[David_S]

Thanks everyone for your comments which I found very helpful.

In the end weight and compactness won out and I went for the Steiner 8x30 Nighthunters. I am making a serious effort to reduce my pack weight as I am not a young man anymore so decided I would not go heavier than my old Pentax, and to put up with the reduced twilight performance compared to the bigger objective models.

In practice most of my hunting is in daylight as I am normally camped high and like to be back in my camp before dusk as finding my way around mountains at night is not my favourite pastime. In any case the chamois which I normally hunt bed down in the late afternoon, early evening. Deer, though, are another story.

First impressions of the Steiner are good. Compact, solid feel, comfortable to hold, Ok with glasses, and brighter crisper optics than the old Pentax. The "auto-focus" seems to work well. I find the eyepiece cover a bit of a fiddle. The objective covers are much better but I would have liked the lenses to be recessed a bit more for protection. All in all a definite step up from my trusty old Pentax.

David