Speaker 1: As a guide and hunter, I've spent thousands of days
Speaker 1: in the field. This show is about translating my hard
Speaker 1: won experiences into tips and tactics they'll get you closer
Speaker 1: to your ultimate goal success in the field. I'm Remy Warren.
Speaker 1: This is cutting the distance. Now. Picture this. It's the
Speaker 1: last day of your elk count. It's been just one
Speaker 1: of those tough weeks. You know, out of all your gear,
Speaker 1: I want to know what you think that you have
Speaker 1: at your disposal is the single most effective tool to
Speaker 1: being successful. Now, if you ask me, I would say
Speaker 1: it's your binoculars. While they don't shoot the animal you're chasing,
Speaker 1: more often than not, they're responsible for my success. I'd
Speaker 1: venture to say that for Western hunting, one of the
Speaker 1: most successful tactics you can employ is glassing. I define
Speaker 1: glassing as the act of finding game at far off
Speaker 1: distances through a set of optics. This week, I want
Speaker 1: to tell you the story of the best spot I
Speaker 1: ever made, and it was just in the nick of time.
Speaker 1: I also want to go over ways to get the
Speaker 1: most out of your optics, how to get steady, and
Speaker 1: what you should be looking for while you're glassing. It's
Speaker 1: mid November in Montana, and I'm guiding an elk hunt. Now,
Speaker 1: you gotta get into my mindset. When I'm guiding. I
Speaker 1: want my hunters to be as successful as if I
Speaker 1: were the one with the tag. You know, it's everything
Speaker 1: to me to give them a good hunt. But there
Speaker 1: are those times when the person I'm guiding I actually
Speaker 1: almost want them to get it even more than had
Speaker 1: I had the tag, because they're just such cool people.
Speaker 1: So I think in order to really explained this story,
Speaker 1: I have to first talk about the guy I took out. Now,
Speaker 1: his name was Mark Larson. He'd never harvested a knlk before. Now.
Speaker 1: When Mark showed up, I was hoping for a fairly
Speaker 1: easy elk hunt because he told me a story of
Speaker 1: what had happened to him before he had come on
Speaker 1: this trip. Now it had been a few years prior.
Speaker 1: But although this isn't my story, I just gotta share
Speaker 1: it because it gives you the mindset of the kind
Speaker 1: of awesome dude this guy was, and how bad I
Speaker 1: wanted to get him his first bull. Now, Mark was
Speaker 1: I would consider him a cowboy um, but also he
Speaker 1: was just an all around good dude. Now, years earlier,
Speaker 1: he was breaking a horse, and this new horse he'd
Speaker 1: put a saddle on that was too small for this horse.
Speaker 1: The horse takes off. When he gets on, his foot
Speaker 1: gets caught in the stirrup. Is the horse runs around
Speaker 1: a fence, Mark's leg gets caught in the fence. With
Speaker 1: the other foot caught in the stirrup, he falls off
Speaker 1: with the foot cot and the horse pulls. As it pulls,
Speaker 1: it essentially rips his pelvis in half, snapping it. Now
Speaker 1: you got to know what kind of a tough guy
Speaker 1: Mark is, because when he got up, he held his
Speaker 1: hips together, forced on his hands, walked back to his truck,
Speaker 1: and got himself to the hospital. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: an incredibly tough guy. They ended up having to put
Speaker 1: his pelvis back together with a bunch of metal rods
Speaker 1: through his pelvis. So at this point, now he's worked up,
Speaker 1: done his pt and he can hike, and he's gonna
Speaker 1: hunt Montana elk. A few of the things that are
Speaker 1: working against him is when it's cold, that cold from
Speaker 1: the metal in his body, he feels it the whole time. Now,
Speaker 1: Mark was wanting an elk more than anybody's wanted an
Speaker 1: elk before, and He was ready to put in the work,
Speaker 1: and that's what I respect. He shows up, he's got
Speaker 1: his boots and his jeans, and he is just ready
Speaker 1: to go. The unfortunate part is I am doing everything
Speaker 1: in my power to find an elk, and it is
Speaker 1: just a really, really tough week. I don't know where
Speaker 1: the bulls went. We're seeing plenty of cows, but we
Speaker 1: just cannot turn up a bull. So what's that mean?
