Brady Miller: All right, welcome back to another Miller Tines podcast. It's absolutely crazy right now that it is already hunting season. So hopefully you've been out looking for some big bucks or some bulls. Maybe you have a hunt coming up, or maybe have still have some time to get out and do a bunch of scouting, start looking at maps, e scouting, researching your your hunt to the best of your ability. yeah, this year time of year is crazy for me actually. I feel like On one hand, I am ready for hunting season, but at the same time I feel like I am not even ready. I always can't wait for hunting season to come here. And then once it's here, I'm like, man, I wish I had another week left to try to catch up on some work related things or stuff back home. But season's finally here. yeah, most of the boys are out hunting right now here at the office trail. He's out in an archery deer hunt right now. Lorenzo, I think he's hunting some spikes, spike elk right now, taking his wife deer hunting. We got Rhett, who's out chasing spikes with some buddies, Bones and Jordan. Our camera guy's Aiden. He's filming trail. So a lot of things happening right now. Seasons are kicking off this weekend. So it's August fourteenth right now. Obviously seasons been open in Nevada for a little bit. Seeing a lot of bucks being taken already. So congrats if you're one of those guys out there. with Nevada archery tag and had some success, but still a lot of time left with those hunts. But yeah, catch up with me. So I've been shooting my rifle a ton, getting ready for season. Been at the range quite a bit, just mainly trying to get things dialed in, working on some different load stuff, get different gun setups. But also just kind of working through a bunch of different shooting situations. So the other week, I was up shooting with my buddy Andrew Whitney of Tenacity Firearms. And let's just say that there is a Definitely some things I need to work on when I am under the clock in time. We kind of did a little, obviously shooting his his tenacities up there. I didn't bring my rifle up. so just got comfortable behind him for a little bit. And those things are tag drivers. Shot phenomenal. But then he's like kept asking me like everyone does, you gonna shoot an NRL hunter match? You ever gonna shoot some sort of match? And I was like, Yes, I really need to at some point here. And so he kind of put me through a little stage. of course of fire if you will and had a bunch of different targets out there from five hundred yards all the way out to eleven hundred and just he's like I'll give you I think it was two and a half minutes to shoot this course of fire camera how many rounds it was. but I was like all confused on how many rounds at each target, where they're at, trying to verify trying to get dope for And he did let me get dope for ahead of time so I could kinda like I don't know. ease my mind a little bit on it and shot off like a big tractor tire and just different shoot shooting positions. But I was like, two and a half minutes, that seems like a lot of time to get off this number of shots. I think it might have been like I don't know. Seven, let me think. No, it was like eight shots. I think we ran through the course twice. So eight shots and two and a half minutes. And took me three minutes to go through it. So yeah, in that sense I'd I'd still need to work re work on some practice in some different shooting situations. But it was just fun to get out of my element and have some fun doing that. So, yeah, I'm just gonna keep going, shoot my rifle pretty much three, four times a week right now. Getting all the reps in, finally getting cool down here, so it's easier to shoot a lot more. also speaking of exciting news, Huge thanks to Kefaro. So Kafaro is now a sponsor of my Milletines podcast. So I've been a huge fan of Kafaro's backpacks recently. So I'm obviously pretty new to Kefaro's line. Used them all of the twenty twenty five season. Got tested out twenty two mag before it was elite released. And yeah, just huge fan of that arc frame and just their overall pack design. I've always said to their their waistbelt and their harness system, wow. Super comfortable. The foam they use is really I don't know, it's just really great under a heavy load when you're packing out lot of meat and a lot of gear. so yeah, sponsor podcast, so appreciate them a lot. And you guys need anything from Kavaro, always you can check out in the Go Hunt Gear Shop. I think we're getting a giant order coming in of more arc frames and a bunch of different backpacks. So we're restocking up here shortly. There's still lot of things available on that front. also, be sure to check out Kafaro's new hunt film on their YouTube channel. I believe it's called Blood Blood Brothers. It's Kenneth and his brother, they're hunting elk, a bunch of crazy grizzly encounters. And yeah, successful at the end of it. So pretty sweet film by those guys. And yeah, even I eventually watched a few elk hunt films every now and then. So one more house cleaning thing here, promo. We got a refer friend promo going on now at Go Hunt. So if you're an insider member and you got a bunch of buddies who want to sign up for an insider, basically it's an easy way to get a bunch of money back to the Go Hunt Gear Shop. So all that they all they have to do is use your email address that you signed up with with your insider account as the promo code field. So you sign up or have a buddy sign up and he'll get seventy five points to the Gohunt Gear Shop, which is seventy five bucks. You're also gonna get seventy five bucks. you can do that second time. Another buddy will get seventy five bucks, you'll get seventy five, you do it a third time, seventy five and seventy five. And then the fourth friend you refer using your email address as the promo code, we're gonna square you up with a thousand bucks to the go on gear shop. So that fourth friend will get seventy five bucks and we'll square you up with whatever that remaining after those three seventy five other, you know, gifts back to you. You'll get squared up with a thousand bucks. So it's a pretty sweet deal. yeah, and then down gear. As of August fourteenth, we launched our down product. So down jacket, down pants and down booties. So we've been working on those for I think close to three years now and they're finally live. It's crazy how long it takes to design hunting clothes. And we obviously, you know, being what I would consider people who are passionate about gear here, especially Trail and myself and a bunch of other guys, like we knew what we kind of want to develop and develop something finally that we're really proud of. So it's down Products are finally available after us beating up prototypes for two and a half, three years. So that's gonna be really cool if you got late season hot. like I said, we've made fun of us in some marketing pieces, but they are warm. They're really warm, really lightweight. I think the down jackets 14.1 ounces and the down pants 15.5 ounces. So super awesome products available now in the gear shop as well. Now we're gonna dump in jump into the topic of discussion for today's podcast. So I wanna talk about glassing. Everyone knows I love to glass, I love the art of glassing, I love just sitting on a mountain picking it apart. I absolutely love that process. And if I can sit behind vinos all day, every day, I would be a happy man. I just there's just something about it. I know there's a lot of other hunt tactics out there, some stuff I still need to get better at, like tracking deer. whether it's in, you know, dry conditions, snow conditions, whatever, but I really do enjoy glassing as a tactic and I obviously lean heavily on glassing being a mule deer hunter. So I just wanna kinda