Performance Hunter

The methods you use to effectively glass an area need to be tied to two things, repeatability and the movement of the game. While you probably had a good idea about how animals move, using these techniques there will be some holes in the middle of the day that you will better understand now, and use more effectively during hunts or scouting trips. Now lets look at the mechanics for good glassing. The first thing to get across is that a consistent method should be used, many people call it a grid, the key is to pick country apart in an organized, repeatable manner. There are two primary platforms, horizontal and vertical. Horizontal glassing is akin to reading a mountain like a book, the majority of the movements made with your glasses are left to right or vice versa, with elevation adjustments being made a the extreme right or left edges of the area being glassed. Vertical glassing means the majority of movements being made are on an up and down plane, with left/right adjustments being made at the extreme top or bottom of those adjustments.

Different types of country dictate which method will be the most applicable. All pieces of ground are either horizontally or vertically oriented, for example, a ridge, the feature is wider than it is tall making it horizontal in nature, where a finger in a canyon is more vertically oriented, it is taller than it is wide. In country of a horizontal nature, vertical glassing movements will be the most productive; the shorter the planes of your movement the more apt you are to achieve full coverage and locate more animals. Just remember, all topographic features can be discerned as horizontal or vertical, and precise glassing dictates that your primary optical movements are perpendicular to the nature of whatever feature you are glassing.

Once a direction is established, the next step is to select a starting point, personally I prefer to begin at one of the extremes, top right or left, bottom right or left etc. There really isn’t a right or wrong place to start, but one point almost always jumps out at a you when you are setting up and no two people start at the same place. Once you start glassing, examine a field of view thoroughly, looking at every tree and branch on it, in the shadows, through the brush and of course in the open areas as well. Once you have picked apart that field of view, make your first movement, only ½ to 2/3 a field of view. This overlap ensures that country won’t be missed and is a mechanism to provide for repeatability and consistency. Continue this movement - either horizontal or vertical – until a discernable end feature is reached, be it a horizon, end of a ridge or edge of the basin you’re glassing. At this point make the logical adjusting movement and continue glassing. While one pass will likely yield results, continued, repeated examination is crucial because sometimes animals are feeding or bedded fully obscured from sight. With each pass you increase your odds of seeing everything that is in the piece of country you are examining. So where should you glass from, and what country should you glass?

The first time you glass country the goal should be to see as much country as possible from a single position. This allows you to scout as much ground as possible at one time, maximizing your ability to produce results. As specific areas produce more or better game, you know to hone in on them with future trips, finding glassing points that offer a vantage into a specific area of interest. With each return trip, you get closer and closer to the animals or specific animal you want to hunt and garner a greater understanding of them. With that knowledge you become more prepared for the hunt itself, knowing game movements specific to your area, so when the hunt comes your ambush point or a good glassing point that will provide for a short stalk to a shooting position will be located, making the hunt itself potentially more successful.

In almost every scenario, elevation is key. Some require only enough elevation to get above obscuring brush, others still require more elevation to maximize results. The best glassing points provide a view into the country you want to find game in. When you have a good glassing point, the trees don’t seem stacked upon one another, they appear somewhat spaced apart, meaning you are more able to find what is there. Hunting mule deer in Mexico for example, the ground is extremely flat, and while the 5 or 6-foot tall creosote is pretty sparse, over great distances it looks like an impenetrable wall. With elevation though, you would think that there is nowhere to hide a deer, much less a giant buck. In this country the further you will be looking, the higher you will need to be. On the other hand, when you’re hunting late season elk that are holed up in canyons, a good glassing point will likely be the opposing edge of the canyon, and likely a point on it that gets you out of brush and relatively close to the country you want to look into. The true goal is to find positions that provide a good perspective of ground that you want to look into, positions that limit the screening brush between you and what you want to see.

When you apply all these techniques you will find more game and gain a greater understanding of those animals. The point of all this is to find an animal that you want to take home, learn where it lives and what it does, then get into position for a stalk, and at the end of that stalk be in a position that provides not just a shot, but a high probability shot. Time spent glassing teaches you about the wind, animal movements, the path of the sun and most importantly, the way the country is laid out. This familiarity plays into the eventual success of a stalk. While it is a tool for finding game, it is also a tool for better understanding that game and increasing your odds of putting a tag on the animal that you want. From here, the next step is stalking, in it we will cover some mental elements: preparation and route planning; timing: when to go as well as how to move; and where to stalk to, a bow hunter has to stalk to an animal and a rifle hunter needs to stalk to a shooting position, these all require thought and planning. The better you understand and plan for these situations the more likely you are to be taking trophy photos when it’s all said and done

This is the end of the first big project I have undertaken. At this point, I have learned that the bites may well be better if taken in smaller amounts. Seeing that the late elk hunts on my home turf have already started, I wanted to get the last of this string of posts out for hunters to get to play around with this season. Good hunting!