Speaker 1: Welcome everyone. This is the Meat Eater podcast. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about binoculars, which I'd like to call knockers, and
Speaker 1: rifle scopes an all manner of hunting optics. We're joined
Speaker 1: right now by joined by or with no joined by
Speaker 1: Doug dern Douglas dern Um and we're on Doug's family farm, Kasinovia, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: the Fame Driftless Area. This is the second installment of
Speaker 1: the Meat Eater podcasts ever been recorded. These have been
Speaker 1: recorded in many states, now many states. You get a
Speaker 1: lot of You get a lot of states for your
Speaker 1: buck on this show. And y honest you tell us
Speaker 1: multiple countries as well, multiple countries. Also by y Honest
Speaker 1: You tell us. Um, I can't mention Yann's name without
Speaker 1: encouraging you to go to his website and by one
Speaker 1: of his t shirts. Thank you hunting dot Com twenty
Speaker 1: four bucks in stock now, also by Mark Bordman and
Speaker 1: Paul Nice from Vortex Optics. I wish we had the
Speaker 1: technological capability to broadcast live and take calls. I hate
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, but it would be good or
Speaker 1: Knox people call in and ask optics questions, you know.
Speaker 1: Instead we will think of optics questions and the first
Speaker 1: one I want to ask, and this is not this
Speaker 1: isn't the main thing I want to focus on. But
Speaker 1: we just we hunted turkeys this morning. Do you guys
Speaker 1: sell a lot of scopes to guys that hunt turkeys?
Speaker 1: I just don't get it. It's it's I know, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say that because you guys are in the scope business,
Speaker 1: but I don't see. But other than it saves people
Speaker 1: from themselves and it makes them aim, I don't see.
Speaker 1: I don't see. Is that a big part of your business. No, No,
Speaker 1: that's truly not. We we sell a lot of red
Speaker 1: dot sites, and the red dot sites are probably you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit kilm, and I think guys will use those.
Speaker 1: But you know is you know, it's just it's a
Speaker 1: it's a style of sight that projects an LED onto
Speaker 1: a curve screen and so you simply see a red dot,
Speaker 1: a single dot. It's just used it, you know, short
Speaker 1: range typically it doesn't. No, No, it's not a projected image.
Speaker 1: Is you view through it, it seems as though it
Speaker 1: floats out in front of the gun, but it's it's
Speaker 1: not a projected image like a laser would be for example,
Speaker 1: and what do you call like, just explain that difference.
Speaker 1: Where you see where you got a light that shoots out, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be that would be a laser. And the
Speaker 1: difference would be if you if you look in many
Speaker 1: fish and game regulations, for example, a projected light is
Speaker 1: typically illegal to use. And that's you know, that is
Speaker 1: a laser beam. So if you if you were using that,
Speaker 1: say on a turkey, and you look, there would actually
Speaker 1: be a red dot on the on the dude next you.
Speaker 1: Someone else could see it just as well. Right, Mostly
Speaker 1: that stuff just probably found on like the pistols and stuff,
Speaker 1: right for defense, Yeah, it is. It's used on handguns
Speaker 1: a lot. You know. The the advantage to red dot
Speaker 1: site it's it's very quick and easy to use. You know,
Speaker 1: they're not you don't have to line anything up um
Speaker 1: the way that they operate their their parallax free. So
Speaker 1: when I'm talking about the actual laser one, where would
Speaker 1: you find that one? Ah? Yeah, handguns? Defensive guns, that's right.
Speaker 1: It's not like military and Lawford for for hunting stuff. Right.
