ORIGINAL: skeeter 7MM
Safety is the reason why you shouldn't use a rifle scope as an identification optic. How do you know that behind what appears to be a deer isn't a hunter, house, etc? Use your binos instead, rifle scope is a site tool so it should be used when your are wanting to shoot not look!!
I guess I'm just used to hunting in Eastern Montana were there are no hunters, houses, etc. whereI'm out hunting. Generally you can see for several miles and where we typically hunt there for sure wouldn't be a house within 10 milesand probably not within 25 miles.
I typically would use the rifle scope to help me figure out whether the buck was worth walkinganother mileto try to stalk or not. I wouldn't be looking at it to figure out if it was a deer or another hunter.
That is why I was wondering if the 14x would help over the 9x - I would be looking at points, etc. trying to figure out if the deer was going to be worth the effort or not.