7 Best Binoculars For Hunting: Top Glass

While most of us live and die by the phrase “buy once, cry once” sometimes you just need something cheap that will get the job done.

Be it because you’ve bought once and cried once too hard on the rest of your gear or be it because you just don’t want to invest rent money into this year’s hunt, here are the best Hunting Binoculars!

Best Hunting Binoculars

1. Maven C.1 10x42mm		Small and easy to pack Great, bright glass Rugged Amazing value	Check Price
2. Leupold BX-1 Rogue 10x25mm		Lightweight Good glass Budget friendly	Check Price
3. Vortex Diamondback HD 10×50		Budget friendly, high value Better than average glass Amazing warranty	Check Price
4. Maven B.5 10x56mm		Outstanding glass Super bright Easy to hold No eye strain	Check Price
5. Bushnell Forge 15x56mm		Extra zoom Very well built Lots of extras included Ready for bad weather	Check Price
6. Bushnell Fusion X 10x42mm		Affordable LRF/bino Get accurate ranges and make better shots Good glass	Check Price
7. Sig Sauer Kilo 10k-ABS 10x42mm		Complete ballistic solution given in the reticle Gives FPS and energy at target Great glass Well built	Check Price

Best Hunting Binoculars

1. Maven C.1 10x42mm
2. Leupold BX-1 Rogue 10x25mm
3. Vortex Diamondback HD 10×50
4. Maven B.5 10x56mm
5. Bushnell Forge 15x56mm
6. Bushnell Fusion X 10x42mm
7. Sig Sauer Kilo 10k-ABS 10x42mm

Best Hunting Binocular Reviews

Now we’ve had an overview and looked at our list, so let’s take time to individually review each item. In this section we’ll be revisiting our specs, speaking about the product, and looking at the pros and cons.

Buyer’s Guide For The Best Hunting Binoculars

Binos for hunting are normally used for two main goals — scouting out animals and scouting routes to take.

Depending on where and what you hunt you might not need binos or you might need a really good pair. Personally, my hunting is done entirely in the western USA so binos are a hard must-have for me.

If you’re using binos to find game you’ll want the best you can afford. Glass quality is huge when it comes to seeing animals that don’t want to be seen. Once you do see them, you’ll need to get a good enough look at them to make sure they’re legal.

That second part is a lot harder than it sounds for some types of game.

To scout out routes, taking cheaper and lower quality binos are normally fine. If you already have a nice pair, there’s no reason to get a second one.

But if you’re spotting game with a spotting scope or are hunting in an area that won’t require magnification, a cheap pair of binos is still nice to have with you just in case.

Important Parts & Names

Magnification and Objective Lens are the two big numbers that every pair of binos lists. “10×50” or “8×42” means the binos will magnify what you see by 10x or 8x.

The second number, 50 and 42 in our case, is the size of the objective lens in millimeters. 

More is better, but bigger adds weight and cost as well.

Glass Coatings – are critical to the function and quality of optics these days. Good coatings can make cheap glass work a lot better, bad coatings can ruin amazing glass. 

That said, what coatings are best and what they actually do is hard to define. Most of the coatings are proprietary secrets and manufacturers are closed-lipped about what they actually are and what they actually do.

Generally speaking, more coatings is more good.

Something you’ll see a lot is “multi-coated” as the term used most often. 

What that means is a bit of a guessing game, however, generally, it means that there are coatings for at least anti-reflection, scratch-resistant, water repellent, and UV. 

Other coatings can include anti-blue light, coatings to reduce chromatic aberration, anti-fog, and more.

Glass Quality – is the biggest cost and biggest feature of any optic. The “quality” covers 3 main things people look at to judge, brightness, color, and coatings.

Coatings we just covered, brightness is how much light gets transferred through the optic, and the color is normally how “true” the colors are to real life. 

Lower grades of glass or weird coatings can affect the colors you see. When you’re looking for a dark-furred critter against a background of the dark forest, seeing the truest colors is important.

Exit Pupil – is the diameter of light that comes out of the rearmost lens. This is the light you actually see. This is also important because of biology. 

Basically, bigger is better — most of the time.

During the day, human pupils are normally around 2-4mm, in low light, they grow to 4-8mm when dilated. This is good info to keep in mind because if you’re hunting exclusively in the full brightness of day, getting the largest exit pupil isn’t critical.

But since most of us are at least glassing in the early or late light, a larger exit pupil is very nice to have.

Twilight Factor – is a bit outdated, but a lot of people want to know about it so I’ve included it here.

Back in the old days, the twilight factor was a way to judge and quantify how well an optic would do in low light. 

First, you multiply the magnification by the objective lens size, then you find the square root of that number. That result is the “twilight factor” of the optic.

These days this number is simply wrong, most of the time. Because of glass quality and coating advancement, this mechanically set number isn’t as true as it once was. An optic can have a high twilight factor but fare poorly in low light because the glass quality and coatings are cheap.

Likewise, an optic with a lower twilight factor can do better than its number suggests because it uses great coatings.

Personally, I ignore this number. But since some people still want to know it, I include it.

Roof Vs. Porro Prism – isn’t so much of a choice that needs to be made but more of a technical explanation behind how the binos work. If you’re buying without looking, knowing what kind of prism is nice so you can have an idea of what to expect.

