Every hunter should understand and prioritize taking care of their rifle and optics in the field. When the time comes to take a shot, knowing that the rifle has been cared for through adverse conditions will bring you peace of mind and lead to better shooting. I protect my optics and action with a specialized scope cover. Covering the muzzle with electrical tape before and after shooting is also a best practice. Watch this video to see my system. I’d love to hear if you have any tips or tricks, so leave a comment on YouTube with your feedback.
The Vortex Optics LHT riflescope hits the sweet spot between magnification and weight. A maximum zoom of 22x will be sufficient for most realistic hunting situations. It is built with the quality, durability and reliability we have come to expect from Vortex Optics. If you are looking for a riflescope, look no further than the one I have selected for my own rifles.
The Vortex Optics LHT 4.5–22×50 FFP Riflescope is a lightweight hunting scope with a first focal plane reticle and a 50mm objective lens. It is designed to provide clear and bright images in low-light conditions, making it a good choice for hunting in mountainous terrain where visibility can be limited. The scope also features a long eye relief, allowing for comfortable and accurate shooting even with heavy recoil.
My previous scope was the Vortex Optics Razor HD AMG 6–24×50 FFP scope. Compared to the LHT, AMG is a more powerful scope designed for long-range shooting. It features a first focal plane reticle, a 50mm objective lens, and a wider magnification range, making it ideal for shooting longer distances. However, its heavier weight may not be ideal for mountain hunting, where a lighter setup may be more comfortable for carrying and maneuvering.
A moose we took at >500 yards with the AMG scope and my Gunwerks Clymr rifle (300 WM).
Ultimately, the best scope for mountain hunting will depend on your specific needs and preferences. It’s essential to consider factors such as the terrain you’ll be hunting in, the distances you’ll be shooting at, and your personal shooting style when selecting a scope.
Field shooting while hunting poses numerous challenges to new and experienced hunters alike. The biggest challenge will be the hunter themselves: “buck fever,” stress, nerves, pressure, whatever you want to call it. Seeing the animal of a lifetime within shooting range raises the adrenaline, unlike anything else. Taking the shot you’ve trained for with an elevated heart rate and everything that comes with stress is a topic for another day. Today’s topic is about getting a good rest and ensuring your rifle is steady before you take the shot.
“If you can get closer, get closer. If you can get steadier, get steadier.”
Jeff Cooper, The Art of the Rifle
Mountain hunts offer all kinds of difficulties: elevation to climb, inclement weather, remoteness and a lack of cover (there are lots more). This last item can also be an advantage to the rifle shooter. Mountain environments are often relatively clear of high vegetation to block your line of sight. Position yourself on a spine or ridge overlooking your quarry, and you may have a clear trajectory for your bullet. More often than not, the ground feature where you’re laying will be far enough that an off-hand shot is impossible. The answer: get low and get steady.
Mountain shooters need to be prepared to take long shots. Shooting out past 300 yards will introduce much complexity into your ballistics and require all your skill. Now, what if this shot comes on day 10 of your once-in-a-lifetime sheep hunt? You’ll wish you had a better rest. What if this shot comes on day 3 of your only hunt of the year? You’ll wish you had a better rest.
Are you ready for this shot?
The goal is to keep your rifle still while shooting. Your bench rest or a sandbag is a superb option at the range. These allow you to test your ballistics as far as your optics are capable and reduce the shooter’s error.
On the mountain, things are a bit different. The ground may be sloping. You are likely hugging the ground to remain hidden. Winds can be swirling, and your heart will be pumping. So how do you stay steady on your mountain hunt? I’m going to go over the different kinds of rest.
Bipod
The bipod is a convenient method to steady your rifle. Most bipods have independently adjustable legs and possibly even additional adjustment capacity to ensure your rifle is horizontally level. Canting the rifle to one side will result in a missed show. I often hunt with my bipod on the rifle at all times, requiring just a few flicks of the wrist to open the bipod and have a good rest. Bipods allow the shooter to raise and lower the muzzle quickly, which can also introduce instability. The use of a rear bag will provide additional steadiness to the muzzle. You can use a rolled-up jacket or another article of clothing under the butt of the rifle to act as the rear bag.
Bipods offer the disadvantage of requiring the hunter to lie prone on the ground. While lying prone does provide the most stability, it also requires a clear line of sight from the ground. When grass or other low vegetation blocks the line of sight, you may need another method to stabilize your shot.
