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Carry Your Tripod and Scope at the Same Time!

Carrying the tripod and scope ensemble can be awkward. Balancing the fully extended tripod over the shoulder, using the arm as a counterweight, is fine for a while, but it quickly becomes tough on the shoulder and hinders binocular use. You can carry both scope and tripod in a knapsack, but this can be time consuming to set up, and that distant peep might have flown by the time you're ready to take a closer look.

I have devised a shoulder strap solution to this problem. I use a Kowa TSN-1 on a Slik D2 tripod, but the shoulder strap can be adapted for any scope/tripod combination. Using a heavy-duty camera/shoulder strap with a non-slip pad, attach one end of the strap to the tripod head. Attach the other end of the strap to the base of the central stem. To allow for 360-degree rotation, you can add two links to the end of a spring-loaded hook. Just remember that too many links can be noisy.