Prisms are pieces of glass that the light travels through after passing through the objective lens and before being focused on the exit pupil.

Light moving through the prisms is how we get the light to do what we need it to do, this includes magnification and reorientation. 

Binos with Porro prisms are easy to recognize because there will be a large step in their housing. They are also the oldest and cheapest style of prisms.

Since these are cheaper to make you often see them in lower-grade binos, but not always.

Mechanically, they can result in a better 3D image and a wider field of view.

Roof prisms are more streamlined, but actually more complex to make. They don’t require the zig-zag that Porro prisms do so Roof prism binos can be made smaller, more compact, and lighter weight.

The upsides, other than being smaller and lighter, is that Roof prisms can give a brighter image and allow for higher magnification.

When we’re looking at higher-end optics, there are a couple of other terms you might want to know. BaK-4, Abbe Koenig, and Schmidt Pechan.

BaK-4 – is a type of glass that is a higher grade than what is very commonly used. If you see it listed, it’s a good thing.

Abbe-Koenig and Schmidt-Pechan – are two types of roof prisms. Schmidt-Pechan is the cheaper to produce and far more common. Abbe-Koenig is much more expensive to make and is only produced by 6 brands in the world, although other brands buy Abbe-Koenig prisms from those 6 to make their own binos.

Swarovski, Docter/Noblex, Zeiss, Sig Sauer, Optolyth, and Leupold are the only brands that make them in-house.

Abbe-Koenig prisms are better than Schmidt-Pechan and provide better light transmission, you often see them paired with a larger objective lens to take advantage of that.

Minimum Focus – is simply how close you can focus on. 13 feet means an object 13 feet away from you can be brought into focus. 24 feet means the shortest distance the binos can focus is 24 feet. This one is pretty straightforward.

For shooting, this number isn’t important since no one is using binos to spot hits at 10 feet.

But if you want to use these for some bird watching or something, this number might matter to you.

What Matters To You

What kind of binoculars you need depends on what kind of hunting you do.

If you’re in the woods with a max range of 50-100 yards, you probably don’t need binoculars at all. But an inexpensive pair to keep with you just in case, won’t hurt.

More normally, you likely are doing some kind of hunting that warrants binoculars where you’re either looking for game from 100-1,000 yards and/or you need to scout locations to move to, camp at, and otherwise get around in, your area.

This is where binoculars really shine.

First, think about how far you’ll likely be using your binoculars. If your max is 300 yards, you can get away with a mid-tier set that won’t break the bank.

If you plan on glassing longer distances, one of the higher-tier sets will serve you much better with the increase in glass quality.

How long per day you’ll be using the binoculars is a huge factor also. The longer you plan on being behind the glass, the more you’ll want the better glass to work with. Well-made, expensive glass means a lot less eye strain and that really adds up over the course of a day.

What time you’ll be glassing is important also. Mid-day only or mid-day mostly means a smaller objective lens will be fine. But if you’re looking to use your binoculars during the morning or late afternoon, you’ll want the light-gathering power of a larger objective lens.

What Magnification To Choose

This is an important topic, you can tell because I put it in its own section.

Most of the binoculars on this list come in multiple flavors of at least 8x or 10x magnification. Some also come in 12x or 15x.

I’ve listed the 10x versions for most of them and the 15x version for my Long Range pick. Personally, 10x is what I recommend most. However, this is a hotly debated topic.

Depending on who you ask and what you read 8x and 10x are by far the most common recommendations. There are people that will die on both hills, but I’m not one of them.

The benefits of 8x binoculars are they are sometimes a little cheaper (not often though), they normally offer higher brightness with the same objective lens, and they definitely offer a larger field of view. 

8x are also, normally, a little lighter, a little easier to use, and are especially easier to use in your hands unsupported. The downside is they are 2 powers less magnification.

Those are all powerful arguments in their favor.

I still like 10x better.

Looking at the Maven C.1 binoculars since Maven publishes really good data on their binoculars so it’s an easy comparison to make, the 10x version is 0.5 ounces heavier, has a 27-foot smaller (314 feet total) field of view at 100 yards, and 1% less light transmission.

Personally, those differences are just too small for them to matter to me and I would rather have 2-power more magnification.

As for the stabilization argument, that 10x binoculars are more difficult to hold and use, personally I never free-hand my binoculars anyway. If I’m glassing something I’m either set up in a position to use my skeletal structure to support my binoculars or I have them on a tripod. Always.

All of that said — I don’t think you’ll go wrong with either option. This is very much a personal choice and you should get what you like to use most.

You Get What You Pay For

As much as it pains us to pay it, better things cost more — normally.

You can find some really amazing value binoculars out there that punch way above their price point, but if you want the best you’ll have to pay for it.

With optics, glass is expensive. Coatings aren’t cheap either. 

While a difference of $10 or even $100 doesn’t guarantee you’ll get a better product when you’re looking at several hundred or more differences you can almost always bet you’re getting something for the money.

For hunting, I strongly recommend spending at least a few hundred ($250-$400) on a good pair of binoculars. Anything less than that simply isn’t enough to get into the good quality glass that will enable you to spot, identify, and track animals at long distances.

If you want some really kickass binoculars expect to spend anywhere from $800 to well over $2,000.