Speaker 1: So people will call up Vortex though, We'll be like,
Speaker 1: hey man, I wanna a red dot site for shooting turkeys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they might say I want a red dot site from
Speaker 1: my shotgun, you know, but it's something that you know,
Speaker 1: turkeys would be one of the primary application you can
Speaker 1: side in with one of those, right. Yeah, So you're
Speaker 1: going like because we bet we were just trying to
Speaker 1: explain it to their Dave, like, I think enough guy,
Speaker 1: guys don't do enough of this. Turkey hunters don't do
Speaker 1: enough of shooting the shotgun. And you're just like, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna be serious about not if you're gonna be
Speaker 1: serious if you're gonna go turkey hunting, I think you
Speaker 1: just at some point you gotta take a piece of
Speaker 1: paper out there, put a magic marker circle on it
Speaker 1: and just see what happens, because you will see where
Speaker 1: it is just always the pattern could be that if
Speaker 1: you were to make the center of the pattern at
Speaker 1: forty yards, I think could be I don't know more
Speaker 1: inches consistently left right, high low. If you had that,
Speaker 1: you didn't want to always remember I was just reading
Speaker 1: this thing by this guy the other day. He says,
Speaker 1: my whole life, I've been aiming high left on turkeys.
Speaker 1: Because he's you know, you are using too. They're just
Speaker 1: using a you know, a shotgun with an elevated rib
Speaker 1: and a bead and they're they're just trying to basically
Speaker 1: center that beat on top of the rib. But you know,
Speaker 1: you move your head a little bit one way or
Speaker 1: the other, and you know that pattern throws exactly differently.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you could actually get like, if you want
Speaker 1: to start shooting turkeys at seve in the eight yards,
Speaker 1: like you know, with the right chokes and right loads,
Speaker 1: people can do. Imagine that that red dot site that
Speaker 1: would be helpful because you can you can turn that
Speaker 1: thing in. You know, it would definitely become an advantage
Speaker 1: of that point. And you talk about, you know, patterning
Speaker 1: your shotgun. If you really want to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: what what the loads are doing that you're pushing through
Speaker 1: your shotgun, you know red dots, that would be you know,
Speaker 1: fantastic for that because you're gonna maintain that consistent point
Speaker 1: errors exactly exactly and you might find, yeah, like your
Speaker 1: high left or its stringing a particular way, and you
Speaker 1: might find that you want to change the turkey load
Speaker 1: that you've been using, you know, and find a better one.
Speaker 1: We have the other day me and you're honest where
Speaker 1: we had some very inexperience first time turkey hunters, very
Speaker 1: inexperienced shooters and experienced hunters going turkey hunt. We're like, well,
Speaker 1: let's gonna shoot a couple of targets. I'm telling you what. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first shot on a piece of paper, you would
Speaker 1: this guy would have never killed that turkey. No, I
Speaker 1: would have missed him clean. You would have been like,
Speaker 1: what in the world happened? You know? It wound up
Speaker 1: being user air. And what's funny is at one point
Speaker 1: he had he didn't know, but he had the gun
Speaker 1: on safe and he thought he had it on like
Speaker 1: he got up and never put it on fire. So
Speaker 1: which is instructive because when he pulled that triggar that
Speaker 1: gun Joe way to the right, it never went off,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's like I remember Yeaest was talking
Speaker 1: about a tricker. You just tell you give someone a shell,
Speaker 1: it's no good. No, you give him a rifle with
Speaker 1: with or without, you know, cartridge in the chamber that
Speaker 1: was ready to go when it's not ready to go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you just kind of go through a couple with
Speaker 1: a couple without, and you know, pretty soon you don't
Speaker 1: know what's gonna you just base our hand today rifle.
Speaker 1: You are treating it as it's live and you're you
Speaker 1: need to aim at the target and squeeze the trigger
Speaker 1: and you'll quickly see who flinches and he does who's
Speaker 1: the I see with myself, I've been shooting my entire life.
Speaker 1: But I'll see now and then I'll have something like
Speaker 1: that happened, and I'll be like, I clearly moved that.
Speaker 1: I clearly moved that chakraun and it didn't go bang
Speaker 1: because I whatever. You know, you if you shoot enough,
Speaker 1: you you generally know to some extent you know if
Speaker 1: you pulled that shot a little bit. But that's where
Speaker 1: I can see the red dot thing is we were
Speaker 1: trying to because we had a guy today, UM hit
Speaker 1: a turkey that fell down and got it ran away.
Speaker 1: I think it's okay to name names. No one's gonna know.
