WE'RE HIKING THROUGH Yellowstone National Park, scanning the trees through binoculars for a rare glimpse of the Great Gray Owl, when our guide, Terry McEneaney, points to a good-sized paw print in the mud. Then: claw marks on an Engleman Spruce. Quickly, we adjust our binoculars to survey the land. Our hands begin to shake, and when we spot something move in the thicket, we frantically spin the focus dial to sharpen the image. It's large, chocolate-colored and has...eight legs? Ah, a pair of elk. "Oh, good," says McEneaney, commending us for the sighting. "Keep your eyes open for bears." Will do.

Whether they're in the woods looking for wildlife or in the bleachers trying to decipher who's on first, Americans are taking a growing interest in seeing things from a distance. Binoculars used to be a ho-hum industry, but in the past five years, sales have increased 22 percent, to $268 million, after remaining flat overall during the previous five. Experts credit the upswing to better technology and retirees becoming more active outdoors. In fact, today's top-of-the-line binoculars allow you to see farther with more stability. The older ones? They tended to shake when you wanted higher magnification.

But with the economy tailing off, even the most devoted birdwatcher or bear-phobic hiker has to pause at prices these days. Standard binoculars can cost $3,000, while you can spend even more if you opt for night vision. To be sure, their gadgetry is nice, they're more weather-resistant, and they provide sharper images. But is it worth it to pay a premium for, say, lenses with 75 layers of special coatings that help reduce eyestrain? With hiking season in mind, we decided to find out with a trip to Yellowstone, where we meet with our expert, McEneaney. Recently retired after 22 years as the park's only ornithologist, McEneaney has used more than a dozen pairs of binoculars to track 324 types of birds here. And at the crack of dawn, we begin our 120-mile drive through the woods, searching for signs of life.

First he spots what he thinks is a gaggle of "wolf groupies" or "grizzly gawkers," so we pull over and hand him the Canon 10x42 L IS WP ($1,600) so he can see what these folks are peering at. This model is from a company better known for making compact cameras, but it's anything but compact. "This is a monster," McEneaney says, strapping the 2.3-pounder around his neck. "A lot of people couldn't hold this." He struggles to adjust the eyepiece barrels and says these binoculars are "cumbersome to use." Finally, our expert gives us a play-by-play of a black bear chasing an elk up a hill. He praises the image clarity even as he follows the fast-moving action. He presses the image-stabilizer button and intentionally jiggles the binoculars to find that the picture stays steady, but the stabilizer buzzes when he taps it with his finger. It seems "fragile," McEneaney says. Canon spokesperson Kevin McCarthy admits this model "is pretty big, unfortunately," and says the barrels are "stiff" so they won't "slide up and down" as you look through them. He adds that the image stabilizer "will make some noise" because of the "internal pieces constantly moving" when you steady the image.

We move on to Lamar Valley, where we pull out the Bushnell Elite 10x43 ($1,300). Unlike the Canon, and the hundreds of bison before us, this pair is "nice and small," says McEneaney. It's the lightest of the bunch, actually. Adjusting the eyepieces so that the bison appear crisply in one circle instead of two blurry ones is easy for our tester. More important, he notes, is how long it takes to turn the focus dial when moving from one object to another. So he zeroes in on a group of stones, then pivots the Elite toward a sage thrasher, a small brown-flecked bird flying nearby. "Focus is pretty good," he says. Turning the dial, however, takes too long a problem when you're trying to spot a quick-moving animal, he says. Terry Mears, director of sports optics at Bushnell, says this "could be an isolated issue" because he has found the dial "very smooth." Also, though the raised bumps around the Elite make it easy to grip, they could cause "hand fatigue" for some, according to McEneaney. Mears puts the kibosh on that, calling it a matter of "aesthetic" preference: "It's really not a concern or we wouldn't have done it."

A pair with a "more pleasing" grip, McEneaney says, is the Pentax DCF ED 10x43 ($1,250). It's heavier, but not by much (less than 3 ounces). He hikes along Pebble Creek to find a subject to test the focus dial on and swings the binoculars from a pile of rocks to a ground squirrel standing erect next to his hole in the earth. "I like that," he says after spinning the knob. Still, he's uncertain whether the Pentax focuses faster than the Canon and the Bushnell. So he takes the other two out of our backpack while, surprisingly, our buddy the rodent stands completely still. The verdict? McEneaney finds that the Pentax is a bit better than the others and offers the "best value for the money."

Next up is the Nikon EDG 10x42 ($2,000). All the models thus far have had "good armor," says our tester, which is necessary because otherwise, if "you drop them once, they're toast." But the Nikon's focus dial seems unusually big; it's "likely to get damaged because it's sticking out," he says. McEneaney holds the unit in one hand to study a pair of Canadian geese on the Soda Butte Creek and finds they look a little shaky. But there's a "quick focus," and the image quality remains sharp in both direct sunlight and shade. And "the brightness is very good" when he peers at the reflection of a cloud and the sky in a lake surrounded by bison. Yet carrying around this model "hurts the neck" because the strap is "too rigid," he says. "For $2,000 they have to do better. They should be top-notch." To that, Nikon product manager Jon LaCorte says, "I'm not going to dispute someone's personal feeling." He also explains that the size of the focus dial "allows for a wider range of use by various people," such as hunters and marine experts, who may wear gloves, and the shakiness our expert experiences is due to the high magnification "there's no way for a manufacturer to control that unless you have a tripod or image stabilizer, which this model doesn't."

Deeper into the woods, we get nervous taking out the Leica Ultravid HD 42 10x42 ($2,300) because McEneaney says he's determined "to find a black bear before we leave," for an up-close encounter. When we offer the Leica, he smiles: "These are pretty." He likes how the neck strap "gives you cushioning" and is "not rigid." The HD quickly becomes his new favorite pair, just in time to track some of the most exotic creatures we see on the move: charcoal-colored mountain wolves and a soaring bald eagle. He spins the dial to get a clearer view, praising its "fast focus" and the "solid" design of the binoculars. But later, he sees something else: Only 100 yards away, rubbing its back against a tree, is a baby black bear. No binoculars needed. As we stand there frozen, McEneaney starts clapping his hands and shouting, "Wuh!" Off the bear goes, through the trees, up a hill.

"I yelled to get him to run up a tree to get a good look," he explains. "It wasn't to scare him away." That's fine with us. We were happy to watch him take off through a winning pair of binoculars.

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