Don't go cheap. Great hunts require great optics.

This article was first published in my email newsletter in July of 2025. I've added it to my website, because I think the information is useful in general, not just for the month it was published. If you'd like to keep up with the latest hunting information, including my open dates and available hunts, you can subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of this page.

It’s popular these days to spend a lot of money on custom rifles, and that’s fine if you can afford the rifle and still buy top-notch optics. But the fact is, you can get a great, off-the-shelf rifle at a reasonable price, but if you try to save money on optics, you’ll end up hurting yourself.

From the perspective of performance, the difference between a good off-the-shelf rifle and a really expensive custom rifle isn’t that big, but the difference between high-end binoculars and mid-tier or inexpensive binoculars is huge.

If you’re on a budget, focus on good optics. After all, you can’t shoot something you can’t see.

Here’s my advice:

Go for top of the line binoculars; you’ll be using them more than any other optical gear, and they need to be really good. I use Swarovski. Leica is also good.

If you buy a spotting scope, I also recommend getting top of the line. When you’re looking across big country, you want a bright, sharp image. However, to tell you the truth, you can probably do without a spotting scope. When you’re hunting with me or with any other good guide or outfitter, we’ll be carrying a spotting scope that you can use.

A range-finder is useful. You can get one built into your binoculars or you can carry a separate one. Personally, I carry a separate range-finder because I don’t want the extra weight in my binoculars.

And finally, get a good scope for your rifle. I use and recommend NightForce scopes. They’re competitive with Swarovski rifle scopes in terms of optics, but they’re more rugged. Rifle scopes take a lot of abuse — rifles get dropped, shooting sticks tip over — and NightForce is built to handle that.

UNDERSTANDING QUALITY OPTICS

It’s easy for me to tell you that you should buy high-end optics because they offer superior quality. But I think it’s better if I explain what makes them better quality, so you can make a purchasing decision that you understand and feel good about.

It’s in big glass — binoculars and spotting scopes — where the quality of your optics is really significant and noticeable. In both cases, I recommend that you spend the money and get top-quality gear, either Swarovski or Leica. Personally, I use Swarovski, so that’s what I’m going to talk about here, and, for simplicity, I’m going to focus on binoculars.

My personal choice for binoculars is the Swarovski 12x42 NL Pure. They’re bright and crisp with a wide field of vision, and they’ve got a great build quality. They’ve also got a magnesium case, which means they’re lightweight and structurally rigid.

Yes, they’re expensive, but they’re worth every nickel. My 12x42 NL Pure are listed at a bit more than $3,000. You can get popular mid-tier binoculars at half the price or inexpensive binoculars at a quarter of the price. But if you’re a serious hunter, you should go for the best.

When I was just starting out as an outfitter, I carried a pair of good-quality, mid-tier binoculars. A friend of mine owns a gun store, and he told me I ought to be using Swarovskis. “You’ll see the difference,” he said. 

He loaned me a pair for a weekend hunt. “If you don’t think they’re worth it, just bring them back,” he said. “Otherwise buy them.”

I bought them.

So what makes Swarovski different? Physically, I think you can break it down into these components:

1. The quality of the glass

2. The quality of the glass coatings

3. The quality of the prism

4. The quality of the eyepiece

Performance-wise, I’d break it down like this:

1. Brightness

2. Clarity

3. Field of vision

And then I’d add one more thing: Incredible service.

Let me talk about those things in a bit more detail.

MECHANICAL SUPERIORITY

Superior glass

The superiority of Swarovski optics starts with the glass. Swarovski makes its own optical glass and does so to extremely high tolerances.

First, the raw materials are carefully selected and refined to eliminate impurities. Then, during the forming process, the glass undergoes a step called annealing — the glass is heated to a really high temperature and then cooled very slowly and evenly. This process relieves internal stress that could otherwise cause distortion or could lead to warping over time. The result is exceptionally stable, distortion-free glass.

Although the details of Swarovski’s process are proprietary, it’s my understanding that Swarovski’s annealing temperature is much higher than that used by lower-quality glass-makers (double, I’ve been told) and that the cooling goes twice as slow, too, so that the glass is significantly more distortion-free.

But technical details aside, you can see the difference. 

Superior coatings

Next, the lenses are coated. Swarovski uses multiple, proprietary coatings that have several purposes. At the most basic level, they simply protect the glass and make them easier to clean and less likely to fog. But more significantly, they actually improve the light-handling capabilities of the glass. 

On its own, glass will reflect some of the light that strikes it. The proper lens coating reduces that reflection and ensures that a much higher percentage of the light gets through to your eyes. More transferred light means better viewing in low light situations, like early morning or dusk.

