Wolf Wilds › Hunting

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Still hunting and glassing

Moving slow through the woods and working the country with binoculars, so you see the animal before it sees you.

What you need

How

  1. Check the wind first and keep it in your face or across it. Moose and deer smell you long before they see you.
  2. Move a few steps, then stop and look for longer than you walked.
  3. Look for parts, not the whole animal: a flicker of an ear, a leg, a straight back line, a patch of the wrong colour.
  4. Pick a spot with a view: a knoll over a bog, an edge of a cutover, a pond shore.
  5. Sit, brace your elbows on your knees, and glass in a grid. Left to right in strips, near to far.
  6. Glass the edges of openings hardest. Animals come out of cover and go back into it.
  7. Go again at first light and last light, when moose and caribou move most.
  8. When you see an animal, stop, make a plan, and close in with the wind right and cover between you.

Do and don't

Do
  • Be sure of your target and what is beyond it before you ever raise the rifle.
  • Use the binoculars, not the rifle scope, to look at anything.
  • Know the legal hunting hours and your zone. See Seasons.
Don't
  • Do not point a scope at something you cannot yet identify. It could be a person.
  • Do not walk the skyline. Stay below the top of a ridge.
  • Do not rush the last hundred metres.

Watch for

Danger
  • Other hunters are in the same country. Wear your orange and never shoot at sound or movement.
  • Glassing late means walking out in the dark. Carry a light and know your way back.
  • A cow moose with a calf, or a startled bull in the rut, can charge. Give them room.

Notes

More moose are seen from a good seat with binoculars than by walking. The walking gets you to the seat.

The same slow way of moving works for watching animals with no rifle at all.

binocularsmoosewindstalking

Updated 2026-09-22

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