walk through some out of the box glassing topics here. So I wanted to make this whole podcast about this topic I'm gonna discuss here right now. I wanna cover quickly the mental side of glassing is something that nothing no one ever really talks about. I'm sure probably other people have the same similar thoughts that I do. Maybe they don't, but I wanted to make this the whole entire podcast, the mental side of glassing. And I brought it up to Lane in our office and he was like, That sounds super boring. You gotta try to find a way to spice it up. But I'm like, th I I fully feel though that this topic is worth a whole entire podcast episode about because I think it's something that a lot of people don't think about when they're glassing. everyone just, you know, throws binos up, starts glassing around, but they're not thinking about the process of glassing and the mental side of it. They're distracted when they're glassing and they're doing all those other other things that while they're glassing, that is just taking them away from the art of glassing. So I do have some other glassing things we'll talk about after this main portion of the podcast here. Talk about my optic setup, talk about some other glassing techniques. But for the most part though, I do want to cover this mental side of glassing. So I'll get into it right now. So When I talk about the mental side of glassing, what I'm kind of talking about here is to glass effectively, I truly feel that you really do need to clear your mind of all thoughts completely. So if you're glassing, whether it's off a tripod, hopefully it's off a tripod, or if you have stabilized vinyls, you can do this as well. But if you're glassing and if you're thinking about other things while you're glassing, like you're thinking about what free dried, you know, meal am I gonna have tonight at camp later. thinking about stuff that's going on back at work, back at home, you're not fully devoted to the task at hand. this will not only cause you just to glass casually, but you're not glassing correctly if you aren't truly in the moment. So to glass effectively from Mule Dear in my mind, you need to be fully committed to the task at hand. If you clear your thoughts, it will allow you to actually see what you're looking at. And by this too, I'm not gonna name names right now, but I do have a buddy out there. I've hunted with him before, so you probably know who you are if you're listening to this. but this spring I saw him post a story to his Instagram and it said, this is gonna be a quote right here. So quote, full days behind the glass equals hours listening to podcasts in the next few slides. Well, end quote. in the next few slides, he was listing some of his favorite podcasts he listens to while he glasses for animals. so that goes into this whole thing right here. your mind cannot think about two things at once. you can't run two different systems in parallel to each other while you're glassing. You're supposed to be glassing, you're supposed to be trying to find an animal and you're listening to music or podcast or you're talking to your buddy on the side, you're not able to fully focus on the task at hand. You are distracted. And that's what I mean by you're not, you're just like kind of casually glassing. You have your binos mounted on a tripod, you're listening to whatever you have on your headphones and you're trying to scan the terrain back and forth. that's a distraction to your mind. It's the same thing of, you know, shooting a subconscious shot, whether you're thinking about trying to execute that shot. You have to like clear your thoughts of everything and your mind can only focus on that one task. So this is actually I did some little bit of research on this because I was like, this is just a thought that I have, or is there actually something behind this? But I'm sure you've all heard about it. You can't your mind can't focus on two things effectively at the same time. So this is grounded in real cognitive science and not just an intuition from myself who's a crazy mule deer hunter. So this core idea. basically stems down to your brain doesn't truly run two attention demanding tasks in parallel. It either rapidly switch switches between them. so basically task switching would be a real cost and speed and accuracy each time it swaps back and forth. So you can't c obviously run on autopilot while the other gets the conscious effort. So if you're trying to focus on listening to music, Well, that's now the thing that your brain is focused on. You're not actually focused on glassing. You focus on glassing, you can't really hear the music in the background. this autopilot part actually does matter. something well practiced and automatic, like you could say right now, well, Brady, you can walk on flat ground. that doesn't compete much for attention, so you can chat while you walk, or you can walk and you can talk to someone and chew gum at the same time, or be on your phone, and you can do that process. But an effortful, controlled task like scanning a bunch of broken country for animals that are actively trying to blend in doesn't allow you to run your mind on something really finely focused. it has to be that thing that your conscious attention is doing, or it it actually barely gets done at all. so that's essentially what a visual search for animals is behind glass, is demanding, you know, top-down attention. where you're actively suppressing all the, you know, quote unquote noise in front of you. You're trying to, you know, look through the the shadows. You're trying to look through the sagebrush and look through the trees. You're trying to pick out what's a rock and what's a deer, to try to pop that one quote unquote signal, which is a deer shape, a flicker of an ear in antler time. the moment though you load that secondary task onto your brain, so holding a conversation with your buddy while you're glassing, running through that mental to do list about stuff you forgot to do at home or have to do coming up, trying to figure out, hey, what am I gonna eat later tonight? You know, all those random things. Even listening to, you know, lyrics, like I keep saying in you know, music or podcast, you're pulling away from that same what do we call limited pool of attention that that visual search of you looking through your binos needs and deserves. Both tasks when you are complicating this are gonna get worse. But it's actually the search side of things that you're gonna lose more on because that's the one you're not actively rehearsing your head. You're listening to the music, you're talking to your buddy, you're thinking about other things that you should not be thinking about. So that's why I always try to harp when you're glassing, focus on the mental side. Clear all your other thoughts out there. All your task is right now is to find an animal. not think about anything else. It sounds stupid simple and I'm sure like, yeah, a lot of people are focused on the glassing, but I think a lot of times people do get distracted. They're, you know, pulling out their phone every couple of minutes to check things. If they have cell phone service, like everyone's glued to their phones nowadays. Or I you know, I'm even guilty of myself sometimes. I do enjoy if we're, you know, obviously glassing really far away. There's nothing close by, like, you know, having a conversation with your buddies. That's part of hunting. I get that. But at the end of the day, our goal as we're up there as a mule deer hunter or even elk hunter for that matter. antelope, whatever you're doing, sheep hunting, our goal is to find an animal. We have the binos out mounted on a tripod and we're literally gritting out the terrain, trying to pick apart every inch of that terrain