toric. Those who have followed the evolution of Tract Optics know one of its distinctive features is smooth, positive, extremely tactile controls. Scope turrets move with smooth precision and binocular eyecups feel like they glide on ball-bearing races. Those controls extend to the focus wheel, locking diopter control, and eyecups of this smallish binocular.
The detail that cemented the Great Buy award for the Tract Toric is its lifetime warranty. I doubt you’d ever use that coverage, but it’s useful to know that you have a binocular for life. In the field, you’ll use it for a one-handed spot-and-stalk bowhunting optic. You’ll have it in your bino pouch for turkey hunting or hiking. Or you’ll throw it in your luggage for a travel optic.
Testers subtracted points for a fairly clunky build and some blue color fringing. Testers who gravitate toward full-sized 10×42 binos thought the compact Tract was underwhelming.
“My first impression was that I didn’t want to like this binocular,” noted tester Ky Idler. “But surprisingly it fit my hands. Good glass. It would be a very good spot-and-stalk binocular.”
The Tract seems bigger than it is largely because of its excellent glass. It’s built around high-transmission Schott glass, manufactured in Japan, and has a wide field of view. Normally, I like open-barrel designs for one-hand operation, but the closed-bridge build of the Toric, while a little center-weighted, has enough heft that it settles in hand, whether one hand or two.
I’d readily use this binocular for bowhunting, when single-hand operation is required and where positive focus control helps parse close, medium, and far range targets. The Tract capably handles this chore with aplomb, if not distinctive style.
Maybe this helps answer the question: Is $644 too much to pay for a quality compact binocular? In the case of the Tract Toric UHD, the answer is decidedly no. While I’m not eager to pay more, this is a solid deal for a very good and versatile hunting optic.
Extremely accessible real-world street price of under $100
Cons
Significant peripheral distortion
Flimsy feeling
Score Card
Optical Performance:
Fair
Mechanical Performance:
Good
Design:
Good
Price/Value:
Very Good
Key Features
Single-hinge, closed-bridge design
Roof-prism design
Right-barrel diopter control
Fully transferable lifetime warranty
Tripod adaptable
Weight:
22.9 ounces
Price:
$99
How on earth can Vortex bring a capable binocular to the masses for under $100? With a good bino harness and the brand’s legendary warranty? Those were questions our test team batted around as we handled this entry-level binocular. Then we got behind the lenses and learned some of the answers.
The biggest answer is the class of glass inside the new Triumph HD is cheap. The Vortex received uniformly downbeat assessments in optical performance; it scored near the bottom in low-light brightness, and its resolution score was just below the median. Testers further complained about blue color fringing, noticeable edge distortion, and blurry focus.
Testers found the Triumph’s focus wheel tight and responsive. Scott Einsmann
But we also recognized that you shouldn’t expect world-beating glass inside a $99 binocular, and that same realism pervaded our assessment of the Triumph’s mechanical performance. The diopter adjustment is stickier than we’d like, and the overall build feels flimsy. But the tapered eyecups move with positivity and the focus wheel is tight and responsive. The texturing, balance, and overall design is better than we’d expect for the price.
On the value side of the ledger, the GlassPak case and integrated harness confirms the best value designation we gave the Triumph HD. This would make a very good first optic for a hunter, birder, or shooter, and if treated gently is a good choice to throw in a pickup or cabin. We’re not sure how much rough handling this bino can take, but Vortex’s excellent warranty and customer service is a cheering consolation.
With this petite binocular, introduced earlier this year, Maven is well on its way to filling out its product line. The B.7 is a compact version of the direct-to-consumer company’s excellent B.3 line.
It should be said at the outset that this is a fairly specialized optic. It’s configured for portability and use in tight quarters and in close ranges. Think whitetail hunting out of a treestand. A travel optic when weight and space is at a premium. Turkey hunting just about anywhere. I use sub-compact binoculars when upland hunting, tucked in a pocket of my upland-bird vest, in order to positively identify distant birds, to find my dog, or confirm a distant point.
This binocular fits in the palm of your hand. Scott Einsmann
The Maven is one of the best-rendered versions of this class of diminutive binocular. The double-hinge design allows the barrels to nest under the bridge, and can fit inside a roomie shirt pocket. The glass is surprisingly good for this mini optic. Maven uses extra-low-dispersion glass that reduces glare and boosts colors and contrast of images, and helped the B.7 post one of the best resolution scores of our 2023 binocular class. But the ED glass is also responsible for the fairly steep price; the 8-power B.7 retails for $600; the 10-power version sells for $625.
Outdoor Life’s optics test team gave the binocular good price/value scores, and they praised the solid build and responsive controls. But several testers noted the limitations of the platform.
“This would be a good spot-and-stalk bino for those times when I don’t want to carry a pack or even a binocular harness,” said tester Ky Idler. Tester Dale Manning further noted that the B.7 would “make a great optic for sporting events, turkey hunting, deep-woods treestand hunting, but for me it’s too small to be a go-to field bino.”
Fair enough, but for those hunters looking for a combination of outsized optical performance in a very trim package, this binocular fits just about anywhere.
Ships with premium GlassPack Pro harness with rangefinder pouch
Cons
At nearly $1,500 street price, expensive for an 8×32
Thumb indents could be larger to accommodate large hands
Score Card
Optical Performance:
Excellent
Mechanical Performance:
Very Good
Design:
Very Good
Price/Value:
Very Good
Key Features
Open-hinge open-barrel design
Right-barrel locking diopter control
Tripod-mountable
5.9-foot close focus
Weight:
21.9 ounces
Field of view:
472 feet at 1,000 yards
Price:
$1,450
Vortex’s new flagship binocular has it all: excellent glass, nice handling, a durable build, and wonderful field of view. The compact 8×32 in our test produces a big image out of proportion to its size, and testers noted it’s a perfect bowhunting optic, since it can be capably handled with a single hand and offers excellent mid-range performance. Enhancing its handling, whether you use one hand or two, the Razor UHD features thumb indentations in the chassis that are placed at the balance point of the binocular. That added touch allows for good gripping, though one ham-handed tester wanted these depressions to be a bit larger to fit his silver-dollar-sized thumbs.
The Razor UHD combines good glass, ergonomics, a robust feature set, and includes a bino harness. Scott Einsmann
The 8×32 joins a compact 10×32, both introduced this year, to fill out Vortex’s excellent Razor UHD line, which includes 10×42, 10×50, 12×50, and 18×56 models. The literalists of our test noted that the term UHD, which stands for Ultra High-Definition glass, doesn’t have a defined meaning. It’s a marketing term to refer to a higher grade of glass and coatings than those used in Vortex’s HD (pedestrian High-Definition) optics.
Regardless of semantics, its exceptional glass and coatings allowed the 32mm Vortex to hang with big 42mm and even a 52mm binocular in our low-light test. Other accolades for the Razor UHD include a locking diopter, fast-focus wheel, and thin eyecups that fit most brows. Perhaps recognizing that $1,500 is a lot to spend on a binocular, Vortex adds its very good GlassPak Pro harness and rangefinder pouch to the deal. Those accessories retail for around $150.
We did note a surprising aberration. Testers recorded noticeable flaring when they peered toward the sun, an optical anomaly that may be caused by dust on an interior lens. We didn’t expect to see that in an optic at this price point.
But most users are unlikely to notice that demerit, one of the very few in an otherwise capable, fine-handling, and extremely bright binocular. Given Vortex’s fully transferable lifetime warranty and exceptional customer service, any deficiencies that users note are bound to be covered by the company.
Because this is a review of binoculars that appeal to a wide range of users, and not just hunters, the idea of incorporating a laser rangefinder inside a traditional binocular may cause some confusion. But if you open your mind, the application of rangefinding has no limits. Say you’re a birdwatcher who wants to know just how close you got to that peregrine falcon. The Leupold gives you the answer. Or maybe you’re a biologist who needs to know the specific distance between camera trap and bait site. The Leupold will easily calculate the answer.
What makes the BX-4 Range worth including in this review of essential binoculars is that it brings excellent optics, solid durability, and smart functionality to the category. The LRF bino is an impressive confluence of the brand’s far-ranging talents with both field optics and rangefinding electronics. The BX-4 Range binocular borrows from Leupold’s software that combines its long line of laser rangefinding monoculars with very good binocular optics.
The BX-4 Range is not without faults. It’s approximately the size and weight of a brick, with similar angular contours. Its eyecups are square and uncomfortable. And the Leupold’s ranging talents are relatively unimpressive. The BX-4 bucks the trend in precision shooting circles by omitting Bluetooth connectivity to a mobile ballistic app, and it doesn’t have sophisticated (and expensive) on-board environmental sensors that help direct bullets. Instead, it has a simple and useful laser rangefinder that ranges from 12 to 2,600 yards.
The Leupold has very good optics, though because rangefinders use an additional lens element for the ranging beam-splitter, and because coatings are tuned to make the red OLED display pop, the optics aren’t quite as clear and crisp as a binocular without the electronics. And at about $1,6
If there are two things in this world that Dick Grzywinski (better known as the Griz) loves, one is catching fish and the other is catching more fish than everyone else. Griz became a local legend in the Upper Midwest fishing scene during the 1990s by guiding anglers, joining fishing shows as a guest, and serving as an expert in countless magazine and newspaper articles.
For most of his guiding career, until he turned 69, he would fish from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Now even in his eighties he still fishes more days than not. In simple terms of actual hours on the water, it’s likely that the Griz is the most experienced angler in the Upper Midwest today.
In a lot of ways, Griz still uses the same gear and tactics that he did 20 years ago. That means no forward-facing sonar or side imaging. He uses a simple depth-finder to monitor depth and bottom structure. From there he focuses sharply on boat control and bait presentation.
As you can see in the video above, the Griz says that catching fish is about putting all the little details together — not what kind of electronics you have in your boat. During this one day of filming on the Mississippi River, he put 83 fish in the boat.
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More ›
Picking a great bear gun isn’t a complicated task, but it’s easy to become paralyzed with indecision if you’re seeking advice on the subject. There is plenty of information, much of which focuses on bore diameter and muzzle energy, but most pontificators miss out on what’s really important when it comes to bear guns.
The truth is that there are lots of great bear guns to choose from, and their utility is found in appropriately matching them to the task. In other words, you need to consider the application and likely conditions it will be used in. Is it going to be hunting for black bears over bait in dense forest, glassing alpine hills and avalanche chutes, or watching over the wind-blown beaches and alder patches on the Alaska Peninsula in search of a brown bear? Lots of bear guns aren’t for hunting at all, but for self defense. Setting these parameters is the first step in homing in on the best bear gun for you.
Generally, there are three major categories of bear guns: guide guns, hunting guns, and defensive guns. While there is some overlap, considering your own situation will help you choose.
When many people visualize the ultimate bear hunting rifle, what they’re really thinking of is a guide gun. In some cases, these do make excellent hunting rifles, but not always. Most are intended to be short-range finishing guns in case a client hits a bear poorly.
Guide guns often sport iron sights, shorter barrels, a spackling of rust, and are usually chambered in heavier cartridges from .30-caliber magnums and up. This is the rifle a guide carries along to back a hunter up or haul into the thick stuff after a bear has been shot.
The most important factor in killing a bear quickly is shot placement. There is no substitute for it. Knowing where to shoot a bear and placing your bullet there are, by far, the most critical keys to success.
Many different hunting rifles are a great choice for hunting bears. They need to be reliable and it’s ideal if they’re impervious to moisture when you’re hunting in wet climates. Aside from those two things, the world is really your oyster. Pick a rifle that you can shoot really well and practice with it.
Most hunters are better off taking a quality deer rifle or the old .308 they have used for years rather than try to get a big magnum. You don’t need it. Even a .30/06, in confident hands, is a perfectly capable hunting rifle for big coastal brown bears. When confidence is lacking, it’s an even more compelling reason to pick a shootable rifle.
Lots of activities can place you in potential conflict with bears, and you don’t always want to be toting your heavy artillery. For those times, it’s good to consider a handgun or shotgun as a strictly defensive bear gun.
We’ve spoken and tested a lot regarding revolvers vs. semi-autos for bear defense and, generally, a semi-auto is going to be a better option for most people. A good defensive firearm boils down to two things: convenience and proficiency. It needs to be convenient enough for you to carry at all times in bear country. Your handgun needs to be quickly accessible and you must keep it on your person. Handgun proficiency isn’t easy to attain, and it’s a perishable skill. Choosing a cartridge like the 10mm auto allows for more affordable practice and a better shooting experience than a magnum revolver.
Though most of us appreciate a fine classic hunting rifle or a premium custom build, the price isn’t what makes a bear gun great. It’s fun to indulge in a new rifle or pistol, but let’s not confuse that with necessity.
There are many affordable guns that are great for bears. While make, model, cartridge, bullet, and other attributes are fun to explore and nerd out on, the most important factor is you. Choose something you shoot well, will work in the context you want to use it, and it won’t disappoint.
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More ›
Cellular trail camera technology keeps getting better each year, and cameras continue to offer more features and more competitive prices. We’ve been testing cell cams for several seasons and collectively we’ve been able to field test every major make and model.
Here’ You’ll find our five favorite cameras and detailed breakdowns on how each performed.
Each cellular trail camera was set to its fastest shooting mode and highest sensitivity. Markers were placed at 10 feet, 60 feet, and 110 feet. The tester walked past the camera (from left to right, then right to left) at a medium pace at each distance. The walkthrough test was then repeated at night. The test is meant to measure the camera’s detection range, trigger speed, shutter speed, and flash range. We looked for blank photos, failures to trigger, blurry images, and overall photo quality.
From there, we set each camera in the field to see how it performed in real-world conditions. In the field, we evaluated the camera’s photo quality, reliability, and ease of setup. This included the ability to use each camera’s app to review and sort photos.
For the third year in a row Tactacam is our editor’s choice winner. The new Reveal Ultra has everything we like about last year’s winner, the Pro 3.0, and adds on features that serious trail camera users will appreciate. It has GPS, low and no-glow flash, and live video streaming. It maintains the 3.0’s fast camera speed, good battery life, and easy-to-use app.
The Reveal Ultra can toggle between low-glow or no-glow flash. Low-glow flash means there is a visible red light that comes on when the camera is triggered. The low-glow flash is brighter and illuminates a larger area than a no-glow flash. A no-glow flash emits no visible light and is a completely stealth option. It doesn’t light up a huge area and is best for photos where the subject is less than 60 feet away — scrapes and trails. No-glow is also a great option if you’re using a trail camera for security rather than hunting.
If you need to find your trail camera you can activate its GPS, which gives you a location update every 6 hours. The GPS function works even if the battery is dead or removed for up to 72 hours. That means if you lost your cameras, it gets stolen, or is moved by someone, you’ll be able to recover it.
During the walkthrough test, the Reveal Ultra triggered 100 percent of the time at 10 and 60 feet, but failed to trigger at night at 110 feet. That is above average performance based on past trail camera tests. Between the dozens of Tactacams we have in the field, we routinely see photos of deer captured at 60 feet and beyond.
The photo quality is excellent both day and night. Subjects are captured as they enter the frame or directly in the center. The images are crisp with no motion blur. The low-glow flash is impressive and it illuminates well beyond 110 feet without over exposing objects up close.
One thing I like about Tactacam is their plans are straight forward and fairly affordable. Here’s a breakdown of the different plans they offer.
Plan
Price Per Month
Max Photos
Price for Adding an Additional Camera
Starter Plan
$5
250
$5
Intermediate Plan
$8
500
$7.50
Pro Plan
$13
Unlimited
$12
You can pause your plan and restart it at any time, which is a convenient feature. It’s also important to note that if you want to get on-demand photos, download HD photos, or enable live videos you have to get the Xtra plan, which is an additional $9 and covers all your cameras.
There are a few downsides to the Ultra. In video mode, you can’t view videos right away. The app displays a thumbnail and you’ll need to request the video before viewing it. The live video mode is slower to start up than my Spartan GoLive2. The Reveal app doesn’t have a species filter which can make sorting through photos time consuming. It does have filters for custom tags, weather, date, and time.
I currently have three Tactacams on my lease and 30 more on an out of state property. Alex Robinson, OL’s editor-in-chief and one of the authors of this article, also runs several Tactacams. That’s a large sample size and we’ve yet to encounter a significant issue. I got to test the Ultra before it was released to the public and on the launch date, it started glitching. I used Tactacam’s US-based support line to trouble shoot the issue and quickly spoke to a real human. The customer service representative helped me resolve the issue and I was back in business.
In our experience, you’re not likely to have an issue with a Tactacam, and if you do, they have excellent customer service to help you out.
Moultrie allows you to select which types of pictures are sent
Integrated GPS
Connects to Moultrie feeders
40 MP images
1080p video
100’ advertised detection range
.5 second advertised trigger speed
Low-glow flash
Price: $99
lux:814
lux:154
Moultrie combines a powerful app with smart integrations, a ton of customization and features, a reliable camera, and all for a relatively affordable price. I’ve messed with every major camera brand on the market and I can say with confidence that they offer more value than any other cellular trail cam brand out there. Despite tariff issues in the outdoor products industry and continuing inflation, the fact that you can still get their new Edge 3 camera for under $100 bucks is nothing short of incredible.
I’ll start with the camera itself and then dive deeper into the many features of Moultrie Mobile. The new Edge 3 has an improved 40 MP camera, live aim capabilities, a battery life estimator, and is GPS enabled, which works in part with onX integration (but more on that in a minute). There is also a Pro version of this camera that offers more camera capabilities, but at the higher price point I think most hunters should opt for the standard Edge.
This camera performed admirably in our walkthrough testing capturing quality images day and night. However I did have one issue with the app not uploading all photos during the test. Moultrie identified this as a known issue in the app and fixed it a couple days later, but those lost images never did come through. Happily, the camera did capture solid images in the field. My family members and I have been running Moultrie cameras on our deer property in north central Wisconsin for a couple years now, and so far, we have not had any reliability issues.
Where Moultrie really offers bang for the buck is in its app features and integrations. First, you can link your cameras to your onX account. This allows you to map your trail camera coverage in an area and check recent photos (in the onX app) in a logical way that will lead to a sharper hunting strategy.
Beyond that, Moultrie cameras also link to compatible feeders (if those are legal in your area). Moultrie Mobile allows you to sort photos by critter (you can see only bucks if you like), time of day, date range, temp, pressure, and even moon phase. Moultrie already had the most powerful app in the game, and now with the onX integration, it’s even better. The total package is the best deal going.
Triggered at all distances during the day and out to 60 feet at night
Live function works with just a slight delay
Easy to use and set up
Cons
App could be improved with species filters
Expensive
Key Features
Live streaming up to 30 FPS
Multi Carrier Transmissions
96 degree field of view
Infrared flash
Anti-theft GPS
Uses micro SD cards
Uses 12 AA batteries
2 year warranty
Price:
$330
Plans from $16 to $33 per month
I’ve had the Spartan GoLive2 in the field for nine months and its been a great camera. The live works quickly every time and I get great quality videos. The issue I have is that the live video feed can vary in its image quality. Occasionally, it’ll come in pixelated, clear up, and then become pixelated again. I find the live is best used in wide open fields or for seeing animals that are inside 15 yards.
The Spartan GoLive2 showed solid performance in the walkthrough test, capturing all distances during the day and out to 60 feet at night. In the field, it captured coyotes on the move and deer feeding at distances from 10 to 75 feet, with very few blank photos.
I primarily use the GoLive 2 in video mode. The videos populate in the app and are ready to view instantly. The video quality is great, but the flash range on videos is low compared to photos.
Nighttime photos from the Spartan cam. Photo by Scott Einsmann
The technology within the Spartan GoLive2 is impressive. However, the camera itself needs improvement. The camera struggles to find the right exposure at night and during daylight. It most often over exposes images, which reduces detail.
Another issue is the shutter speed is too slow — probably because the camera is trying to use a lower shutter speed to gather more light — and I get a lot of blurry images. A quick software update would probably fix those issues and I hope Spartan releases one because aside from that, the camera has been excellent in the field. — Scott Einsmann
I used the previous version of the Revolver Pro last year and was enamored with the concept. The camera has a 360-degree detection range, meaning it can pick up deer cruising through the area from any direction. It’s the ideal tool for monitoring fields or open hardwoods, especially when there’s not a well-defined trail.
The camera body contains a small motor that rotates the lens to each of the six zones when triggered. When in “360 mode” you get six photos that the app stitches together to provide a full-circle panoramic scene. This allows you to see what triggered the camera, but also everything else around it. You simply turn your phone sideways to scan the 360 view (see my screen recording below as an example of what you’ll experience in the app).
Though you don’t need to use 360 mode if you don’t want to. In walkthrough testing, I found this camera to capture me moving through the area from all directions, just as advertised. This year’s Pro 2 version promises improved durability (the previous version was prone to moisture issues) plus live on-demand photo and video.
This is one of the few trail cameras that can receive photos for free. All you have to do is add the camera to the SpyPoint app by scanning the QR code inside the camera and you’re ready to receive photos. The free plan is good for 100 photos per month. I use it in my low-activity areas, but it would also be great if you are using a trail camera to monitor a property for trespassers.
The cameras performance is OK, but not great overall. I get some motion blur in night photos and the detection range during the walkthrough test was 60 feet (only captured walking in one direction).
You can sort photos by species, date, time of day, and custom tags in the SpyPoint app, which makes managing a lot of photos much easier.
Cell Cam Plans Compared
Camera Brand
Cheapest Plan
Details
Most Expensive Plan
Details
Tactacam
$5 per month
250 photos per camera; $5 per additional cam
$13 per month
Unlimited photos; $12 per additional cam
Spypoint
$0
100 photos per month; one camera per plan
$15 per month
Unlimited photos; one camera per plan
Stealth Cam
$5 per month
600 photos per month; one camera per plan
$20 per month
Unlimited photos & video; discounts for additional cameras
Moultrie Mobile
$10 per month
1,000 images and 10 videos each month
$35 per month
Unlimited images & 50 videos; additional cameras are $8 per month
Reconyx
$5 per month
200 photos per month, per camera
$20 per month
Unlimted images; one camera per plan
Spartan
$16 per month
Up to 3 cams & 500 MB of data (approx 1,500 lo-res photos)
$33 per month
Up to 10 Cameas and 2GB of data. (6,000 low res photos)
Bushnell
$10 per month
250 MB per month (approx 2,000 lo-res photos)
$20 per month
1 GB per month, per camera
Final Thoughts on the Best Cell Cams & Hunting Ethics
There is some controversy in the hunting community about using cellular trail cameras to hunt big game (make sure to check your local regulations before buying and using a cellular trail camera). In 2022 the Boone and Crockett club revised its policy in regard to cell cams, stating: “The use of any technology that delivers real-time location data (including photos) to target or guide a hunter to any animal in a manner that elicits an immediate (real-time) response by the hunter is not permitted. ‘Real time’ is the key concept. Seeing a photo and harvesting an animal a few hours later, or even the same day, uses this technology to assure a kill. It also takes advantage of the animal, which cannot detect impending danger from a camera. Waiting several days, or even until the following season, to pursue an animal captured on camera is different, and would not be deemed an unethical use of a trail camera.”
Right now, I don’t see many hunters using cell cams to capture images of a buck on a food plot or corn pile and then running out there to kill him that very moment. But I do know that many of us use cell camera pictures to plan our hunt for the next day.
As live-feed technology improves, I could see more ethical issues cropping up. More states might look to restrict the use of this technology for hunting. It’s up to hunters to use the tech responsibly and ethically and maintain fair-chase standards. At their best, trail cams can provide consistent data on deer movement and hunters can interpret that data when making decisions on where to hunt. Most of us have limited days to hunt, so picking a prime spot is critical. But we must still use our woodsmanship, hunting knowledge, and fair chase principles. I think that trail cameras can only help with that. —A.R.