Speaker 1: We just got a hunt harder and he's right there
Speaker 1: with me. I'm not joking. We were putting in twenty
Speaker 1: mile days for five days hiking is like we couldn't
Speaker 1: find the elk. We end up hiking further, glassing longer,
Speaker 1: hunting harder, leaving way before sun up and getting back
Speaker 1: way after dark. I'm not gonna lie. I was war out,
Speaker 1: and I generally don't get war out. We were hunting
Speaker 1: hard and he was right there every step of the way.
Speaker 1: I always like to think the harder you hunt, you're
Speaker 1: often rewarded. And now it's the last day of his hunt,
Speaker 1: and I was worried that it wasn't going to pan
Speaker 1: out for him. I mean, he had put in the
Speaker 1: time getting to the position where he could even hike
Speaker 1: like that. He hunted harder than of the people I'd
Speaker 1: ever guided, and yet we were still struggling to find
Speaker 1: a bull. It's the last day, and I just have
Speaker 1: the pressure on me because I want him to get
Speaker 1: a bull more than I ever wanted anybody to need
Speaker 1: to get a bull before or hiking up the ridge.
Speaker 1: I'm hiking, stopping glassing, hiking, stopping glassing, get to this
Speaker 1: new base, and we're we've pushed in further than we
Speaker 1: did the days before, into this big burn area. I'm
Speaker 1: sitting down, locked off, and then I've got my head
Speaker 1: rested on my pack. I'm glassing I think probably a
Speaker 1: mile and a half away, and I all of a
Speaker 1: sudden spot something that just looks out of place. I'm
Speaker 1: starting to get a little windy, so I grabbed my
Speaker 1: tripod out, put my binoculars on my tripod, just start
Speaker 1: staring at the spot, like, gosh, is it? It says little?
Speaker 1: Just the shine of this stick is just a little
Speaker 1: bit off. So I decided to grab my spotting scope out,
Speaker 1: zoomed into sixty power, and sure enough, it's the back
Speaker 1: tind of a bull. That's all I can see. And
Speaker 1: it's a mile and a half away. Okay, this is it.
Speaker 1: This bulls bedded. We move in. I arranged the ridge
Speaker 1: in front of this bull. We get set up three
Speaker 1: yards away. We wait for the bull to stand. Mark steady,
Speaker 1: he takes a perfect shot and drops the bull. On
Speaker 1: the last day of his hunt, he gets a bull.
Speaker 1: And I believe that that was the best spot I've
Speaker 1: ever made When you look back at that. When I
Speaker 1: showed him what I had seen through the spotting scope,
Speaker 1: we thought no way could anyone have spotted that animal.
Speaker 1: And I think it was just because of a few
Speaker 1: little things that I like to do and the ways
Speaker 1: that I get steady, that we were successful that week
Speaker 1: and Mark was able to get his bull. Now, growing up,
Speaker 1: we always have this adage, by the best glass you
Speaker 1: can afford, and there's a reason for that. It's because
Speaker 1: binoculars and optics are such a great tool, but the
Speaker 1: quality varies, and it's pretty much directly attached to the price.
Speaker 1: It's because a lot more goes into making optics that
Speaker 1: are a little bit clearer, a little bit easier to
Speaker 1: look through. They've got crisper focus and more definition. So
Speaker 1: I could go into optics and everything that makes up
Speaker 1: a good pair of binoculars. But that adage is just
Speaker 1: the easiest way to explain it. By the best you
Speaker 1: can afford. The higher the price, the better the binocular.