and try to memorize everything that's on that slope and try to dive in that second level deeper to try to see through that terrain to be able to see that subtle, you know, twitch of an antler, ear flick, deer leg, purpose back, whatever it may be. And you can't focus on doing that task. And distracting your mind by talking or listening to music or podcast. I you just really can't. I'm sure I'm gonna get someone who says they do it all the time, they do it successfully. And props to you for being able to do that. My mind doesn't work that way. As you guys know, I'm very analytical, very I don't know, anal driven towards everything that I do in my life. so I can't do that. And that's why every time I'm up there glassing, you know, for the most part, I have to be fully dialed and zoned in at that task. I want to find a deer and I need to do everything I can to try to find a deer. So why would I want to distract myself with other noise and nuance and listening to a podcast or listening to a stupid song when I'm up there in nature? I want to be able to just have ambient, you know, say like, what about noise and wind and trees blowing around? Well that's not something that's super distracting because you're not actually listening and trying to focus on the words that are being talked to you. So I feel really bad right now. This is coming out before hunting season. So if you listening to this podcast, while hunting season you're probably giving me a big middle finger right now like thanks Brady I'm listening to this the pod listening to your podcast while I'm glassing. but hopefully it'll just give you something to think about as you're you know glassing the rest of your hunt after you finish this podcast if you are that person who is gonna check out this podcast while you're on a hunt or while you're glassing. I do want to bring up too there's actually a really classic and striking demonstration of this process. It's called The Invisible Gorilla. Now I know. Before you think I'm crazy, just understand that it is called the Invisible Gorilla. And it's an experiment by Daniel Simmons and Christopher I'm gonna murder your now last name, Jabris. I remember seeing this way back in the day. So this is a really, really old YouTube video. I think it's been close to twenty years it's been out there. Maybe it was like sixteen years or something like that. And it has like thirty some million views on YouTube. But yeah, called the Invisible Gorilla. So what this video is about, it's a really short video. I definitely recommend people checking it out. But now that I'm going to describe what's going on, you're probably gonna you'll be able to pick out exactly what's going on in this video. but I wish I could tell you right now, stop this podcast. Maybe I should do that. Stop this podcast if you're at home. Go YouTube search Invisible Gorilla and check out this study and Yeah, I'll tell you what the study is too. But pause the video, go watch it, and it actually gives you a description of what to do. So people in this video, or people watching this video, were told to count basketball passes from people in white shirts. There's a couple of people with different colored shirts and that thing. So you're supposed to count how many times the basketball gets passed from people in white shirts. And then you're supposed to watch it and count the passes. So pause right there. If you're going to go watch it, do it. here's what people fail to do in this video. So people routinely fail to notice a person in a gorilla suit that walks through the middle of the scene. The the gorilla is like waving and then walks off. This gorilla this person in a gorilla suit is literally in plain sight, just kind of walks through those people passing that basketball around. And that's kind of what I'm talking about earlier. That's why I wanted to bring this up. It correlates directly with the mental side of glassing, is that's inattentional blindness. So this is a near, as best as I could do, perfect analogy for the mental side of glassing. So you can be looking directly at a bedded buck and just not register it if your attention is elsewhere, because quote unquote looking and seeing aren't the same thing. Seeing, i.e., glassing, requires your full attention. So because that video described as like passing the basketball box back and forth, your mind is focused on that. It's not focused on that gorilla walking through there. So that's that dis slight distraction thing we're kind of talking about when we're glassing, listening to music, listening to the podcast, talking to your buddy, thinking about things you shouldn't be thinking of while you're glassing. so yeah, the practical takeaway takeaway for glassing lines up, I think, perfectly what you're already doing instinctively. So treat it like the primary task, not something to run in the background of conversation with your buddy sitting next to you. Again, I keep mentioning all the time, listening to the podcast, music, that sort of thing. If you do need to talk about gear, plans with your buddy, It's usually better just to pause your glassing, talk, and then get back to focused searching rather than trying to do both at like a shallow half-assed level. I've even found too that we're when I'm out glassing too, short deliberate breaks help me push through long hours that might seem distracting. especially since your visual attention also, you know, seems to fatigue over you know, long periods of time. It's I think it's some some of the saying that like if you're working really hard at your computer all day, it's actually kind of beneficial to get up, walk around, you know, for a couple of minutes and then get back to the task because you start to get, you know, exhausted doing that same thing over and over again. so those short, deliberate breaks while you're glassing, could help you rather than trying to distract yourself, you know, by listening to something while you're glassing. but yeah, back to that nuanced thing I said. Well you know, does background input, is it always equally costly on the hunt and ambient noise with no work no words. so like, you know, blowing wind, for example, trees moving around in the background, that definitely taxes your attention a lot less than music with lyrics or a conversation. because you're when you're listening to those songs and processing the information you're trying to l do, because everyone listens to the podcast, or I listen to podcasts to try to gain information. That's what I listen to, you know. tons of hunting based podcasts if ever I have a chance to, usually when I'm driving, because I want to learn something. So if you're trying process that stuff while you're trying to glass all those decision-making skills that you're looking for, which is a mule deer or an elk, you're not able to focus your full attention on that. So silence and full visual focus while you're glassing is going to be key here. So stop listening to music while you're glassing, stop listening to the podcast and In a way, just stop having long, drawn out conversations with your buddy about things that don't portray to your actual hunt and get back to actually picking up deer on the hillside. So that's the mental side of glassing. And I wanted to go in so much more in depth on that. Like I feel like there's a lot more to uncover there and a lot more of my thoughts on it. But Elaine said that was too boring of a full on podcast. So we're gonna move on to some other topics. But if you guys want I think it's definitely something to hash out a little bit more. Or I'd love to, you know, have other other guests on and probably talk to them about it too, if they've ever thought about that while they're sitting there glassing and see if there is like a key to