Striped bass populations have been down in recent years and, as many East Coast states weigh future regulations, fall fishermen are anxious about striper runs right now. Anglers can still expect reasonable numbers of 10-to 20-pound striped bass this season, but not many schoolies as overall populations tank.
And at some point, if these trends continue, even those medium-sized fish will dwindle, say John Waldman, an aquatic conservation biologist and professor at Queens College of New York.
“Instead of a good session with 10 schoolies, you will be happy catching one or two larger fish this year,” Waldman says. “I’m not saying schoolies don’t exist, but the numbers really pale compared to the good old days.”
Which ultimately means that, “striped bass are on the edge of being in trouble.”
It’s not the first time striped bass numbers have suffered in the famed Chesapeake Bay. Striped bass stock collapsed in the late 80s from overharvest. Fewer females meant fewer eggs, and fewer eggs meant fewer fish in general. But fisheries managers tightened regulations, even instituting a moratorium, and numbers surged back. By the late ‘90s and early 2000s, anglers started grumbling about too many striped bass. The fish were eating estuaries out of house and home, he says.
A net of young stripers in an annual fall survey conducted by the Maryland DNR. Photo by Stephen Badger / Office of Communications, Maryland DNR
But now the story has flipped again. For the past six years, standardized survey numbers of young striped bass in Chesapeake Bay and the Hudson and Delaware rivers are down. Way down.
“Six years is a long time to go without a good year class,” he says, referencing Maryland’s dismal population surveys. “If you have a healthy population, some years will be above normal and some years will be below, some may even be way high and some low, but now it’s low year after year.”
And those estuaries where striped bass are spawning are “where the sausage is made.” Their numbers indicate where the overall population will be in another four or five years.
While the numbers are clear, the cause is anything but obvious.
Most fisheries biologists would point to usual suspects like not enough eggs, but Waldman cites decent numbers of 10-to 20-pound fish which tend to be the breeders. Invasive blue catfish also may be hurting numbers of striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay tributaries, but that wouldn’t account for low numbers in the Hudson or Delaware rivers.
So Waldman wonders if the issue could be a mismatch in plankton abundance as striped bass larvae grow.
“It’s possible a changing climate could create that mismatch,” he says, “but the answers are still not straightforward.”
Some biologists also worry about numbers of menhaden, a primary food for striped bass. However, while striped bass do feed on abundant menhaden, they also eat plenty of other prey including sand eels, anchovies, crabs and shrimp. Poaching is a problem, though not likely the entire cause.
What Waldman does know from his own fishing and talking to friends who actively pursue striped bass, is at some point, this decline will become a critical issue.
He recommends anglers consider using circle hooks for less harmful catch and release. He also urges anglers to consider throwing back even some of those striped bass they might ordinarily keep.
“We should be conservative about removals of striped bass because we don’t always know what’s going on in the oceans, and it would be better to restrict this as much as possible until we turn it around,” Waldman says. “And the fact that we’ve had six years in a row in the Maryland waters of the Chesapeake that are abysmal makes me think this is more than a roll of the dice.”
This story, “Attacked by a Grizzly,” appeared in the March 1983 issue of Outdoor Life.
The grizzly bounded down the mountainside straight at me. Its head was low to the ground and it was growling all the way. By the time I realized the bear was corning it was only 10 yards away. I had only a second or two to defend myself.
I instinctively grabbed for my .44 Magnum revolver on my belt, but it wasn’t there. A moment later, the grizzly was almost on top of me. I tried to dive under a log, but the bear either knocked me down or I fell to the ground. I don’t remember.
I tried to turn away from the bear but it grabbed my head between its jaws. The grizzly started to shake me like a dog and drag me along the ground. The bear was roaring and growling, but I matched the grizzly’s growls with plenty of shouting and hollering of my own.
I managed to twist and get to my feet, but the bear kept its vicelike grip on my head. I walked in a half-crouch along with the bear to ease the pain and to keep it from tearing and lifting my head.
When the grizzly’s teeth bit deeper into my scalp, I realized I had to do something. 53 “Buddy, you’d better start fightin’ or you’re gonna die right here,” I told myself. I had been hunting elk in the Sunlight Basin in northwestern Wyoming’s Absaroka Wilderness Area. Three other hunters, Jack Porter, his 17-year old son John, and a man g named Butch were hunting with me. I had just bought Jack’s outfitting business, and I was enjoying some late-season hunting with him. It was late November 1981, the day before the end of elk season.
It was my first year in the business, and I was getting familiar with the area. I was hunting with a .44 Magnum revolver and I was carrying it on my belt. I’m right-handed, but a sawmill accident a few years back makes my hip hurt when I carry a gun on my right side. I holstered the gun on my left side, and it was awkward for me to reach it. I never gave it much thought, because I always figured I had plenty of time to reach over and lift it out of the holster when I spotted an elk. I had no idea the gun’s bad position would almost cost me my life.
I’m 39 years old and I love to hunt. I was born and raised on a farm in Hulett, Wyoming, with 10 brothers and sisters. We learned how to hunt at a young age because game meat was important to our family. Each fall we put enough whitetail deer meat in the freezer to get us through the winter. Whitetails fed a lot of folks up in Crook County where I lived.
I own a motel in Hulett and a welding business, and I work on road construction as well. I always wanted to be an outfitter, but I never figured I could get into a good area. In the 1960s when I was a labor foreman on a new highway job over Togowotee Pass, I went into Jackson to see about an outfitter’s permit. The U.S. Forest Service told me there were about 500 people on the waiting list.
When Jack Porter came to Hulett and stayed at my motel, we got to be good friends. He asked me if I wanted to buy his outfitting business, and I thought he was kidding. When I realized he was serious, I took him up on it and made the deal in time for the 1981 hunting season.
I had just started making a drive with John when the bear attacked. Jack and Butch were on stand at the top of a ridge. John walked through a patch of heavy timber while I worked my way across a canyon. My route was the longest, but it was fairly open. There were patches of timber, small openings and downed logs along the area I was walking.
I was walking slowly with the wind at my back when I stopped on a knoll and looked ahead of me for elk in the canyon. A motion alongside of me caught my attention, and I turned to see the grizzly.
When I told myself I had to fight back, I grabbed the bear’ s upper jaw with one hand and his lower jaw with the other. I used all my strength and managed to pry its jaws far enough apart so I could get my head out of the animal’s mouth.
I grabbed for my knife, which was on my belt and I managed to get it out, but the bear slapped it away. I backed off from the bear, but it came right for me again. It was down on all fours when I kicked it solidly under the chin.
The bear’ s face changed expression after I kicked it. It had sort of a surprised look. Then it came for me again, growling and snapping. I tried to kick it again, but it batted my foot down with a quick slap. The grizzly knocked me down, but I stuck my thumbs in each side of its mouth, and kept kicking at its belly. I kept sliding out from under it, but the bear scrambled back on top of me again.
My only chance was the revolver on my belt. I didn’t go for it before because everything was happening lightning-fast. The only reason I tried for my knife was because I could get to it more easily.
I let go of my grip in the grizzly’s mouth with my left hand and went for the gun. I got it out of the holster, but the bear slapped it away. The .44 Magnum went off as the bear hit my arm, but the bullet only whizzed past its face.
Maybe the roar of the gun in its face made it madder, because the grizzly chomped down on my right shoulder and bit deep. Its jaws were clamped shut, and I felt its teeth deep in my shoulder.
I kept kicking the bear in the belly, and I punched it in the face with my free hand. My other hand was still in the bear’s mouth. I wasn’t about to take my thumb out, because it gave me at least some control on its jaws.
Suddenly the grizzly jumped straight up and pulled me to my feet by my thumb. It almost jerked my arm out of the socket. When we were both standing, the bear turned loose and ran for the timber. I jumped for my gun, but by the time I got it all I could see was the bear’ s hind end in the brush. I didn’t want to shoot and take the risk of wounding it.
When the bear was gone, I sat on a log. I was physically exhausted and felt more tired than hurt from the bear’s attack. All I wanted to do was rest. As I sat on the log, I watched the blood drip from my face and head. I was bleeding but didn’t figure I was losing much blood.
After sitting for a few minutes, I went over to a little creek and took a drink of icy water. Then I tried to clean off some of the blood.
The cover of the March 1983 issue. Outdoor Life
I headed up the mountain to find Butch and Jack. John was still somewhere in the timber making the drive. I walked along, hurting from the wounds, but the worst pain was from the wind as it bit into my flesh.
Butch wasn’t where he was supposed to be, so I headed for Jack’s position. I figured Butch had headed into the cover to get out of the wind.
Before I got to Jack’s stand I saw a hunter loading an elk on a horse. As I talked to him, Jack walked over out of the timber.
He took one look at my bloody face and didn’t know what to think.
“What happened to you?” he asked. “Did your scope recoil into your face?” Jack was still far enough away he couldn’t see my face and head. He forgot I wasn’t carrying a rifle.
“One of your grizzlies got me,” I answered.
“You’re kidding,” he said in surprise. Then he moved up close and saw the deep cuts and gashes. I told him what had happened and he kept shaking his head.
John and Butch showed up and they were shocked when they saw what I looked like. I insisted that I was OK, and suggested that I head back to camp while Jack and Butch help the hunter finish loading the elk.
Our horses were tied in the timber near the ridgetop, so I could ride into camp. I wasn’t weak or even in shock, but the fierce wind stung.
I cleaned myself up at camp as much as I could and Butch swabbed Merthiolate into the cuts. The bear ripped up both sides of my face, my left ear, my eyebrow and my head in several places.
It took another hour to ride my horse from camp to my pickup truck. We went directly to the hospital in Cody and a doctor started sewing me up as soon as the wounds had been cleaned. He kept giving me local shots of anesthetics, and told me to holler when I felt the sewing needle. He took a lot of time, and did a great job patching me up. He worked on me for five hours and when he was done, counted 101 stitches. Most were in my face and a few in my head. The bear didn’t tear anything important when he clamped shut on my shoulder. There were some deep puncture wounds that healed by themselves.
While the doc was sewing me up, several Wyoming Game and Fish officers questioned me. I told them my story and asked them to leave the bear alone. I didn’t want them to kill it. I’d like to see Wyoming have a grizzly season and it won’t help if every problem grizzly is destroyed. I also figured I was an intruder in that bear’s territory.
Why did the bear attack? I have no idea, though I’ve heard a lot of guesses and theories. Maybe it was a sow with cubs nearby, or maybe it was about to enter its winter den and I came too close. Maybe it had a fresh kill nearby and was protecting it.
Some people asked me if the bear’s breath stunk because they’d read stories about dangerous animals with bad breath. I was too busy at the moment to notice the grizzly’s breath. Besides, I’d been in elk camp long enough to guess I didn’t smell all that great, either.
/
Another question people ask is my certainty of the bear’s identity. There’s no question that it was a grizzly. I’ve spent plenty of time in Wyoming’s mountains and I’ve seen lots of bears; grizzlys and blacks. This bear had a broad head, a hump on its back and silvertip fur. I don’t know how big it was, but it was big enough to cause me a lot of problems.
One of the factors that saved me was that I’m in good physical condition and I was able to defend myself with my hands and feet. I also was wearing a lot of clothes that offered extra protection. I had on longjohns, wool shirt, sheepskin vest, wool jacket and sweatshirt with a hood. All the bear got from my neck down was a few mouthfuls of clothes, except for the bite in my shoulder.
Some persons ask if I have any nightmares or if I fear the woods on account of the attack. I’ve never had a single bad dream, and I plan to keep hunting in the area. I’m in great game country and I’ll keep taking hunters. But one thing is for sure. Every time I walk down that draw I’ll always remember the day that the grizzly and I went round for round. I’m lucky I’m alive to tell about it.
Two unidentified Cornell University students caught some attention from their peers over the weekend for skinning and butchering a black bear in their communal dorm kitchen. A police report was filed and a game warden came to investigate, but according to a university spokesperson, the students received no charges because they’d hunted the bear legally and didn’t break any school rules.
TheCornell Daily Sun was the first to break news of the incident, which took place Saturday at Ganędagǫ Hall. School officials confirmed the details, including the lack of charges, with several national news outlets Thursday. NBC News reports that the Cornell University Police Department first received a report about the bear butchering late Saturday night, and that an investigator with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation visited the residence hall Sunday.
By that point, news of the incident had spread quickly around campus. It had already been shared on various social media pages and subreddits, including on a Cornell parent’s page, where many users were already questioning the legality of the students’ actions. Photos shared to Facebook showed the partially skinned carcass on top of a camouflage tarp, and some of the meat already broken down and stored in plastic bags in the communal freezer.
“Today, nearly everyone I’ve spoken with has talked about the bear-skinning” one Cornell senior told The Ithaca Voice Monday.
Regardless of the accusations that were made online, the DEC investigator who visited campus Sunday found no evidence of any wildlife violations, and they determined that the students had taken the bear legally in New York’s Region 4 with the proper tags. Region 4 covers several counties in the northern Catskills and it lies to the east of Region 7, where Cornell is located. Region 4’s early firearms black bear hunting season opened Saturday, Sept. 6.
The investigator also reported that the black bear weighed roughly 120 pounds, according to statements from school officials. This is on the smaller size, but not that small by East Coast standards, and New York does not have any minimum size requirements for black bears. (State regulations do prohibit the taking of cubs, however.) At the same time, Cornell’s Student Code of Conduct does not address the transportation and/or processing of animal carcasses on campus, according to The Ithaca Voice.
Cornell University used live black bears for mascots starting in 1915. Here is the original bear that was brought on campus and nicknamed “Touchdown.” Photo by Wikimedia Commons
Bears have a symbolic status at the Ivy League school. Which could explain why the incident spread so quickly around campus. Cornell’s unofficial mascot is a Big Red Bear named “Touchdown,” and a growling bruin is at the center of the school’s athletic logos. This history goes back to 1915, when the university first started using a live black bear as a football mascot. Cornell continued this tradition on-and-off for a couple decades and brought in a few different animals as replacements. But there were reportedly several incidents with the bears, including at least one escapee and a kidnapping attempt by Harvard.
Jeff Kolodzinski, also known as the “Marathon Man,” set another 24-hour fishing record Thursday in Spring Lake, Illinois. His final tally of just over 2,700 fish, landed back-to-back during the daylong marathon, easily replaced his previous record of 2,143 fish.
But Kolodzinski wasn’t about to quit there. He’d set out to break the record on a specific day, Sept. 11, to honor the victims who died in the terror attacks. So he kept on fishing until he’d caught exactly 2,977 fish — one for each life that was lost in the 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and those aboard Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania.
Kolodzinski had some help with the final 277, according to 25 News. Some kids and others who helped host the event grabbed a rod and caught some fish after the 24-hour clock had expired. The intent was the same.
“Everybody had a role,” Kolodzinksi told the local news outlet, referencing the rest of the team that made the marathon happen. “I can’t be more proud of them, especially how it ended.”
Kolodzinski fishes in front of a crowd during a past fishing marathon. All these events have helped raise funds for local charities. Photo via Facebook
Although the timing of this year’s event on the 24th anniversary of 9/11 made it even more meaningful, Kolodzinksi used the marathon as a fundraiser for Camp Dallas. The outdoor camp was founded by the parents of Dallas Atherton, who died by suicide at the age of 19, and its mission is to “embrace the outdoors as a catalyst for mental wellness.” Kolodzinski asked for donations during a live-stream of the fishing marathon, and he thinks they raised around $25,000 in total, according to 25 News.
Fittingly, Kolodzinski held the event on the camp’s small private pond, which is located just off Upper Peoria Lake. Sitting on a dock covered with sponsor logos, the marathon fisherman used a modern cane-pole setup to pluck thousands of small sunfish out of the pond. He fished non-stop and through the night, using small hooks baited with bread crumbs and small grubs. He also threw these into the water as chum.
“The art of what I do is actually [drawing] fish from another bank, from another area, over to me,” Kolodzinski explained to the cameras. “And I do that by feeding them little breadcrumbs or little insect larvae.”
In order to hit his goal, Kolodzinski said he would have to catch and release around three fish per minute. He came pretty close to that, averaging almost two sunfish per minute (or roughly 112.5 fish an hour) over the course of 24 hours.
Kolodzinski told reporters that due to a dispute with the folks at Guinness, he’s unsure if they’ll validate his most recent record in the Guiness Book of World Records. His previous record of 2,143, which he set in 2011 during a similar charity event in Minnesota, was validated by Guinness, so it’s unclear what the source of the dispute might be. Either way, he’ll likely get another opportunity. Kolodzinski said this was his 19th year of 24-hour fishing marathons, and that 2025 won’t be his last marathon endeavor.
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More ›
A sidearm is a valuable tool to have while hunting, scouting, or hiking, and to be useful, you need to keep it at the ready. This is, fortunately, made easier with the wide variety of holsters available. Most folks will find that chest carry is most convenient. Here are a few reasons for that:
Chest carry doesn’t interfere with a backpack waist belt
Chest holsters can usually be kept on the outside and aren’t affected by clothing layers
It typically allows the best freedom of movement
Your handgun can remain quickly accessible, and not snag on anything
One drawback to chest carry is that sometimes holsters don’t work cohesively with a binocular pouch/harness — a tool that’s become standard for most western hunters. At best, you have another extra set of straps to deal with, and at worst, it simply doesn’t work. There are better options out there, and one of them is the Guardian chest plate from Deadfall Designs. This simple plate allows you to attach your holster, and uses webbing straps to the rear of your bino harness, sandwiching the pistol between. The plate’s hole pattern is compatible with a variety of holsters and you can orient the pistol how you like.
For harnesses with wings or side pouches, the pistol can be a bit buried, but the Guardian works very well with compact handguns in this configuration. For others using bino pouches with no side wings, it’s easy to fit a holster for a G20 or other full-sized 10mm, and to position the grip for an efficient draw.
A key to successful backcountry defense is being armed and always having your handgun at the ready. This system makes that easier by providing a simple, universal, user-friendly option.
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More ›
This year’s collection of binoculars in our optics test is all over the place. We have a pair of compact binos, some stabilized units, a handful of large-frame binoculars, and probably the smallest assemblage of conventional 10×42 units in the history of our test.
In most years, we have so many submissions in each of the sub-categories of compact, mid-sized, and large-frame binoculars that we break them into groups of peers. Not this year. We threw all the binos in one big collection and worked through them, moving from an 8×32 Tract to a 15×56 Burris, and from an image-stabilized Sig to a $150 Bushnell 10×42.
We did try to pair up similar configurations with each other. For instance, we had three 12×50 units, from Zeiss, Leupold, and Bushnell, and while they are all at vastly different price points, they served as useful peer-to-peer comparisons.
We always try to tease out trends in our tests, and the rise of super-sized binoculars seems here to stay. We had only four binos with objective lenses of 42mm or smaller this year. That left nine other binoculars with objective lenses sized 50mm or larger.
Stabilized binoculars are also having a moment. This year we had three units, from Sig Sauer, Kite, and Nikon, and several brands are working to bring stabilized optics to the market next year.
We struggled with a Great Buy in this year’s binocular category, but ultimately felt that the two compact models in the test represent a ton of value for a fairly steep price point, considering this is our budget award. We gave two Great Buy nods, one to the conventional Tract Toric 8×32 for its wide versatility and fine handling. And we gave a Great Buy to the very unconventional Nikon Stabilized 12×25 for its ground-breaking design and ability to deliver 12-power magnification in a vibration-free unit that fits in your jacket pocket.
A year after Zeiss introduced its SFL binocular in 8×40 and 10×40 versions, the German brand has achieved a pinnacle accomplishment with 10×50 and 12×50 models in the line, delivering 50mm performance in a 42mm-sized chassis.
The result is a powerful, bright, and extremely well-balanced binocular that is optimized for hunters and birders who value walk-about size and weight but want a little more optical horsepower than a standard 10×42.
The combination of excellent glass, a responsive and tactile focus wheel, excellent ergonomics, and what we consider a fair price for a premium optic earned the Zeiss SFL our consensus pick for Editor’s Choice as the top binocular of 2025. While the award goes to the 10×50 SFL, Zeiss’s 12×50 SFL accrued nearly the same score.
Both binoculars achieve their compact frame and relatively light weight through a redesigned optical prescription that uses thinner, lighter lenses stacked relatively close together in the magnesium chassis. The result is a 6.3-inch binocular that weighs just under 31 ounces. Those dimensions are standard for 10×42 binoculars, but the Zeiss models give users 18 percent more magnification (in the 12x version) and a significantly larger exit pupil in both versions, delivering more light to users’ eyes and contributing to overall image brightness compared to 10×42 binoculars. The 50mm objective lens, with 42 percent more surface area than a 42mm, is similarly capable of delivering significantly more light to the eye.
Manufactured in Japan, the Zeiss’s glass is excellent, with no observed edge distortion or flaring, and testers noted the vivid color rendition and remarkable image brightness.
“A do-it-all, take-it-anywhere piece of gear for hunters, wildlife watchers, spectators, etc.,” noted tester Luke Coccoli.
And tester Ky Idler, who noted some stickiness in one eye cup and some tooling marks in the interior of one barrel, said “The glass is clear. I would not be afraid to glass with this for hours. Zeiss nailed it.”
The open-barrel build and light weight enables one-hand operation, and the balance is excellent, settling in both hands without feeling forward heavy. The fast-focus wheel is especially useful, even under gloved fingers. In fact the SFL naming convention comes from Zeiss’s term for this control: the very Germanic SmartFocus Concept. The oversized focus wheel turns from close focus of 6 feet to infinity in just 1.4 turns of the wheel.
The rest of the unit has the features you’d expect: a good tripod mount on the front hinge, right-barrel diopter control, and three-position eyecups. The SFL is covered by a transferable warranty.
Of the two units we tested, I prefer the 10×50. The wider field of view makes images seem more panoramic, and the 12×50 version has just a little hand-shake unless I lock my elbows in. But for users who stabilize their binos on a tripod or other support, the 12×50 offers just a little bit more reach with the same vibrant, bright image.
With the addition of the 50mm models, Zeiss’s SFL line now includes an 8×30, 10×30, 8×40, 10×40, 8×50, 10×50, and 12×50.
The 10×50 and 12×50 SFL models retail for $1,799 and $1,999, respectively. It’s an investment, for sure, but we think between the optical performance, ergonomics, and disruptive design, the Zeiss SFL is an heirloom-grade binocular that will produce years of satisfying viewing.
The Tract Toric UHD’s are compact, but fit nicely in the hand.
Testing the Tract Toric UHD.
Calm down, settlers. I hear your roars of discontent that we have named a $644 compact binocular an Outdoor Life Great Buy. That’s a lot of money for relatively little glass. But hear me out. First, there wasn’t a lot of competition for the award this year. There were cheaper submissions, but they were optically inferior to this bright, tight little unit. And this binocular from a direct-to-consumer company punches way above its size. Add the lifetime warranty and versatility from whitetail stands to turkey vests to every truck console in America, and this is the binocular you will reach for above all others.
We’ve tested the big brothers of the 8×32 in previous tests, but this configuration hits a sweet spot. Its image seems like it was delivered by a big 10×42, but the small frame of the 8×32 fits in places the larger chassis doesn’t.
Then there’s the tight build of the Toric. Those who have followed the evolution of Tract Optics know one of its distinctive features is smooth, positive, extremely tactile controls. Scope turrets move with smooth precision and binocular eyecups feel like they glide on ball-bearing races. Those controls extend to the focus wheel, locking diopter control, and eyecups of this smallish binocular.