Tripod
According to the Precision Rifle Blog, “92% of the top shooters said they owned a tripod they use with their rifle.” Hunters and match shooters have similar, though different, needs. The tripod’s size and weight are less important to a match shooter but critical for hunters, especially on backpack hunts. However, if 92% of the best shooters agree on something, it’s worth consideration.
Tripods are a serious upgrade from bipods in two main ways: maximum height and stability. Tripods can be easily adjusted to various heights, even as tall as required for a standing shot. The bipod will win for a shooting position very close to the ground, though most tripods can accommodate this in a pinch.
For seated, kneeling or standing shooting, the tripod will give you a steadier rest resulting in more accurate shots.
Downsides of Tripods and How to Manage These Costs
Additional cost: If you already use a tripod for glassing, it would be ideal for the same unit to be functional as your shooting rest. Also, some pieces of gear are worth a proper investment. The tripod is one of them.
Challenges at shallow height: You may not have the room to spread the tripod legs out as far as needed to get your rifle close to the ground. Often there are workarounds to the requirement of being at ground level. With a bipod, the best position may be very close to the ground and not from behind vegetation or a terrain feature. With the tripod, you have the flexibility and stability to move backwards for a more extended shot or behind a bush or boulder.
Time Requirements: Setting up a tripod takes time and energy, and you may be doing this when you have little of either. The flip side is that you’ll gamble with inadequate rest, like your buddy’s shoulder, a tree or your pack. Do you want to take the time to do things correctly or not? Your choice.
Shooting off Your Pack
We all carry packs, so a pack is an obvious option as a rest. Unfortunately, backpacks offer limited support to the rifle, leaving the shooter to control the muzzle’s direction. Further, you are limited with a very low shooting position or contorting your body to shoot from the pack you are propping up with your knee. Should your quarry move out of your shooting lane, you must pick up your pack and move it to a new shooting location, taking precious seconds. This time requirement is similar to what you will encounter with a tripod but without the tripod’s superb stability. Conclusion: your backpack can act as an impromptu shooting rest, but it’s not the best choice.
I never shoot off my pack, but this setup is similar.
Shooting off a Tree
Many of us hunt in wooded areas. Tree trunks and branches can act as your shooting rest. I have used this in a pinch, but clearly, you’re leaving a lot to chance if you depend on a tree in the right location for your shot.
Not ideal!
Bonus: Fill the Space
At Gunwerk’s Long Range University, I learned about “filling the space.” When you consider all the space between your limbs, your trunk and the rifle as you prepare to take your shot, you will see the places where your body and rifle can move. Closing this space with a different body position, a jacket, or other items can make your shot more stable.
In a seated position, you have lots of room under your arms. Can you stuff something in there to tighten things up?
A bag under the butt of the rifle or between the butt and your body can also make a difference in a prone position.
Take-Aways
As Jeff Cooper said in The Art of the Rifle, “If you can get closer, get closer. If you can get steadier, get steadier.” The tools and techniques I describe above will help you make the best shot possible when it matters most.
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Gear selection for mountain hunting is a skill that takes foresight and a willingness to take some risks. I recommend taking as little as possible. You won’t find many “nice to haves” on this list.
When selecting what optics to bring into the field, the first thing to know is that a spotting scope is always required. Spotting scopes provide the ability to properly evaluate an animal’s calibre and help you decide whether getting closer is necessary. You will also spot bedded or well-hidden game much easier with a spotting scope than with binoculars.
I’ve seen people take two spotting scopes. In most cases, I would recommend against this approach. A mountain hunt with two hunters will not benefit much from having two spotting scopes, and the additional weight and bulk will be more of a hindrance than a help. When I am hunting with someone else, we spend most of our time on binoculars. If something is of particular interest, whoever needs the spotting scope will grab it to take a closer look.
My favoured setup for Yukon mountain hunting is to have each hunter with a pair of 10×42 binoculars. I use Vortex Optics’ Razor UHD binoculars with outstanding optical clarity and brightness. I spend a lot of time with these binoculars and can cover a lot of country with them, whether seated or standing. When two hunters use binoculars like these, they can cover much ground to a reasonable distance.
Ultimately, it’s not rocket science to decide what optics to bring. Minimizing weight while maintaining your capacity to hunt effectively would be best. Bringing a single spotting scope/tripod setup and two pairs of binoculars is the sweet spot for spotting power and weight for a pair of hunters.