these people who are out consistently finding animals when they're on the mountain. Like, are they doing something special? Are they doing the same thing here by closing their mind off to everything else but the task at hand? All right, we're gonna go into next little next little segment here. Sorry, I had to drink a little, I don't know what this is. Spin drift. Real squeezed fruit. Probably really bad for me. Some flavored water. Crap. But yeah, I want to talk through my my go to optic setup. So I get a question all the time about my optic setup, kind of why I carry what I carry, sometimes different hunts. You might see me using something else. But for the most part, this is my go to optic setup. And I'll kind of give a little bit of the why around it. But you probably know my spotting scope suggestion for this. So if you've been following me for any number of years, you'll know that my go-to optic almost all the time. backpack hunts, day hunts, truck hunts, whatever it may be, Sravsky spotting scope 115 adjective with a BTX adapter on there or an ATX and on Pretty much all the hunts I go on where I take my one fifteen, I will carry the BTX and I will carry the ATX. The BTX to me is for finding animals. Can't find an animal or can't kill an animal unless you find an animal. So to me, that's that little edge I can gain by having a giant optics set up set up. Yes, it's super heavy. Yes, sometimes I even get annoyed carrying it. But there's certain areas, as you all know, in my gear kit when I'm not willing to sacrifice weight for and that's my optics and that's my rifle. both those things are at the end of the day what's gonna help me kill. Yeah, there's a lot of other things that help you kill as well. But those are the two things that really aid in my ability to find an animal and kill an animal. So that one fifteen always is with me. Yeah, there's certain maybe really crazy backpack hunts where I'll try to borrow, you know, a sixty-five mil objective from someone here at Go Hunt. Or maybe I'll switch it up to a different optic setup. But I just love being able to sit on a mountain and glass with that one fifteen, glass of that BTX setup. And just scan really far distances away. I want to be able to pick out animals that are on the next mountain range. Obviously it gets kind of annoying sometimes being a fixed thirty-five power and trying to glass some of those, you know, really close mountain ranges that are in how a thousand yards and in, it's really difficult. It's really great for, you know, really extreme distances. But once I find an animal with the BTX, I do not like digiscoping off the BTX. I know there's tons of digiscoping options out there. but it's always cumbersome 'cause you always have to like For the most part, you know, take a little adapter, put it on there, that's gonna move the spawning scope back or yeah, move the spawning scope back and forth. so what I would prefer to do in that situation is I would I definitely do carry an adapter to digiscope off of, but if I have time and the buck's far away, I know it's not gonna get away in you know, five seconds that's gonna take me to swap over, I will leave my 115 objective, mount it on my tripod. I will swap the BTX off and I'll put the ATX on. I like the ATX a lot for being able to zoom in. That has a lot higher magnification. What's that like a 70 power? I believe. So it allows me to zoom in to get way better digiscope footage to analyze that buck I'm looking at a lot more than the BTX, because the BTX, when I'm digiscoping, when I have my phone mounted on there, I can you know use digital zoom and zoom in, but that footage gets a little bit grainy and a little bit hard to pick out. Like, is that an extra or is that just his G3? Or, you know, I'm trying to judge you know, size class of antlers. And that sort of thing. So a lot of times I do like to swap over to the ATX, especially when I'm trying to video for myself, video for hunts, for hunt films, I should say. So I love carrying that thing around all the time. obviously, you know, I do have some other optic setups. but first off, I will say I paid for that 115 BTX ATX setup with all of my own money. and while the optic is very heavy, it'll make your wallet a lot lighter. But I felt like it was one hundred percent worth it to me to pick up the the one fifteen BTX and ATX. I think I got it. I was an early adopter to the one fifteen. Maybe it was a year. I think it might have been out for a year when I picked it up, but I'd always wanted a set of big eyes and I felt like this is the best option for me. you know, rather than those COA, really the COA Highlanders, big eyes. Cause it's just a modular setup. Like I like I said, I can take a sixty-five, I can I'm fortunate to have friends who have them. So I could potentially borrow a sixty-five or I could buy one if I did feel like there was a need there on some other crazy hunts where I want to save some weight. So it's definitely not an optic you would carry everywhere. I try to as best I can, but like I said, it does come at a big weight penalty in your backpack. But again, I like to class everything that's possible. But like I said, I do have some other optics. obviously I've been testing a little bit of that Sporo, you know, A T balance, their stabilized spotting scope. I have a straight version of the well it's the only version right now, the six hour Oscar six. Both of those optics I do love a lot. I just don't know exactly right now in my life or hunting situations where I find the stabilized spotter is highly beneficial. It's it's really great. And if I honestly didn't own any spotter right now, I probably would have you know either picked up the Swaro or the Oscar six from six hour. Both of them kinda do things a little bit different. There's pros and cons to both. obviously Swaros big higher priced egg, but SIG has a lot great features, better battery because the battery is, you know, takes double A's rather than a sole battery or their proprietary battery that Swaro has. But there's definitely different options out there. So obviously the hunts I go on I might grab one of those, but I'm in a unique position where I can, you know, grab things here and there and test them out and a lot of times I'll send them back. But I do have that. side of it, but if I was just gonna buy one and I still was just gonna buy one to this day, like even with the stabilized spotters that are out there now and some of these other new spotters that Swore 115 BTX and ATX, that is king. If I was just gonna do one eye piece, obviously the BTX is a lot for a lot of situations, but behind it with a glass with two eyes is absolutely phenomenal. That's one of the main reasons I love glassing with that BTX, a lot less eye strain. can focus in everything kind of seems like it's, you know, more clear in a way because you're glassing with two eyes and your eyes are not like squinted and you know that strain you get from squinting with one eye all the time. If I was just gonna buy one, I would probab maybe lean some people towards the ATX just 'cause the BTX is a lot. I do have a lot of or not a lot of friends, but I know several friends who have purchased a BTX for their Swaro and eventually they have sold it 'cause it just wasn't for them. But I figure for me where I live, hunting in the desert a lot, hunting a lot of this open country, high desert type stuff like BTI Camilla Glass really long range is really, really effective for me. On the Bino side, once you go stabilize, you can't come back. Let's just let's just put that right up front. So I've been a stabilized fan since the OG model that Sigas came out with. And I've seen, you know, their whole transition throughout the years. And Right now, the one I really love a lot is