The detail that cemented the Great Buy award for the Tract Toric is its lifetime warranty. I doubt you’d ever use that coverage, but it’s useful to know that you have a binocular for life. In the field, you’ll use it for a one-handed spot-and-stalk bowhunting optic. You’ll have it in your bino pouch for turkey hunting or hiking. Or you’ll throw it in your luggage for a travel optic.
Testers subtracted points for a fairly clunky build and some blue color fringing. Testers who gravitate toward full-sized 10×42 binos thought the compact Tract was underwhelming.
“My first impression was that I didn’t want to like this binocular,” noted tester Ky Idler. “But surprisingly it fit my hands. Good glass. It would be a very good spot-and-stalk binocular.”
The Tract seems bigger than it is largely because of its excellent glass. It’s built around high-transmission Schott glass, manufactured in Japan, and has a wide field of view. Normally, I like open-barrel designs for one-hand operation, but the closed-bridge build of the Toric, while a little center-weighted, has enough heft that it settles in hand, whether one hand or two.
I’d readily use this binocular for bowhunting, when single-hand operation is required and where positive focus control helps parse close, medium, and far range targets. The Tract capably handles this chore with aplomb, if not distinctive style.
Maybe this helps answer the question: Is $644 too much to pay for a quality compact binocular? In the case of the Tract Toric UHD, the answer is decidedly no. While I’m not eager to pay more, this is a solid deal for a very good and versatile hunting optic.
In order to appreciate the audacious capabilities of this tiny, super-hero binocular, it’s helpful to understand how image-stabilization works.
Most image-stabilized binoculars have a single gyroscope that tames environmental vibrations, whether delivered by shaky hands or by straight-line winds. This usually bulky central control center helps understand why Sig’s stabilized binoculars don’t have traditional twin barrels. Instead, they have undifferentiated barrels that are controlled by a single prism at the head of the works, between the focus wheel and the eyecups.
But Nikon has disrupted the norm by delivering a stabilized binocular that actually looks like a binocular. They do this by installing image-stabilizing modules in each barrel. The upshot is that Nikon has delivered a high-magnification binocular (12-power) in a super-compact frame that’s easy to hold in a single hand. It’s honestly a form of optical magic.
The result is that you can fit this tiny binocular in a jacket pocket or the front pouch of a backpack and deploy it on a birding trip, a European vacation, or any bowhunting adventure.
I have to acknowledge a rare failure in our optics test, but it’s instructive for readers who are in the market for a stabilized binocular. We dropped this Nikon Stabilized bino during our optics test. It fell off a tripod directly on a concrete pad and the impact knocked it out of collimation. I mention this because I’ve been concerned about the durability of the design of Sig’s stabilized ZULU6 line of optics, but in our experience – with a super small sample size – this two-barrel design may be less durable than the single-barrel design of Sig and Kite.
But even with that durability demerit, the Nikon charmed us with its optical horsepower in a hand-sized frame. It goes everywhere. It does almost everything. And, at about $650, it’s a steep but fair price for such a versatile optic.
Add to the positives the fact that the stabilization module takes widely available AA batteries, delivers a decent image, and provides awesome magnification in a hand-sized unit. It’s a great travel and sports-spectating optic, but it has abundant talents for close- to mid-range targets that most bowhunters and turkey hunters encounter.
Reticle’s floating center dot enhances target visibility
Reticle offers 10 MRAD of windage and 5 MRAD of drop references
Tripod mount has Arca-Swiss-compatible foot
3-position removable eyecups
This super-sized binocular has a very specific niche as a spotter for precision rifle shooters. Match the milliradian-based reticle to the reticle in a shooter’s rifle scope, and it’s a cinch to call hits and misses and relay corrections to the shooter.
The benefit of this 15×56 optic is that its magnification is low enough to reduce the target-obscuring mirage that is amplified with larger spotting scopes. When stabilized on a tripod, the Zeiss Conquest HDX enables both-eyes-open viewing, allowing users to spend more time behind the glass than they can squinting through a single-barrel spotting scope. Zeiss acknowledges the purpose of the binocular in its promotional materials. “Tailored to enhance the performance of competitors in Precision Rifle Series (PRS) and National Rifle League (NRL) events.”
We judged the merits of this tight, bright, and durable binocular as it’s intended, but we also appraised it as a large-frame binocular that could be used for general wildlife observation. This latter talent, as a very good super-sized binocular, is enabled by a key feature: the reticle can be unfocused to the degree that it drops out of the image. Focus the reticle using the left-barrel diopter when you’re ready to spot for a shooter or use it to range a distant object. The HDX has another key feature, a reticle leveler, that allows users to straighten the reticle to the horizon. Most binos with built-in reticles achieve leveling by moving the barrels, which changes the interpupillary distance — or distance between the two barrels — and makes it uncomfortable or impossible to center the eyes in the eyepieces.
The Zeiss HDX LRP reticle. Scott Einsmann
The MIL-based reticle is smartly designed. Its T-style offers 10 MRAD of windage references, with 5 MRAD on either side of a floating center dot, and 5 MRAD of elevation references. It’s open enough to witness hits but detailed enough, with horizontal and vertical hashes every .1 MIL, to allow spotters to easily communicate shot locations to the shooter.
Optically, the Zeiss HDX is bright and free of aberrations. The 15×56 won our low-light test, largely on the basis of its large objective lens. But given that the binocular has an additional lens element — the one containing the reticle — that restricts light transmission, this low-light performance was impressive.
While we liked the positive controls, testers noted that it takes time and attention to tune the reticle, focus, and diopters.
“One drawback is the time you have to spend adjusting both tubes if you intend to use the reticle,” notes tester Luke Coccoli. “You can give yourself a headache if you adjust them incorrectly.”
The Conquest HDX is intended to be mounted to a tripod, and Zeiss enables this deployment by shipping a very good mounting adapter with the binocular. If you want to get the best out of this system, invest in one of Zeiss’s new Pro-Series carbon tripods.
If you’re in the market for a big 15×56 binocular, you could do worse than this solid, unsurprising entry from Burris. If that sounds like faint praise, it’s because the Signature HD does its job without fuss or failure. It reaches across landscapes to deliver images with good enough clarity and brightness. It easily mounts to a tripod but can be used adequately without stabilization. In short, it’s an honest optic.
Its biggest selling point is its price. You get an Asian-sourced large-frame binocular for under $1,000. That puts it in the league of Nikon’s Monarch 5 (20×56), and 15×56 models from Bushnell (Match Pro ED), Athlon (Cronus G2), and Steiner (Predator), but its image and handling are a bit better than those peers, based on previous year’s testing.
The Signature HD was runner-up in our low-light test, thanks to its large 56mm objective lenses and also generally good glass and image brightness. Testers reported good edge-to-edge clarity with only a little color fringing in bright daylight conditions. While users aren’t typically in the market for 15×56 binos for close-up viewing, the 23-foot close distance of the Burris was disappointing; most large-frame binoculars can focus inside 15 feet.
We also dinged the Burris a bit on its handling. The closed-bridge design and overall heft make it hard to use with a single hand, which is unsurprising considering its configuration. It behaved much better on a tripod, where the focus is tight and the aggressively textured armor is easy to handle, even when wet or with gloved hands.
At about $279, an appealing price for a large-frame bino
Ships with Vault TMLite harness
Lifetime warranty
Cons
Disappointing glass
Overly tight hinge
Key Features
3-position eyecups
Closed-bridge design
Textured two-tone armor
See our evaluation of the 10×42 version of the R5. Pretty much all those comments and take-aways apply to its big brother, the 12×50. Testers added to their critique by noting that the hinge was overly tight, and even repeated workings of it didn’t loosen it much. We also detected a loose diopter.
But it must be said that, if you were going to evaluate the price per unit of magnification, this 12×50 is probably the most affordable larger binocular we’ve ever had in our test. For a beginning hunter or shooter who wants to get into a larger-frame binocular and who doesn’t have the coin for a spotting scope and tripod, this is a helluva bargain.
The R5 also has those excellent Bushnell optical coatings, and the fact that it includes a very good binocular harness and a lifetime warranty add value to a binocular that might get a hunter started, even if they don’t have it for long.
Leupold has been trotting out new versions of its yeoman binocular, the BX-4 Pro Guide HD over the past year. We tested the 10×42 version of the Gen2 model last year. This year we had a number of other configurations, including an 8×42 and 10×50, but this 12×50 scored the highest of the three, which share so many attributes that we’ll cover the product line here and have shorter reviews for the other configurations.
These Gen2 BX-4 binos have a couple significant upgrades from the Gen1 Pro Guide HD models. The most celebrated and visible is the interchangeable “Form-Fit” eyecups. Each model ships with three styles that are easy to trade out in the field. There’s the winged eyecup that blocks stray peripheral light. There’s the medium version for all-around use. The low-cut eyecups are designed for use with glasses. The cups fit tight enough that they’re unlikely to slip off in the field, but they are easy to work off the eyepieces without much effort.
The Gen2 binoculars also have upgraded coatings to resist scratches and enhance color, optical clarity, and contrast.
Testers like the easy-gripping ergonomics of the open-barrel design. While the 12×50 is a little too powerful to use with a single hand, the frame balances nicely in either or both hands. Controls are decent, though testers reported a little sponginess in the focus wheel. The center-wheel diopter control, which pulls to turn and pushes to lock into place, is a very nice feature.
Optically, the binoculars are good, but we often found ourselves switching between the 12×50 Leupold and the 12×50 Zeiss, and the Leupold was noticeably darker and less colorful. That’s to be expected; it’s also about a quarter the price of the Zeiss. The 12×50 Pro Guide finished in the middle of the field in our low-light test, and testers reported blue color fringing.
Overall, it’s a solid binocular that nicely splits the difference between 10×42 and larger 15×56 frame sizes, though the 12×50 frame requires a slightly larger bino harness pouch than that of most 10×42 binoculars. The 12-power is a nice magnification for Western hunters who glass large landscapes, and the 50mm objective allows for decent brightness with the additional magnification. Use the 12×50 without a tripod, especially if you can find supports like a fencepost or pickup window frame, but the unit is at its best when mounted to a tripod.
Image stabilization enables hand-holding of high-mag optic
Runs on standard AA batteries
HDX software tunes stabilization to use
Good image
Lifetime transferable warranty
Cons
Ergonomically awkward
Tripod mount should be integrated into chassis
At $1,700, it’s expensive
Key Features
Stabilization makes tripod use optional
10-minute auto shutoff
Independent diopter controls
40+ hours of run time
Relocated battery compartments provide enhanced grip
The Zulu binoculars don’t have traditional ergonomics.
The focus wheel is easy to reach.
Testers had a complicated relationship with this ground-breaking binocular. On the one hand, the stabilized 18-power image is astonishing. To be able to hand-hold such a powerful binocular with no noticeable vibration is freeing. We managed to spot and classify a herd of elk three miles away with the hand-held ZULU6. Try that with any conventional binocular.
If only the Sig was more enjoyable to hold in the hands. The reality is, it’s not. It’s about as much fun as holding a motorcycle battery. The binocular is square and angular and doesn’t balance particularly well and the too-small focus wheel is located too far forward to comfortably reach.
One tester said the Sig was at its best when mounted to a tripod, but that sort of defeats the purpose of stabilization. Plus, the ZULU6 doesn’t have a built-in tripod mounting port. If you want to mount it, you have to buy a sold-separately ($60) clamshell adapter that has both a threaded adapter and Arca-Swiss foot.
Those ergonomic quibbles out of the way, this is a remarkable optical instrument. It allows for both tack-sharp viewing of far-distant objects and its built-in accelerometer adjusts to the speed of panning to keep the stabilization in time with your own movement. That’s the HDX PRO part of the ZULU6’s name. It allows users to glass from a moving vehicle, or on horseback, or on a pitching and rolling boat.
Sig has poured a number of upgrades into the latest versions of the ZULU6, including moving its twin battery compartments to the belly of the bino, where they serve as small purchase points for users’ hands. The glass and coatings are better, too, and we had no quibbles with image quality, though the small exit pupil means the image often appears dark. The Sig finished in the middle of the field in our low-light test.
But we long for the day when the stabilized ZULU line looks and feels, and handles, like a traditional binocular.
Tester Dale Manning captured the team’s sentiment by commenting, “The stabilizing technology is amazing. I do think there should be some sort of tripod attachment, because when the stabilization is turned off – or when the batteries fail – this is a difficult bino to use and a rest is required.”
If we knocked the Sig Sauer ZULU6 for its brick-like handling, the Kite feels like you’re holding an unsliced loaf of oatmeal bread. It’s a little lighter than the Sig, and somehow more squishy under its neoprene jacket. But it’s simply uncomfortable to hold.
Once you get a grip on the Belgian-made Kite, the image it delivers is very good, and the stabilization mode works marvelously, freeing you from a tripod to glass distant targets with exceptional resolution. The image is so close in color, brightness, and overall quality that we could discern no important differences between the Kite and the Sig. The Kite performed slightly better in our low-light test than the ZULU6.
The Kite has a ¼-20 threaded tripod receiver in its belly, a feature we appreciated, and used to get the unit out of our hands and on a support.
The optics test team had fun describing the unconventional styling of the Kite.
“Looks like you need to put a quarter in it to make it work,” noted Ky Idler, who questioned its practicality. “It’s just not really built to put in a bino harness for a backpacking or hunting trip. Maybe a good pickup or boat binocular?”
“An Atari for your eyeballs,” wrote Luke Coccoli.
“The hammerhead shark of optics,” said Dale Manning.
Others noted that both the Sig and the Kite need better on/off switches, with more positivity and possibly a locking feature. And the consensus opinion of the team is that the Kite needs a larger and farther-back focus wheel.
Still, it’s a remarkable confluence of optics and electronics, and enables users to glass from a moving vehicle or from any conveyance.
This entry-level binocular begs the question: Is affordability worth the reduced cost of entry?
The optics test jury is out on this question. Half the team felt like this would be a decent entry-level optic for a beginning hunter or outdoors person. The other half felt like the glass and controls were so poorly rendered that they’d recommend a buyer save their money for a more expensive, but better performing binocular.
But, at a real-world street price of about $150, it’s a decent value, and with a lifetime warranty and the very good Vault TMLite bino harness that comes with the R5, it’s hard to go wrong.
We won’t dwell on the glass, which is pretty much what you’d expect. We were more disappointed with the sloppy focus wheel, which has a flat spot that tends to bind while you riff from close focus to infinity. That’s not ideal.
The one detail that is perfect is the objective lens coating. Bushnell has spent decades developing its EXO Barrier and IPX7 waterproofing coatings, and it’s an argument to buy a price-point bino from an established optics company because you get those coatings almost for free.
Note that we also had Bushnell’s R5 in 12×50 in our test, and most of our impressions of the 10×42 also apply to the larger binocular.
We’ve voiced many of our impressions about the overall build and features of the BX-4 Pro Guide HD Gen2 binoculars in the 12×50 review, but it’s worth a few paragraphs about the specific results of the 8×42 version.
While it scored a few points lower in overall tabulation behind the 12×50, the difference was mainly on low-light and image scores, where the smaller objective lens diameter and magnification held it back. Its 5.25mm exit pupil, on the other hand, gives it a bright image in nearly all conditions. In terms of handling and ergonomics, the 8×42 is a darling. It is sized perfectly for one-hand operation, making it a great spot-and-stalk optic for a bowhunter.
While we swapped out each of the three eyepieces, our consensus pick was the tapered model that comes delivered on the optic out of the box.
Lastly, some testers noted blue edge aberration and a loose focus wheel. At somewhere between $599 (Leupold’s price) and $399 (the price we saw this advertised at retail), it’s priced right for a mid-sized, do-everything binocular that has excellent ergonomics.
Like the 8×42 and 12×50 versions of the BX-4 Pro Guide HD Gen2 (that’s a mouthful), we had mixed impressions of this 10×50. It’s nicely hefty, and the 50mm objective lens gives the binocular a nice, bright 5.0mm exit pupil. The open-barrel design provides plenty of gripping surface, though we liked the balance and handling of the 8×42 a bit more than the larger 50mm.
We had the same gripes about the glass in this version that we did in the others, namely a noticeable blue flaring. Two testers reported difficulty getting a tripod mount to screw into the front-hinge receptacle, which is a few thread revolutions too shallow.
“I really want to like you but your glass is whack,” noted tester Luke Coccoli, who added that he liked the heavily textured focus wheel and locking center-dial diopter control.
Interestingly, the 10×50 version is slightly lighter than the 8×42 Leupold, and delivers an impressive field of view.
Once you recover from the sticker shock of this Austrian-made binocular, find a way to experience the image and the design that starts to justify its price of $100 per ounce. In terms of image quality, low-light performance, and ergonomics, the NL Pure is one of the most remarkable binoculars Outdoor Life has ever tested.
Its distinctive external lines are purposeful. Swarovski introduced the roof-prism NL Pure four years ago in three configurations: 8×42, 10×42, and what seemed like a crazy magnification at the time, a 12×42. That high-power binocular works as a shake-free hand-held optic because of its balance and the balance-enhancing barrel shape.
This year the Austrian optic company is extending the line with a series of 52mm binos. The 14×52 version is in our large-frame binocular test, and requires stabilization to perform to its potential. The 10×52 is a better balance of hand-holdability, image delivery, and overall handling.
The wasp-waist design conforms to your hands for comfortable glassing. Note the diopter adjustment tab just behind the focus wheel. Scott Einsmann
Swarovski calls the NL Pure a “wasp-waist” design, and a new optical prescription and redesigned prism allow the chassis to accommodate big objective lenses, a slender mid-section, and large eyepieces fitted with field-flattener lenses that enhance edge sharpness. The design also enables a monstrous field of view. The 10-power NL Pure has a 426-foot FOV at about 1,100 yards (the strange math is because I’ve converted from metric meters). That’s even wider than most 8-power binoculars, and far wider than any other 10-power that we’ve tested. If you’re a glasser that appreciates panoramic images and the ability to take in wide swaths of landscapes, the NL Pure is for you.
This binocular is decidedly not for you if you want to mount it to a standard tripod. One of the more frustrating aspects of Swarovski’s design is its proprietary front-hinge tripod socket. Instead of being fit with a standard ¼-20 thread, the NL Pure has a special click-lock socket that only accepts Swaro’s tripod mount, which sells for an additional $200. A cheaper alternative is to buy the $60 NL Pure adapter at Outdoorsmans and install it yourself. But either way, it’s an affront to working-class glassers to have to buy an aftermarket tripod mount after spending $3,500 on the binocular.
The diopter adjustment indicator is located under the barrel hinge.
Testers also dinged the NL Pure for its non-locking center-dial diopter, which features a tab that can easily get bumped off plumb, especially if users employ enclosed bino harnesses. Evaluators had mixed reviews of Swaro’s proprietary harness mounting system, which features push-to-turn locking studs that hold straps to the chassis. The system, while elegant, requires users to stick with Swarovski’s hardware, and to buy expensive replacements when they inevitably lose one or both of the studs.
But these external nuisances distract from the NL Pure’s astonishing image. The binocular easily won our low-light test, thanks to premium glass and coatings and those huge 52mm objective lenses. The image delivered by the NL Pure is so vibrant, bright, and pleasing that testers gravitated to the Swarovski any time they wanted to get a better look at a distant object. That’s the best testament to a world-class optic: that users spend more time behind it. And as hunters know, the more you look with an optic, the more you’ll see, and the more successful you’ll ultimately be in the field. It’s hard to put a price on that level of performance.
Extremely accessible real-world street price of under $100
Cons
Significant peripheral distortion
Flimsy feeling
Score Card
Optical Performance:
Fair
Mechanical Performance:
Good
Design:
Good
Price/Value:
Very Good
Key Features
Single-hinge, closed-bridge design
Roof-prism design
Right-barrel diopter control
Fully transferable lifetime warranty
Tripod adaptable
Weight:
22.9 ounces
Price:
$99
How on earth can Vortex bring a capable binocular to the masses for under $100? With a good bino harness and the brand’s legendary warranty? Those were questions our test team batted around as we handled this entry-level binocular. Then we got behind the lenses and learned some of the answers.
The biggest answer is the class of glass inside the new Triumph HD is cheap. The Vortex received uniformly downbeat assessments in optical performance; it scored near the bottom in low-light brightness, and its resolution score was just below the median. Testers further complained about blue color fringing, noticeable edge distortion, and blurry focus.
Testers found the Triumph’s focus wheel tight and responsive. Scott Einsmann
But we also recognized that you shouldn’t expect world-beating glass inside a $99 binocular, and that same realism pervaded our assessment of the Triumph’s mechanical performance. The diopter adjustment is stickier than we’d like, and the overall build feels flimsy. But the tapered eyecups move with positivity and the focus wheel is tight and responsive. The texturing, balance, and overall design is better than we’d expect for the price.
On the value side of the ledger, the GlassPak case and integrated harness confirms the best value designation we gave the Triumph HD. This would make a very good first optic for a hunter, birder, or shooter, and if treated gently is a good choice to throw in a pickup or cabin. We’re not sure how much rough handling this bino can take, but Vortex’s excellent warranty and customer service is a cheering consolation.
With this petite binocular, introduced earlier this year, Maven is well on its way to filling out its product line. The B.7 is a compact version of the direct-to-consumer company’s excellent B.3 line.
It should be said at the outset that this is a fairly specialized optic. It’s configured for portability and use in tight quarters and in close ranges. Think whitetail hunting out of a treestand. A travel optic when weight and space is at a premium. Turkey hunting just about anywhere. I use sub-compact binoculars when upland hunting, tucked in a pocket of my upland-bird vest, in order to positively identify distant birds, to find my dog, or confirm a distant point.
This binocular fits in the palm of your hand. Scott Einsmann
The Maven is one of the best-rendered versions of this class of diminutive binocular. The double-hinge design allows the barrels to nest under the bridge, and can fit inside a roomie shirt pocket. The glass is surprisingly good for this mini optic. Maven uses extra-low-dispersion glass that reduces glare and boosts colors and contrast of images, and helped the B.7 post one of the best resolution scores of our 2023 binocular class. But the ED glass is also responsible for the fairly steep price; the 8-power B.7 retails for $600; the 10-power version sells for $625.
Outdoor Life’s optics test team gave the binocular good price/value scores, and they praised the solid build and responsive controls. But several testers noted the limitations of the platform.
“This would be a good spot-and-stalk bino for those times when I don’t want to carry a pack or even a binocular harness,” said tester Ky Idler. Tester Dale Manning further noted that the B.7 would “make a great optic for sporting events, turkey hunting, deep-woods treestand hunting, but for me it’s too small to be a go-to field bino.”
Fair enough, but for those hunters looking for a combination of outsized optical performance in a very trim package, this binocular fits just about anywhere.
Ships with premium GlassPack Pro harness with rangefinder pouch
Cons
At nearly $1,500 street price, expensive for an 8×32
Thumb indents could be larger to accommodate large hands
Score Card
Optical Performance:
Excellent
Mechanical Performance:
Very Good
Design:
Very Good
Price/Value:
Very Good
Key Features
Open-hinge open-barrel design
Right-barrel locking diopter control
Tripod-mountable
5.9-foot close focus
Weight:
21.9 ounces
Field of view:
472 feet at 1,000 yards
Price:
$1,450
Vortex’s new flagship binocular has it all: excellent glass, nice handling, a durable build, and wonderful field of view. The compact 8×32 in our test produces a big image out of proportion to its size, and testers noted it’s a perfect bowhunting optic, since it can be capably handled with a single hand and offers excellent mid-range performance. Enhancing its handling, whether you use one hand or two, the Razor UHD features thumb indentations in the chassis that are placed at the balance point of the binocular. That added touch allows for good gripping, though one ham-handed tester wanted these depressions to be a bit larger to fit his silver-dollar-sized thumbs.