Speaker 1: You know, you know what your budget is. But I
Speaker 1: would start creeping up toward that top end binocular if
Speaker 1: you can do it, because out of your whole kit
Speaker 1: of gear that you can have, and honestly, I get
Speaker 1: asked more gear questions than any other questions, I don't
Speaker 1: that whole kit. I honestly believe that your binoculars are
Speaker 1: probably the most important. Your binoculars are really what gets
Speaker 1: you game in open country and western type hunting. Now,
Speaker 1: let's say that you've got that good pair of binoculars. Okay,
Speaker 1: having a great pair of binoculars does not necessarily mean
Speaker 1: you're gonna spot more stuff in the wrong hands. A
Speaker 1: two thousand dollar pair of binoculars is just a worthless neckpiece.
Speaker 1: It's a flavor flavor clock around your neck. It's just
Speaker 1: a time piece that costs you a lot of money.
Speaker 1: That means absolutely no more success in the field. And
Speaker 1: I think the first step to using your binoculars correctly
Speaker 1: is knowing how to get steady. Now that might seem intuitive,
Speaker 1: but I see it all the time. The way people
Speaker 1: glass is just they freehold, they throw their binoculars up.
Speaker 1: They're just moving around and they aren't able to pick
Speaker 1: out the things that a guy or girl that has
Speaker 1: the skills to get steady and do quality looking has. Now,
Speaker 1: you could take somebody that knows how to glass and
Speaker 1: give them a cheap pair of binoculars and somebody that
Speaker 1: doesn't know how to get steady and give them the
Speaker 1: best pair of binoculars, and the person with the cheap
Speaker 1: binoculars will probably outglass them every time. It's because steady
Speaker 1: glass is good glass. Now, I hunt with people all
Speaker 1: the time that rarely spot things, and there's a reason
Speaker 1: for that. The first step to using your optics, and
Speaker 1: this is the most basic of steps. You gotta put
Speaker 1: the damn things to your face. Okay, now that seems
Speaker 1: like of course, but you be surprised how many times
Speaker 1: people go out out hunting and they rarely look through
Speaker 1: their binoculars. They're looking with their eyes, they're scanning around,
Speaker 1: and then they throw their binoculars up when they think
Speaker 1: they see something. When I'm in the field hunting, I'm
Speaker 1: looking through my binoculars probably eight percent of the day.
Speaker 1: The other times I'm just walking around. Even when I'm
Speaker 1: in cover, I'm using my binoculars to scroll the focus
Speaker 1: to check even through or behind thicker cover, because I
Speaker 1: know the advantage that my binoculars give me. It allows
Speaker 1: me to see the world closer, clearer, and pick up
Speaker 1: the slightest things in more detail. People are always amazed
Speaker 1: at the things that I see, and I think I
Speaker 1: really attributed it to the time that I spend looking
Speaker 1: through the binoculars because I'm looking at the world through
Speaker 1: more magnified, better view than just with my eyes. Now,
Speaker 1: I do catch a lot of things with my naked eye,
Speaker 1: as I would call it, but I'm looking through my
Speaker 1: optics probably more than i am just scanning with my
Speaker 1: bare eyes. Now, I think the best way to understand
Speaker 1: the way that I hunt with binoculars is to just
Speaker 1: kind of go through a hunt. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things involved in hunting. Glassing is a huge portion
Speaker 1: of it, but there's a lot of walking and moving
Speaker 1: to different spots, checking out different areas. So I would
Speaker 1: say for my naked eye, I use it to preview
Speaker 1: an area and to catch movement. You can catch a
Speaker 1: lot of movement through your peripheral vision, but as soon
Speaker 1: as it comes time to look through the binoculars, the
Speaker 1: key is to get steady, and to do that is
Speaker 1: what I call locking off. So you'll see the guys
Speaker 1: they're just freeholders. They are just walking around, free handing
Speaker 1: their binoculars, throwing it up to their face. Now you
Speaker 1: might see something like that, but with a little bit
Speaker 1: of shake in your optics, what you're doing is you're
Speaker 1: stressing your eye because it's it has to follow with
Speaker 1: the bounce and you aren't gonna be able to pick
Speaker 1: out as much a detail. Just locking off and getting
Speaker 1: slightly steadier will allow you to pick out more and
Speaker 1: more details. So the more steady the glasses, the more
Speaker 1: detail you're gonna pick up later on. Let's go as standing.
