Vanguard Binoculars and not exactly about fly fishing

I am doing a couple of odd posts because there wasn't much fly fishing this year. It was a rainy cool summer, and every weekend the rivers were too blown out to bother fishing, unless you owned a drift boat, and had a fishing partner capable of helping you row while you threw giant streamers and poppers. So I worked on getting ready for serious deer hunting.

Last year I had a new experience- big woods hunting for deer up along the NY/PA border. This is very different from Michigan hunting, where you put on about 17 layers of clothing and sit in one place for hours hoping something will pass by. It involves light clothing, and tracking. You work you way through the woods until you pick up a track, then follow it until you see the animal that made it. No matter where it goes, and for several miles. My two friends Matt and Mike excel at this, but for me it was a learning experience. In addition to more stamina, lighter clothing, organization skills, experience, skill, and woodcraft, they both had another thing I lacked: good binoculars. As they tracked, they would constantly glass the area in front of them. I had a cheap-ass pair of binocs that were so lame I did not like using them, and on two occasions I spooked deer that I should have or could have seen had I scanned. So I decided to get a real pair of hunting binocs.

Went to a big box outdoor store that had every brand ever made and tried them all.  I had never looked through 20 different brands and models at once the differences were amazing. There were sort of three levels of optics: the 100 to 150 dollar range, the 350-450 dollar range, and then the insane dollar range. The expensive ones were not a possibility, and I was getting vexed because I did not see that much difference between the cheaper and mid-price brands that would justify the cost. I had about settled on an inexpensive pair that has become very popular with deer hunters, and then ran into the Vanguard rep. He asked me if I had tried their brand, and I said "no, because I have never heard of them." He handed me a pair of ED-II 8 x 30's (400 bucks), and I focused them on the eye chart that someone in the store had cleverly taped to a heating duct about 75 yards away. Whoa. It was the only pair where I could read the entire chart, and there was far less distortion at the edge of field. Color was spot on. Light. They were by far better than others in the same price, and even better than some of the more expensive ones. I took a pair home.

Vanguard is not new, but for years they made optics sold as house brands in other stores. They felt they could do better, and started selling their own stuff.

Anyway, the field testing was even better. They really are waterproof (although legally advertised as only water resistant), armored, light, and they do not fog up. Whoever designed the focus and diopter knobs was actually a hunter, because you can use both with gloves in really, really, cold weather. The part I like best is the focus, which is neither too coarse (you are rotating the knob back and forth to dial it in to the tiny sweet spot) or too fine (endless rotation to have an effect by which time the deer is out of sight). They are the binocs that I can look through all day without eye strain, and they added a new dimension to my experience. Although a hunting binocular, you could use these as your primary birding binocs too.

Note that I have no financial interest, and the bitches would not discount them for me either. I paid full price. But this is a rare case where I found something so good I wanted to tell other people about it. If you hunt, beg for these to appear under the tree this Christmas.