The Razor UHD combines good glass, ergonomics, a robust feature set, and includes a bino harness. Scott Einsmann
The 8×32 joins a compact 10×32, both introduced this year, to fill out Vortex’s excellent Razor UHD line, which includes 10×42, 10×50, 12×50, and 18×56 models. The literalists of our test noted that the term UHD, which stands for Ultra High-Definition glass, doesn’t have a defined meaning. It’s a marketing term to refer to a higher grade of glass and coatings than those used in Vortex’s HD (pedestrian High-Definition) optics.
Regardless of semantics, its exceptional glass and coatings allowed the 32mm Vortex to hang with big 42mm and even a 52mm binocular in our low-light test. Other accolades for the Razor UHD include a locking diopter, fast-focus wheel, and thin eyecups that fit most brows. Perhaps recognizing that $1,500 is a lot to spend on a binocular, Vortex adds its very good GlassPak Pro harness and rangefinder pouch to the deal. Those accessories retail for around $150.
We did note a surprising aberration. Testers recorded noticeable flaring when they peered toward the sun, an optical anomaly that may be caused by dust on an interior lens. We didn’t expect to see that in an optic at this price point.
But most users are unlikely to notice that demerit, one of the very few in an otherwise capable, fine-handling, and extremely bright binocular. Given Vortex’s fully transferable lifetime warranty and exceptional customer service, any deficiencies that users note are bound to be covered by the company.
The Test Protocol
We put all submissions to our annual binocular test through the same criteria. First, we measure optical resolution, using the diminishing black-and-white lines of a 1951 Air Force Resolution Target to score the optical performance of each submission. We also measure the low-light performance of each binocular by mounting them to tripods and focusing them as a group at 200 yards at a black-and-white resolution target starting at twilight and then well into the gathering dark, all in order to measure the brightness of the glass. This is an important consideration for both hunters and wildlife watchers, since animals are more visible in the early morning and late evening than at any other time.
We measured the optical resolution using a resolution target developed by the Air Force. Scott Einsmann
The binocular that can “see” the longest into the dark gets top marks. The model that loses its night vision earliest gets the lowest score. Binoculars in the middle receive weighted scores somewhere between those two poles. We averaged the results over at least three nights, with a different pair of eyeballs behind the binoculars each night, to arrive at our adjusted score.
How We Scored the Results
We break our 10-point scoring into four general categories: optical performance, mechanical performance, design, and value. The average of these categories is the basis of our grades, detailed below.
Optical performance includes the resolution and low-light tests plus the more subjective assessments of image quality and brightness. Mechanical performance assesses the durability of the submission along with its controls: focus and diopter controls, eyecup extension, and comfort. In the case of rangefinding binoculars, it also factors the electronic interface and performance. Design considers the exterior finish, interior blacking, tripod mount, and its innovation and versatility, along with its comfort. We ask testers to evaluate this critical question: how long could you glass with this binocular?
And then our price/value score rates how much optic—along with warranty and amenities such as carrying case or harness—you get for your money. The binocular that gets the highest overall score wins our Editor’s Choice award for the best in the category; the optic with the highest price/value score wins our Great Buy recognition.
Our 10-point evaluation adds up to a total numeric score, but we translate those to grades for each submission. The optical performance grade combines the scores from resolution, low light, image, and brightness. Our mechanical performance grade aggregates the mechanics and durability score. The design grade considers construction, innovation, versatility, and comfort. And then the price/value grade is our value grade.
To earn an “Excellent” grade, the average of that category must be 9 or higher, which is extremely hard to achieve. “Very Good” is an average score of 7 to 9. A “Good” grade is 5 to 7. Our “Fair” grade is 3 to 5, and “Poor” is anything under 3.
This story, “In Case of Death,” appeared in the April 1962 issue of Outdoor Life.
IF THERE IS any country wilder, more isolated, or harder to fly into than the Wrangell Mountains of Alaska, I have yet to see it—and I’m not sure I want to. Never again, I had sworn, would I make the nerve-racking flight east from Anchorage over and through the Chugach Range, across the sprawling Copper River Valley, on south to the junction of the Copper and Chitina rivers, and into the heart of the towering Wrangells.
It was downright foolish, I’d said, to fly 500 miles into this formidable country for sheep hunting when, with any luck at all, we could bag legal Dall rams less than an hour’s flight from Anchorage. We would stick close to home, have more time to hunt, and not take so many risks.
Sound logic. Yet, on the morning of August 20, the opening of sheep season, my wife, Evva, and I were hiking around the shoulder of an unnamed mountain. In the Chugach or Talkeetnas, close to home? Oh, no, high in the lofty Wrangells.
And the cause of all this foolishness was a book. Our sensible, conservative viewpoint vanished when we looked between the covers of the Boone and Crockett Club’s Records of North American Big Game.
Evva and I have hunted most of our lives, but our primary purpose has always been to get meat. We had never given trophy hunting a serious thought, but when we saw that beautifully illustrated record book, it made us realize how much we were missing. The book presented a daring challenge that couldn’t be ignored. We just had to see if we could get a big one for the record.
Before leaving, she wrote a note to leave in camp. At the end it read, “In case of death, list cause as Boone and Crockett record book, plus one Dall ram downriver.”
The decision to return to the Wrangell Range where we had killed rams with 40-inch curls the year before (and thrown away the horns without ever knowing they were near-records) was inevitable. We had flown our plane over most of Alaska’s sheep ranges and hadn’t seen anywhere near the number of sheep as in the Wrangells. These mountains are little hunted compared with other areas, and it’s easy to see why. They’re far from big population areas, and storms and bad weather there are the rule. Some of the state’s highest peaks are in this area, and if you could sell glaciers by the square mile you’d get rich fast. It’s hazardous flying, and we didn’t look forward to the trip, but we couldn’t quite talk ourselves out of it either.
There were no seaplane facilities available after leaving Anchorage, so Evva drove our old pickup over the Glenn and Richardson highways to the junction of the Chitina Road and on to Willow Lake with two drums of gas and most of our gear. The following day I flew our Aeronca Sedan across the mountains and met her at the lake. We refueled, stashed another 20 gallons behind the front seat, and threw all the other equipment on top of it. Then we took off together.
We followed the silt-brown Chitina over vestiges of the railroad to McCarthy, once site of the world’s largest copper mine but now occupied by only a few old-timers. Beyond lay nothing but high, glacier-coated mountains. We continued up the Chitina until we came to the narrow, rock-sided canyon that led to our campsite.
Evva and I with the two Wrangell rams killed with identical shots. We never did learn who dropped which, but both are whoppers, and it’s all in the family anyway. Outdoor Life
They say every pilot has one bad weakness, and mine is shared by Evva: we don’t like to hunt where others hunt or fish where others fish. The lake we’d found hadn’t seen a hunter since the early day prospectors walked in from McCarthy. It was short for a landing — one reason for its not being used. While it wasn’t the riskiest place we’d ever set down, it certainly wasn’t the safest. But the isolation we sought was there in that spot off the regular flight lanes, and completely out of touch with anyone or anything.
We set up our meager camp on the swampy slope beside the lake because that was all the country offered. Aside from the 10 x 12 tent and air mattress, we could easily have back-packed everything we had: our double down bag, ax, cook kit, Model 70 rifles, ammo, spotting scope, binoculars, camera, and grub box.
Though we usually end up camping in such a crude fashion, this time it was a necessity. If we both got rams, we’d have to ferry meat, horns, and gear in several short hauls to a big, low-country lake with plenty of room for a gross-load take-off and hopefully make it back to Willow Lake in one trip. So we brought no luxuries and no extra clothing except socks.
At 3 a.m. we were rummaging through the tent by candlelight, eating cold sandwiches with one hand and gathering up gear with the other.
We’d camped on the far side of the lake from the hunting country because it had a small stand of spruce we could use for firewood, so we taxied across the dark, quiet lake, bumping softly against the willows on the far shore.
Willows are the worst part of hunting this country. We stepped off the floats of the plane into a sea of them and didn’t break clear until we’d fought our way a mile up the ridge.
We emerged into an open meadow and hiked below the bare slope of the mountain to the east. As the fog lifted, big snowy peaks burst out all around us. We decided to wear our rain clothes even though the weather promised to be fair. They make good windbreaks on high, exposed peaks, and we consider both rain pants and coats essential on any Alaska hunt.
We had never hunted the upriver end of the peak we were headed for. It falls off sharply into a deep, craggy gorge cut by a churning glacial creek that joins the Chitina almost at right angles. We had decided to have a go at the meadows and ridges above this canyon.
We circled the hill until we came out on the river side, about two miles from where we’d climbed out of the brush. We hadn’t seen any sheep, though there was sign and a few trails across the hard, barren ground above.
The ridge paralleling the river is actually a series of peaks, each with its own pattern of shale, boulder slides, vertical ledges, and green patches. We climbed out on a rocky shoulder where we could see for miles downriver and glassed the peaks for over an hour, our eyes watering from the cold wind.
About noon our patience was rewarded. Evva spotted a ewe and lamb down below us through the 7 x 50 binoculars. We looked them over with our 20X spotting scope and eventually saw two more sheep on a point above the river, but they were both young ones.
We suffered another hour in that breath-catching wind and then two more fruitless hours climbing over rocky ridges glassing each new slope and valley before heading back to camp.
Next morning we emerged from the willows and went the other way, to the west and downriver. At the end of that cold, miserable day we were really discouraged. We’d seen very little sign and no sheep, though this was the same country where we’d seen 88 sheep in one bunch the year before. Then there had been a dozen or so nice rams, now nothing. We had gone even farther from camp than before, climbing ridge after ridge, skirting canyons, traversing hard, steep shale slides, but we saw nothing.
After a vanishing act neither of us understood, sheep appeared suddenly, bouncing like ping pong balls.
That night it poured, and at dawn the rain was still coming down. The muskeg beneath us practically turned into a lake, and only the air mattress saved us from a very wet sack. It rained and blew a gale all day, so we stayed in camp.
The weather calmed that night, and the fourth day we hunted the way we had the first, still unable to believe that all the sheep could have left the country. By late afternoon, however, we were convinced. We wouldn’t have believed it had happened here even if someone had told us, though we had seen such a disappearance of animals before.
We hiked out to a point of meadow over the gorge to watch the sunset. We had planned to take a quick look and then be off to camp, but as we rose to leave we heard a rock roll. The sound was down toward the junction of the spur creek entering the Chitina. There, where a series of cliffs fell like stairsteps to the river, the slopes of the gorge weren’t so steep, and the creek funneled out where it joined the Chitina. Both of us saw him at about the same instant — a big ram crossing a ledge about 500 yards away. He was going straightaway from us over a rocky slope, and every time his feet hit the ground, rocks started rolling. I got the binoculars on him as he broke recklessly over a jumble of rocks and then went out of sight in one incredible leap over a ledge. I guess we’d spooked him from his bed. He was too far away for a shot, but at least we had seen a ram.
One thing was obvious — he was big. He ran with his head back as rams do when they’re packing lots of horn, and his body was thick and powerfully built.
We sat by our campfire after supper trying to figure something out. The main trick to hunting sheep in this country is to catch them on the meadows or shale slides. They always seem to have a nearby retreat — a wall of stone, a ledge, or a canyon where they can navigate with ease and nothing else can.
If we were going to get a ram, we’d have to scratch. Our grub supply was running low, and we’d be lucky to get meat in the pot, much less a trophy. But I was encouraged. I knew that there was at least one good ram in the country.
Just before I crawled in the sack, I had an idea. It wasn’t a good one, but a minute after I thought of it nothing else would do.
“I’m going after that big guy,” I said, “I’ll fly down, land in the Chitina, and hunt him from the bottom.”
Evva groaned. “You know that when we first flew over this country we dragged the river for 50 miles and never found one place to land,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I replied.
“Well, that ram isn’t down there digging a channel for you to land in.”
“Maybe the river has changed,” I countered. “I might be able to go in light and make it out if I don’t carry any extra gear.”
“And you might not make it at all.”
I’d thought of that, of course, but the ram was there, and there might be others under the ledges near the river. We argued a while and finally agreed we would try it. And I mean we, because Evva wouldn’t hear of waiting me out. Before leaving, she wrote a note to leave in camp. At the end it read, “In case of death, list cause as Boone and Crockett record book, plus one Dall ram downriver.”
We took off at dawn and flew the way we had come in, crossing over to the Chitina side way downriver to avoid the hunting country. The buzz of a plane sends sheep scattering, and I didn’t want to disturb anything.
THE FARTHER UP the Chitina you get, the worse it looks. Here it sprawled over a wide valley, flooding, cutting new channels, and so heavy with silt you can’t see bottom. Judging its depth is a matter of how it looks. That’s poor business when a pair of floats cost $2,000 and your airplane plenty more — not to mention your neck.
The river didn’t look any better than usual, but the third time around we noticed a feeder creek running in a mile or so below the spur canyon and made a quick circle to look it over. The shores weren’t quite so gouged and boulder-strewn as those of the main river.
The creek looked shallow, but the plane draws only about 12 inches, so I dragged it while Evva timed it with her watch. We can judge the length of a river or lake quite accurately by timing our flight over it in seconds. Anything less than 30 seconds is borderline for landing, anything less than 25 is generally out. This one timed 24, but there were no obstacles to clear in take-off and no obvious danger spots.
I came in upstream and eased the plane over the end of the straight channel. It looked mighty short, but the air was calm, and before I knew it the plane was skimming the surface. It was a neat landing — until the ship settled in the current. Then there was a sudden, loud crunch, the nose lurched forward and down, and we came to a grinding halt.
“Lafayette, we are here,” Evva said nonchalantly as she stepped out onto a float, “though we may never leave.”
I saw with great relief that there was no obvious damage. We floated the plane into an eddy and beached it. I still couldn’t see any damage so I figured we’d scraped a rock and probably dented the floats. There was nothing we could do about it now, however, so we went on with the hunt.
The cliffs above the river were farther up than we had thought, almost 3,000 feet. As we started up the rocky creek bed, the fog began to creep in. In a few minutes it was so thick we couldn’t see 30 yards.
For more than an hour we climbed over slick meadows, crumbly rock ledges, shale slides, and a few barren slopes, all of it in fog. Then we were above the clouds. Directly above us rose a mountain of rock. We detoured downriver about a quarter of a mile and came out on a small meadow. The fog boiled in and out, but it cleared enough so that we could see broken ridges hanging in space a mile or two downriver. No sheep in sight.
When the fog burned away and the sun came out, we sat down to rest and look some more. To the right of the castlelike peak above us, sloping toward the spur creek we had hunted, was a huge meadow — the one we’d been on the opening day, I thought. It was perhaps a mile across, though we couldn’t see all of it, and half a mile from top to bottom.
I was using the 20X scope, resting it on a rock. Evva was looking below with the binoculars. My attention was on the ledge above when I caught a motion on the big meadow. Right in the middle of it, like a white cow in a pasture, stood a white sheep. He moved his head to feed just as I began to focus the scope, but even before I got a good look I knew he was big. When the scope was focused sharply, my heart began to pound. He was magnificent.
Evva immediately turned her glasses on him. “Man, what horns,” she said breathlessly. “There’s another one, to the right, and he’s as big as the first.”
I took one long look at the heavy, full curls on both of them, and then the sad truth dawned. They were nearly a mile off, and the crumbling white ledge above blocked our way. We couldn’t have got 10 feet closer to them than we were. I don’t think I ever felt more defeated. We watched the giants for more than an hour as they fed placidly, and I was tempted to take a shot just to relieve my frustration. There didn’t seem to be another thing in the country except a bunch of 11 ewes and lambs a couple of miles downriver. All we could do was head back for the plane.
The rams turned abruptly and headed for the canyon, presenting a broadside view. I got my scope on the lead boy, swung with him, and fired. As my ears rang from the blast, Evva’s gun went off beside me.
Once there, I checked the floats. The right one had a leak in the center compartment and was full to the waterline, so I pumped it out and tried to sponge it dry. Water surged in all along the keel, however, and I later found we’d torn it loose and popped a few rivets on some of the side seams.
A STIFF WIND blew upcanyon, so we made it off the river, but that is one day I do not recall with pleasure. We were too tired to build a fire or eat when we arrived at camp. Our feet were blistered and sore.
We had another day’s supply of food, though, and our plans for the next day were definite — back up the mountain.
When we got up before dawn, Evva made a remark I like to remind her of now and again. “I wish I’d never heard of Boone and Crockett,” she grumbled.
Things looked brighter when we reached the slopes. Every glacier and snowfield shone brilliant pink. We worked our way around the mountain above the canyon as we had before. We might have gone straight over the top, but that way we were in danger of spooking the rams. I figured that by approaching from the side we might get in range before they took off.
It was tempting to go as hard and fast as we could, but we took it slow and easy.
We stayed well above the lip of the canyon where we could see both up and down. The mountain above us was smooth; all the rough stuff had fallen on the slopes below. In between was the gently sloping meadow we were on. I would have sworn anything bigger than a pack rat would have been visible for a mile. Trouble is, that country is so big it fools you, especially if the air is clear. The meadow stretched for a mile ahead of us, yet it seemed to be only a few hundred yards across. We noticed the willows cutting through it without ever realizing they grew from shallow, water-gathering gullys.
EVEN THOUGH we were watching, the sheep saw us first. They’d probably been watching us for several minutes, and I’m sure that only the fact that we were moving slowly kept them from taking off.
Luck was with us. A motion caught my eye as a sheep turned to duck into the willow strip about 300 yards away. Beside him another did the same thing. We only saw a flash of their heads as they turned, but it was enough to tell us that if these weren’t the same rams we had seen the day before, they were good substitutes.
“Now they’ll go clear to the canyon,” I groaned. But suddenly a flash of white broke through the far side of the willows, then darted back in.
We ran, hoping to get a shot before the sheep reached the canyon rim. I am not too sure just what happened next; it was too fast, and I never remember much when the shooting begins. We’d run a few yards when four sheep came funneling out into the open and tore across the bare meadow.
I sighted on the lead ram, since he was farthest to my left and Evva was on my right. He presented the worst target possible, running dead away, and I had visions of ruining much prime steak, though I wasn’t about to be choosey. And horns? They all looked as if they were wearing tractor tires, but in a situation like this a hunter hasn’t a chance to pick his trophy. I couldn’t tell which one was which as they danced across my field of view, and I couldn’t seem to get a shot at any of them. They were bouncing across the slope like a box of ping pong balls tossed on a concrete walk.
But luck was still with us. The rams turned abruptly and headed for the canyon, presenting a broadside view. I got my scope on the lead boy, swung with him, and fired. As my ears rang from the blast, Evva’s gun went off beside me.
“I missed,” Evva said disgustedly. “What’d you do?”
I was about to answer when another ram broke out of the willows, following the others.
“Get him,” I yelled, but she was already aiming. It took a few agonizing seconds, but she finally pulled off a shot and the ram folded in mid-air.
I wasn’t sure I had anything, but it didn’t take long to find out. Just beyond the fringe of willows were two fine rams within 25 yards of each other, both shot through the chest.
We dragged them together. Both had massive, full-curl horns, and the longer I looked, the bigger they seemed. I grinned at Evva. “Do you still wish you’d never heard of Boone and Crockett?”
“Will they go in the book?”
“I don’t have a tape,” I said as I measured one by hand spans, “but I bet they’re better than 40-inchers.”
She looked at them a moment, then asked thoughtfully, “Which is yours — and which is mine?”
There was no way we could tell. We both shoot .300 Magnums, and the rams were so close together we couldn’t tell from their positions. Luckily, there wasn’t much difference between them. The rams were nearly the same age, as those traveling together often are. One set of horns was half an inch larger at the base than the other, but this was offset by one tip being broomed and three inches shorter than the 41 inches of the other side.
Last fall we had them officially measured and found that not just one, but both scored above the 160 points required for trophy listing. The one I finally claimed totaled 164 4/8 and Evva’s 162 6/8.
So we made it in and out of the Wrangells with only a banged-up float, and we’re mighty proud that we got not one but two for the book. But there’s one thing I’d like to say: If you get a record, you either damn well earn it or have fantastically good luck, and most probably both. But if you expect it to cure you of recorditis, it won’t; it will only make it worse.
This story was originally published in the July 1960 issue of Outdoor Life.
The rim of night was barely cracking loose when Andy killed the motor. “Tie to that scalybark snag straight ahead,” he told me, as he maneuvered the boat with his paddle in this drowned forest off the southern shore of Grenada Lake. While I was tying the craft, I heard the swish of a rod and splash of a lure. Andy tapped me on the shoulder.
“Here, Bob, try this,” he said, plopping a soft, wet object into my hand. It felt like a fistful of snails, and I recoiled slightly. “What is it?”
“A gollywomper. It’s dog-day dynamite,” he said, thumbing the push button on his reel into freewheeling. “Tell you more about it later. A bass has picked up my gollywomper.”
I turned to watch as something moved away slowly, peeling loose coils of monofilament from the reel. About six feet scratched through the guides, and Andy locked the reel. He waited until the line tightened, then swept the rod back over his shoulder. It arched like a new moon.
“He’s a good one,” Andy said. “Watch him jump beyond that cypress log.”
The largemouth came out broadside in a burst of spray, huge and dark-silver in the early light. He crashed back into the lake and put on a terrific surge of power as he tried to tear loose. Andy let the rod dip until the tip touched the water. Then he forced the fish back to the surface, skidded him across the log, and fought him to the side of the boat. I lowered the net into the low, tepid waters of late summer and dipped him up —— a tough, streamlined six-pounder.
Andy poses with a stringer of bass caught on gollywompers. Outdoor Life
I strongly suspect that Andrew Whitaker, who’s in his late 30’s, catches more big bass than any other fisherman of any age in Mississippi. I know that’s saying a mouthful because the Magnolia State is famous for her prolific king-size largemouths, and for the skill of her anglers. During the past two years Andy has taken 627 bass weighing four pounds or better. Some 265 were in the five-pound class, and 72 topped the sixpound mark. All of these whoppers were taken from Grenada Lake, a 65,000-acre flood-control reservoir near the town of Grenada, where Andy lives and edits his weekly newspaper.
I used to live in Grenada before I was transferred to Tennessee, and I got to know the editor in those days. I also relished his tart editorials on conservation malpractices and poor sportsmanship. Even though I like to sample promising waters over the entire Southland, I have found north Mississippi’s bassing opportunities second to none, and I return to Grenada to fish at least every other weekend. I’m a confirmed largemouth angler. That fish is cunning enough, powerful and agile enough, and unpredictable enough to rate my undivided angling attention. At the same time, however, I view with admiration and envy any fisherman whose tactics get better results than mine.
For more than a year I looked on in agony while Andy, a lone wolf, staggered in with his heavy strings of jumbo bass. I kept hankering for an invitation to go fishing with him so I could learn something of his deadly technique. Finally, late one afternoon after a long siege of my bold, blunt hinting, he telephoned my home in Memphis.
“I was wondering if you’d like to go fishing with me tomorrow?” he asked.
“Would I?” I said in as calm a tone as I could manage.
“Might’s well come on down tonight,” he said. “Then we can get an early start in the morning.”
“I’ll start packing as soon as I hang up,” I promised, anxious to start the 100-mile drive south on U. S. Highway 51.
As I walked away from the phone, I suddenly wished he hadn’t waited until mid-August to call me. All sane bass and smart bass fishermen had agreed to call it quits until the first cool nights of September. I included an ultralight spinning rod and reel with heavier equipment, determined to make the most of any bass that might be stupid enough to grab my bait in the torrid heat. If we caught any fish tomorrow, I would consider Andy’s stratagems invincible.
At 3:45 on the morning after the call, the jeep lights came to rest on a little green boat tied in the shelter of a wooded cove. Andy, grabbing the motor, a bristling fistful of rods, paddles, and a tackle box, strode eagerly toward the boat.
