First World Stalking Conundrum - Stalking and sunglasses 😎

[wytonpjs]

Morning

Thoughts/ advice please. I’m just back off a warm holiday where I’ve been wearing high tint sun glasses all day and yesterday, managed to get out on a stalking outing with a colleague in the very warm and bright conditions. Driving to/from the ground - sunglasses on. Stalking the ground - sunglasses off but with wide brimmed Aussie hat on to give some protection but I found I was having to squint most all of the time due to the bright clear conditions. Thankfully, whilst I have to wear glasses for reading my long sight is good so thermal, binos and scope are all set up to use without glasses. Yesterday was an “on the sticks, off the sticks” sort of day and the last thing I wanted to do was to include the faff of having to deal with removing sunglasses before using the thermal/binoculars or to take a shot.

So, question: does anyone have a simple practical solution to wearing sunglasses when stalking? I seem to recollect there were some flip-up type sun glasses from years ago when fly fishing.

Any suggestions?

 

[Deerkeeper2]

Why can’t you use the Binos/TI/scope with sunglasses on?

 

[Herb64]

Sunglasses on a cord round my neck. Push them off, pick up thermal or binoculars, after use put glasses back on. Easy.

 

[mike308]

I wear lightly tinted prescription glasses when it's sunny and have no problems.

 

[Dunwaters]

Lenses with a slight yellow tint help to emphasise the red/brown spectrum and make animals pop from the background.
Dark green/grey lenses reduce the contrast so that they blend in.
Other than that, slow down a bit and use your Mk1 eyeballs without optics more.
Once you get a chance you’re doing something wrong if you have to remove the shades

 

[wytonpjs]

Why can’t you use the Binos/TI/scope with sunglasses on?

Fit/feel of looking through the sunglasses is all wrong for me and, as I use a heavy tint, it makes the old/cheap thermal I’m currently using (will try them with my Telos when it comes back from repair) unusable.

Sunglasses on a cord round my neck. Push them off, pick up thermal or binoculars, after use put glasses back on. Easy.

A lot of yesterday was walk 2 paces then stop and scan. Spent over an hour enjoyably stalking in a beech wood forest block walking on cornflakes, tip-toeing around trying to get a clear shot on a yearling cull buck - it wasn’t practical/sensible to keep on putting them on/off and faffing with getting the cords on/off my very large ears and doing extra movement. Stalked in to 13m of an unaware roe doe - great craic.

I wear lightly tinted prescription glasses when it's sunny and have no problems.

As with my reply to Glyn, I’ve never used glasses to look through binos, thermals or scopes and it just doesn’t seem to work for me (scope less so due to the eye relief) but I look through my binos more frequently than my eldest daughter looks at her phone

 

[Tim.243]

Morning

Thoughts/ advice please. I’m just back off a warm holiday where I’ve been wearing high tint sun glasses all day and yesterday, managed to get out on a stalking outing with a colleague in the very warm and bright conditions. Driving to/from the ground - sunglasses on. Stalking the ground - sunglasses off but with wide brimmed Aussie hat on to give some protection but I found I was having to squint most all of the time due to the bright clear conditions. Thankfully, whilst I have to wear glasses for reading my long sight is good so thermal, binos and scope are all set up to use without glasses. Yesterday was an “on the sticks, off the sticks” sort of day and the last thing I wanted to do was to include the faff of having to deal with removing sunglasses before using the thermal/binoculars or to take a shot.

So, question: does anyone have a simple practical solution to wearing sunglasses when stalking? I seem to recollect there were some flip-up type sun glasses from years ago when fly fishing.

Any suggestions?

Guess you might expect Tim's reply, go out stalking as the sun in on the way down. I don't worry about squinting it is
(NOT) casting a shadow which I feel is more important especially with big deer as their head height is close to ours
It is something I take into account a lot when pigeon shooting as you can be stuck with the sun in your face for a long time
and they are up in the sky not eye level.

 

[mike308]

Fit/feel of looking through the sunglasses is all wrong for me and, as I use a heavy tint, it makes the old/cheap thermal I’m currently using (will try them with my Telos when it comes back from repair) unusable.

A lot of yesterday was walk 2 paces then stop and scan. Spent over an hour enjoyably stalking in a beech wood forest block walking on cornflakes, tip-toeing around trying to get a clear shot on a yearling cull buck - it wasn’t practical/sensible to keep on putting them on/off and faffing with getting the cords on/off my very large ears and doing extra movement. Stalked in to 13m of an unaware roe doe - great craic.