Speaker 1: I mean, all right, Doug's best during best well, Doug's protegee,
Speaker 1: d protege doctor protegee. UM doesn't have a huge the
Speaker 1: great guy doesn't have a huge technical interest in hunting
Speaker 1: equipment and gear and whatnot. Roll to turkey and UM,
Speaker 1: I wonder like, were the red dot if you would
Speaker 1: have been being like, you know, one thing, you know,
Speaker 1: you think you think about when you when you aim
Speaker 1: for a fine spot, and that you know, that does
Speaker 1: definitely increase that tendency to pick a spot and aim
Speaker 1: for and on a turkey course, guy is gonna center
Speaker 1: that up on the head and the neck. And but
Speaker 1: just having that small dot, you know, I think it
Speaker 1: would make a guy maybe concentrated a little more on that. Um.
Speaker 1: The other kind of anything about the red dots is
Speaker 1: you know, when you look, you have a small window
Speaker 1: to look through that's about an inch square, so and
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a neat thing wherever that you
Speaker 1: can see the dot and you can move your head
Speaker 1: around from side to side and up and down and
Speaker 1: and the because the device is parallax free, as long
Speaker 1: as you see the dot visually, whether it's down the
Speaker 1: corner of the right corner, you'd think it would drift,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't. It stays constant to the image. And
Speaker 1: so all you have to you know, as as soon
Speaker 1: as you pick that dot up in that field of
Speaker 1: view and it's on targeted, you're you know, you're good
Speaker 1: to shoot, even if it's not centered in the window.
Speaker 1: It's so they're you know, they're quick and they're friendly
Speaker 1: to you. Explain parallax. That's one of the the things I
Speaker 1: was going to say needs to be I never actually
Speaker 1: understood parallax till I kind of understood it. But when
Speaker 1: did we spent I spent a long time on the
Speaker 1: phone call my own analogy. We could probably spend a
Speaker 1: whole hour just talking about So we don't want to,
Speaker 1: we don't want to, but but parallaxes, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's the it's the shift of that radical or that
Speaker 1: point of aim on the target. And depending on where
Speaker 1: the focuses are the the device or set at that
Speaker 1: that point of aim can move around on the target
Speaker 1: at different distances. And so you know, it leads to inaccuracy.
Speaker 1: Let me let me just let me stop going side
Speaker 1: in the state like to to to the to the listener.
Speaker 1: Imagine that you're looking at you're looking at the rifle
Speaker 1: scope and you got the cross air center on the
Speaker 1: bull's eye something that had that's not parallax adjusted. You
Speaker 1: could move your eye around so you got the crosstairs
Speaker 1: or of the bull's eye. You could move your eye
Speaker 1: around still keeping your eye looking through the scope, you
Speaker 1: can move your eye around and there would be a
Speaker 1: perhaps perceptible maybe inperceptible to you, but the cross hair
Speaker 1: will have some movement. Yeah, it will be. It will
Speaker 1: appear almost to just to float around and move depending
Speaker 1: on where the eye is behind the And when people
Speaker 1: talk about like for that reason when people talk about
Speaker 1: consistently shoulder and you're gunn and doing everything the same
Speaker 1: way all the time, is if you bring your face
Speaker 1: you could feasibly sight your gun in. Then bring your
Speaker 1: faith to the to your rifle and do your cheek
Speaker 1: well and look through the scope and you might be
Speaker 1: different than you normally are, but still look like you're
Speaker 1: dead nuts, but you're not because and so parallax is
Speaker 1: a thing that can fix that. And I'll talk about
Speaker 1: like fifty yards, hundred yards, rim fire all that stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's you know, parallax. Depending on where an optic is
Speaker 1: is set at when it's assembled or some of them
Speaker 1: have adjustable lenses that that can be adjusted. They'll be
Speaker 1: set for a particular distance. So in a big game
Speaker 1: hunting scope that's that's non adjustable. Typically they would be
Speaker 1: said at a hundred yards distance. As you focus on
Speaker 1: something closer further than a hundred you can see some
Speaker 1: of that parallax movement. Some rifle scopes have adjustments, either
Speaker 1: an an adjustable objective out on the far end of
Speaker 1: the scope or a side focus. You guys make anything
Speaker 1: that doesn't we make. We make both. We do both.