the Zulu Six HD X Pro. It's the sixteen by fifties. I have swapped back and forth sometimes with the regular HDX, which is their smaller single bot battery model. The HDX Pro is a dual battery. and it's a sixteen by forty two. This one, the HDX Pro is a sixteen by fifty, so it does have a little bit better light gathering capabilities than the forty twos. it's a little bit heavier, which that's sometimes why I swap back and forth between the two, but Stabilize on a mountain, my gosh. Being able to glass comfortably all day long. I can mount it on a tripod for that set for the HDX pros. I do have an ASIAC adapter that goes around it. It's basically this little, I don't know, 3D printed thing that loops around there and has a little arca plate kind of built into the bottom. And then on my the regular Z06 HGXs, the 16 by 42s, I have a Tricer Z6 mounted on the bottom that basically goes in the little battery compartment and that has ARCA. basically an archer plate on the bottom of it. But so I can still mount it on a tripod if need to. And a lot of times I do mount it on a tripod and glass with or without stabilization on because I really want to try to grid out a a landscape. That's the one kind of downside, I guess you could say, to stabilized optics. When you're hand home all the time, it's a little bit harder to do that fine detail work of gritting out a mountain. that's why mounting on a tripod I can get the best of both worlds because I can have stabilized on it. I can turn it on, I can leave it off, I can pull it off and hand hold. But the biggest benefit is being able to hand hold those by nose all day and be able to lean back in a comfortable glassing position. I don't have to be leaned forward, hunched around my tripod. you know, trying to glass. I can actually, you know, lean back, glass with glass with one hand. I don't have to put my hands over my my the brim of my hat to like help stabilize it. I can be leaning over on a rock, leaning over against a tree, I can be standing up hiking. And flip that stabilization mode on and boom, it's like I'm glassing off a tripod even though I'm hand holding hand holding it. So I've tried out by no since running stabilized for the longest time. And every time I do, I just wish I had my stabilized. Like it's it's fully honest with you. Once you go stabilized, you just can't go back. And I understand there's other optic companies out there, Swaro, they're optics are super bright. They're really nice. They are. but to me it's the features that help me find animals and help me kill animals. So I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit on not even really sacrifice, but just not have that, I guess, tool in my toolkit 'cause I do feel like that stabilization method does help me find more animals. Obviously if you're gonna, you know, get a pair of NLP or Swaros and mount on a tripod the whole time. They're phenomenal. They're great. but once you pull back and handhold them, you're definitely shakier and You can start to realize or maybe you haven't realized this yet, but a lot of times when you're glassing and trying to be super stable, you can eventually start to feel your heart beating as you're glassing. You can like literally hold your binos out there and as your heart is beating, you know, your binos are are moving around. Like you don't get that with stabilized. Stabilize will cut that right out and it'll cut all that wind out too. It'll cut out that adrenaline if you hike it up a mountain when trying glass something. But I know there's different tools for different people, but for me in my hunting style, chasing mule deer, Yeah, stabilization's king. And I absolutely love those Zulu Six HGX Pros from Six Hour. And you would have to do a lot to pry those things out of my hand and make me not take those on a mountain, because they're just that great. then rangefinder. I don't really talk about rangefinders too often when I'm talking about optics, but the rangefinder is obviously a very, very important tool, especially me as a rifle shooter. Whether it's long range practice at the range or out while I'm hunting, I want a rangefinder that is in a binocular form and not built into a binos. Yes, I do have a pair of binoculars with a rangefinder built into it, but on hunts, I do prefer having a standalone range finder. Again, when you combine all these features into one, there's a lot of times you're sacrificing something, or at least in my mind, I feel like you're sacrificing something, whether it's different features, you're you're adding more weight, you're adding more complexity to it. Where a single handheld minocular style range finder is just in my mind. It's simple. I can, you know, have my bino up, I can have my range finder and say, well, Brady, don't you want to combined? But yeah, it's gonna come out of weight and it's gonna have a cost. And I just like I don't know the simplicity of the handheld monocular style range finder. So I use a six hour kilo eight K ABS Gen two range finder that has applied ballistics built into it. So I can get all my atmospherics, my dope. all the real time data I need to make an a effective shot. So obviously I have a kestrel as well that I can get dope from. But when I'm in the field, it's just quick and easy. All my data is, you know, dialed in. It's like my brother says, everyone overcomplicates killing an animal. All you gotta do is range, look at the dope, dial the turret, press the trigger, kill the animal. It's that simple. obviously though it comes with a lot of practice. You can't it's not just an easy button and you'd be like, my gun sheets thousand yards out box. I can do that in real time. It's not the case. You have to put a lot of time in. But with these tools, it does make things a little bit easier and be able to get the dope right from my rangefinder. And I do, you know, just appreciate that side of it. just how simple it is and how that technology has kind of advanced to make me myself a more effective rifle hunter. I always did the animal to make a perfect shot possible every single time. obviously sometimes it doesn't happen in the field, but at least now I know I have the correct tools to lead me to that and all the practice I do helps me be more effective. So I absolutely love that rangefinder. tripod. Tripod that I use on my mule deer hunts, spring bear hunts. a lot of times they're pretty much the same tripod, but I will kind of move around tripods based on different situations. So right now I'm really, really enjoying the Tricer BC tripod. It's a tripod that is not the most compact. It's it's still really lightweight, and I can still stand in glass if I need to, which is kind of what I like about it. You never know in situation when you want to stand up and glass off a tripod. Obviously, not skyline yourself somewhere, but so it's not kind of middle of the road. It's not the lightest, it's not their AD, which is a little bit lighter setup when you really can't stand in glass with that. But I really like that tripod a lot, especially their new version that folds a little bit. more together with that tritech column technology. on top of that, I will mount the Tricer 360, which if you don't know what the Tricer 360 is, it's another one of those pieces of gear. And I'm not just trying to talk about this like brand this or this brand. But like when companies do make cool pieces of gear, I take Note and the Tricer 360 though, it's a little device that has an ARCA plate on the bottom and allows you to mount any ARCA accessory on top of it. So I basically take my tripod center column mount the 360 and then I mount a pan head of some sorts on top of that. But the Tricer 360 allows you to micro pan. So it has a little lever that comes up the side and a bunch of, I don't