When I’m packing for a mountain hunt, there are a few items that I will never forget at home and which form the basis of hunting style. Binoculars (10×42) and a binocular case, spotting scope (27–65×85), rifle, bullets. You get the idea. The final component of the necessary hardware is my tripod.
Ever since I first used the Ascend-14 in the field, I’ve been able to adapt the tripod to my hunting style and focus on what is most important: finding game.
I used a cheap little tripod for my spotting scope for the longest time. It was tiny and light but didn’t allow smooth panning, and even a light breeze was too much for it, forcing me to stay very low to the ground and find a windbreak when I was glassing far off. Additionally, the aluminum legs weren’t strong and were too short for any glassing where I wasn’t seated, making using binoculars to glass over bushes impossible. Shooting off this unit was totally out of the question.
My new tripod for mountain hunting addresses each of these shortfalls. The Really Right StuffAscend-14 with the Anvil-30 ball head allows for smooth panning, letting me focus on what I’m looking at instead of trying to get a good sight picture. The Ascend is built with premium carbon fibre tubes, offering incredible stiffness in a lightweight package and can withstand a stout breeze before I have to look for cover from the wind. The 1/4-turn sealed twist locks make extending the legs a breeze.
The Ascend-14 adapts beautifully to any glassing situation, including this rocky position where I wish to sit but not extend myself above the skyline.
The Ascend’s legs extend the tripod’s maximum height is 59.9″, allowing for all kinds of flexibility. I can extend the legs out at a wide-angle in windy conditions to give a huge footprint and outstanding stability in all but the worst conditions. In rocky terrain, extending one or two legs out quite far may be necessary to keep the tripod level and allow me to sit in the place that gives me the best glassing. I had to choose my position to suit the tripod with my old tripod, rather than the other way around.
Weighing in at 3.2 lb, the Ascend is strong enough to handle any optics I own. Paired with the Anvil-30 ball head, I can also shoot from the tripod, which has been a revelation and transformation of my shooting capabilities. This configuration is suited for flat, downhill, or uphill shooting, whether prone, seated or kneeling.
Paired with the Anvil-30 ball head, the Ascend-14 is an incredible shooting platform. Moments after we took this image, I took a 400-yard shot on a Dall’s Sheep ram in the McKenzie Mountains with Canol Outfitters. After days of hard hiking and a big investment in the hunt, my shooting platform was as comfortable and stable as any bench rest at my local shooting range.
An additional feature that I really love is the extendable quick column. The centre column allows me to raise the height of my optics even higher but is also easily removed to save weight. I tend to remove the column in the mountains as the tripod has sufficient height for the vast majority of my use cases.
The Ascend-14’s quick column allows maximum flexibility when choosing a glassing position. In this image, I am standing to gain height over the low bushes in this location.
Watch my discussion of the Ascend-14 in this video. I will walk you through how I use the tripod and show it to you in the field.
If you’re in the market to upgrade your mountain hunting tripod, the Really Right Stuff Ascend-14 should undoubtedly be at the top of your list. Investing in a premium tripod like this will make every future hunt more enjoyable and more successful.
I’ve been hunting moose for more years than I can remember, but it’s only recently that I’ve started to use a tripod for shooting. How well does the tripod lend itself to hunting moose in the Yukon? Can a moose hunter use a tripod to improve hunting success in terrain with high brush and other obstacles?
Off-hand shooting ability is admirable, and we should all aspire to be confident shooters in many shooting positions. Whether prone, seated, kneeling or on the tripod, we should be able to adapt to the situation presented to us when it’s time to take a shot on a trophy animal. However, certainly, an off-hand shot will seldom be the best possible shot. That’s where the tripod comes into play.
I’ve been using the Really Right StuffUltralight TFC-33 tripod with the BH-40 ball head for my moose and bison hunting. The strength and stability of this tripod are superb, as is its light weight and quick deployment.
I hunt moose during and after the rut and face high brush as a serious obstacle. Prone and seated shots are rarely possible, and if they are possible, they are likely very long shots. A tripod will be the best approach in these cases, and I will have plenty of time to set up and choose my shooting position. Even in tight timber, the tripod provides outstanding support, which I can move as I move through the bush.
I face chest-high brush from my shooting position or between the moose and me more often than not. Using a tall tripod like the Really Right Stuff Ultralight TFC-33 raises my rifle above the brush and provides benchrest-quality stability.