“Cut the lights off,” he called over his shoulder. “Can you bring the rest of the stuff?” Only a handful remained.
We putted out of the cove and turned west down the main body of the reservoir. The moonless but starry night left only smudgy landscape silhouettes for Andy to steer by, but they were all he needed. He opened the throttle, and we ran carefree under the canopy of crisp stars.
About three miles down the lake, Andy plunged the boat into a dead forest that had been drowned after the dam was closed. Under his expert handling, the sled-nosed wooden craft twisted and turned and tore its way through the maze of rotting timber and underbrush until we came to that scalybark’ snag.
While Andy was stringing his first bass of the day, I examined the gollywomper. “This think looks like a sports-model eel,” I said. “It is a red one, fully equipped,” he laughed. “I pickle and dye the hog hide, and rig them myself.” The porkrind strip was about six inches long, and it had a red and white skirt about the neck. The head was pierced with a 5/0 weedless hook attached to a No. 3 willow-leaf spinner. I wondered if any bass could resist the delectable morsel, and I started setting up my ultralight tools to find out.
“May, my wife, came into the kitchen one night and saw me dyeing pig skin,” Andy continued, tearing the seal off a fresh sack of North State roll-your-own smoking tobacco. ‘”What kind of gollywomper is that you’re making?’ she asked. ‘This is a green gollywomper,’ I told her, fishing one out of the pot. The name stuck. It’s the best bait I’ve ever used during the doldrums of July and August when bass are deep and dormant.”
The lure is absolutely weedless and, properly weighted, hugs the bottom like a leech, Andy told me. You twitch the rod tip, and a flick and flash of the spinner rouses the largemouth from his siesta just in time to see the fat, fuzzy gollywomper squirming tantalizingly past his nose. He thinks it’s the easiest meal he’ll ever get and gobbles it down.
“You want to give him a little time before you strike, so he can swallow it, leisurely,” Andy added with a deadly chuckle.
Andy hadn’t been paying any attention to what I was doing, but now he suddenly noticed.
“Wait, Bob,” he said in alarm. “Don’t use that toy rod in here. It would be like trying to whip a grizzly bear with a switch. These bass are big and power-packed, and the water is saturated with logs and limbs. When one hits, you’ve got to wrestle him out of the stuff in short order.”
“Oh, I’ll give this a try,” I replied casually, but confidently. I’d whittled down some pretty hefty largemouths with that rig.
“Suit yourself,” he said, sprinkling some North State on a cigarette paper.
I made my first cast and he said, “Goodbye gollywomper.”
Almost immediately something moved off with that lure. When I stung him with the hook, which was the extent of the damage, I saw the bass climb into the branches of a fallen hackberry tree, thrashing like the nozzle of a loose fire hose. The six-pound-test line popped like a cap pistol and snapped back about my shoulders. Andy’s riotous laughter did nothing to salve my injured feelings.
Meekly I said, “I wonder if you could spare another one of those gollywompers for use on heavier equipment?”
“Take a look at my outfit, Bob,” Andy said, and this time I took his advice. His six-foot spin-casting rod had a thick, stiff back, tapering to a slim, fast-action tip. “This is a heavy-duty reel packed with a 20-pound-test line,” he explained. “Anything smaller would be sawed in two when wrapped around a stump or log with a five-pound bass doing the sawing. I use a 4/0 or 5/0 hook, because I’ve had smaller ones straighten or break after a big bass fouled the line close to the hook. Fishermen who don’t have the right tackle don’t take home many of these whopper bass. I learned how the hard way.”
The author with a stud largemouth caught on a gollywomper. Outdoor Life
He handed me another gollywomper — a white one this time. Andy seemed to have an infinite supply of these masterpieces fashioned from pork-rind and plastic. This one was mounted on a plain 4/0 hook. The barb of the hook was bent inward to within a quarter inch of the shank.
“Won’t this get hung up a lot?” I asked.
“A little more than the weedless hook, maybe,” he granted. “But it costs only about one tenth as much and will stick fish that the weedguard knocks off.”
Andy handed me a half-ounce sliding sinker. “Thread your line through this,” he said, “and tie it to a snap swivel. The swivel will keep the lure from twisting your line. The heavy sinker will drag your bait to the bottom fast, right down through branches and brush, and will pull it to the bottom again after it climbs over obstacles. The sinker will help you to make long casts with the heavy line, but won’t interfere when a fish picks up the lure. The sinker stays put while the line plays out through the hole.”
I knew by now that I was in the hands of a master, and retooled exactly as he recommended. My mediumweight, closed-face spinning reel was clamped to a springy but powerful seven-foot rod, my first cast was a long one into the edge of a log jam. The gollywomper went straight to the bottom, pulling five or six more feet of line from the reel before I made a clockwise turn of the handle, engaging the line. I moved the rod tip up and down in little jerks, feeling the bait bounce along the bottom, then rise and fall over obstacles. When it hung up, I gave slack and tried again until it came free. I worked the lure in without results and cast again. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Andy was watching me closely.
“I set the drag on my reel so that line won’t strip,” he said casually. “I’ve had a reel spill line when I didn’t want it to-just once.”
Without hesitation I twisted the cover of my reel so tight that the 20-pound-test line would break rather than escape under such tension. Then something bumped my lure.
“Here we go,” I said, unlocking the reel and lowering the rod. The line hissed through the guides. I locked the reel, and the rod bent into a horseshoe. The bass lunged away, and I followed him with the rod. At the moment that I felt something must break, he finally turned and streaked toward us. I recovered line like a madman and had the slack on the spool when he veered off to the left. I pumped the rod and he came out slantwise, wearing the gollywomper like a white goatee. He was almost as large as Andy’s fish. I noticed that the bass was securely hooked through the jaw hinge, and played him in open water until he was so worn he didn’t even flinch when Andy eased the net under him. My companion was obviously pleased with me, and I tried not to act as pleased as I felt.
In the next 30 minutes we didn’t raise another fish, so we moved to a strip of green cypress timber, switching to bait-casting rods to work the dense undergrowth. After the cypresses we tried a long, straight row of weathered oaks, and then fished the edge of the dead forest, fronting on the open lake. Andy boated another six-pounder in the green timber, and I caught a 5-pounder on the edge of the woods. We released one bass that weighed three, and another in the three-pound class.
“No need to drag that kind of stuff around behind the boat all day,” Andy said.
The July 1960 cover of Outdoor Life. Outdoor Life
As the heat built up, the striking tapered off. The fish took our gollywompers lackadaisically, probably by the tail, and we missed at least a dozen strikes.
We lunched in a patch of cypress shade twice the size of a jeep. It was like stepping out of a furnace into a freezer. Between the cheese sandwiches and chilled peaches I said, “Andy, I’ve fished all over this reservoir and have never found as many bass as we did this morning. How come? You just picked places at random and we raised fish everywhere.”
“What makes you think I was just picking places at random?” he replied, looking a little hurt. “As many years as you’ve bass-fished you know that at this time of year the fish are lying dormant in the deepest, coolest holes they can find. The topography of this reservoir should tell you exactly where those holes are. Didn’t you notice the fringe of dead willow trees surrounding the area where we stopped first this morning? The first time I saw the circular pattern of the trees I knew they had sprouted in the muck of a stock pond before the reservoir was built.”
I had to admit I’d seen the willows, but hadn’t got the message then.
“The green cypress strip,” Andy went on, “marks the course of an old slough. The straight line of dead oaks were left along a drainage ditch. On the edge of the woods, we were fishing along the deep drop-off into the main body of the lake.”
It was all clear to me now why he hadn’t appreciated my comment about just picking places at random, and I tried to make up for it.
“This afternoon,” I said, “what say we try that long open chute I saw cutting through the woods east of here. It must be the route of an old highway. Bass should be lying in the ditches beside it and come into the shallows above it to feed.”
“Now, you are catching on,” Andy said, pulling the motor with one hand and rolling a shapely cigarette with the other.
When I flung my gollywomper into the left-hand ditch, I didn’t feel a thing, but the line started moving away on a diagonal. I set the hook, and you’d have thought I’d slapped the largemouth across the face. The ditch erupted. That bass seemed to jump tail first, kicking as though he had a bellyful of exploding firecrackers. He landed in a holly bush, wrapped the line around a stout limb, and jumped again beyond it.
“Give slack,” Andy yelled. I did, and the bass took it. The line grew taut and scraped around the dead limb, twanging like a guitar string. “Play him to the limb, and maybe he will jump back over,” Andy suggested. It’s against his principles to go get a fish; you either work it out or lose it.
The bass wouldn’t jump. I gave more slack, fearing he’d tear the hook out or find a flaw in the line as he flounced violently in the surface water. I cranked him in again. He made a low leap, and I helped him scramble over the limb.
“We’ve accumulated about 30 pounds of largemouth back here,” Andy said. “How many fish do you want to take home?”
“Only one,” I replied. “My wife and daughter like fillets broiled in butter.”
“Might’s well make it an economy-size bass then,” he said. “I’m going to take you to a place across the lake near Choctaw Landing where I guarantee you a strike on the first cast. I think it’ll be your take-home bass, if you can out-tussle him.”
What Andy did next startled me a little. He raised an umbrella and handed it to me. “It’s going to be hot crossing the open water,” he said. “I keep these things on hand for long runs under the sun and sudden showers.” He spread another umbrella for his own use and we took off.
As we approached two green knolls protruding from the lake, Andy idled the motor. “Some awful big bass lie in a deep crevasse between those Indian mounds, but they’re spooky. You hook one, and he flushes the others.”
I let fly with my gollywomper, and it dropped squarely on the target. I twitched it just once and the line went slack, dropping loosely from the rod tip and coiling on the water.
“He’s got it and he’s swimming toward you,” Andy said. “Wind in the slack and pop him.”
I felt the hook drive home, and the bass swapped ends, pulling three feet of my rod into the lake. I loosened the tension and he took about eight feet of line.
“You’re making a mistake,” Andy sang out. The bass catapulted into the air — a full seven pounds of him, I judged.
He crash-dived and streaked around the boat in a widening circle, stripping more line. Then he headed for a big pile of brushwood around a jagged stump. I reached for the reel to tighten the drag, too late. He plowed into debris and thrashed it adrift while he sawed my line to shreds on the stump.
“Had enough of this heat for today, Bob?” Andy asked. I liked the way he said, “for today.” It meant we’d be coming back. He had taught me his deadly techniques, and I had used them to whip the whoppers —— all except one. More important, I’d gained a new and delightful fishing companion.
“I’m ready to go,” I said.
Andy fired his homemade cigarette, we raised our umbrellas, and we took off for the landing through the hot sunshine.
Fathead minnows, leeches and worms are mainstays in bait-shop refrigerators across the country. These old standards have produced stringers of game fish for decades, and they’ll continue to produce for decades to come. But for a greater selection of live bait that will give you the ability to successfully adapt to the demands of a variety of angling situations, skip the tackle shop and catch your own. Just make sure to check your local regulations before you head out.
The cast nest is a great option for the solitary angler who needs bait in a hurry. Outdoor Life
Live Bait You Can Catch
Minnows
Beyond the bait-shop fathead lies a whole world of minnows, including shiners, dace and chub. Larger members of the minnow family, such as creek chub, can be caught on small dry flies or nymphs with a 3-weight fly rod and size 14 Humpy and Woolly Worm patterns. If fishing for your bait seems like way too much work, consider the following two methods, both of which can produce a mess of minnows.
Traps: Minnow traps make it easy for a lone angler to gather up bait. The traps, made of light wire or hardware cloth, guide the fish inside through entrance cones at either end of a cylinder. Once inside, the fish are unable to escape. Bait the trap with some bread, salted crackers or dry dog food, and then secure it to a dock or tree limb in shallow water overnight.
Seines: When you can’t wait overnight for your bait, a seine is the way to go. Minnow seines, however, are somewhat awkward for one person to manage; a partner makes the process much easier.
A seine is nothing more than a long, rectangular net with a pole on each end. One partner holds his end of the seine on shore while the other partner wades through the shallows holding the other, sweeping the seine in a wide arc to herd minnows toward the bank. Keep the lower edge of the seine against the bottom and the top out of the water to prevent minnows from escaping. Seining provides a quick and effective way to catch large numbers of small cyprinids along beaches and sandbars from late spring to early summer.
Suckers and Sunfish
Suckers live mainly in streams and in small rivers. During their spawning run in the early spring, they’ll congregate in swift riffle areas, offering anglers the best opportunity to catch them. Use worms fished right on the bottom to entice the subtle-striking bottom-feeders. One- or 2-foot-long suckers will produce enough bait chunks for an entire day of fishing.
Look to ponds, small lakes and reservoirs for sunfish. You can use a fly rod or an ultralight spinning rig outfitted with a casting bubble and popping bugs to catch the spunky panfish.
Gizzard Shad
A member of the herring family, the gizzard shad is an open-water roamer that often amasses in the tailraces of low-head dams in summer. If you know how to handle a cast net, a single toss can often produce hundreds of shad from 2 to 10 inches in length. Dead shad make excellent catfish bait, but check your local regulations —— using them as bait is illegal in some states. Live shad will also elicit strikes from walleyes, crappies, and bass.
Crickets and Grasshoppers
Easily found throughout summer and autumn, crickets and grasshoppers can be caught in your own backyard. To attract crickets, sprinkle sugar on a piece of stale bread or a fresh-sliced potato. In the evening, place your bait near a pile of wood or rubble and cover it with newspaper or a tattered cardboard box. Come morning, scoop up the crickets.
Unlike crickets, grasshoppers are active during the day. Catching a mess of hoppers is as easy as strolling through tall grass with a butterfly net. In fact, you might even be able to catch enough for a day of fishing by using your hat.
A live frog will often outproduce all other baits for largemouth bass. Walleye anglers should also try using frogs as bait in autumn, near places where marshes join the main lake.
To catch frogs you need a headlamp and a long-handled, fine-mesh dip net. Slowly walk along the shoreline of a pond at night and look around for frogs to net. If they leap into the water before you can reach them, wait for the sediment to clear and shine your light into the water where the frog entered. You’ll often see the reflected rays of your headlamp in the frog’s eyes. Reach into the water with your net and scoop up the frog.
Crayfish
Few freshwater fish can resist a live crayfish (aka crawfish or crawdad). Smallmouth bass, walleyes, trout and even bluegills relish crayfish-especially in the small “soft-shell” stage of early summer. Streams throughout the nation’s midsection are often loaded with soft, green crayfish about 1 inch long during the month of June. At this time, seining is a highly effective method of catching them. Proceed in much the same way that you would for minnows, but do your seining in rocky riffles during low-light periods for the largely nocturnal crustacean.
At other times of the year, traps will catch crayfish of all sizes. The best traps are constructed from black netting or black rubber-coated wire. The black structure of the trap gives crayfish a sense of security by creating the illusion of overhead cover. Except for the color difference, crayfish traps look a lot like minnow traps. Use cut, oily fish such as shad, herring, or the heads of cod or salmon as bait.
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More ›
A revolution is well underway, but it doesn’t have anything to do with immigration, tariffs, or AI. Instead, it’s a quantum leap in the thermal imagery technology, deployed in that backwater of hunting that takes place at night.
As companies both miniaturize the size and increase the capabilities of their thermal sensors, image-correcting software, and high-resolution displays, the amount of digital technology packed into a modern thermal scope is the equivalent of that of an early NASA spaceship.
Even entry-level thermal scopes have impressive tech packed in their flimsy housings.
But pay close attention to the top-end products in this review. They’re expensive because they are built around the most sophisticated components available to the consumer market. But one of the dominant trends in thermals is that this leading-edge tech quickly descends into other, more affordable, product lines and into competitors’ catalogs.
While our testing rewards these higher-performing thermals — after all, there’s a demonstrated benefit to higher-resolution thermal cores, larger germanium lenses, and proprietary image-sharpening algorithms — our testing also demonstrates that there’s a decent thermal scope for every budget.
The entry-level models might leave you with a headache and a desire for a sharper image, but they’ll at least get you in the nighttime hunting game.
Here are the top thermal scopes of the year. Note that it’s an invitational test; we didn’t invite every product and brand, but we endeavored to test a variety of models, brands, and prices to give readers an idea of what’s on the market, and the attributes they should consider as they buy a thermal scope.
Rounded display resembles traditional daylight scope
Red and green monochrome palettes reduce night-blindness
Ships with 30mm ADM Recon Mount
Extremely easy to zero
5-year warranty
Cons
At over $7,000, wildly expensive
Unexpected shut-downs with battery drain
The future of thermal hunting is here, and it’s gonna cost you. The new 1280-class Adder V2-60 from AGM Global is bright, clear, sensitive, and fully capable of making range-adjusted nighttime shots out to 1,000 yards. The price for that performance? An eye-watering $7,300.
Anyone who has ever used a thermal scope has wanted it to perform like a daylight scope. But the technology that converts temperature variation into visible images is so full of noise and distortion, from the processor to the software that sharpens images to the digital screen that projects them to your eye, that thermal hunters have to accept headaches, eye strain, and astigmatism as a price for seeing into the night.
The V2-60 is the closest I’ve come to a thermal scope that delivers an image that’s in the same galaxy as that of a traditional scope. It achieves that performance with a souped-up 1280×1024 sensor, one of the most powerful in the class, and a high-resolution 2560×2560 digital display that is crisp and contrasty. But it’s AGM’s software that fuses these components into an almost pleasing image.
The Adder’s controls. Photo by Scott Einsmann
Add a blazing-fast 1,000-meter through-the-lens laser rangefinder, cold-and-warm viewing modes that reduce eye strain, an on-board ballistic calculator that displays distance-adjusted holdover, and a 9-hour run time, all packed in a fairly trim 30mm aluminum tube.
All that performance combines to make the AGM Adder V2-60 the consensus winner of our Editor’s Choice as the top thermal scope of the year.
But there’s more. Two features of the Adder that may get lost in its specs include a ½-power magnification step. Most thermals have what’s called “step zoom,” in which the magnification doubles with every tap of the button. Those big steps can create large gaps in the zoom range, but the Adder’s incremental zoom creates a much more usable magnification range. Second, that 1-inch hyper-sharp display is slightly rounded, giving users the visual perception of looking through a traditional scope.
The AGM wasn’t without its flaws. Tester Alex Robinson struggled with unexpected shut-downs.
“When the external battery was low, but the internal battery was full, the scope shut off repeatedly,” he noted.
The AGM had hot competition from Nocpix’s new 1280-class ACE S60R scope and Pulsar’s Thermion 2 XL50. On paper, the Nocpix has the more impressive array of features. But here’s where the power of image-enhancing software tips the scales. In head-to-head-to-head comparisons, testers unanimously noted that the Adder had the clearest and least eye-straining image. That’s a squishy but important consideration for thermal users who might be behind their scopes for hours at a time.
Still, there’s the issue of the high cost of the AGM. Readers who aren’t immersed in the realities of thermals might be put off by the price. But readers who know that, just as with traditional optics, with thermals, generally, the more you pay, the more you get. That’s certainly the case with the remarkable, full-featured, investment-quality AGM Adder V2-60.
Thermal Sensor
1280×1024
Display
2560×2560
Pixel Pitch
12-micrometer
Sensor Sensitivity
<18mK
Frame Rate
25Hz
Magnification
2.5-28x
Objective Lens
60mm germanium
Rangefinder
1,000-meter detection range, through the lens laser
9-hour run time with internal and external batteries
Includes single-point QD rail mount
Single-button and rotary selector operation
At 8 inches, perfect for carbines
Easy to zero and calibrate
Cons
Power/selector button is finicky
Battery cap hard to keep closed
Underwhelming clarity
Clunky mobile app
Let’s start with what this entry-level thermal isn’t. It isn’t very clear or very sharp. It isn’t going to allow you to shoot out to 500 yards, or even past 250 yards. It isn’t going to win any hunting competitions or design awards. It feels a little flimsy.
But it is one of the best bargains in the thermal market, and is fully capable of getting you on coyotes and pigs out to near 200 yards. It will easily capture video and photos and transmit them to your phone. It comes with a solid rail mount. It’s easy to operate. And it gives hunters an opportunity to dip their toe in the thermal category without taking out a second mortgage.
Given the astonishing capabilities – and prices – of its competition, we had low expectations of the Athlon. The ATS Pro’s 256-microbolometer sensor is among the lowest-resolution cores in our test. To put that in context, the 1280-microbolometer sensor of AGM’s Adder has five times more resolution. It’s also 12 times more expensive.
The Athlon Cronus ATS Pro being tested on the range. Photo by Scott Einsmann
The $600 entry point for the Athlon Cronus ATS Pro 25P-250, combined with its decent performance, is what makes it so appealing, and what earned it our Great Buy award for the highest Price/Value score in the group.
If you want a bit more resolution, consider Athlon’s Cronus ATS Pro 35P-400, with a 400×300-pixel core. That unit will cost you about $1,000; in our view the increased performance doesn’t quite justify the upcharge.
The 25P-250 Cronus isn’t racing for the bottom. Its one-button and rotary selector operating system is fast and intuitive. Double-tap the power button to reveal the menu, use a rotary collar inside the eyepiece to navigate its options, then hit the power button to make selections. The scope has 10 selectable reticles, five based on MOA and five based on MIL dimensions adjustments, and seven color palettes. While the Athlon doesn’t exactly have a ballistic calculator, it does have the ability to customize reticles to various holdover values at specific distances.
Athlon’s mobile app is a little clunky — among its other shortcomings, it only works in horizontal mode — but the photo and video transfer is easy.
The single-point rail mount is decent, and makes for fast mounting, but it’s not a precision attachment. We also had fits keeping the battery cap attached. That’s a small quibble, but a meaningful shortcoming since it reduces operating time. And we worried that the plasticky build might not be up to the sort of bump-and-grind abuse thermal hunters routinely demonstrate.
But those are speculative fears. What we determined in testing is that this is a thermal that’s absolutely worth the money.
Ability to “hot-swap” batteries without shutting down device
Ballistic calculator displays range-adjusted reticle hold
Standard 30mm tube
5-year warranty
Cons
Very expensive
Inconsistent connection to mobile app
Glitchy rangefinder performance on inclined targets
Every tester (and every tester’s thermal-using buddy) was more excited to put their hands on this new flagship scope from Nocpix than any other thermal. It’s gotten tons of hype not only for its exceptional performance but for its astonishing price of just under $8,000.
While it would be easy to dismiss that price as a stratospheric extravagance, there’s a lot in this scope that justifies it. Let’s start with the stunning resolution. It ran head-to-head with the AGM Global’s flagship and just ahead of Pulsar’s remarkable Thermion2. Its 1280-class thermal core generates a rich and detailed image, but it’s the high-resolution 2560-pixel display that makes looking through this scope almost like an AI-rendered video, so sharp and vibrant are the images it delivers.
Like the AGM Adder, the Nocpix ACE uses a slightly rounded display that imitates the circular field of view of a daylight scope, a design that somehow reduces eye strain. It was also one of the few scopes that was useful in daylight. Adding to the conventional feel is the Nocpix’ 30mm tube, which accepts standard scope rings, and a very smart magnification ring on the ocular lens. This manual magnification enables users to add between 1-3-power in addition to the digital magnification without causing any reticle shift. It’s a very handy feature when you want to add just a bit more magnification to a scene without doubling the digital zoom.
The Nocpix Ace’s controls. Photo by Scott Einsmann
We also liked the easy operation of the ACE S60. A button in the eyepiece powers on the unit, starts and stops recordings, and fires the laser rangefinder. For other menu items, simply tap the button on top of the elevation turret, then turn the turret to navigate selections. And, man, are there a lot of selections.