Speaker 1: The advantage is to a you know, a scope that
Speaker 1: does not have any sort of adjustment is typically they're
Speaker 1: they're simpler, they're less expensive for a lot of guys.
Speaker 1: You know, a guy deer hunting in this country here,
Speaker 1: for example, you know you're probably not gonna shoot much
Speaker 1: beyond two d yards that it doesn't come into play
Speaker 1: as far as hunting accuracy. You're you're not going to
Speaker 1: get enough shift to you know, to miss the lethal
Speaker 1: zone on a deer. If a if a rifle scope,
Speaker 1: a magnified optic is going to have a parallax adjustment
Speaker 1: on it of some fashion, it'll generally not always be
Speaker 1: a scope that's ten power or more, just because that
Speaker 1: that parallax becomes more of a factor chat greater distances.
Speaker 1: In a room fire scope, we'll have a fixed yeah,
Speaker 1: might have what you can imagine on a rampire scope.
Speaker 1: Of courses you're shooting shorter distances. So a typical rim
Speaker 1: fire range might be twenty five out to fifty yards
Speaker 1: or so. And so when we we have a couple
Speaker 1: that we do and we would set those at fifty yards,
Speaker 1: and so there's you know, at fifty the right on
Speaker 1: the money is you come in closer than fifty, you
Speaker 1: could have a little bit of shift, and as you
Speaker 1: go up beyond fifty, you could have a little bit
Speaker 1: of shift too, But it brings it closer to sort
Speaker 1: of the practical range that a rim fire shot at.
Speaker 1: You know, when I was trying to explain all this
Speaker 1: stuff in writing, the image that kept the stuck in
Speaker 1: my head is like, let's say you're you're in the
Speaker 1: passenger seat of a car good example, good example, and
Speaker 1: you're looking at the spedometer right, and from your perspective
Speaker 1: it looks like you're going thirty five for the knee
Speaker 1: those themes that be from the driver's perspective you're going
Speaker 1: for just looking at different angles. That's that's not entirely right,
Speaker 1: but it kind of is a little know what it
Speaker 1: does because what happens if you if you if you
Speaker 1: were to sort of look at the mechanics of that spenometer,
Speaker 1: and the needle is obviously it's it's come off the
Speaker 1: plate of the surface, and that sort of represents that
Speaker 1: that internal gap in in parallax in the scope if
Speaker 1: the scope is focused correctly. If we had that scope
Speaker 1: that was set at a hundred yards and you were
Speaker 1: shooting at a hundred yards effectively in your example, the
Speaker 1: needle of the spedometer would be just flush with a
Speaker 1: backplate an incident. You know, no matter which angle you
Speaker 1: looked at, it all the same speed. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: so round rifle scopes. Prior to the next rifle scope.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break, alright, So still on
Speaker 1: the subject, rival and yahn jump in, man, jump in
Speaker 1: what you want. But I'm gonna jump to And this
Speaker 1: one isn't like, this isn't a huge thing because I
Speaker 1: don't get a lot of quiet. Like I'm in some
Speaker 1: way trying to relay to you guys, questions that we
Speaker 1: get from people to watch Mediator or whatever, listen to
Speaker 1: the show, or just people who are looking for advice. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is one that doesn't get asked that much. Let's
Speaker 1: not spend a ton of time on it. But why
Speaker 1: in the hell did scopes used to have a one
Speaker 1: inch okay the tube. Everything used to be like a
Speaker 1: one inch tube, or maybe I'm wrong, it feels like
Speaker 1: it was. No, there's still lots of one inch tubes.
Speaker 1: And now you see like one inch and you can
Speaker 1: pick you can buy a scope like suck X scope
Speaker 1: and one inch or thirty millimeter why or larger? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like what like? And there are even some forty millimeter
Speaker 1: tubes out there if you can believe that. So and
Speaker 1: you got to match the tube with your rings that
Speaker 1: you purchased. So why why did Why did this is
Speaker 1: just some people can sell more stuff. Well if you
Speaker 1: if you go you know, if you track it back
Speaker 1: far enough. It was just as as sort of this
Speaker 1: the scope industry get going and built scopes in the
Speaker 1: United States. Traditionally one inch was just sort of adopted
Speaker 1: as as as a common size that companies were using.