I’ve previously broken branches to use a tree branch as a rest, but this creates a lot of noise and requires luck to find a suitable tree and branch. Additionally, relying on a tree for rest means you are pinning your success on whether Mother Nature has put a tree in a convenient place. That doesn’t make any sense to me! If there happens to be a good tree, but the wind is blowing, your shooting rest will be moving as well.
Getting the rifle above terrain and vegetation obstructions is critical, as is stability. If you’ve never hunted moose with a tripod while hunting moose, please do give it a try.
The tripod provides outstanding support if a high-country shot allows me to shoot from a seated position. Here you can see how I am bracing my elbows on my knees, making for a very stable platform to take a longer shot.
What should you look for in a mountain hunting tripod head? Is this a piece of gear you should ignore, or can it be a link in your hunting chain that improves your odds of success? The answer to this question is an emphatic “yes”. There is no point putting your expensive spotting scope or rifle on a wobbly tripod or lightweight head that can’t handle the weight and wear and tear.
My wife Denise glassing rams before opening day off the Ascend-14 tripod and the Anvil-30 tripod head.
I need a tripod head to allow smooth glassing with the spotting scope and binoculars and act as a linkage to my tripod that performs when it’s time to take that shot. I’ve been using the Anvil BH-30 ball head from Really Right Stuff. It ticks all my boxes, including some I didn’t know I had.
The Anvil-30 is lightweight and is designed and built with incredible machining in the USA. The craftsmanship and forethought that Really Right Stuff puts behind all their products, including this unit, are second-to-none.
The Anvil’s lever release allows me to quickly attach my optics or rifle, and I have complete confidence that my Gunwerks ClymR rifle will remain locked in there until I decide to unlock it. The pan/tilt locking lever allows me to control the swivel of the head with my non-shooting hand, adjusting to a moving animal or allowing me to bring my sights to bear.
Moments after I took a single shot on my Dall’s Sheep ram while hunting in the Northwest Territories with Canol Outfitters.
The Anvil-30 allows the use of the standard Arca-Swiss plate on your optics or rifle, or even the Picatinny rail on your rifle. If you don’t have a rail, head over to your trusted gunsmith to have him install a Picatinny rail.
I have this head mounted on my Really Right Stuff Ascend-14 tripod, which is a superb and compact tripod that is perfectly suited for backpack hunting.
Should I leave my bipod behind if I have a great tripod? That’s a new question for me, as I’ve only been shooting from a tripod for a few short years. I’ve always carried the bipod with me. I’ve loved shooting sheep, and other mountain species off the bipod as stability is so important when taking anything longer than a short shot. For the weight, a bipod is a no-brainer when contrasted with shooting off a pack or some other improvised rest.
I’ve always glassed from tripods and carry one on every hunt. Shown: Really Right Stuff Ultralight TFC-33 with the Anvil-30 head.
The tripod changes the equation. I definitely need a tripod for my spotting scope and, sometimes, binoculars. Now that I have a rifle and tripod system that allows me to shoot easily, I’ve fallen in love with this new system’s outstanding versatility and performance. So where does this leave the bipod?
The main challenge with the tripod is that it requires a bit more time to setup up. You’ll need to fasten the rifle to the tripod and set the leg lengths to match the context. This takes a few seconds; there’s no denying that. However, you can mitigate the negative impact of this by getting your rifle and tripod set up before you expose yourself to the animal’s line of sight. Further, in the vast majority of situations, I absolutely have time. Yukon game animals are often bedded when I come across them or are feeding, and thus it’s not a matter of split seconds in most cases.
Watch my video where I walk through the strengths and weaknesses of the tripod versus the bipod.
An additional benefit of this slight delay is that it allows me to be more calculating and patient, making the most of the shot opportunity. A calm, deliberate shooter will be more successful than a rushed, tense shooter.
A fantastic bull moose I took off my Really Right Stuff Ulatrlight TFC-33 tripod. This setup allowed me to contend with the tall brush at my shooting position and down where the moose was.
Because the stability offered by a tripod is so good, the tripod will allow me to select better shooting locations, whether behind better cover or that provide a superior field of view. If the superior cover is 50 or 100 yards further from my target than where I would choose to use a bipod, I will still have a better shot.
If you’ve always used a bipod, check out the tripods from Really Right Stuff, and I promise you that you’ll be glad you did.