Among its more noteworthy attributes: an onboard ballistic calculator that adjusts the reticle to your specific load’s impact at distances determined by the rangefinder. Once you have your dope loaded, simply range a target, and you’ll get a range-adjusted holdover. The through-the-lens laser rangefinder is fast and fairly accurate, though some testers noticed incorrect ranging at severe angles.
The ACE S60R also utilizes Nocpix’s new N-Link, a Bluetooth-enabled frequency that communicates with other Nocpix devices. A user scanning with the Nocpix Quest thermal binocular, for instance, could range a target and transmit that information wirelessly to the ACE scope, where it would show up as the range-adjusted reticle hold. It’s a slick system that elevates the capabilities of a hunting team and is especially handy in the fast-paced coyote competitions that tester David Stroud competes in.
Stroud drags a couple of coyotes with his Horizon rifle topped with an ACE slung over his shoulder. Photo by Scott Einsmann
Stroud, who uses a variety of high-end scopes in the Texas predator-hunting circuit, was especially emphatic about the talents of the new 1280-class ACE.
“I have the ACE H50R and have used it for the past few months, but the S60R is on another level, entirely,” Stroud noted. “I will probably invest in the ACE S60R as my next thermal.”
We had only a few quibbles with the Nocpix, but they were enough to knock it out of the top spot by a single point. The most common problem was inconsistent connection to the mobile app, and then getting the app to refresh with our ballistic data.
But the Nocpix is the scope that other thermal weapon sights will be judged by. It’s not only the flagship for Nocpix, but for the entire industry. An investment in the ACE S60R is soothed a bit by its durable build and its remarkable 5-year warranty. Even more remarkable: warranty claims are addressed at the brand’s Dallas-area service center within five days, so users won’t be without this remarkable scope for long.
Thermal Sensor
1280×1024
Display
2560×2560 AMOLED
Pixel Pitch
12-micrometer
Sensor Sensitivity
<15mK
Frame Rate
50Hz
Magnification
2x base magnification, 24x zoom
Power
Dual-battery operation
Reticles
10 reticles, 7 color palettes, pre-set holdover values
The third in our trio of full-size flagship scopes, to include the Adder from AGM and the ACE from Nocpix, Pulsar’s Thermion 2 is the OG of the category. It set the design and performance standards that its competitors have adopted, and in some cases, exceeded.
The latest version of the venerable Thermion2 is a 1024-class gem. It features an excellent laser rangefinder, very good optics and image-enhancing software, and one of the easiest, most intuitive menu navigation in the class. With a 1.75x base magnification and a top-end mag of 14x, it has the close-in capabilities for hog hunters who generally engage targets inside 200 yards, but it has the resolution and magnification to take coyotes out to 500 yards and beyond.
Appealing attributes of the Pulsar include the smartest focus control in the category, textured dials on either side of the bulky rangefinding unit that focus the image. Most scopes have an objective-bell focus that’s a long arm reach for users, but the side focus works for both right- and left-handed shooters and enables fine focus without pulling the rifle off your target. We also liked the 3-button navigation system with buttons on the eyepiece.
Pulsar’s picture-in-picture feature, in which users can magnify the portion of the image that’s covered by the reticle while leaving the rest of the image at base magnification, is also noteworthy. The P-in-P resolution is sharp, the aiming point highly visible, and allows users to have both situational awareness with the wide field of view and pin-point precision with the magnified aiming point.
Photo by Scott Einsmann
“This is the scope I hunted with the most and I had no issues detecting or identifying coyotes out to 200 yards. But, I also hunted with Nocpix Ace which, is much more sophisticated for an extra $1,000,” says Outdoor Life‘s gear editor, Scott Einsmann.
We didn’t like Pulsar’s proprietary batteries, though. While most thermal brands have migrated to interchangeable lithium-ion batteries, particularly large-capacity 18650 cells, in addition to their internal rechargeable batteries, Pulsar’s APS batteries fit only in the brand’s chargers and battery compartments. They work well enough, but lose one at your peril, and learn to carry the Pulsar charger with you in the field.
Unlike other brands, which list only the sensitivity of their thermal core — this is the NETD, the value of which is listed as mK, or millikelvin, in each thermal’s specs — Pulsar adds a sNETD, which stands for system sensitivity. It’s an important distinction, because it describes the image delivered to the user’s eye, not just the image rendered by the sensor. I mention this because the image of the 1024-microbolometer Pulsar is every bit as sharp and contrasty as that of the 1280-class AGM and Nocpix. Some testers thought the Pulsar was even better.
That’s a testament to a brand that has built thermal scopes for decades and which still dominates the category. The XL50 is built like a tank and will reveal targets as far away as you want to shoot.
>1 MOA point-of-aim shift through magnetic alignment
Ambidextrous one-hand operation
Powered by common 18650 rechargeable batteries
Intuitive 3-button navigation
Durable magnesium alloy chassis
Perfect configuration for AR carbines
Cons
No rangefinder
Middling resolution
QD mount isn’t particularly precise
You have to use this handy, versatile, and priced-right thermal to fully appreciate its abundant talents. It’s a hand-held monocular, configured for decent mid-range scanning. But it can snap onto a mount in seconds, with the aid of a magnet for indexing, and the SLIM becomes a capable rifle sight. We tested this function for return to zero and it was right on after removing it and putting it back on.
This dual-use unit is the answer to those hunters who recognize that, in order to be in the hog- and predator-hunting game, you need both a thermal viewer and a thermal scope. But who has the budget to afford both? This single unit might not be the ideal of either platform, but it’s good enough at both that budget-minded hunters should seriously consider it. In fact, it was a close second to the Athlon Cronus ATS Pro 25P-250 for our Great Buy award.
Tester Alex Robinson crystallized its place in the category.
“This seems like a great option for a new night hunter or a pig hunter who will be shooting at 100 yards and in. I like the easy functionality, small profile, and the ability to remove it from a rifle and use it as a handheld viewer.”
As in any Outdoor Life gear test, testers identified some shortcomings. First, its 640-class sensor is pretty good for hog hunting inside 250 yards, but it’s not sharp enough for the long-range shooting that characterizes most nighttime coyote hunting. Second, the quick-release Pic rail mounting interface is fast, for sure, and it’s pretty precise, but it’s not a system that will warm the hearts of long-range precision shooters. Nocpix claims a 1 MOA deviation in return to zero between the transition from viewer to scope, and that’s about right. That +/- is right in line with the expectations of most hog hunters.
This is not a ding on the unit, but rather on the Nocpix digital ecosystem — every tester tore his hair out with infuriatingly frequent firmware updates. Another demerit: no rangefinder.
I tested the value proposition of the viewer-to-scope capability, and timed the transition. I used the SLIM H35 as a hand-held viewer, identified a steel coyote-sized target at 200 yards, slapped the Nocpix on my 22 Creedmoor, cinched it down, reacquired the target, and then made a first-shot hit all within 13 seconds. I recorded no point-of-impact shift.
We liked the fact that the SLIM uses standard flat-top 18650 batteries, has a smart magnetic charging port for quick power-ups, and has recoil-activated filming.
In short, this isn’t a full-featured scope or viewer. But it’s not intended to be. Instead, it’s intended to be a one-and-done do-it-all thermal that can capably transition from a viewer to a rifle sight.
This otherwise very good thermal scope raises a critical question for potential buyers: Do you spend $4,000 for a 640-class scope that is serviceable, or do you spend twice that amount for a thermal that will blow your hair back?
It’s the same question that shoppers of traditional daylight optics ask. Reduced to its essence the question is: Do you settle, or do you invest?
Those who settle will get pretty good mid-range performance from the Guide TU651. The ergonomics are generally excellent, and they include a fast and intuitive top-turret menu navigation, a left-turret zoom control, and a single-button laser rangefinder operation on the back of the ponderously large ranging unit. The durability is equally satisfying; a stout 30mm aluminum tube that mounts on standard scope rings.
Our complaint with the TU651 is its guts. The 640-pixel core is good, but compared to the new class of 1280-microbolometer sensors that is coming to the market, its resolution and image quality is anemic. If you’re spending a bit over $4,000, you don’t want just “good.” Happily, the Guide brings enough other talents to the game that its resolution won’t be distracting.
The scope’s rangefinder button. Photo by Scott Einsmann
The intuitive operation is its superpower. Its interface is fast and simple, and the laser rangefinder is both powerful and fast, though the nearly 2-inch-tall LRF module ruins the sleek lines of the Guide. Capturing images is as simple as pressing a button on the eyepiece, and zooming the magnification with the control where you might expect to find an illumination or parallax focus on a traditional scope, on the left turret, is an excellent feature.
Operationally, each tester complained about frequent freeze-ups as the digital image refreshed, and a couple said the Target IR mobile app was hard to navigate. Still, there’s a lot of performance in this big, honest thermal scope. And if you don’t like the price of the performance delivered by the 50mm TU 651, Guide has nearly a dozen other models with a combination of objective lens size and thermal resolution to fit your budget and your performance expectations.
Sig Sauer’s long-awaited entry into the thermal market isn’t a single product. It’s three versions of the ECHO line, all built around the same 640×512 thermal core. The company has a 25mm clip-on, a 50mm weapon sight, and this 35mm sight. The 50mm version costs another $500, which isn’t that much given its additional reach and optical horsepower.
The 35mm version is a solid freshman effort, and it seamlessly folds many of the products from the Sig ecosystem into a workaday thermal. There’s the Ballistic Data Exchange (BDX) that wirelessly shares aiming dope between devices. There’s Sig’s KenETHIC energy indicator that allows a hunter to set a foot-pounds threshold for distance-adjusted shots. There’s Sig’s proprietary optical coatings and what Sig calls its Lightwave DSP, which is a fancy term for a signal processor that’s supposed to provide fast refresh rates.
The ECHO is also built like a Sig, which is to say it’s a brick, in all the best ways. Its aluminum-alloy chassis is built for the abuse night hunters dish out to devices, and its power source, twin rechargeable 18650 Li-Ion batteries, keep it firing for an impressive 9 to 11 hours. Also on the plus side is its 1,000-yard integrated laser rangefinder.
The 7-inch integrated cantilevered Picatinny rail is a great attribute, and it makes the ECHO a boon companion for full-rail AR carbines. But, it makes mounting the scope to a bolt rifle a relative nightmare. We couldn’t run the ECHO on our Horizon 22 Creedmoors because the rangefinder module collided with the bolt lift.
While we’re on demerits, the Sig was optically underwhelming. It was handy inside what the test team calls “pig range,” the inside 200-yard operating range of most feral hog hunters. But it struggled to define even deer-sized targets beyond 300 yards, which makes the 1,000-yard laser rangefinder a little extraneous. Testers dinged what they called the “stingy” eyebox and the eye-watering display during long hunting sessions.
“I needed Visine after about an hour behind the Sig,” noted tester Derrick Ratliff.
The Sig’s control buttons. Photo by Scott Einsmann
We like the 4-button menu navigation. It’s a smart and intuitive system, with brightness, image capture, menu-access, and laser rangefinder buttons all around the central control button. With so much of the industry migrating to 3-button or even 1-button operation, the 4-button arrangement takes some practice but in the field it’s fast and sure.
In all, it’s a decent sight. We might recommend this 35mm version lose the rangefinder and become a slim and nimble sight, while the 50mm version could transition to the mid- to long-range thermal. But if you’re an AR hunter looking for a plug-and-play thermal sight, the ECHO is a great choice, and the fully transferable lifetime warranty makes it one of the safest investments in the thermal category.
David shooting from his high-rack rig. Photo by Scott Einsmann
We’re not quite sure how AGM Global has so many models at so many different resolutions, but our take-away is that if you don’t like the image or the price of one AGM model, shop around, because the brand probably has a thermal for every performance and price point.
The V3 version of AGM’s venerable Rattler builds on the celebrated line, adding an in-lens laser rangefinder, a high-resolution 1920-class display, and an unbelievable 3-mile detection range.
All those attributes are great on paper (or on a website) but in our experience, the new Rattler is an excellent inside-250-yard hog sight but a disappointing 400-yard coyote sight. Those might seem like arbitrary metrics, but in the field they’re meaningful. We could identify, classify, and target game inside that wild-hog boundary of about 200 yards. But we struggled to do the same with those cagy coyotes, which generally won’t come inside the 400-yard ring unless conditions are just right. That maximum operating range gave testers the consensus conclusion that the Rattler V3 is a nearly perfect hog-hunting scope, but it struggles at coyote distances.
We loved the compact form factor that makes this a capable mount-and-shoot AR carbine scope and its overall functionality, which includes its shot-activated recording, onboard ballistics calculator, and connection to the excellent AGM app. But we tested the 50mm Rattler against the 35mm Sig ECHO, and it was hard to find meaningful differences, despite the bigger AGM lens and somewhat better image-enhancing software.
Still, the AGM has some very appealing close- to mid-range attributes, which includes a 4-button menu navigation, quick refresh, smooth focus, and what AGM calls its “image boost” software that sharpens and adds contrast to its picture.
If the V3 version of the Rattler is too rich for some hunters, consider more price-point Rattlers. It’s a proven and capable platform and if AGM has demonstrated anything, it’s that it can deliver a product for any combination of budget and thermal expectation.
Like Trijicon’s thermals, Armasight is courting the consumer market after a robust track record of providing thermals to military and law-enforcement agencies. That martial DNA is on full display with the Commander, which is built around a shock- and drop-proof metal-alloy chassis and battery and SD-card compartments that are gasketed, tethered, and otherwise immune from user abuse.
The 640-class sight is designed for use with an AR carbine. Like the Sig ECHO, it has an integrated cantilever mount that’s optimized for full-length rails. The compact form factor is similarly sized for use with an AR-15-sized carbine, though we had a ball with it on a .22 rimfire. Also like Sig, the Commander shares design and operation with other Armasight thermals; once you learn to navigate this unit, you can seamlessly transition to any of its 640-class models.
The Commander is a decent close- to mid-range sight, but also like the 640-class Sig, we struggled to define targets beyond about 250 yards. The Armasight also lost points on its relatively limited run time of 4 hours, as it’s powered by twin CR123 batteries. And the brand doesn’t have a mobile app or ability to wirelessly connect. Instead, media is stored on a micro SD card and must be manually transferred to a device.
Those aren’t deal-breakers, but they hold the Armasight back from consumer expectations. What the Commander640 brings, though, is simple and reliable operation. I mentioned its session aboard a rimfire; this might be the most capable varmint-removal tool in our arsenal. Night hunting for rats, raccoons, and skunks suits its compact form-factor, its short-range talents, and its fast operation.
Holosun has married its excellent red-dot technology with a miniaturized thermal unit in the DRS-TH, which enables users to capably deploy handguns or self-defense shotguns in nighttime scenarios. Our testing was geared to tease out the talents of mid- and long-range thermal scopes, so we weren’t able to get a full work-up on the Holosun.
But we strapped the unit on our 22 Creedmoor ARs and had a ball with short-range plinking in quick target-acquisition scenarios. We operated the DRS-TH in separate red-dot and thermal modes, but the unit can run in dual-use mode where users can dim down the red dot to a barely visible aiming point and use the thermal for low-light target detection and recognition. It’s a fast and effective combination.
A look through the Holosun DRS TH. Scott Einsmann
The unit has a 2 MOA red dot with eight brightness settings as well as four night-vision settings. Users can choose between a 65 MOA circle or 32 MOA depending on how large you like your donut of death. Or deactivate the circle and use just the red dot for precision work. DRS-TH has a 1x base mag but magnification steps to 3x and 5x. Display options include white hot, black hot, outline, and highlight modes.
The small size of the Holosun does have some drawbacks. It doesn’t have a Bluetooth transmitter, so it doesn’t connect to a mobile app. Users can record video and then transfer it via USB cable. And the small controls and separate lens covers take some practice to quickly deploy the sight in the field.
But the display, at 1.25x.98 inches, is surprisingly large for such a micro sight, giving users a fairly wide view of the world. Given those dimensions, plus all the technology packed into this sight, the unit is a chunk. But it’s just about perfect for an AR, pistol-caliber carbine, or home-defense shotgun.
Compatible with external laser rangefinding module
Accepts standard 18650 batteries
7 reticle choices
The most consistent and enduring dig on thermal optics is that the image they deliver is grainy, dull, and unfocused. Even in the best conditions, these devices can’t match the sharpness of traditional optics. The resolution of thermals’ sensors and displays are far less than that of your mobile phone or laptop computer screens.
The reason, of course, is that the image that reaches your eye behind a thermal is a digital depiction of reality, and the factor that limits sharpness is a combination of pixels and processors that turn tiny differences in detected temperature into images our brains can comprehend.
A video showing the Bolt TX60C’s color palettes and resolution while viewing a buck on the ride about 150 yards away.
It’s expensive to boost digital resolution. That’s why thermals with high-resolution sensors cost much more than those with lower-resolution sensors. Many thermal brands “cheat” by providing software solutions that sharpen and brighten images. But the new InfiRay Outdoor BOLT TX60C thermal scope features a premium 1024×1024 sensor that’s double the resolution of most of its competitors. Even more remarkable, its display resolution is 2560×2560 and round to provide corner-to-corner clarity. That investment in image processing results in a noticeably sharper and more resolved image compared to the InfiRay’s peers.
The optical horsepower of the BOLT puts it in a class by itself, but it has tons of other features that make it a fast, smart, intuitive, and highly effective hunting and shooting rig. Taken in total, the InfiRay BOLT TX60C handily wins our Editor’s Choice award as the top thermal scope of the year.
You’ll pay for this level of performance. Priced at $6,999, the BOLT is an expensive product, but it not only represents the next generation of thermals, but considering all its talents, it’s not out of line with the price of lower-performing competitors.
Operationally, the BOLT is simple and intuitive. In place of a traditional scope’s elevation turret, the BOLT has a push-and-turn control that operates its extensive electronic menu. Near the eyepiece is a 3-button control that activates the photo/video mode, palette choice, and image brightness. The controls are easy to use with gloved hands, and riffing between modes and menu choices is among the simplest of any unit in our test.
This buck was easy to spot in red hot mode. Photo by Andrew McKean
Externally, the BOLT has an objective lens focus with a retractable throw lever that makes fine-tuning focus easy and fast in the field. The unit has a recoil-activated video mode that automatically records 30-second clips before and after a shot. And the InfiRay has one of the simplest battery systems in the field. Users can plug the scope into a wall mount with a USB cable, or they can use standard 18650 batteries, swapping them in and out in the field. Add an inclinometer, choice of seven reticles, seven color palettes, and a compass-activated directional orientation, and this thermal scope wins on attributes alone.
Add a best-in-class quick-detach Picatinny rail mount, and you have an investment-grade thermal that should provide years of excellent operation and imagery, with software upgrades provided by the excellent InfiRay Outdoor app.
Sluggish performance when rangefinder and image capture operate concurrently
Score Card
Ease of Set-Up: Very Good
Connectivity: Very Good
Thermal Performance: Excellent
Shootability: Very Good
Field-Worthiness: Good
Price/Value: Good
Key Features
Sensor Resolution: 640×512
75 mm objective
Detection Range: 3600 Yards
Sensor Frame Rate: 50hz
Optical Magnification: 4X
8x digital magnification
Onboard laser rangefinder
6 hour run time
We greeted InfiRay’s claim that the RICO Hybrid scope could detect deer-sized objects out to 3,600 yards with a big dose of skepticism. After all, that’s a lot of real estate for any optic, especially in the veiling darkness of night. But at this year’s Outdoor Life optics test, we used the Hybrid to scan the miles-distant face of the soaring Rocky Mountain Front, and damned if we didn’t detect an animal — it might have been a cow moose or a young bull elk — feeding out of a cottonwood bottom and grazing on a foothill pasture, at 1 in the morning.
A moose spotted 2 miles away with the Hybrid.
The next day, we ranged the spot. It was two miles away, 3,311 yards, to be exact. InfiRay’s claims are spot-on. This is a serious, expensive, and very capable thermal scope, and if you have $8,000 laying around, you should run to a retailer or internet site to buy this. It’s that good.
It’s actually a little too good. We’ve been used to rating the relative merits of thermals based on their sensor and display resolution. Those with higher-resolution innards generally deliver better imagery, and since this is a test of optics, image is everything. Well, almost everything.
This is one of the few cases in thermal devices where lowish sensor resolution doesn’t necessarily result in disappointing performance. The RICO Hybrid scope has a fairly pedestrian sensor resolution of 640×512 microbolometers, which should produce a forgettable image. But InfiRay has combined a huge 75mm objective lens (a 50mm lens is also available) with a high-resolution 2560×1920-pixel display, and a sophisticated digital processor to boost the image, creating sharp, immersive, three-dimensional images out of quavering nocturnal targets.
The Hybrid has a number of other appealing features for thermal hunters. It ships with a built-in Picatinny mount that easily mates to most rifle rails, and it has a couple of other integrated Pic rails that accept accessories, including a sold-separately InfiRay laser rangefinder module. Its controls are simple and easy to use at night. Those include a dial focus control that’s easy to use with gloved hands, and a smaller dial that controls the internal menu.
The RICO has a large objective. Photo by Andrew McKean
The device captures both photos and videos, and sharing them through the InfiRay Outdoors app is easy and simple. Users can also choose to manually download images stored on the 64 GB onboard memory of the RICO. The unit has a recoil-activated video capture mode that allows users to capture 30 seconds before and after the trigger is pulled. Run time on the rechargeable batteries is about 6 hours, depending on how much recording you do, and given the great image capture of this device, you’re going to do a lot of videoing.
There are some important downsides to this hefty thermal scope. The first is its physical size. It weighs 2.8 pounds, so you’d better have a good bipod or tripod to handle the weight of the optic and your rifle. And it’s undeniably expensive, especially when you consider that a laser rangefinder will cost another $800 to add a Bluetooth-connected rangefinder to this unit.
But for a thermal scope that will fully reveal the far-away world at night, and will help shooters place bullets thanks to customizable reticles, this scope is in a class of its own. When you consider that it also performs as a very competent hand-held thermal viewer, the sticker shock is a little less, well, shocking.
Kit includes adapters for wide variety of slave scopes
For some reason, American hunters haven’t fully embraced the elegance, simplicity, and versatility of clip-on thermals. Our European peers pioneered the use of clip-ons, which use traditional daylight scopes as slave optics, with the thermal unit literally “clipping-on” to the objective bell of the scope. The design dominates in Europe, largely because hunters don’t have to swap out their main rifle scope in order to add thermal capability.
The Krypton comes with adapters to fit on most scopes. Photo by Scott Einsmann
That’s probably because gun ownership is limited in Europe, and most hunters there don’t have a dedicated night-hunting rifle.
But it really is a sensible way to add thermals to your existing arsenal. Clip-ons tend to be less expensive than dedicated thermal scopes, and they often have better electronics and recording capabilities because they’re not dedicating so much room and battery power to generating images.
If you’re looking for the best of the clip-on world, Pulsar’s Krypton2 is a good place to start. It features an excellent 640×480 12-micron sensor, a high-resolution 1920×1989 AMOLED display, 2,500-yard detection range, and a whopping 11-hour battery life, thanks to a backpack battery that clips right to the top of the unit. Adding to its value and versatility, the Krypton2 doubles as a thermal imaging device when paired with Pulsar’s monocular.
One of the arguments for clip-ons is their relatively clear image. Because they use the magnification of the slave scope to enlarge the digital image, they’re largely free of the extreme pixelization that occurs when most thermals zoom in. The Krypton2 has a fixed 3-power magnification, obviously more than the 1X of most clip-ons, which gives it a bit more reach while still delivering a clean, crisp image.
Pulsar ships the Krypton2 with a whole series of adapters to fit a wide variety of rifle scopes. It connects to the very good Stream Vision 2 app that allows users to remotely control the device, stream video from the clip-on, and easily record and share photos and videos. Significantly, it also allows users to upload photos and video to a Stream Vision cloud storage.
