Swarovski 15×56 SLCs In the Field

Swarovski SLC 15 x 56 binoculars: huge unfair advantage.

A Need

My existing hunting glass consists of Swarovski 20-60x80HD and Vortex Razor 11-33×50 spotting scopes, 10×42 Vortex Viper binoculars, and three tripods. My wife has a wicked pair of Cabelas/Meopta 10x42HD binoculars. That pretty much rounds out what we need to get it done; or so I thought.

My wife, Tammy, drew a ridiculous once-in-a-lifetime desert bighorn sheep tag in our home state of Nevada this past season. I knew I was very solid with my spotting scopes and binoculars, but I started to worry a bit about her longer-range setup. She absolutely loathes the pistol grip ball heads that I use on my tripods and she isn’t very handy with scanning from a spotting scope. She is as good as they come with binoculars however.

A Solution

Yeah, I read a lot of hunting magazines. If you ever see photos of desert sheep hunters you will almost always see them behind some huge binoculars mounted on tripods. I get it. They obviously knew something we didn’t. Occasionally something strange happens and the normal random static electricity that constitutes my mental capacity aligns and produces a genuine spark and an idea. I put two and two together. Wife hates scopes + wife exceptional with binoculars + sheep hunters use big binoculars = we need big binoculars (ok 1 + 1 + 1 = 3).

I knew the big 15 x 56 Swarovski SLCs were in a class by themselves for resolution and relatively portable weight. They would also set us back a chunk of change, so off we went to the sporting goods shops to try to figure this out.

Our Choice

Tammy and I spent time behind quite a few binoculars. When we winnowed it down to two, the Vortex Kaibab and the Swarovski SLCs were last men standing. Honestly, we were having a lot of trouble deciding whether the SLCs were enough better than the Kaibabs. Could we justify double the cost? When we focused on the nearby drive-through menu, it was impossible to tell them apart. Both were so crisp and clear.

Finally, I tried another tactic. We focused on the menu and then used our eyeballs to focus on an advertisement at the edge of the binocular field of view. It only took us a few goes at this technique before we could clearly determine the Swarovski SLC was hands-down the better edge-to-edge glass. Some of you might say that we were splitting hairs for double the cost. Consider that a desert bighorn sheep tag in Mexico or at auction in the US will set you back at least 50,000 clams. We were not going to skimp in this case, so the Swarovskis ended up in our home later that week.

A Stand

We cut some corners and bought a $200 Manfrotto tripod with a pan/tilt head. Note: that will have to be upgraded one day soon. We also bought a shelf-type binocular adaptor that uses a Velcro strap to attach the binocular to the tripod. Again, I think a QR-type binocular mount is in the works at some point. Anyway, we had our (Tammy’s) new binoculars up and running.

We found you could brace your cheekbone against the pan/tilt lever and push the binoculars from side to side to pan. A little extra pressure from your nose or a hand on the lever adjusted vertical tilt smoothly.

Results

I set up my big scope and her new binoculars on the front porch and we spotted some landmarks on the Ruby Mountains several miles away. I was so impressed that these binos seemed to stack up very well at 15x against the Swaro scope set at 20x. Next, we took these bad boys out scouting for elk and deer in September and I was simply amazed. Scanning with these things is simply unfair and probably should be banned from hunting at all.

Scanning for deer and elk in the 0.5 to 2.0 – mile range was a breeze. It is more like looking at an HD TV set with a Where’s Waldo picture on it. Or maybe more like a Nat Geo panorama. It is impossible for me to convey how very impressed I was with these binos. Tammy and I have a system. She glasses while I spot. When she finds something she wants to look at closer, she kicks me off of my scope. I then stand around digging my big toe absently in the dirt. No longer! Now when she kicks me off the scope, I run to her binos and continue my quest for animals. In fact I really look forward to the view through her binos.

Sheep Test

We used these bad boys extensively on Tammy’s sheep hunt. Suffice to say, of the four of us, she saw more sheep than anyone. I’d venture that she maybe saw 40 percent of the sheep with her stupid Swarovski SLC binoculars. It was a bit embarrassing for the rest of us. The edge-to-edge picture is ridiculous. It is only in the last 5 to 10 percent of the view that there is any noticeable degradation. The phone scope pictures taken through these were better than through my big scope.

Tammy was able to hand-hold these binos at times, and was also able to brace them quickly to get a good view. In hindsight, I wish I’d have spent a bit more on the tripod, especially the head. I will be looking to get a very good ball head for her based on the experience we had with an adequate but not spectacular tripod and pan/tilt head.

Conclusion

Because my wife and I hunt a lot, and we hunt out west, I couldn’t see getting by without these SLCs now. If we lost them, I’d hock something and buy another pair. Now that we’ve used them and learned how many more animals we were finding because of them, there is no way we could live without them.

I think the Kaibabs would have been really wonderful. Maybe we’d be raving about them as well if we’d bought them; however, there is no comparison. If you were a casual hunter, maybe hunting one or two or fewer tags each year, I can see these would represent a large investment. For us, we hunt at least 6 tags per year and once hunted 15 in a single season. It is our biggest passion and these Swarovski SLCs will be a big part of our future hunts. This was a great investment in my wife’s capabilities as a spotter!