One of these days I might actually write a blog, but for now I'm hoping to benefit the Hide by providing these reviews. For those of you who've read my stuff before, I am not a professional reviewer, I'm just an aficionado who loves to shoot and enjoys good gear and especially good glass; however, I'm not made of money and have to buy all the gear myself, since I'm not a professional blogger I don't have companies sending me product (but I would not be averse if any companies would like to offer); however, what I can tell you is that I try to be as honest and unbiased as possible when reviewing gear, so if I don't like something I'll say it without reservation, but I also realize I'm fallible and sometimes make mistakes, that's where the community comes in, so I encourage constructive criticism. Without further ado, let's get to the review...
The Latest Budget LRF Binoculars
Ranging – a bit of history
Back when I was in the Army we had trained with the M203 grenade launcher strapped to our M16 A2 rifles and the instructors would point to an object and tell us to do our best to hit it, no range was given and no tools were given to figure out the range, just guess was the prerogative, but what the instructors were looking for were soldiers who had good range estimation skills, sadly, I was not one of those soldiers as my range estimation was usually way off, but where I lacked in range estimation I made up for in precision, but what good does putting rounds in a tight group on a target mean if you can’t figure out how far away your target is? Therein lies the dilemma for many a shooter in the field, especially for hunters who desire to make the “ethical” shot, and so for years, the rule of thumb was “point blank range” and if you’re really good you could estimate holdover with a duplex reticle but even that was just guessing and you also had to guess the distance of your game, throw in wind and other atmospherics and you can see why not a lot of hunters wanted to take shots out at distance. I’ll leave the argument for what is “ethical” within the hunting community to others, but for our purposes I will give the definition as: the maximum range that you feel confident you can strike within the kill zone of your intended target with a cold bore shot. That “confidence” can come from lots of shooting and understanding your rifle and its ballistics, but “confidence” can also come from utilizing tools that will help us get the job done.
The Mil Reticle
The US Army decided it wanted to incorporate a range estimation tool for their Snipers and the mil dot reticle was born. Without going into too much detail about how mil reticles work they are basically a way to identify how far away a target is if you know the size of that target. The nice thing about mils is that 1 mil = 36” at 1000 yards, or 18” at 500 yards, or 9” at 250 yards all the way down to 3.6” at 100 yards or 72” at 2000 yards, you get the idea, it shrinks and grows with distance; therefore, if your intended target happens to be a 36” circle walking around out there and you put your reticle on it and see that it fills up exactly 1 mil, then you know that target is 1000 yards away, or if it fills up .5 mil then it’s at 500 yards distance and so forth. There are calculators and tools out which will help you figure out distance, but you first have to know the size of the object you’re milling and that’s where it can get tricky so unless you’re a math prodigy who can calculate numbers in his head faster than a calculator you may find yourself calculating yourself out of a shot because by the time you’ve figured it out your target has walked off.
This handy little chart I found over on Long Range Hunting by a poster named Diamondback
The LRF
But even with tools such as these you’re still guesstimating, not all targets are the same size, one Bull Elk may be smaller or bigger than the next Bull Elk and so forth. So how do we get an exact distance to our target regardless of its size? Enter the Laser Rangefinder (or LRF for short), these nifty little tools allow us to aim the device at the intended target and receive a reading back that will tell us how far away that object is, usually in yards or meters. LRF’s have been around for a while now and while the early models were clunky and could not function at long range distances (at least not accurately), the newer models can easily range targets such as big game well beyond 500 yards with accuracy down to +/- 1 yard. While most hunting and competition shooting occurs within 1000 yards, there has been an interest in ELR (Extreme Long Range) distances with shooting out to a mile and further of late. With LRF’s you basically pay for more distance, so the further out your go the more expensive the LRF device is going to be.
My first LRF (Bushnell Yardage Pro 400) alongside my Steiner Military/Marine 8x30’s
Welcome to the new age – Minox 10x44 HD BL’s with Sig Kilo 2000
My first LRF was a Bushnell Yardage Pro 400 which, as its name implies, is supposed to be capable of ranging objects out to 400 yards, it was a decent unit and got the job done within its design limitations. Paired with my trusty Steiner Military/Marine 8x30 binos, this was a decent combination when I first started hunting big game in the 90’s, but a couple years ago I decided it was time for better equipment. The Sig Kilo 2000 was getting rave reviews at the time so decided to get that little wonder and ended up replacing the Steiners with a set of Minox BL 10x44 HD binoculars which are “clearly” better at glassing distant objects over the Steiners. But carrying around a set of binoculars and an LRF is kind of a pain, wouldn’t it be nice if there was such a thing as an LRF that is built into a set of binoculars.
I’m not sure who was first, but the German and Austrian manufactures have “owned” the high end optics market for some time and have incorporated LRF’s into their Binoculars in the form of the Leica Geovid’s, Swarovski EL Range’s, Zeiss Victory RF’s and so forth, but these have always been units that break the $2k barrier which have put them out of reach for many shooters. In recent years however, Japanese manufactured optics have closed the gap considerably, and most notably the recent Japanese HD/ED glass has narrowed that margin even further. Last year (2017) two new LRF Binoculars were introduced: The Vortex Fury HD and the Nikon Laserforce ED, both are 10x42 roof prism designs which happen to be my preferred design for my hunting binoculars so I decided it was time to find out if one of these units could replace my one/two punch of the Sig Kilo and Minox BL’s. Why only the Nikon and Vortex and not the Bushnell 1 mile or a more expensive alternative, well quite simply because my budget would only allow for these two and I have looked through the Bushnell’s before and was somewhat underwhelmed by its optical performance, don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine unit and has represented the best bang for the buck when it comes to LRF binoculars, but I was hoping the new Nikon with its ED glass and the Vortex with its HD glass could open the door to a new level of performance at this price point. Both units retail for around $1200 with street prices now having dropped below that mark recently. Compared to the Leica, Zeiss or Swarovski units these are downright bargains.