know, gears inside of it. It allows you to slightly rotate the little handle. And that optic is going to very slowly pan to the right and then you could feather it over and it's gonna slowly pan to the left. So yeah, there's great fluid heads out there, and yeah, they're super smooth moving back and forth. But to be able to have your spotting scope, if I'm having my BTX or I'm having my Binance mount on the tripod, and I am using that micro panning, I don't have to have I don't have to use the no the bridge of my nose anymore to try to move the binoculars back and right left and right when I'm panning, or probably usually like to try to glasses right to left. I can just use that micro panning feature to slowly go through that terrain. That way I'm glassing again focused. And I'm able to pick out slight, more subtle details a lot easier because it's slowly moving through there and I'm able to pause it. I can move it a little bit more. And it really works out r great for when I'm at the range trying to digiscope people's shots or in the field, even when I'm trying to track animals when they're moving. It's just really smooth to be able to move it and have that spotting scope or by no's move back and forth if you're trying to record digiscope through any of your optic setup. So I feel like that's a awesome feature. Like It doesn't weigh that much. It does add a little bit of weight. Can't remember with the weight is at top of my head, but it's a cool feature. And you can use it with any you don't have to use it with any trice product, you can use it in any product you want to. So it'll mount, like I said, with any Arca Swiss compatible device you have out there. And the bottom two, you don't even really have to use the ARCA if you want to. If there is a quarter twenty or a three eighths stud, I think you just mount it to any tripod without trying to put it on a plate. And yeah, then head on top of that. So I use the Tricer BP fluid, fluid head when I'm using a lot of my big optics. This is that one system that basically has that big I don't know, it's kind of like a disc brake setup on the side. And the cool thing is about that one, you can actually move that handle multiple different positions. So I like having the gear on my right side and I like having that handle facing where I'm glassing, so not towards my body, away from my body. It's really nice to just be able to feather it in. I can lock it in super tight. And even with the BTX one fifteen, it just doesn't move if I lock it all the way, but it's also still really fluid. And I can, you know, pan left and right with it up and down. And it's really great for shooting off of. I've shot my, you know, off my three hundred rum with my three hundred rum off that tracer BP fluid head quite a bit. So it's a great setup. if I want to save some weight, I will I've used the Tricer LP quite a bit. That's I think it weighs four point five ounces. It's a awesome, really ultra light pan head, very, very buttery smooth when you're moving around. but the new one I've actually been testing out. So I was fortunate enough to get one before they were launched to kind of test it out a little bit this spring. And that was the tricer SP. So actually I used it in Australia early this year and then on some of my spring bear bear hunt. So it's kinda like a it's a Hybrid pan head and ball head system all in once. You have the ball head on the bottom, which is super great for a lot of times if you're setting your tripod up and trying to glass and trying to pan back and forth and you know your tripods at the slight angle so your the top part is kicked off to the left or right or whatever it is. And you always have to, you know, move down to your tripod leg and you know, lower your tripod leg, raise your tripod leg, that sort of thing. with that ball head system, now you can just simply loosen that ball head. I can kick that. head over a little bit and then I can lock that in place and then I can still use the basically fluid panning that you would use on the Tricer LP but now it's basically all that built into one. It's also great for shooting off of. I know a lot of you guys who are you know competition rifle shooters or whatever, most of those tripods you use are kind of ball head design on the bottom because there's really nice to shoot off of you can make quick adjustments, subtle movements and lock it in place and then shoot off of it. This is definitely a trimmed down system. I have not shot with my 300 Rum off it yet. but you definitely could in a pinch use it to shoot with the rifle off of. It does lock down that ball head really nice and all those other, you know, knobs adjustments on there. You can lock them down really tight. But you're basically getting the best of both worlds. when I'm taking photos, it's really great to use to use that ball head portion of the tricer SP to just, you know, adjust different angles when I'm trying to take photos off a tripod, that sort of thing. But it does have really good benefits when I am out in the field glassing, like I said, the different terrain or whatever, I can just, you know, move it in position. I'd really need or get a lot quicker. that way I'm just more proficient in my glassing. So I like to describe it as the tricer the SP is the tricer LP on steroids. I should probably slow down my talking. As you can see, every time I talk about something I'm really excited about, I talk really, really fast. And I need to work on that. especially when I'm talking about tricer products, because all their Any product for that matter, all their names are always crazy and weird. S P L P B C B P. so hopefully most of that made sense. one other tripod I want to mention really quick. I actually do a lot of glassing with my Swaro 115 BTX setup. This is normally what I use when weight isn't a concern, but I do love the Tricer JC. Now this is one of those tripods that does allow you to add or remove these like Metal leg sections that basically screw out the bottom cups of your legs, and then you'll be able to slide up these leg weights and be able to screw them in. And so it adds a lot of stability to your tripod. A lot of times I will take those out because that tripod has a little bit thicker leg diameter, so it's a little bit stiffer for glassing. so that one does work really well for heavy optics, and then up on top of it, it actually has built-in micro panning. So this was release before the 360. So it actually has a separate knot or a knob that's already built in for that micro panning that the 360 have. So I really enjoy that and I usually use that tricer BP on top of it. So that's one if I really want to do some long distance glassing, glassing from my truck, where weight is not a concern. I still have backpacked with it, but it's definitely a little heavier setup, but it's also a little bit nicer setup to shoot off of with a with a rifle. So that's kind of my optics setup in a nutshell. I'm sure there's more stuff I could talk to you about there. But I do get a lot of questions about it. People keep sending me DMs all the time about my optics setup and questions for them about certain hunts. So I figure it's probably a good time just to run through my optics and what I'm using, why I'm using. Now I just want to go through some other just random little things here since Lane didn't want me to do mental side of glassing the whole entire time. So these are other really good glassing things that I try to do all the time and hopefully they'll help you out as well. obviously we're talking about optics in this podcast, talking about glassing. I fully feel that optics are your best friend, but don't assume that the optics will do the work for you. and why what I mean by that is you still have to use the tool and