Vanguard HD Endeavor 82A

Field Report Part 2: Vanguard Endeavor HD Spotting Scope

Vanguard HD Endeavor 82AHaving taken my new Vanguard Endeavor HD spotting scope to the world famous Turnagain Arm in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, and experiencing instant high definition performance and no fogging with drastic changes in temperature, I was becoming quickly impressed. However, there were more tests to do.

One of the worst enemies of any optic is sunlight.  No matter how expensive or how many special coatings are applied, a spotting scope lens cannot see into direct sunlight, period.

So, while most spotting scope users have to keep their lenses at least 90 degrees away from direct sunlight, people who try the Vanguard Endeavor will be pleasantly surprised to find the built in sunshield on the objective lens end of the spotter.  With this sunshield, a user can cut that 90 degree no-look zone in half. I was able to look through the spotter at almost a 45 degree angle towards the sun. By the way, that 45 degree angle is 45 degrees more than almost any spotting scope on the market due to the fact that not very many are made with built in sunshields. I assume that the sunshield is the result of lessons learned by Vanguard from being in the photography industry for almost 30 years.

The next phase of field testing is trying out the zoom feature on the eyepiece.  Zooming is an important function when wanting to take a closer look at details that are far away and poor quality eyepieces cannot hide an inferior zoom. Let me just say that the zoom dial was smooth and extremely fast which is good thing for any hunter or outdoorsman who needs to acquire a target a.s.a.p.

I found the zoom’s performance to be on par with the big dogs in sporting optics, but the best surprise was finding out that the eye relief was still strong to me as an eyeglass wearer, and the rubber eyepiece offered warmth and comfort.  This spotter was really performing well.

There is another feature of the Endeavor spotting scope that deserves to be mentioned, and that is the built-in protection it offered. It is hard to spend hundreds of dollars on a spotting scope and not have it protected in some way. Vanguard has its customers covered as it not only offers the rubber armor coating on top of the magnesium body for protection against drops and bumps, but it is also water proof enough to survive being submersed.  With my initial testing over, the Vanguard Endeavor HD 82A looks like a winner and I can’t wait to hunt with it.

**The Endeavor HD 82A used for this article provided by Vanguard.