Operationally, we had no quibbles with the short, light, durable unit. It has all the functionalities you’d expect – eight color palettes, intuitive arrangement of buttons that are easy to reach from the front of the scope, and 16 GB onboard image storage. But the Pulsar also has the ability to calibrate the unit’s display so it centers in your rifle scope’s exit pupil, a key feature to align the thermal with the daylight optic.
We do have a quibble with Pulsar’s naming convention, though. Would-be buyers should be aware of the significant differences between the Krypton2 FXG50, which we tested, and the FXQ35, which has a lower-resolution sensor and decreased operating range.
Color Palettes:
White Hot, Black Hot, Red Hot, Color
Onboard recording
WiFi connection
Storage Capacity:
64GB
Power Source:
USB-C or 18650 Battery
Run Time:
6.5 hours
5 Year Warranty
Made in China
Length:
4.52
Weight:
11.3 ounces
Operating Temperature Range -4°F to 122°F
IP67
Recoil Rating:
300 Win. Mag
Sensor Resolution:
640×480
Sensor Pixel Size:
12μm
Sensor Frame Rate:
60hz
Display Resolution:
1440×1080
The Rico Mirco V2 mounted in front of a Vortex Razor 1-10 LPVO. Photo by Scott Einsmann
Thermal optics are expensive, and there’s no way to avoid paying for performance. But you can choose how much your thermal does. For example, you can spend $4,000 on a thermal scope, but it will only be useful as a weapon sight. On the other hand, you can spend $4,000 on a Rico Micro, and you’ll have a scope, clip-on, hand-held monocular, and a helmet-mounted monocular all in one unit. That’s a pretty compelling feature set, especially if you want one thermal optic that can do it all.
The author picked off a pig from this group as they hurried up the hill. Photo by Scott Einsmann
I tested the Rico Micro on a South Texas hog hunt where I spent most of my time high rack hunting. That meant fast shooting at moving pigs from 30 to 200 yards. I mounted the Rico Micro in front of a Vortex Razor 1-10 set on 1x and pre-adjusted my focus for 50 yards. After an hour riding around, and blasting a few skunks, we spotted a group of bigs a touch over 100 yards away. They were moving left to right, trying to get up and over a hill. I threw the scope to my eye and had a nice wide field of view. Then, I caught the pigs at the edge of the scope and panned left to get on one. I squeezed off two quick shots and heard a loud squeal.
One of the key challenges to the place I was hunting was the large number of exotics and other animals we weren’t allowed to shoot. This made target identification a big deal and I needed to quickly focus the thermal on a running animal, identify it, and then make a shot at it. The Rico Micro’s strength isn’t quick focusing or high-detail at long distances, so it left me wanting a dedicated thermal scope in that scenario. But let’s say I were hunting a feeder, the Rico Micro would be an amazing option for turning a day optic into a night optic. I did find the focus easier to manage when the Rico Micro was used as handheld, especially inside 50 yards.
At close range, the Rico Micro V2 produces excellent detail. Photo by Scott Einsmann
After hunting with the Rico Micro, I think it’s an excellent option for someone who wants a quality monocular that can also be used as a clip-on or scope for close-range (inside 100 yards) hunting.
You’re going to need to set aside a chunk of time to unlock all the features of this remarkable thermal scope. That’s because there are so many functions and sub-functions, but also because the user interface is frustratingly Byzantine.
The payoff for navigating the convoluted menu is unlocking the abundant capabilities one of the most versatile thermal scopes on the market. The ThOR (not a typo, that’s how ATN names its flagship thermal) has one of the most precise and useful integrated laser rangefinder in the field. But it also has features like manual pixel healer to improve the displayed image, an integrated ballistics calculator, a cant indicator, compass header, wind indicator, and through an available app, the ability to create and share reticles with other users.
ATN is one of the OGs of the thermal market, and early generations were defined by glitchy operation. That’s still an issue with this fifth-generation ThOR, but it’s much more stable than previous iterations. The 4-32×50 model that we tested costs $3,295, pretty good for its boost in sensor resolution. Our model has a 640×480 processor; pay attention since ATN also sells a ThOR 5 with a 320×240 sensor that doesn’t have nearly the resolution or the reach of the more powerful thermal.
You’ll need your own set of 30mm rings to mount the ATN. While many brands are shipping quick-detach rail mounts with their sights, the ability to use your own rings gives users more mounting options. Field tests confirmed the laser rangefinder’s reach to 1,000 yards, and combined with the ballistics function, we made shots out past 500 yards with a variety of calibers.
The ThOR 5 has some significant shortcomings. First, it stores video and photo content on an onboard micro SD card. If you want to share images, you have to manually download the data. While ATN has a fairly robust mobile app — and after working our way through the tedious WiFi connection — we found that it doesn’t yet have the ThOR 5 profile available for linkage. We expect that to change in the coming months.
Users must also manually input important components of ballistics, including altitude, temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure. More advanced thermals fetch that environmental data from onboard sensors.
Our final gripe is with the 7-button navigation. It takes some time to learn the functions of each button, and in a controlled environment we got pretty good with riffing through menu options and selecting various functions. But in the field, while wearing gloves and in the hectic moment of incoming coyotes, the buttons are too small and closely configured to operate effectively. At one point, while trying to laze a coyote, switch color palettes, and increase magnification simultaneously, we were pushing and releasing buttons like frenzied trumpet players.
But if the interface is frustrating, the capabilitiesof this scope are impressive. The ability to mount it to a rifle, zero it in just a couple shots, then engage targets out to the very limits of its recognition range make it a relatively affordable thermal sight worth a hard look.
How We Tested the Best Thermal Scopes
David Stroud after a successful evening of testing. Photo by Scott Einsmann
We tested this year’s class of thermals in the places and style that most American hunters use them: in Texas hunting coyotes, bobcats, and wild hogs.
We based our test out of a sprawling ranch in South Texas’s brush country, where we had thousands of acres of coyote and bobcat hunting out the back door. We also had access to a shooting range with steel targets out to a mile and reaction targets from MR Targets.
We strapped all thermal weapon sights onto either Horizon Firearms bolt guns or ARs chambered in 22 Creedmoor and zeroed the thermals at the range in both daylight and after dark. We used the thermal viewers to assess hits, just as a range spotter might do with daylight optics. And we used the stationary targets as the basis for assessing thermal image, sensitivity, focus, and operating range.
David’s high-rack rig. Photo by Scott Einsmann
But the bulk of our testing was in the field. Test team member, competitive coyote hunter, and captain of “Team Dead On,” David Stroud, provided his high-rack rig with three swiveling shooting tables. While Stroud drove and called, the rest of the team rotated through sessions on the high rack and with various thermal sights and viewers. In quiet moments between calling sessions, we cycled through thermals’ menus, practiced navigating their buttons and features in the dark, and assessed image quality, various features like rangefinders and color palettes, and recorded videos and photos through the devices.
And we killed coyotes and bobcats, enough to confirm the talents of many of the submissions in real-world conditions. Our plan was to take the collection of thermals to a neighboring ranch for a night of pig hunting, but while we were in South Texas, a monsoonal rainstorm broke the region’s drought, and we were washed out of pig hunting. But Stroud later took many of the thermals to a hog lease, where he finished evaluations and content collection.
In daylight, we further evaluated the units, rating them on ease of use, connectivity to a mobile app, versatility for a wide range of uses, thermal features, image resolution and overall image quality, and durability. And we assessed their value, asking of each submission: how much performance do you get for the money. This particular category, considering thermals can cost several thousand dollars, is among testers’ (and buyers’) most important considerations.
The unit with the highest overall score wins our Editor’s Choice as the best submission in the category. The thermal with the highest Price/Value score wins our Great Buy award.
The Outdoor Life Thermal Test Team
Outdoor Life’s editor-in-cheif, Alex Robinson, out testing thermal scopes. Photo by Scott Einsmann
This year’s Outdoor Life thermal test team includes a pair of Texans who handle more thermals in a month than most of us do in a year and three Outdoor Life editors who evaluate gear with a combination of objectivity and close attention to detail and value to readers.
Texan David Stroud actively participates in the growing competitive coyote circuit, hunting all night across Texas at least a couple weekends a month and using a wide variety of thermal viewers and weapon-mounted sights in his pursuit of fur and prize money.
Derrick Ratliff is the founder and president of Horizon Firearms in Bryan, Texas. Ratliff was an early adopter and manufacturer of the 22 Creedmoor, a round that’s become a darling of night hunters for its flat trajectory, mild recoil, and hard-hitting performance on predators and hogs. We ran Horizon’s bolt guns chambered in 22 Creed, fueled by Hornady’s 80-grain ELD-X ammunition.
Alex Robinson is Outdoor Life’s editor in chief and frequent member of OL’s gun and optics tests. He’s an avid deer, turkey, and waterfowl hunter and is relatively new to hunting with thermals.
Scott Einsmann is Outdoor Life’s gear editor, and oversees all of OL’s flagship gear tests. As the youngest member of the test, he’s also a digital native, an important consideration for navigating thermal devices.
Andrew McKean is Outdoor Life’s optics editor and designed our test methodology as well as handling most of the testing logistics.
Things to Consider Before Buying a Thermal Scope
The author coyote hunting while testing thermal scopes.
The first thing you should consider if you’re in the market for one of the best thermal scopes is how you’ll use it. Do you want a rifle-mounted scope, with reticle and even a built-in laser rangefinder? If that’s the case, then you’re looking at a fairly expensive subset of thermals. Or maybe you just want a unit to see into the night. A hand-held thermal will do just fine, at a fraction of the cost of the thermal scopes, but without any ability to place after-hour shots.
Second, consider your budget. You can spend anywhere from about $1,000 to well over $10,000 on these devices. But if you’re simply interested in a viewer to detect animals or maybe a car parked at a trailhead, you won’t need all the bells and whistles of a scope. But if you want a plug-and-play scope to shoot coyotes or varmints after legal shooting light, then you should expect to pay well over $3,000 for the most capable rifle-mounted sights.
FAQs
Q: How much do thermal units cost?
Thermal units range in price from around $1,000 for basic thermal viewers to over $7,000 for the most sophisticated rangefinding scopes. Keep in mind that these aren’t night-vision units, which can cost only a few hundred dollars. Thermal scopes depend on a rare-earth element called germanium, which supplies temperature-sensitive glass for thermal units. Generally speaking, the best combination of attributes, capability, and overall utility of thermal units will set you back around $3,000.
Q: What do sensor and display resolution numbers really mean?
That’s a great question. You’ll generally see a couple of different resolution equations mentioned for thermal devices. One measures the sensitivity of the sensor, or the interface that receives the thermal image. The bigger the numbers, the more detail the sensor is receiving. That’s generally a function of quality components and size of the objective lens. For higher-quality units, look for sensor resolution of about 640×480 pixels. You also want to pay attention to the display sensitivity. That’s a measurement of how much detail you’ll see on the screen of the device. The higher the number, the more contrast and detail you’ll observe. Resolution of 1064×748 provides very good visibility.
Q: What’s the best brand of thermal sight?
There are a number of quality brands on the market, but generally European brands only have thermal sights or what are called clip-on units, intended to be used with a standard riflescope. Units from Russia and Southeastern Europe generally have a good combination of rangefinding riflescopes and hand-helds, though quality is variable. Then there are American brands such as Trijicon and Burris that have consumer versions of their military-grade thermals.
Q: Can I hunt with a thermal scope?
Generally, thermal scopes and viewers are illegal to use in pursuit of game animals, like deer or turkeys. But most states allow their use for non-game animals, like coyotes or raccoons. You’ll have to check with your state’s hunting regulations to see if they’re expressly prohibited. Because they occupy a gray area, it’s a good idea to also check with your local game warden.
Final Thoughts on the Best Thermal Scopes
The best thermal scopes and clip ons are getting more affordable and accessible by the day. Until you are able to see through the darkness and pick up thermal signatures several hundred yards out in the field, you might not think you need one of these devices. But once they reveal all the hidden secrets of the night, you’ll want one just to see what happens around you in the dark.
But not all thermals are created equally. Generally speaking, you get what you pay for, with the cheaper units lacking some crucial attributes, but the most expensive having more modes and capabilities than most people normally need.
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More ›
It’s an exciting time to be a bowhunter. In just about every product category associated with bowhunting, there are more options at more price points than ever before. It wasn’t terribly long ago when that wasn’t the case.
For example, if you come across a photo of bowhunters from the mid to late 1990s, odds are pretty high the arrows in their quivers are Easton XX75 Gamegetters. There were other arrows on the market, but the XX75 Gamegetters were widely considered to be the only real choice.
Today, there are many quality hunting arrows on the market, offered by multiple companies. Easton is still in the game, but the field is much deeper now. You’re just as likely to see bowhunters shooting Gold Tip, Victory, or Black Eagle arrows today as you are Eastons.
Brands aside, you’ve also got choices today between micro and standard diameters, heavy arrows or light, carbon or aluminum – or both – pre-fletched or bare shafts, and on and on. Instead of choosing one arrow to serve all your bowhunting needs, you can build certain arrows for specific applications, like having a micro-diameter, lightweight arrow for hunting pronghorns on the prairie and a heavyweight, high-FOC arrow for chasing moose in the timber.
In my job working for Lancaster Archery Supply, one of the leading suppliers of bowhunting and target archery gear to pro shops and individuals around the world, I get the chance to see and shoot pretty much every new arrow as it’s introduced to the market. Likewise, I get to see which arrows are returned to us by customers due to performance issues. Based on that experience, here are our picks for the best hunting arrows.
Easton finally built the ultimate arrow when they came out with the 5.0 late last year. Due to incredible demand, bowhunters are just starting to get them in their hands now.
The 5.0 is more than just an arrow – it’s an arrow system because you can build it the way you want. To start, it’s a 5mm arrow built using Easton’s Acu-Carbon process, which was made famous by the Axis series of arrows. Instead of rolling the carbon around a mandril to form the shaft, Easton weaves the carbon over the mandril in a continuous process.
This construction minimizes the effect of a “high spine,” which is a line of stiffer carbon running the length of the arrow commonly found when the carbon is rolled. Ideally, you want to identify that high spine and make sure it’s facing up when you load the arrow to shoot. Because of the 5.0’s construction, that orientation is less critical than it is with other shafts. Also, the continuous weave means the first arrow off the line will match the 387,000th arrow off the line, and every one in between. Buy a dozen this year, and the weights and straightness tolerances will match the dozen you buy three years from now.
Where Easton hit the 5.0 out of the park is in making the shaft super light. The 300-spine 5.0 weighs 8.4 grains per inch. That’s not the lightest arrow on the market, but it’s pretty light. So if you’re looking for a flat-shooting arrow, you can build the 5.0 to be super light. Put in the aluminum HIT inserts and some 2.5-inch fletchings, and you’ve got a real speed burner.
Easton has a series of components made for the 5.0 that allow you to add weight to the front to make the arrow hit like a sledgehammer while maintaining long-range accuracy. You can build a 5.0 arrow with 15 percent FOC that’s still a viable, long-range arrow, as opposed to one that weighs 700 grains.
Easton has a series of components that allow you to build the 5.0 arrow you want. There are inserts that weigh 16 grains, 25 grains, 50 grains, and 75 grains. You decide how much weight you want in the front of your arrow to get the performance you’re looking for.
Along with that, Easton offers the 5.0 in 200, 250, 300, 340, 400 and 500 spines. The varied spine offerings are critical for building high-FOC arrows that will still fly well. One of the common mistakes bowhunters make in building arrows with high FOC, is they don’t consider the effect that added weight has on the arrow spine.
The more weight you add to the front of an arrow, the weaker the spine gets. So a hunter shooting a 70-pound draw weight with a 29-inch arrow would want that arrow to be 300 spine with a 100-grain point. If the hunter adds 50-100 grains to the front of that arrow, the correct spine for solid arrow performance is going to change to 250 or even 200. But bowhunters don’t realize that, so they end up sticking with the now-weakened 300, which likely won’t always fly well – especially as the shooting distance increases.
Nano ceramic coating makes the arrows easy to pull from targets
Cons
Expensive
Key Features
.204 Micro-diameter
Every arrow is spine aligned
.001, .003 and .006 versions available
Prices (shafts):
$190 to $235
The Victory HLR – Hunt Long Range – was built with the long-range bowhunter in mind, whether that person is actually hunting or shooting targets at long range. The carbon that’s used to make the arrows has a unique weave pattern that’s designed to help the arrow recover faster in flight.
When an arrow leaves a bow, it flexes. The faster it can stop flexing and fly straight, the less drag it produces and the flatter its trajectory will be. The flatter the trajectory, the greater distances an archer can shoot the arrows.
The 1.5K carbon is a carbon weave made of 1,500 carbon filaments per bundle. It’s the bundles that are woven together to create the carbon fabric that’s rolled into an arrow shaft. This type of carbon is valued for its high strength-to-weight ratio. It’s very strong but still super light. The 300-spine HLR Elite arrow shaft weighs just 8.1 grains per inch. That’s among the lightest arrows on the market at that spine.
The .204 diameter of the HLR is considered a micro-diameter, which is ideal for cutting through the wind. The skinnier the arrow, the less surface area there is for the wind to push against.
Something Victory does with the HLR that not all arrow manufacturers do is the company marks on each arrow shaft the location of the stiffest axis. That is, the seam running the length of the arrow that is the stiffest. By knowing this, archers shooting compound bows can fletch their arrows so that this stiffest part is always facing up. Arrows leaving compound bows flex up and down, rather than side-to-side, as they do from recurve bows, and so the most consistent arrow flight is produced when the stiff axis of every arrow faces up when shot from the bow.
Compound target archers often figure out where the high spine of an arrow is on their own – assuming it’s not marked by the manufacturer – to help achieve same-hole consistency from arrow to arrow. Little details like this are more critical when shooting at longer distances than when shooting 40 yards and under.
Nano ceramic coating makes for easy removal from targets
Cons
Extra components required for high foc set ups
Key Features
Weight (350 spine):
6.4 grains per inch
.204 micro-diameter
Spine aligned
.001 straightness
Spines:
200, 250, 300, 350, 400, and 500
Price (shafts):
$180
The Victory RIP XV Xtreme Velocity Elite is built for one purpose – speed. At the most popular spines, it’s the lightest arrow among the major manufacturers. The 7.1 grains-per-inch weight of the RIP XV’s 300 spine is unmatched in the arrow world. The .204 diameter isn’t the smallest in the arrow world, but it’s still considered micro-diameter and will minimize wind drift.
One of the downfalls of ultralight arrows is they can break easily. That’s not a problem with the RIP XV Extreme Velocity. Victory is part of Mitsubishi Chemical America, which is one of the world leaders in carbon technology. The carbon fiber used to make the RIP XV Xtreme Velocity is strong and durable. These arrows can take a beating.
I chose the Elite version of this arrow for the best lightweight arrow, which is Victory’s highest-rated version, with a straightness tolerance of .001 inches. There are also versions with .003-inch and .006-inch straightness tolerances. Truth be told, most archers probably won’t notice a difference between the versions, but if you want the best, get the Elites. The Elites also are sorted so that every arrow will weigh within a half-grain of one another. Again – tight tolerances mean tight groups.
Every RIP XV Xtreme Velocity arrow is spine aligned, which means Victory identifies the high spine for you so that you can fletch your arrows with that line facing up for consistent performance. Also, Victory’s Nano Ceramic ICE coating is among the best in the game. Shoot these arrows and some others that don’t have the coating into a foam 3D target in cold weather and you’ll appreciate the coating. It just makes arrow removal much nicer.
The Black Eagle Talon V2 Fletched .003 arrows represent the ultimate in convenience, simplicity, and affordability. This is a six pack of factory crested and pre-fletched arrows, so all the customer has to do upon buying a pack is to have the arrows cut to length and then glue in the included inserts. No arrow wraps are needed. No fletching required. And the pack sells for just $70. That’s a bargain.
Often times with these factory-fletched six packs, there is no cresting – a bright paint or sticker that serves the same purpose as a wrap – and the fletchings are kind of cheap. The Talon V2 Fletched .003 arrows include neon-yellow cresting and 2.5-inch Q2i shield cut fletchings. These are high-quality, durable fletchings that will work well for shooting field points or fixed-blade broadheads.
At the factory, Black Eagle “super sorts” these arrows to make sure that each arrow within a given pack weighs within 1 grain of all the others and that the spines and straightness tolerances are also equally precise. That’s the pinnacle of consistency, and it’s rare among lower-priced arrows.
We picked the Talons with .003 straightness, which isn’t the tightest tolerance, but it’s pretty good. Most bowhunters aren’t likely to notice an issue where straightness variances affect performance. And the .003 six pack of this arrow is $20 cheaper than the .001 version.
Made of high-modulus carbon, the .244-diameter Talons are available in 300, 350, 400 and 500 spines. That will cover a broad spectrum of draw lengths and weights.
The Easton FMJ has been the gold standard for heavyweight arrows for many years. No one else makes arrows as heavy as the FMJ.
New for 2025, Easton has introduced the FMJ Max 5mm Match Grade. Think of it as the FMJ 2.0. It’s actually not quite as heavy as the standard 5mm FMJ. For example, the 300 spine FMJ Max 5mm Match Grade weighs 10.3 grains per inch, as compared to the FMJ 5mm, which weighs 12 GPI.
So why would we pick a lighter arrow as our best heavyweight? For starters, the carbon core of the FMJ Max is made using Easton’s Acu-Carbon process, where the standard FMJ is not. The Acu-Carbon process is a continuous weave of carbon around a mandril. It ensures consistency of spine, weight, and straightness from shaft No. 1 to shaft No. 1 million.
Also, the slightly lighter overall weight of the arrow makes it easier to beef up the FOC. You’re already shooting a heavy arrow, so you might want to have a high FOC for ultimate performance and penetration. Well that’s easier to do with a slightly lighter arrow. It would take greater point weight to increase the FOC of an overall heavier arrow shaft.
This is where the 200-spine offering is important. A bowhunter pulling 70 pounds and shooting an arrow around 30 inches long is likely going to need to go to the 200 spine to beef up the arrow’s FOC. The amount of point weight needed to boost the FOC of a 300-spine, FMJ Max 5mm arrow is likely going to substantially weaken that arrow. The hunter would be better served moving up to the 200-spine arrow with super-heavy point weight in order to maintain good arrow performance in flight.
The FMJ Max 5mm is now a Match Grade arrow, which means Easton takes the greatest precautions to ensure straightness, weight and spin, so that every arrow matches every other arrow as close as possible. That’s critical for consistent performance.
There are many 4mm, 5mm, and 6mm arrows in the market. There is only one 4.5mm. There are many pre-fletched arrows on the market. There’s only one where the vanes included were designed to maximize the aerodynamics of the specific arrow that carries them. There are many arrows sold with inserts included in the pack. There’s only one that comes with inserts and field points.
The UV 1K is one of one in the arrow world. There’s nothing else like it. And that was the intent of Ultraview in creating the UV 1K. If you want to stand out in a crowded field, you have to be different.
The UV 1K arrow is built from 1K carbon. That’s a special grade of carbon that emphasizes high strength in a lightweight package. The carbon used to make arrows is a woven mesh of carbon fibers. The UV 1K utilizes carbon that’s based on 1,000 fibers per tow – or bundle. Most carbon used for arrows is built on 3K carbon – 3,000 fibers per tow – which tends to be heavier.
If 1K carbon is so much better, then why isn’t everyone using it? Well, it’s harder to get, which means it’s more expensive. In light of that, the UV 1K is expensive. There’s only one hunting arrow sold by Lancaster Archery Supply that costs more.
Aside from the unique carbon, the UV 1K is a 4.5mm diameter arrow. It’s a compromise between the wind-cutting properties of the 4mm arrows and the durability and light weight of the 5mm arrows.