utilize it and have the dedication behind the glass to find animals. You can't just say, I'm gonna spend a lot of money on whatever brand of binos and they're gonna find a 200 inch deer for me. That's not the case at all. You have to be due dilig put your due diligence in behind the optic to actually find those animals. So get out there, do all the bunch of practice you can. Hopefully you're scouting a lot. Hopefully you're trying to figure out how to glass and how to actually find animals in the field because just having the best optics does not mean you're gonna find all the animals. It's a tool at the end of the day, but you have to find that tool and figure out how to use it for you. as most of you probably know, hopefully if you're listening this podcast that if you want to find more deer, binoculars, they fully will become an extension of your eyes. and what I mean by that is you should have binos with you all the time and in a readily available position, bino harness, that sort of thing. But mount them on a tripod. Literally does no point if you have non-stabilized binos, if you're trying to glass for mule deer and you're not mounting them on a tripod. Yes, I've done that before. once I figured out glassing of a tripod, I don't know how many years ago that was, 20 some years ago now. But it changed my life. It honestly did. mount your tripods. There's so many different binocular adapters out there nowadays that'll make your life a lot easier. mount them on tripod, but also put your the extension to your eyes thing, you have to be glassing all day long. You're out there to kill. End of the day, that's the whole goal. This is our, like I said before, this is our Super Bowl. This is our one week of the year where we have been waiting for Since last hunting season ended. Go if you're going on a hunt and trying to find animals and you have the time to glass, and that's the whole goal. You went to n spot went to that knob to glass, you should be glassing. So if you aren't glassing, you won't find deer. And again, yes, there's other glass, there's other techniques you can do to try to kill deer. but I love glassing. And I've obviously glassed with my knees or my elbows on my knees to try to stabilize, you know, non stabilize by noes. But a tripod, if you don't have stabilizer allow you to pick out those fine details on a mountain in a controlled manner. And yeah, like I again said earlier, glassing for bucks. I'm trying to pick apart every small detail of the train. I want to be able to memorize how everything on that mountainside looks. That way when I pan back through there again for the second time, I can tell when something looks off. Like a different shade of a shadow, like it's now not as dark as was before. Maybe that is a deer. Like the backside of a deer walking through there, or that ear twitch, subtle, you know, hint of an antler tyne shining in a little pocket, tail flicking, that sort of thing. So pick apart everything in such a small detail and use your optics to the best your ability. This next one, gosh, I probably need a big old asterisk next to it. I'll start off by saying this is the statement I want to make. Stop glassing for bucks. probably like Brady, you're an idiot. so what I mean by that is s when you're out glassing, stop glassing like for the entire body. I think, you know, I caught myself doing this a lot back in the day where you set down a glass, you're like, I know what the shape of a deer looks like. and I'm gonna try to find that. And the whole e everyone's vision is that Buck is going to be broadside on that mountain, you know, 500 to a thousand yards out in the open and That's what you're looking for. So you're gonna glass the mountainside, and that's that visual picture you have in your head of what you're trying to find when you're glassing. But let's face it, there's not a lot of times when bucks are standing out in the open unless you have a high country velvet hunt. Maybe you're hunting private land, maybe you're hunting some big, just open country. yeah, you're just not gonna see that. So if you're looking for a giant buck or elk for that matter, just to pop in your by nose, like see that thing sitting there broadside, you're kind of setting yourself for setting yourself up for a rough time of glassing. you again, you need to think slash look for those small objects that signal to your brain that you're looking at a deer. What I really like to do too is like when I get to a glassing spot, I always try to find a deer. I don't care if it's a doe. I don't care if it's a coyote, a rabbit, something out there to Get your mind thinking about the size of objects that you're looking at at that distance. 'cause it I bet you've noticed it before, that once you find that first deer on a hunt, everything else starts to click after that. You're like, okay, I'm glassing two miles away and you're you're thinking, you know, this object is gonna be so tiny out there, you have to really focus in, but actually it's gonna be a lot bigger, or you're looking for a giant a giant object like a deer, 'cause you're thinking it's gonna be, you know, this whatever size in that area you're looking at, but it's actually gonna be a lot smaller. So it's like Once I find that first deer, everything seems to click after that. I'm like, okay, that's what a deer looks like in this terrain. whether what type of vegetation it's in, if it's, you know, burnt off vegetation or if it's summer green grass, like you start to develop that mental picture of what you're actually looking at. So that's what you want to develop that image in our brain to know what we're looking for. But once I find that first deer, boom, everything starts to click. And now I'm like, okay, now I can now I know what I'm actually looking for. That's that shape, that's that size. of animal at that distance, so it helps me out. So I always try to like yeah, just use that to notice things when I'm out there. And again, looking for those small details. Again, that's why I say stop glassing for bucks, like a whole body. I mentioned a bunch of times in this podcast like I always do, but the ear twitch, the antler tine, color of a buck's, you know, gray face, the vertical line of a buck's leg as they're standing up feeding. Or even the horizontal view of a buck's back, you know, like you're sitting there glassing and there's not a lot of things that are horizontal on in nature besides for obviously like, you know, tipped over trees in that sense. everything else is kind of vertical. So if you see like a horizontal line in a patch of timber, like that should excite you right away. Like, is that a buck or not? Let me let me pause my binos now, let me focus in on that to see because that kind of looks out of place. Yeah, even just like locating the color difference of that buck compared to the terrain. That's that size reference thing again. The subtle details you're trying to look at. Like stop glassing, for big objects, hone in and fine-tune and just look for those small features I think will help you pick up deer a little bit easier. so yeah, that's a roundabout way to some weird analogy that I have in my head. I always went out there glassing, but yeah, just try to pick up that small details again. Think small always and try to hone in on those little things. I I do believe there's a lot of times you get up to glassing and you glass everything and you're like, hey, there's no deer here. but it's 'cause you glassed it casually. You you were thinking too much while you're glassing. You're you're glassing for a whole body of a buck and not thinking at a more smaller scale and just looking for those subtle details. Like all these little things combined together that we're talking about this podcast, I think will