{"id":5348,"date":"2026-02-02T07:08:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T07:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/how-to-use-your-spotting-scope-to-be-a-better-hunter\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T07:08:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T07:08:18","slug":"how-to-use-your-spotting-scope-to-be-a-better-hunter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/how-to-use-your-spotting-scope-to-be-a-better-hunter\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Use Your Spotting Scope to Be a Better Hunter"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
\n

On the surface, spotting scopes have limited applications for most hunters. The whitetail crowd can put them to use for dialing in summertime bachelor groups munching away in the beans. The western crowd can employ them for on-the-job recon to locate bedded mulies, bands of early-season elk in the high country, and really any stalkable critter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

That might be good enough, but it doesn\u2019t have to be. There are ways to utilize long-range glassing to not only monitor critters, but figure out exactly how you can either ambush them, or crawl into range before you run out of daylight. One of the best ways I\u2019ve found to do both is to utilize a phone scope to film the action, and then review it in real time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tech Advantages<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
\n

For the bulk of my freelance writing career, I carried an elk-hunt-sized pack with me almost everywhere I went. This was simply so I could lug along my DSLR camera gear. It doesn\u2019t take long with a camera body and a couple of lenses to fill up a daypack, and it was a nonnegotiable part of my hunting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

It also made me realize that if I spotted a bedded mule deer in the breaks somewhere, I could take a high-resolution image of it, no matter how far away it was, and then zoom in to see not only the deer, but the trees around it. The lay of the land. The routes I might take to get into bow range, and often, whether he had any buddies with him that might blow the stalk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

It didn\u2019t take me long to realize that the same option existed with whitetails. Whether I was trying to dial in an exact tree to kill a velvet buck in early September, or figure out what cottonwood to set up in for a cruiser on a western river bottom, the option to take a picture and zoom in just helped me understand my potential setups before ever going into the red zone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Nowadays, I don\u2019t need to use my high-end Nikon for that job. I can just use a phone scope adapter, which is way better for a couple of reasons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n