Speaker 1: Now I'm walking, I'm looking at this hillside or other
Speaker 1: things as I move along, Let's say within the out
Speaker 1: max a four yard range. This is great for just
Speaker 1: standing and giving it a scan. But when I'm standing,
Speaker 1: the way I hold my binoculars is I've got my
Speaker 1: binoculars up to my face and instead of just holding
Speaker 1: them out with my elbows out, the binoculars get heavy
Speaker 1: and it causes bounce. So what I do is I
Speaker 1: bring my elbows down into my body or my chest.
Speaker 1: I have my hands around the binoculars, and then I
Speaker 1: grab and pinch the binoculars between the bill of my hat.
Speaker 1: What that does is my hat is on my head,
Speaker 1: which is a straight line to the ground down my legs.
Speaker 1: So as I'm standing, I'm locking my elbows into my
Speaker 1: body or my trunk, and then my binoculars onto my hat.
Speaker 1: It's like a grounded effect. It's straight to the ground
Speaker 1: and is way more stable than just throwing binoculars up
Speaker 1: and freeholding it. Now, let's say we've moved through and
Speaker 1: we get to this bigger basin and we're now looking
Speaker 1: at what I would say, maybe that four hundred to
Speaker 1: thousand yard range, maybe out to a mile or just
Speaker 1: under a mile, maybe that fifteen s d yard range.
Speaker 1: For that, I want to be even more locked off.
Speaker 1: Now it's it might not be an area that I
Speaker 1: want to spend all day looking at, but it's something
Speaker 1: that needs some investigating. So for that, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do what would be sitting down getting rounded by getting grounded.
Speaker 1: I'm adding even more stability to my entire setup. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be able to spot more. I'm gonna be able
Speaker 1: to see more detail. So when I'm on the ground,
Speaker 1: I've got my pack on. I'm sitting on my butt
Speaker 1: with the pack as a backrest, so that's gonna stabilize
Speaker 1: my upper torso. Then I've got my feet planted on
Speaker 1: the ground with my knees up. I've got my elbows
Speaker 1: locked to my knees. So what that's doing is putting
Speaker 1: everything that's holding the binocular more points of contact on
Speaker 1: the ground. It's just a lot more stable. Now I'm
Speaker 1: locking my hands to the bill of my hat and
Speaker 1: I'm glassing and scanning. This is great when you're moving
Speaker 1: and checking new areas because you're sitting down and you're
Speaker 1: able to pick out even more detail. You can even
Speaker 1: take that a step further and almost what looks like
Speaker 1: you're taking a nap. Lay down, get your head rested
Speaker 1: on something, because you want to be stable. If I'm
Speaker 1: walking and i come over a ridge into a new
Speaker 1: base and it's almost like I'm laying down, I'm on
Speaker 1: the ground, I'm locked off, and I'm looking. I'm just
Speaker 1: covering it and getting a better source of information. Of
Speaker 1: what's over there by taking a steady look at it
Speaker 1: before I move on. So many times that's how I've
Speaker 1: spotted animals that I probably would have otherwise glanced past
Speaker 1: by just standing there, scanning while standing up and then
Speaker 1: moving on. That bowl that I spotted for Mark, just
Speaker 1: picking out that one time was because I was practically
Speaker 1: laying down. Got that get glass so steady that I
Speaker 1: was able to see the slightest shine off the back
Speaker 1: tie of a bullet almost a mile away. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot to be said for being steady. Now, what
Speaker 1: if you're overlooking an area, Let's say you've got to
Speaker 1: what I would call a glassing tit or a glassing knob.
