PRO'S PICK
Phone Skope
By Dan Kidder Managing Editor
R
ubber or glass? That is the question. Would you rather invest in hours of walking to get to an animal you have spotted in your binoculars to determine whether it is something you would like to harvest or would you rather look through a spotting scope from miles away before deciding to make the hike or pass for a better animal? Both have pros and cons. If you rely on spot and hike, you can expend not only a lot of energy, but a lot of time that could be better spent looking for a better option. If you rely on glassing to determine the quality of an animal, you can expend a lot of money on good glass, but it can also wear out your eyes looking through the tiny eyepiece for hours. Phone Skope is a digiscoping adapter that transforms the relatively small eyepiece of your spotting scope or binoculars into a screen, by allowing you to attach your smartphone to your optic. It also lets you use your phone’s onboard camera to capture photos and video so you can show them to your buddies or look at them in more detail back at home base on a larger screen such as a television or computer monitor. There are several options on the market for this task, but at Sportsman’s News, we exclusively use Phone Skope products for our own hunting as well as capturing footage to bring Phone Skope lets you use your smartphone's onyou great video for Sportsman’s News Television. The other board camera with your spotting scope or binos to view products on the market take a much more universal approach and capture animals far off. This can save you hours and to their adapters and they generally are a “one-size-fits-none” miles of hiking to get a good look at them. approach in that they never seem to get the proper eye relief, alignment or clarity that Phone Skope gets. The reason the model case, coupled with an adapter, customized specifically for your particular Phone Skope adapters work better is that they utimake and model of optic. This properly aligns the camera on your device with the lize a two-piece format to use a specific phone optimal placement on the optic. With Phone Skope, you purchase to different pieces. First you select the proper case for your phone. These are available for most major manufacturers of smartphones. Obviously, this doesn’t include antiquated flip phones. It is the Twenty-First Century already and if you are still using those, then get ready to burn some shoe leather the same way the other cavemen hunted before you. These cases also can be purchased to slip over your favorite Otterbox or Lifeproof phone case without removing the phone from your protective cover of choice. The next piece you purchase is the eyepiece adapter that slips snuggly over the eyepiece of your optic. They make an outrageous number of these to accommodate the vast number of major optics-makers on the market. The selection of options is staggering. This adapter has three lugs on the outside that engage the case with a twist with three locking tabs on the phone. Once done, you may need to move the adapter back and forth a little on the eyepiece, but otherwise,
24 October 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