help you find animals 'cause it'll put you in the right mindset, the right attitude. The excitement level will be high because like, my gosh, I just saw, you know, an antler tyne flicking Like just moved a little bit, that's a buck right there. And then you're like you just get so amped up because you're like you're classing with such a fine-tuned, like a fine machine that you're just like you know exactly what you're doing, what you're there for, and you know you're not just casually doing things. Don't ever casually do things in life. I'm the very passionate person. everything I do is balls to the walls. Like I I love everything in life and I always try to do it the best of my ability. I'm not perfect by any means. That just keeps me excited and I just try to like how can I do things better all the time? Like every time I'm out hunting, every time I'm out shooting, every time I'm doing anything, anything at work, like how can I do things better? a lot of times that's slowing down, thinking harder and you know, trying to gather as much detail as I can, especially while glassing. So that's kind of, I believe, the podcast in a nutshell. Where are we at right now? We're at fifty-two minutes here. maybe I'll touch on one more thing really quick. there's this notion I think a lot of people have when they're out glassing or out trying to e scout or even scouting boots on the ground is like, is there an ideal glassing spot? I know I always look at stuff on the map and I'm like, gosh, this There's not a great place to glass right here. Like I can't see a full 360 or I can't see this giant basin. I can only see part of it. I do feel truly behind this statement that you do always have to give up something on a glassing numb. Yeah, I will always want a master vantage point where I can see a ton of country, I can see all the way around me, I can see in every little nook and cranny of a canyon before I move on. But a lot of times that's not the case. So sometimes I won't be able to see my left because there's a thick patch of trees. Or I can't see the bottom of a canyon. Like I've done it before where I've approached something and I'm like, well, if I glass from right here, I can't see the bottom. So I am going to now expose myself and sneak down through here in the dark, even if it's early morning or even it's in the middle of day when I'm trying to move spots. Cause I wanna able to see that bottom. So I keep sneaking, keep sneaking, keep sneaking, and that mountain this way the shape of it is, you know, those big roller type mountains where you think you're gonna get to a point where you can see it on the bottom, but that train isn't steep enough, and you end up just cruising in the open for a while or in some sparse timber where you think you're hidden and you're exposing yourself. So stop thinking that there's a master glan a master optimum glassing point. Glass maybe up high a little bit. Yeah, you might not be able to see that bottom, but give it like forty-five minutes of glassing here and then maybe move. That way you're not going to give yourself up for an animal to see. Maybe going to spook you know, a dough bedded down below you and it's going to blow out and go drop down to that bottom of that cany and blow something out. Yeah, that animal's down there, but you never would have known it anyway. So just kind of like working things a little bit slowly, stay mobile throughout the day. And I like to keep moving, so I can glass an area from different angles. That'll allow me to get a little better picture of the area and then hopefully allow me to avoid terrain terrain features that might have been blocked before. But I don't really believe, yeah, there's probably some outliers out there, that there's a spot on a mountain that is the best glassing point at all times. There's always always other things that are gonna get in the way that you can't obviously see everything from from one glassing spot. So definitely places are gonna be difficult to glass from, but don't be discouraged if you can't see everything from a particular glassing sp glassing spot. That's I guess the main point of this last topic that is there an ideal glassing spot? And I don't really believe there is. So just kind of like use the terrain as you see fit, but also keep in mind that if you keep moving around through the Through the woods, through the mountains, that eventually you're gonna be seen by some some animal or spook something and your whole plan will go out the window because you thought there was probably a better glassing spot than that one. Maybe should have sat down and glassed that for a little bit before you, you know, dropped down the mountain. So that's probably what I would do in situation. So yeah, that's the podcast in a nutshell. Hope you guys got some value out of that. Hopefully you found value. In that topic, I think that's the meat and potatoes of this episode. Just yeah, there's so many important things here when it comes to glassing, but best of luck to you guys. Do you guys have some tags? I really hope you find success this fall. I'm so excited for the hunting season. Got a couple good tags myself. trying to look for some other ones right now. but yeah, appreciate you guys. And as always, if you do like the podcast. Go over to Spotify. Go to Apple, wherever you're listening to, go to YouTube. give us a review wherever you can. Obviously, on YouTube you leave comments. that always helps. But leave us a review, Spotify, Apple, wherever you leave them, good, bad, indifferent. just love to hear your feedback. And I truly do appreciate everyone who listens to whether it's my podcast, Miller Tines, Trails, Game Trail, or our Big Hunt Guys podcast. Obviously, they're under the same. umbrella when you're listening to the podcast, but I do appreciate every one of you guys. love the comments, love the feedback. At the end of the day, I just love talking about hunting. I love helping people. and I love learning. I'm I'm a sponge. I have this on my desk right here. David Long's book, Public Land Mule is the bottom line. I read this book two times already in twenty twenty six and I know I do get a lot of people asking about my entire Mule Deer book list. And I am Going to do a podcast on it here shortly. And I know season's coming up and everything. I'm just trying to read through a few of the books so I can give a little bit better thought process or thoughts around them. But I do believe I own every single mule deer book in existence. I try to find them all the time, all these random hidden gem ones. Sometimes I don't even know about it, but I search the internet for mule deer books. 'Cause like I said, I am I love learning. And that's why I love jumping on here to the podcast. I am not an expert in every field by any means. I still fail all the time as everyone knows when I'm on hunts. I do have some success every now and then. And I have wasted a lot of time, wasted all the money, wasted a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. And I'm hoping, you know, that is talking on this podcast all the time, passing on some things I learned to you. Like I always say to you, if there's just one thing you learn from a podcast, an article I write, a video you watch of mine, like I take that as a win and it truly does mean the world to me when you guys, you know, reach out, whatever it may be. And you know, just yeah, appreciate everyone, sir, all their support. So we're gonna stop there. I gotta head home, carry all my rifle stuff. I gotta do a bunch of probably do some reloading tonight. I'm gonna jump on the treadmill, pound about seven miles tonight, and probably back to shoot my rifle tomorrow. So appreciate you guys. Best of luck again the season and I'll be back at ya next time.