Speaker 1: That's an area where you've got a great vantage and
Speaker 1: your primary function for the day is just looking over
Speaker 1: that country. At that point, I'm gonna get even more stable.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna break out the tripod. Now. I write for
Speaker 1: a Western hunter magazine and I've worked a lot with
Speaker 1: the company called Outdoors, and they make adapters for tripods
Speaker 1: for glassing. And that's kind of how I got into
Speaker 1: using a tripe odd with my binoculars, Because in the Southwest,
Speaker 1: those guys just trying to spot CU's dear. It's over
Speaker 1: huge expanse of open country, very hard to see, dear,
Speaker 1: and just that little bit of stability. What it does
Speaker 1: is when the binoculars are stationary without you moving while
Speaker 1: on that tripod, it allows your eyes to scan what's
Speaker 1: in the field of view of the binocular. Because of that,
Speaker 1: you're able to pick out things at further distances than
Speaker 1: you can while holding it because of the shake. So
Speaker 1: just that tripod action allows you to move your eyes
Speaker 1: and focus inside what's in the binocular, and then move
Speaker 1: the binocular on the tripod and then scan that new area.
Speaker 1: You'd be surprised. I mean I can spot with my
Speaker 1: binoculars two and a half miles or more depending on
Speaker 1: the game when it's on a tripod, So you go
Speaker 1: from a para binoculars. A lot of guys have trouble
Speaker 1: spotting stuff four hundred yards away with because they're just
Speaker 1: standing there. To now be able to use the same
Speaker 1: piece of equipment to reach three four miles out. I
Speaker 1: mean I've hunted in Nevada for LK, sat five miles
Speaker 1: away with my twelve power binoculars on a tripod and
Speaker 1: started picking out bulls in the timber. It's because of
Speaker 1: the steady nature of putting it on the tripod allows
Speaker 1: you to pick out so many more details than if
Speaker 1: you're just free holding it. Now. Just because you might
Speaker 1: not be in big, open country also doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be using your binoculars. I think one thing that
Speaker 1: gets overlooked all the time is people that hunt timber
Speaker 1: or are still hunting through on a way to a
Speaker 1: glassing area forget to use their optics in that because
Speaker 1: they think that they can see so close. The trouble
Speaker 1: is is your eyes focus on the brush and everything
Speaker 1: in the way when you throw your binoculars up. What
Speaker 1: I'll do is I'll still hunt through a piece as
Speaker 1: I'm going to a glassing area, I'll put my binoculars up,
Speaker 1: and then I'll just scroll that focus. Because what that
Speaker 1: focus does is it changes your depth of field that
Speaker 1: you're looking through and past brush. If there's something, maybe
Speaker 1: say just behind a big cluster of timber, you'll be
Speaker 1: zoomed in and you'll be able to focus on each
Speaker 1: vocal length beyond what your eyes capture. I've caught so
Speaker 1: many animals that way that have led to a successful
Speaker 1: hunt just by using my binoculars even in close quarters.
Speaker 1: So just because you might not be in an area
Speaker 1: that is wide open where you can see for miles,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you shouldn't also use your binoculars there. Honestly,
Speaker 1: binoculars are one of the most effective tools we have,
Speaker 1: and to get good at it you have to practice. Now,
Speaker 1: people always ask, well, what do I look for? That's
Speaker 1: a great question because I'm not necessarily looking for the
Speaker 1: whole animal when I'm glassing. What I'm looking for is
Speaker 1: a piece of the animal, and that piece of the
Speaker 1: animal I'm looking for is something that looks out of place. Now,
Speaker 1: in that story, when I spotted just the back tind
Speaker 1: of a bull, what it was was the way that
Speaker 1: the sun hit that it had a sheen that the
Speaker 1: other branches didn't have, and because I was steady, I
Speaker 1: was able to pick up on that. Think about the
Speaker 1: shape of an animal. A lot of things that I
Speaker 1: look for are the flat line is that really kind
Speaker 1: of stand out in nature, the lateral line of the back,
Speaker 1: the flat horizontal line of the back, maybe the dark
Speaker 1: or the or the vertical line of the leg, a
Speaker 1: piece or the round shape of the ear, the shine
Speaker 1: or bifurcation of an antler branch for mule deer, say,
Speaker 1: or the way that the beam grows on an elk
Speaker 1: with times coming straight out of it. Things that look
Speaker 1: slightly out of place for the terrain or the background
Speaker 1: around them. If you've got an area that has very
Speaker 1: little white, the white patch on a mule deer stands out.
