Does anyone really think they can be effective glassers by hand-holding their binoculars? It pains me to watch TV shows or read magazine articles about how a guy sits down to glass, and just jams his binoculars up to his face and plops his elbows on his knees. I don’t consider anyone who does that a true glasser. Sure, they are using their binoculars, but glassing? No way!
Glassing is the methodical use of tripod-mounted binoculars to scour the countryside in search of animals. Only when binoculars are mounted to a tripod can the hunter use them to their full extent. Of course, I still handhold my binoculars when necessary—still hunting, quick checks, etc. but again, that’s not glassing! That’s simply looking through binoculars.
In the future, I will try to get far more in-depth with this subject, but for now, think about this: would you take an off-hand shot at an animal standing anywhere from a quarter mile to multiple miles away? No! Why not? Because you can’t hold your rifle steady enough to make the shot, right? So what makes you think you can hold your binoculars steady enough? When you hand-hold your binoculars, you interject the same type of movement. You might pick up the perfectly obvious animals, but what about the elk bedded in the shade under a juniper? Or the Coues deer standing in the ocotillos? It’s plain and simple in my mind— to call yourself a glasser, you must have your binoculars mounted to a tripod!
Tripod-mounted binoculars are essential to get the most out of your optics! Obvisouly, these guys know what they're doing...