Speaker 1: In Europe, thirty millimeter was was adopted. And you know,
Speaker 1: those those two numbers are actually not too far apart.
Speaker 1: They were they were sort of a practical size and
Speaker 1: dimension to sit on top of a of a rifle.
Speaker 1: So we're the crowd shooting at American gis with millions
Speaker 1: during world War two. That's a really good question. My
Speaker 1: dad never forgave the Germans how many millimeters is one inch? Then?
Speaker 1: So I can the gap. It's twenty five point four,
Speaker 1: so it's four point you know, small small difference in there.
Speaker 1: There are some you know, what's really interesting about that question,
Speaker 1: and widely misunderstood, is that there are some there are
Speaker 1: some differences between the two. The big misconception about that
Speaker 1: is that the larger tube provides a brighter image to
Speaker 1: the shooter, and that's it really isn't true that that
Speaker 1: really has nothing to do with a tube size. So
Speaker 1: what are you getting for what? Well, again, the history
Speaker 1: is that it was just one size used in one
Speaker 1: area another another. But there are some advantage of when
Speaker 1: you look at these scopes that go from one inch
Speaker 1: to thirty to thirty four to thirty five, obviously that
Speaker 1: tube is getting bigger and bigger. Seeing a cutout of
Speaker 1: a rifle scope would would help to make this easier.
Speaker 1: But inside the scope there's a there's another tube inside there.
Speaker 1: It's called an erector tube, and it can It contains
Speaker 1: the zoom lenses and the erecting lenses which which flip
Speaker 1: and invert the image that tube has to move inside
Speaker 1: the main tube of the SCUPE. So it effectively it's
Speaker 1: it pivots and moves up and down, and that's controlled
Speaker 1: by the turrets on the scope. And so what a
Speaker 1: larger scope tube can allow, not necessarily, but it can
Speaker 1: allow is a greater swing of movement inside for that
Speaker 1: erector tube. And so for the guys that shoot very
Speaker 1: long distances, they need to be able to adjust for
Speaker 1: a lot of bullet drop at extreme distance. And so
Speaker 1: the more internal swing is available in the scope, the
Speaker 1: more the scope can handle that sort of thing. So
Speaker 1: there are some theoretical advantages there. Now I had I
Speaker 1: had no idea. That depends that's what it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's you know, if you think heavier, bigger scope,
Speaker 1: bigger rings. Yeah, but it depends on the relationship to
Speaker 1: if you think about it between that outer tube and
Speaker 1: that inner tube, and if the if the inner tube
Speaker 1: grows at the same rate the outer tube does and
Speaker 1: the and the movement is the same, well then there's
Speaker 1: no advantage to it. So that has to you know,
Speaker 1: you need to increase that gap inside what percentage of
Speaker 1: what do you guys sell? It's it's because you guys
Speaker 1: kind of like you guys push the thirty You guys
Speaker 1: seem to like the totally wrong. No, not necessarily. We
Speaker 1: sell a lot of one issues we have. We we
Speaker 1: have a pretty strong emphasis on long range stuff. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a big focus of workings. So in that view,
Speaker 1: those typically are are going to be thirty millimeter or
Speaker 1: thirty four and some of the big tactical scopes we
Speaker 1: do like a long excuse me, like a long range
Speaker 1: scope that will generally start like at thirty millimeter, Like
Speaker 1: that would be like generally your starting point and then
Speaker 1: like Paul said, you'd go up into you know, potentially
Speaker 1: a thirty four even a thirty five. Have you guys
Speaker 1: started making we do? Yeah, we do right now. We
Speaker 1: have both thirty four and thirty five millimeter two scopes.