UV 1K arrows are sold only as complete, fletched sets. The fletchings are made from injection molds, with unique thick and thin areas designed specifically to make this arrow fly like a dart. The arrows include uniquely-shaped wraps under the fletchings and hardened field points with O-rings so they don’t come loose.
The Easton Axis arrows have tight tolerances and are tough as nails. Scott Einsmann
There’s a strong case for an arrow being more important for accuracy than your bow. I’ll let that debate rage on Facebook, while I give you some food for thought when choosing the best hunting arrow for you.
How far are you shooting?
We’d all like to think we are as good as Levi Morgan, but you’re not and I’m not. So, be realistic when considering how far you’ll be shooting at critters. If it’s a close range, like 30 yards, you have a lot of options. If it’s a further range than you might want to consider a micro-diameter arrow for reduced wind drift.
What are you hunting?
If you’re a single-species hunter, building an arrow that’s specific to that animal is beneficial. For example, if you just hunt elk, a hard-hitting, micro diameter arrow is a great choice. If you’re hunting antelope and elk, a middle of the road arrow is the way to go.
Find a Happy Medium
In a world of extremes, sometimes it’s best to find the middle of the road. Some people will tell you a light 350-grain arrow is the special sauce for killing everything in North America. While others will tell you a 700-grain arrow is what you need to get a pass through on whitetails. For most people, a middle ground between those two setups will be perfect, something in the 450 to 500-grain total arrow weight range.
FAQs
Q: What is the best hunting arrow?
The best hunting arrow is tailored to the animal you’re hunting, the type of hunting you do, and has a spine that matches your bow. If you’re treestand hunting whitetails where your farthest shot is 30 yards, you’ll want a different arrow than if you’re spot-and-stalk hunting mule deer above treeline.
Q: What are the most accurate arrows?
There are three main specs for an arrow: weight consistency, spine tolerance, and straightness tolerance. Of these, spine tolerance is the most important, followed by straightness, and then weight tolerance. So, the most accurate arrows have tight tolerances and are tuned to the bow firing them.
Q: What are the toughest carbon arrows?
A durable carbon arrow has a thick wall, which is the thickness of the carbon. They are also made from quality carbon fiber. Today’s market is filled with tough carbon arrows. When looking for a tough arrow look for a heavy micro-diameter arrow with stainless steel components that reinforce the front of the shaft.
Final Thoughts on the Best Hunting Arrows
There are tons of options to choose from when you pick your arrow for bowhunting this season. Odds are, there’s an arrow out there that will do what you need it to do: whether that’s fly super fast, punch through a big bull elk, keep your bank account from imploding, or all of the above. The days of having just one or two arrows to choose from are long gone. Do your homework and choose wisely.
Randy Brown has been fascinated with blackmouth curs ever since he read Fred Gipson’s Old Yeller as a kid. As he grew up and got into hog hunting, that fascination became an absolute passion. Brown owns 17 of these curs—“yellow dogs,” as he calls them—and four American bulldogs for chasing wild pigs near his home in central Alabama with his best hunting buddy of 25 years, Brian Miller. It took Brown a decade of researching, testing, and breeding dogs before he was able to assemble a pack that perfectly fits his style of pig hunting. Brown and Miller hunt by rigging—which means they have two of their best scenting dogs ride on the front of their truck (the rig) while they drive down trails. When the dogs catch the scent of a pig, they start barking, and the hunters cut them loose. Then the chase begins.
Rigging is a common practice among Western houndsmen who target bears and mountain lions, but it’s unusual in the South to use hog dogs to hunt this way, Brown says. Blackmouth curs are athletic, protective dogs that are eager to please and extremely loyal. Brown makes the most of those personality traits. If his dogs can’t strike a pig from the truck, he’ll cast them in a 300-yard loop, and then they’ll come back—unlike some big-running hounds that could be gone for the whole morning.
“There are so many pigs down here, if I can’t find one in a spot, I’ll just pick up and move to another spot,” Brown says. “I want to be chasing hogs. I don’t want to be chasing after my dogs [trying to get them back] all day.”
But once the curs get on a hog’s scent, they stick to it—especially JJ, the lead dog, Brown says.
“You can watch him on the GPS. When he loses a track, he’ll make circles until he picks it up again. Then he’ll shoot out of there on a straight line, and you know he’s back on that hog,” Brown says.
Once the curs have a hog bayed, Brown and Miller rush to the spot with their catch dogs—two massive American bulldogs. The breed is a descendant of the now extinct Old English bulldog, which was brought to the States by working-class immigrants hundreds of years ago. Ever since then, the American bulldog has been catching feral pigs for Southerners and guarding their farms.
During that time, the role of the catch dog has not changed. His life’s work is to bite the pig and hold it so his hunters can move in and kill it with a knife to the heart, an adrenaline-kick ending to a wild chase through the backwoods.
“I just love the thrill of watching the dogs I’ve trained,” Brown says. “No two hunts are ever the same. You never know what’s going to happen.”
Randy Brown loads up a pig after a long, grueling morning hunt. The hog took Brown’s blackmouth curs on a chase that covered almost 10 miles before they were able to finally get him bayed in a swamp. Then Brown and Miller joined the fray with the catch dog. Tom FowlksJJ (left) and Duke ride on the hood to scent hogs while Brian Miller drives down trails. Hunters call this technique rigging, and once the dogs cut a fresh pig scent, they’ll start barking. That’s when the hunters let the dogs loose and the chase begins. Tom FowlksTonka (right) is a catch dog in training. Luckily, he’s got hog catching in his blood and his two parents, Diva (left) and Tank (bottom left), to learn from. Brown gave Tonka to Miller, and he gets to run with the big dogs on training hunts. Tom FowlksDiva holds down a 140-pound boar that the curs bayed in a brier patch. Most of the time, boars will run to the thickest, nastiest cover they can find. Brown says he’s seen one clever boar hide in a creek with only his snout sticking above the water. Tom FowlksMiller and Brown hoist a
good-size hog onto the Suzuki. Giant old boars are always the goal—and are usually the most challenging to catch—but small- and medium-size hogs make for the best-tasting meat. Tom FowlksDiva gets a ride back to the rig. As a pup, she had little interest in hunting pigs, and Brown thought she’d end up as a yard dog. But at a year old, a switch flipped and she caught her first pig. Now, at 6, she’s an aggressive, smart, and powerful catch dog. Tom FowlksThe hog-hunting crew heads home after the morning hunt. Brown runs his dogs as much as he can throughout the year and kills hundreds of feral pigs on his home hunting grounds. Tom FowlksBeing a catch dog is a hazardous occupation, and it’s not uncommon for dogs to get injured—sometimes even killed—during a hunt. But Diva actually got her eye put out in an accident as a pup, not during a scrap with a pig. Tom FowlksJJ (left) and Duke are ready for their next chase. JJ is Brown’s lead dog and the sire for most of his blackmouth cur pack. He took years to develop, and early on, Brown wanted to give him away many times. But at 3 years old, the dog “grew up and got himself a job,” Brown says. JJ is effective because of his scenting ability. He can ride on the front of the rig and smell a pig from 800 yards off. When he gets on a track, there’s no stopping him. He’s a deadly combination of drive and natural ability. Tom FowlksDiva gets a well-earned rest and some cool water after the hunt. Midday heat can be one of the biggest dangers to a dog on a Southern hog hunt. Brown tries to get the pig caught early in the morning so he can rest the dogs in the hottest part of the day. Tom Fowlks
A concealed-carry handgun is an important tool. You need something that you can use effectively and, more importantly, carry every day comfortably. Go to any gun store and you’ll see that the options can be staggering. There is a wide variety of sizes, styles, calibers, and price points, so I’m here to help you sort through a few of the best concealed carry guns and my top recommendations on holsters, ammo, lights, belts, and red dots based on my extensive gear tests.
Optic Compatibility
Dawson Precision optics mounting system
Price:
$2500
The CS is very controllable. Scott Einsmann
Staccato 2011 (formerly STI) introduced the CS for 2023, and after putting a collective 2,500-3,000 rounds through two of them, I’m sold. I’ve found them to be very reliable with every type of ammunition I could find—from 115-grain ball through 147-grain hollowpoints. easy to shoot, and incredibly accurate. The average of 10 groups I fired from a supported position at 50 yards with three different types of ammunition was .676 inches. Read a full review of the Staccato CS here.
The Staccato CS has great ergonomics, positive controls, and is a dream to shoot. Sean Murphy
At around the size of a Glock 19, just slightly slimmer, the Staccato CS is a downsized 2011 pistol. It has some key differences from larger 2011’s and 2011-style pistols like the Staccato P and Springfield 1911 DS Prodigy. The grip and frame are smaller, and the CS uses a re-designed magazine that’s similar in shape and size to the Sig P365’s magazines. It still uses the 1911’s controls and trigger, but the recoil system has been updated to a dual guide rod system that makes the CS the flattest-shooting compact 9mm I’ve fired.
The Staccato CS is an expensive gun, and the supply bottleneck is resulting in some being scalped for pretty wild prices. Ordered from Staccato, the pistol will cost $2,500, but we’ve seen the tangible benefits you’re getting for the money—both in the build quality and on-target performance.
Glock’s 19th model, the Glock G19, is one of the most prolific and effective concealed carry guns in the world. Glock was an original innovator and is still a superpower in the world of polymer-framed, striker-fired pistols, and the G19 is one of many successful Glock models. It’s one of the original compact, 9mm poly pistols, and still one of the best concealed carry guns on the market today. You can also get a 1-to-1 trainer for the G19, chambered in .22 LR — the Glock G44.
The Glock G19’s beauty is in its simplicity. Let’s face it, it’s not beautiful in any other way. The G19 is effective though. It’s relatively easy to conceal, easy to shoot, and very simple to operate. Glock’s built a reputation of reliability over the decades, and the G19 has managed to stay at the front of the pack since the late 80s. Not many similar-sized pistols have bested its 15+1-round capacity, and it’s available in just about every gun store.
The success of the G19 (bottom right), and user modifications and customizations of G19’s has led to several aftermarket G19 clones like the Lone Wolf Arms Dusk 19 (top left).
Despite their motto of “perfection,” there are some things that shooters commonly modify on their Glock G19’s. The factory sights must go immediately. Really they aren’t terrible, but they could be much better, and there is an entire industry of aftermarket Glock-compatible parts, sights, and accessories that has grown up alongside the G19. Companies like Shadow Systems and Palmetto State Armory even offer G19 clone pistols. If you get the Gen 5 MOS version of the G19, you’ll see some updates to the grip, an ambidextrous slide stop, and an optics-ready slide. Even after 35 years, the G19 is one of the best carry guns you can buy.
In the highly competitive Glock clone market, the RXM, a collaboration between Ruger and Magpull, caught a lot of people by surprise. It’s a clone of Glock’s legendary G19 Gen 3, but several hundred dollars cheaper. It’s available for $400, or sometimes less.
Externally, the RXM incorporates some changes that many shooters have paid extra to attain. It’s got a nicely contoured slide with attractive and functional slanted forward and rear slide serrations, and is cut for an optic. Rather than Glock’s MOS plate system, the RXM is adaptable to a few footprints including Delta Point Pro, RMR, and RMSc, with the help of pins that can be installed to adapt to particular optics. This allows a low mount and co-witnessed iron sights.
Magpul’s contribution to the collaboration is the interchangeable grip module. Unlike Glocks or other Glock clones, this module houses a removable fire control group or chassis. The grips are crafted with great ergonomics and a grippy stipple texture. Essentially, these are similar to what many shooters have been transforming their OEM Glocks into for years. What’s even better is that the removable chassis design is still compatible with aftermarket Gen 3 Glock trigger parts, allowing for further upgrades.
On the range, this gun performed as well as any pistol we’ve seen at this price point, and several members of our annual gun test team preferred it over a stock Glock. It’s accurate, handles well, and has a pleasingly soft recoil impulse. We don’t think that there’s currently a better value for a concealed carry gun than the RXM.
The RXM has what many Glock clone shooters want, at an incredible price. Sean Murphy
Like many of its peers, the Springfield Hellcat Pro seeks to strike a perfect balance between concealability and magazine capacity. In that regard, it does a good job. It is a hair smaller than a Glock 19 and a hair larger than the Micro-9s but has a 15+1 capacity with flush-mounted magazines. It is also trimmer than a G19 and has low-profile controls for snag-free carry.
Like other Springfield pistols, it is spec-ed out with a solid list of features. It has a reversible magazine catch, a loaded-chamber indicator on the top of the slide, it comes with two quality magazines, has a tough Melonite finish, a generously-sized accessory rail, and cocking serrations on the front and rear of the slide.
The Hellcat Pro OSP is a heavy-hitter in the sub-compact market, and it’s a reliable, solid choice among the best concealed carry guns. Although the muzzle flip isn’t bad, the Hellcat pistols tend to have slightly snappier recoil than other similar-sized guns, but they still aren’t bad to shoot. They are one of the best at packing a lot of ammunition into a slim, small package.
The P365 XMacro Tacops comes optics ready. Scott Einsmann
Sig Sauer has been busy over the past few years, producing an array of variations of their front-running models. The Sig Sauer P365 XMacro Tacops is the second iteration of the P365 XMacro, which is an up-sized version of the micro-compact P365 that features a compensator-cut slide. If the XMacro Tacops seems a little redundant, it is, but it is one of the best compact concealed carry guns right now. It’s ultra slim, with unmatched capacity in its class.
The P365 design is very modular. The P365 XMacro Tacops slide can be used on the standard P365 grip module. Tyler Freel
The biggest difference between the Tacops and standard XMacro is a slight simplification. The Tacops is the same overall size, but has a longer barrel because it lacks the integral slide compensator. The XMacro Tacops also features a small magwell that’s effective, but unobtrusive. Compared to the smaller standard P365, the XMacro Tacops has a larger grip and longer slide. The 17-round magazines are the same, and they fit in the P365, they’re just longer. The XMacro Tacops has a similar footprint to the Glock G19 and Staccato CS, but it’s a little more comfortable to carry inside the waistband because it’s thinner.
I’ve expended about 1,800 rounds between two of these pistols, and aside from a couple failures to feed in the first 100-round break-in period, they’ve run great. The P365 XMacro Tacops is an incredibly soft-shooting pistol, and points intuitively. The trigger isn’t too heavy, but it doesn’t have a firm wall. At our 2023 gun test, we did some slow-mo video analysis of rapid fire strings between the Tacops and ported XMacro, and found that the more affordable Tacops showed only slightly more muzzle flip. I couldn’t tell the difference while shooting them. You can read a full review of the Sig P365 XMacro Tacops here.
In early 2025, H&K launched their all-new CC9. It’s a pistol that’s designed specifically to meet the demands of American shooters looking for an EDC pistol. The CC9 is a wonderfully executed micro-compact 9mm that ships with both 10- and 12-round magazines. It’s not dramatic or flashy, and that’s what we like about it. We recently tested the CC9 at our annual gun test at Gunsite Academy, and everyone on the test team commented on the pistol’s good ergonomics and subtle feature set.
The CC9’s frame has a grippy stipple-type texture in all the right places, and there aren’t any snaggy corners or surfaces anywhere on the gun. The slide is nicely rounded but offers good purchase with it’s front and rear slide serrations. It comes fitted with low-profile dovetail-fit night sights, and is cut for and RMSc- or 407k-pattern red dot optic. Fitted with a low-profile red dot, it’s still conveniently concealable and quick to get on target. It handles well both two- and one-handed, and is lefty friendly with low-profile slide stop levers and magazine catch buttons.
Most micro-compact 9mm pistols are snappy or flippy under recoil due to their small size and short, light slides. We found the CC9 to be quite easy to control, placing rounds on target quickly and accurately. We were even able to score regular hits on vital-sized steel plates from 50 yards. Even skeptical members of the test team were convinced that they might just need a new CC9 for themselves.
The CC9 is an excellent new concealed carry pistol at a great value. Sean Murphy
Not as heavy and flat-shooting as the steel-frame PDP model
Key Features
Caliber:
9mm
Capacity:
15+1
Barrel length:
3.5 inches
Weight:
23 ounces
Optic Compatibility
Walther optic plate system
Price:
$650
Walther’s PDP-F series is designed with female shooters in mind, but this is a concealed carry gun that just about anyone will like. It’s got what we like about the PDP platform, but with a slender grip and shorter trigger reach. Compared to the chunky full-sized PDP, the PDP-F is more comfortable to carry inside the waistband, but still offers excellent ergonomics.
Like the standard PDP pistols, this Walther features three-dot white sights with a rear sight that’s adjustable for windage and elevation. The slide also features a removable cover plate and can be fitted with one of Walther’s optic adapter plates and fitted with a red dot. I tested one with the Trijicon RMR and it was a wonderful-shooting pistol. You can read a full review here.
Although small, the .380 ACP cartridge is still popular among the best guns for concealed carry. Ruger saw great success with their single-stack LCP pistol, but recognized room for improvement. As the micro-compact pistol market has surged, and manufacturers have boosted the capacity of these tiny guns, Ruger followed suit.
With the slightly extended magazine, the LCP Max holds 13 rounds of ammunition, and is only slightly thicker than the original single-stack design. It’s easy to shoot, reliable, and small enough to stick in a pocket. With the high-performance projectiles we have today, a high-capacity .380 pocket pistol is still a formidable defensive concealed carry gun.
The Ruger LCP Max is reasonably accurate out to 15 yards or so, but it’s most effective at very close range. The slide cycles fast, and the recoil feels a bit snappy, but there isn’t much muzzle flip and the pistol is very easy to control. You can read a full review of the Ruger LCP Max here.
Beretta’s PX4 Storm has been a popular carry gun, and the new PX4 Storm Concealed Carry 2 is further optimized for the task at hand. Like the regular PX4, it features a rotating barrel design, but the CC2 version has a heavier barrel that adds mass and mitigates recoil. Notably, it also has an improved decocker and bobbed, snag-free hammer and improved double-action trigger pull.
The whole test team found the PX4 to be a soft, manageable shooter, and some really liked it. We had mixed feelings though. Some of us plainly thought it would be smaller than it is, and it certainly does have a thick, chunky feel to it. That thickness does help the shooter get more purchase on the gun, but considering the abundant number of manageable pistols that are more compact with equal or greater capacity, we had a hard time falling in love with this one.
The double-action/single-action operation isn’t what most shooters will choose, but if you’re already a Beretta 92 fan or comfortable with those pistols, you will probably like the PX4 Storm.
There are some folks who subscribe to the theory that real guns are wheel guns, and they’d trust their life to nothing but a revolver. There are some great revolvers to choose from, but one of my favorites has been the Colt Python 3-inch model. In recent years, Colt has breathed new life into its classic Python line, and the 3-inch model is one of their most recent. The short .357 Mag revolver might be a little stubby, but it’s all Python. For a revolver fan that wants to carry under a jacket, it’s one of the best concealed carry guns you can choose.
The Colt Python at the firing line. Tanner Denton
Everything about the Colt Python 3-inch is Python, just with a shorter barrel. It features the same quality wood grips, same frame and cylinder, and the contemporary Pythons have a bit of reinforcement added to the frame under the rear sight. They hold six rounds and use a transfer bar firing system so that you can safely carry it with a round under the lowered hammer.
The Cold Python 3-inch is as much about nostalgia as performance, and it performs very well. Operation is butter-smooth, and the full-size grip makes full-power defensive loads quite manageable. This revolver isn’t the most concealable, but for OWB carry under a jacket, or even IWB under a loose shirt, you don’t find too many options better—or cooler—than the Python. You can read a full review of the Colt Python 3-inch here.
The Smith & Wesson 351 PD is an AirLite series J-frame revolver that’s chambered in .22 Magnum. It’s light even when loaded, and boasts an impressive 7 round capacity. Other J-frames chambered in .38 Special and .357 Magnum are certainly more potent, but they are also much more difficult to shoot with speed and precision — even at close range. The .22 Mag. chambered 351 PD offers the same concealable size and feel, but it’s much easier, and more fun, to shoot.
This is a great option for a practice gun for someone who carries a larger cartridge in a J-frame regularly, and is well-suited for anyone who might struggle to control the sharp, flippy recoil of a .38 or .357. Though .22 Magnum might not be the most potent self-defense cartridge, it’s performance has been elevated by defense-specific loads like Federal’s Punch and Speer Gold Dot.
More than just a dedicated EDC revolver, the 351 PD would be quite useful as a carry gun for a trapper or backwoods hunter. It’s not especially accurate, but would be useful for small game under 15 yards, and is generally a fun and affordable revolver to shoot. You’re guaranteed to shoot it much more than the same platform chambered in .357 Mag., and for a tool you might have to use in the most stressful of situations, that counts for a lot. You can read our full review of the Smith & Wesson 351 PD here.
How We Test and Choose the Best Concealed Carry Guns
There are many great concealed carry guns to choose from, and lots that aren’t so great. Rest assured that any guns in this or other buyer’s guides have been hands-on tested by our staff. I shoot about 20,000 rounds through handguns annually, and each gun — whether tested by me or another staff or test team member — gets both accuracy and reliability testing. We fire a minimum of several hundred rounds through each pistol, running drills, drawing from holsters, and, in this case, carrying concealed. We test for accuracy by firing from a standing position at 15 yards, supported on a sandbag-topped tripod as described in this story on how to shoot a pistol accurately.
In this story, we have chosen our favorite concealed-carry pistols across a wide variety of categories, sizes, and applications.
If you’re wondering, What’s the best concealed carry gun?, well, the answer depends. Choosing the best concealed carry gun for you means considering several factors:
Carry position and where you prefer to carry your gun
Your clothing style and how well it conceals a gun
How well the concealed carry gun fits your hand
Your budget
Picking a concealed carry gun is a personal matter, and everyone will have different preferences based on their individual needs. However, there are excellent starting points, and our team has been able to thoroughly test and vet every gun on this list. Whether the feature set, size, or budget is most important to you, you’ll likely find a concealed carry gun on this list that will fit your needs. Most importantly, get some qualified training before you start carrying.
Best Concealed Carry Guns FAQs
Q: What is the best gun to carry while running?
It’s most important to carry a gun that you can shoot safely and effectively, and for running, a holster that holds the gun securely to your body is more important than the particular handgun you choose. A concealed carry gun that’s light enough to carry on your day-to-day will work just fine for running, but a micro-compact will be your most concealable option.
Q: What is the safest concealed carry?
There are many methods to conceal carry that are very safe, whether inside the waistband (IWB), outside the waistband (OWB), or even off-body in a purse or bag. The most important factor is that you have a holster that’s designed to hold your particular gun securely and keep the trigger protected at all times when it’s in the holster.
Q: Which caliber is best for concealed carry?
The most popular caliber for concealed carry is 9mm. It’s moderately sized, but effective. The best caliber for you will depend on the gun you carry, how well you shoot it, how you want to carry your gun, and of course, your personal taste.
Q: Do Glocks ever jam?
Though Glocks (and many other pistols) are reliable, they can all jam. A common malfunction or jam occurs when the shooter holds the pistol with a loose grip, and the pistol cannot cycle properly.
The Best Concealed-Carry Accessories
There are a wide variety of AIWB holsters that fit many handguns. Tanner Denton
Picking a pistol or revolver is just the first step in setting yourself up for safe, effective concealed carry. Gearing up with good accessories like these can make your EDC setup more comfortable and practical.
Choosing which gun to carry every day is an important decision, and the best concealed carry gun will be different for many people. There’s lots of things to consider when picking one, but a fortunate certainty is that you have a lot of options to choose from. Pick something that you can shoot well, and that you’ll carry every day. An EDC pistol won’t do you any good sitting in the gun safe at home.
Login