Review continued in next post
The Latest Budget LRF Binoculars
Ranging – a bit of history
Back when I was in the Army we had trained with the M203 grenade launcher strapped to our M16 A2 rifles and the instructors would point to an object and tell us to do our best to hit it, no range was given and no tools were given to figure out the range, just guess was the prerogative, but what the instructors were looking for were soldiers who had good range estimation skills, sadly, I was not one of those soldiers as my range estimation was usually way off, but where I lacked in range estimation I made up for in precision, but what good does putting rounds in a tight group on a target mean if you can’t figure out how far away your target is? Therein lies the dilemma for many a shooter in the field, especially for hunters who desire to make the “ethical” shot, and so for years, the rule of thumb was “point blank range” and if you’re really good you could estimate holdover with a duplex reticle but even that was just guessing and you also had to guess the distance of your game, throw in wind and other atmospherics and you can see why not a lot of hunters wanted to take shots out at distance. I’ll leave the argument for what is “ethical” within the hunting community to others, but for our purposes I will give the definition as: the maximum range that you feel confident you can strike within the kill zone of your intended target with a cold bore shot. That “confidence” can come from lots of shooting and understanding your rifle and its ballistics, but “confidence” can also come from utilizing tools that will help us get the job done.
The Mil Reticle
The US Army decided it wanted to incorporate a range estimation tool for their Snipers and the mil dot reticle was born. Without going into too much detail about how mil reticles work they are basically a way to identify how far away a target is if you know the size of that target. The nice thing about mils is that 1 mil = 36” at 1000 yards, or 18” at 500 yards, or 9” at 250 yards all the way down to 3.6” at 100 yards or 72” at 2000 yards, you get the idea, it shrinks and grows with distance; therefore, if your intended target happens to be a 36” circle walking around out there and you put your reticle on it and see that it fills up exactly 1 mil, then you know that target is 1000 yards away, or if it fills up .5 mil then it’s at 500 yards distance and so forth. There are calculators and tools out which will help you figure out distance, but you first have to know the size of the object you’re milling and that’s where it can get tricky so unless you’re a math prodigy who can calculate numbers in his head faster than a calculator you may find yourself calculating yourself out of a shot because by the time you’ve figured it out your target has walked off.
This handy little chart I found over on Long Range Hunting by a poster named Diamondback
The LRF
But even with tools such as these you’re still guesstimating, not all targets are the same size, one Bull Elk may be smaller or bigger than the next Bull Elk and so forth. So how do we get an exact distance to our target regardless of its size? Enter the Laser Rangefinder (or LRF for short), these nifty little tools allow us to aim the device at the intended target and receive a reading back that will tell us how far away that object is, usually in yards or meters. LRF’s have been around for a while now and while the early models were clunky and could not function at long range distances (at least not accurately), the newer models can easily range targets such as big game well beyond 500 yards with accuracy down to +/- 1 yard. While most hunting and competition shooting occurs within 1000 yards, there has been an interest in ELR (Extreme Long Range) distances with shooting out to a mile and further of late. With LRF’s you basically pay for more distance, so the further out your go the more expensive the LRF device is going to be.
My first LRF (Bushnell Yardage Pro 400) alongside my Steiner Military/Marine 8x30’s
Welcome to the new age – Minox 10x44 HD BL’s with Sig Kilo 2000
My first LRF was a Bushnell Yardage Pro 400 which, as its name implies, is supposed to be capable of ranging objects out to 400 yards, it was a decent unit and got the job done within its design limitations. Paired with my trusty Steiner Military/Marine 8x30 binos, this was a decent combination when I first started hunting big game in the 90’s, but a couple years ago I decided it was time for better equipment. The Sig Kilo 2000 was getting rave reviews at the time so decided to get that little wonder and ended up replacing the Steiners with a set of Minox BL 10x44 HD binoculars which are “clearly” better at glassing distant objects over the Steiners. But carrying around a set of binoculars and an LRF is kind of a pain, wouldn’t it be nice if there was such a thing as an LRF that is built into a set of binoculars.
I’m not sure who was first, but the German and Austrian manufactures have “owned” the high end optics market for some time and have incorporated LRF’s into their Binoculars in the form of the Leica Geovid’s, Swarovski EL Range’s, Zeiss Victory RF’s and so forth, but these have always been units that break the $2k barrier which have put them out of reach for many shooters. In recent years however, Japanese manufactured optics have closed the gap considerably, and most notably the recent Japanese HD/ED glass has narrowed that margin even further. Last year (2017) two new LRF Binoculars were introduced: The Vortex Fury HD and the Nikon Laserforce ED, both are 10x42 roof prism designs which happen to be my preferred design for my hunting binoculars so I decided it was time to find out if one of these units could replace my one/two punch of the Sig Kilo and Minox BL’s. Why only the Nikon and Vortex and not the Bushnell 1 mile or a more expensive alternative, well quite simply because my budget would only allow for these two and I have looked through the Bushnell’s before and was somewhat underwhelmed by its optical performance, don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine unit and has represented the best bang for the buck when it comes to LRF binoculars, but I was hoping the new Nikon with its ED glass and the Vortex with its HD glass could open the door to a new level of performance at this price point. Both units retail for around $1200 with street prices now having dropped below that mark recently. Compared to the Leica, Zeiss or Swarovski units these are downright bargains.
Review continued in next post