As with my reply to Glyn, I’ve never used glasses to look through binos, thermals or scopes and it just doesn’t seem to work for me (scope less so due to the eye relief) but I look through my binos more frequently than my eldest daughter looks at her phone

I have no problems with glasses and binoculars or thermal just adjust them to suit. Glasses and heavy rain a different story.

 

[wytonpjs]

Guess you might expect Tim's reply, go out stalking as the sun in on the way down. I don't worry about squinting it is
(NOT) casting a shadow which I feel is more important especially with big deer as their head height is close to ours
It is something I take into account a lot when pigeon shooting as you can be stuck with the sun in your face for a long time
and they are up in the sky not eye level.

I was doing a range shoot yesterday, taking a colleague from still further away with me and, whilst we were there and having made the effort, it would have been stupid not to get out on the ground. Besides, I have been away for a few weeks so I wanted to see what the rapidly growing cover was now like and what animals were around so limited option in this case.

 

[starr shot]

Stalk at night with a thermal problem solved

 

[GWP]

I wear reactolights with a brown shade this helps highlight browns better than grey or green just turn down the eyecups on your binos these dont go as dark as the prescription sun glasses i use for driving

 

[Boristhedog]

My glasses have transition lenses which darken considerably in bright sun. I’ve not had a problem, I’ll keep them on if I haven’t time to remove them and put in a pocket for a few minutes. But I can usually stay back in a hedge row etc for a few seconds to take them off then set the rifle and sticks up.

 

[HonestJohn]

If it’s that sunny, it’s too hot, too late in the morning, or too early in the eve for the deer to be out IMHO

 

[308rws]

Eureka, tinted contact lenses!

 

[wytonpjs]

If it’s that sunny, it’s too hot, too late in the morning, or too early in the eve for the deer to be out IMHO

True, but having driven some distance, it was a shame not to try. That said, as I answed earlier, there were multiple shot opportunities but made more challenging by the stillness and heat, especially in the wood blocks where the deer were typically found. Out in the open, it was squint central but we did bump several couched deer at very close range so there were still deer about.

In the rare circumstances that we get more sun, I have order some flip-up baseball/softball glasses to give them a try

 

[wytonpjs]

So....... an update and potential solution (will be trialled Fri/Sat this week) if anyone looks at this thread in the future to the question I originally posed. Oddly enough, "Clip-On" baseball hat sunglasses popped into my FB feed soon after I posed the question (strange that ) and, recognising that these all probably come from China I had a look on Temu and guess what - the same item was there at a fraction of the FB price A pair duly ordered, they have just arrived and frankly, they are quite good! How robust the hinges are time will tell but for £7 a pair (I ordered a snazzy mirrored finish pair too) I think they are very reasonable.

Apologies for presenting you with my ugly mugshot - I've taken a leaf out of Stalker162's book to "preserve" my identity.

 

[Bavarianbrit]

Lenses with a slight yellow tint help to emphasise the red/brown spectrum and make animals pop from the background.
Dark green/grey lenses reduce the contrast so that they blend in.
Other than that, slow down a bit and use your Mk1 eyeballs without optics more.
Once you get a chance you’re doing something wrong if you have to remove the shades

I use the yellow tinted ones.

 

[teflon]

I have photochromic lenses in my glasses that i wear almost all day, every day. I use a shorter " sports" type strap on them and most of the time just drop them down to my chin with the strap over my ears when i use binos/ thermal, then back on when looking through the scope. I imagine i look a bit of a plum but it works just fine.

 

[angusb1]

I wear glasses and can't shoot without them due to astigmatism. This is no problem but the other day at the range I had my fit over sunnies on and discovered I couldn't get the image of the target to sharp focus. After messing about with the scope for a bit I took the sunnies off and straight away could get the image to sharp focus. This is likely to present a bit of a problem if I ever need to wear sunnies while stalking as I am loath to fork out several hundred quid on prescription sunnies due to my being a tight git. I guess I will just have to accept a slightly blurry image. I will worry about it if I ever go on safari.

 

[wytonpjs]

I wear glasses and can't shoot without them due to astigmatism. This is no problem but the other day at the range I had my fit over sunnies on and discovered I couldn't get the image of the target to sharp focus. After messing about with the scope for a bit I took the sunnies off and straight away could get the image to sharp focus. This is likely to present a bit of a problem if I ever need to wear sunnies while stalking as I am loath to fork out several hundred quid on prescription sunnies due to my being a tight git. I guess I will just have to accept a slightly blurry image. I will worry about it if I ever go on safari.

These should fit over your regular glasses and as they just "flip up", shouldn't cause a problem as long as you wear a baseball cap (or similar) with a brim.