I think this is a ligitament question. I' ve never seen anyone' s binos get checked all the years I' ve shot there and I know one guy who purposely scraped off the 12 and repainted it with a 8 for several years to fool the group he was shooting with cause he didn' t want to buy a separate set for IBO. He hunted with 12x and he knew they weren' t going to check. (He has since that time gotten another pair of 8x.) If you are going to have that rule I feel it should be enforced.
I also don' t see the need for a restriction in bino power at all anyway. 12x, 50x, or just 8x what difference does it make? You don' t shoot your shot through the binos anyway. So what if you can see if a arrow caught a line from the stake or not? You' ll see it when you go forward to score it anyway. I just don' t really see where even a big 50x spotting scope is going to give ANY advantage to anyone over a pair of 8x56 savorski' s? I personally wouldn' t care if the guy next to me had a spotting scope with him or not. If he feels like carrying the heavy thing around I say let him. End the bino restrictions.