Lens coatings also reduce reflections inside the optics, which makes for greater image clarity; they minimize how different light wavelengths scatter, which preserves color accuracy; and they reduce glare, which is critical when you’re looking toward the sun or bright snow.

Of course, all optics manufacturers — including mid-tier manufacturers — put some kind of coating on their lenses. The advantage you get with Swarovski is the quality and performance of those coatings. You get more light through the glass, you get better image clarity, you get truer color, and you don’t put up with the kind of glare you’d get with lesser optics.

Better prisms

All quality binoculars include prisms. Their job is to flip the upside-down and reversed image that is delivered from the objective lens. But the quality of the prisms — and again, that includes coatings — varies significantly. Lesser-quality prisms pass less light, have lower contrast, and can produce soft edges on your images.

Advanced eyepiece

And then there’s the eyepiece itself. The eyepiece is a set of lenses whose job is to magnify the image delivered by the prism system. The eyepiece also determines your field of view. 

Of course, when you add another set of lenses to the system, you’ve got another opportunity to lose clarity and brightness. I’ve already explained how Swarovski’s glass and coatings preserve clarity and brightness, so I won’t go through that again. I’ll just say that it all applies to the eyepiece, too. I do, however, want to talk about field of vision, because that’s so important to the real-world usefulness of your binoculars.

My Swarovski 12x42 NL Pure have a field of view of 339 feet at 1,000 yards, with sharpness from edge to edge. A typical mid-tier 12x binocular gives you just 270 feet at that distance, and even then, the edges won’t be crisp, so your useable field of view is even smaller. Very often, in fact, you’ll see a ‘rolling ball’ effect, where the landscape seems to be bulging as you sweep from side to side.

To keep the entire field of view crisp and focused, Swarovski uses something called ‘field-flattener lenses’ in their eyepieces. It’s a technology that corrects for ‘field curvature’, an optical distortion where the edges of the image appear out of focus even when the center is sharp.

Most mid-tier and entry-level binoculars omit field-flattening completely. Swarovski -- even when compared to higher-priced binoculars -- is known for building a highly refined field flattener. The result is an ultra-wide field of view, crisp edge-to-edge clarity, and no noticeable distortion or rolling ball effect.

PERFORMANCE

If you read through the mechanics I’ve described above, you can see why there are real-world performance differences:

Brightness. The lenses and the coatings make sure that the maximum amount of light gets through to your eyes. This is hugely important in early morning hours and at the end of the day.

Clarity. Again, the lenses and the coatings keep images crisp. At a long distance, that enables you to get a clear view of the animal you’re hunting that won’t be matched in a lesser piece of equipment.

Field of vision. This can be huge. Imagine the difference between my Swarovskis, with a field of view (at 1000 feet) of 339 feet and compared to getting only 270 feet with a mid-tier brand. With my Swarovskis, I’m seeing an extra 25% of the territory I’m glassing. And that entire field of vision is crisp and clear.

Keep in mind that these differences don’t just affect what you’re seeing. They also affect how you’re feeling. If you spend the day looking through glass that has distortions, that is dim, that has color fringes, your eyes are going to get tired. You’re going to get fatigued and you’re likely to get headaches. It’s like wearing cheap boots. By the end of the day, you’ll wish you had spent the extra money.

SERVICE AND WARRANTY

My Swarovskis have a lifetime warranty, and it’s transferrable. That’s nice, but it’s not unique. What’s better is the lifelong service you get from Swarovski.

I’ve had my binoculars for quite a while now, and every year I send them in to Swarovski for cleaning and adjustment. This is a free service. They completely tear down, clean, and inspect the internal optics and mechanical components. They adjust and lubricate the focus knobs and diopter rings. The lenses and prisms are realigned to eliminate any possible drift, double images, or misalignment. They replace any worn O-rings or rubber components, and they even refurbish the housing. Then they finish up with a nitrogen-purge, seal, and a quality control check.

The result is a pair of binoculars that feel and work like they’re brand new.

Beyond the obvious advantage (practically new binoculars), there’s another upside to this service. Like the warranty, this service is transferrable to a new owner, meaning that buying used Swarovski binoculars is an excellent investment.

BOTTOM LINE

My point is pretty straightforward. Invest in excellent optics. 

Once you understand what makes great optics so much better than lower-quality optics, you’ll see the value of that investment. And if you give the high-end optics a try alongside their cheaper competitors, the differences will be apparent.

I’m betting that, just like me, if you try them out, you’ll buy them.