Speaker 1: But if it's really white, maybe the dark colors stand out.
Speaker 1: It's things that look different than everything else you're looking at.
Speaker 1: I rarely look for the whole animal. Most oftentimes I'm
Speaker 1: just looking for something that looks out of place. You
Speaker 1: create these mental pictures as you get used to glassing
Speaker 1: and start finding things. What did you pick out on that?
Speaker 1: Was it an ear? Was it a movement? Now, moving
Speaker 1: animals are are easy to see, but what about the
Speaker 1: stationary animals When it's tough, when you haven't seen much.
Speaker 1: What do you look for then? Well, that's when you
Speaker 1: really have the key into the specific little pieces that
Speaker 1: just don't look right, the pieces that identify that's an animal,
Speaker 1: but I don't know why that's an animal at this point.
Speaker 1: It needs a closer look, and that's where your spotting
Speaker 1: scope comes in. When I'm glassing. It's the time through
Speaker 1: my binoculars. I rarely will just sit and scan an
Speaker 1: area with my spotting scope because it caused a lot
Speaker 1: of eyestrain to close one eye. You'd be better off
Speaker 1: putting your binoculars on a tripod covering an area and
Speaker 1: then using your spotting scope to get it just a
Speaker 1: closer look and identify maybe some things that looked out
Speaker 1: of place, or some areas that you think, well, maybe
Speaker 1: an animal be hiding in there. But overall, the key
Speaker 1: to glassing is getting steady and creating a mental search
Speaker 1: note for things that just look out of place. I
Speaker 1: have a saying, if you were to go out with
Speaker 1: me hunting generally in the morning, what I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you is, let's put our balls all over this hill.
Speaker 1: And what I mean is your eyeballs. You just gotta
Speaker 1: remember that, right there is the trick of the trade.
Speaker 1: And I talked about glassing this week because I got
Speaker 1: so many questions on glassing. And I know last week
Speaker 1: we did a little Q and A. There's just a
Speaker 1: pile of emails and messages about how do I find stuff?
Speaker 1: What should I be doing when I'm out there looking?
Speaker 1: Glassing was the number one thing that I got questions about.
Speaker 1: I think rightfully so, because it just probably the most
Speaker 1: effective tactic. It's kind of hard to talk about. It's
Speaker 1: a little dry when you're out there glassing. It can
Speaker 1: get boring, but you just gotta get out there, keep
Speaker 1: doing it, keep practicing, keep those little tips in mind.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I got asked about a lot
Speaker 1: was just gear, and out of all the gear, boots
Speaker 1: was probably up there in the top. So next week
Speaker 1: what I want to talk about is boots selection, foote air.
Speaker 1: I've even got a great story for you about a
Speaker 1: guy who got gang green by not following the rules
Speaker 1: of footcare and boot selection. That's a dangerous thing to
Speaker 1: get in the elk woods. So we'll cover that, and
Speaker 1: then I might even after that jump back into just
Speaker 1: a different avenue of glass ng or spotting game before
Speaker 1: your friends. I think that'll be cool. So we got those.
Speaker 1: Still don't have a good sign up, but until next week,
Speaker 1: put your balls all over the mountain. Your eyeballs not
Speaker 1: gender specific audios.