Speaker 1: The thirty five is part of our Razor series. That scope,
Speaker 1: for example, has been used in some of these really
Speaker 1: extreme long range three thirty eight lapooh magnums, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty b mgs where guys are shooting out past two
Speaker 1: thousand yards with it. They're getting tremendous bullet drop, so
Speaker 1: they need a way to compensate for that. We had
Speaker 1: a guy with that scope that had a confirmed engagement
Speaker 1: with a target. Excuse me, and I want to say
Speaker 1: two point zero seven miles if I remember correct, like
Speaker 1: an actual like a combat situation. No, it was, it was,
Speaker 1: I mean it was. It was. It was like at
Speaker 1: a out of range like you know, but but it
Speaker 1: was like you know, a big metal plate point seven miles.
Speaker 1: That's a long way out there, two point zero seven miles. Yeah. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a poke though, But so he used, I want
Speaker 1: to say, and you know, I could be quoting us incorrect,
Speaker 1: shooting a something three farms over. What's your head? What's
Speaker 1: your thing doing? Way up there, Doug? I was just
Speaker 1: listening and I thought, you know, I'm gonna start breathing
Speaker 1: heavy because of all this scope talk, and you know,
Speaker 1: starts getting tis get me so excited. So I just
Speaker 1: took the microphone away so I could have a little
Speaker 1: time with myself over here. Anyways, like shooting before, Doug
Speaker 1: durn Fell sleep be shooting a deer in town from
Speaker 1: the long drive, Well, Doug's place here, I bet you'd
Speaker 1: be pushing it to get a three yard shot. Probably
Speaker 1: you might have a spot or two, but you know,
Speaker 1: and so we think about that to two point oh
Speaker 1: seven miles. That's in the neighborhood. A third five hundred yards.
Speaker 1: I remember while as a kid my brother shot at
Speaker 1: deer hundred seventy yards. Seemed like this infathomable distance. It
Speaker 1: was like unfathoml distance. My father shot a deer on
Speaker 1: this farm at a quarter of a mile all the
Speaker 1: way across the forty one shot. So there's there. He
Speaker 1: stretched it further than that. That is why he is
Speaker 1: known as the quarter mile buck hunter. He's got it
Speaker 1: on a hat, all right. Yeah, and he's throwing a
Speaker 1: good optics question you see all the time to keep
Speaker 1: him with scopes. We'll switch to knockers later. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: like all the distinctions, Yeah, I just had a good one.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, the main one being like, no, you go ahead.
Speaker 1: I don't want to stop. I don't want to take
Speaker 1: your turn. No go ahead, I'll think of a better one.
Speaker 1: Dog got dog jumping in with the optics question. So
Speaker 1: I have vortex optics on my rifles. Say, say I
Speaker 1: run vor Tex optics. Do you want to sound cool
Speaker 1: as ship? I run flortex optics on my rifles, and
Speaker 1: uh is cooler? I noticed that when you hang out
Speaker 1: with Steve Rinella. After a while you start talking like
Speaker 1: him and well you know that, No, there's a cadence
Speaker 1: and everything. Uh BDC radical. Um, I have a BBC
Speaker 1: radical on one of my rifles and I don't on
Speaker 1: another one, dear rifle. Both our thirty six is UM
Speaker 1: and I like both. I seem to prefer the BDC
Speaker 1: even though I'm not shooting that far. How should I
Speaker 1: set that up? Can I can? I? Can? I can? I? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't. Why about who I asked the permission? Great question, Doug,
Speaker 1: But can you take it a step further, like just
Speaker 1: explain what the hell that means as opposed to like
Speaker 1: like start with what start with radical and then and
Speaker 1: then build up to ducks questions. Sure that mean that?
Speaker 1: That is? It's a very very popular radical that we sell,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a commonly used term in the
Speaker 1: industry too. I think everybody is familiar with a you know,
Speaker 1: a radical being a set of crosshairs in a rifle
Speaker 1: scope and of course the you know, the user aims
Speaker 1: with the target on the center of the crosshairs. What
Speaker 1: a BBC is, that's it's it's called a bullet drop
Speaker 1: compensating radical, and you know. What we're trying to do
Speaker 1: is you, as you sit in a rifle at a
Speaker 1: fixed distance, say a hundred you're adjusting the center of
Speaker 1: the crosshairs to be zeroed in commonly at a hundred
Speaker 1: yards on the target. But of course that you know
Speaker 1: that bullet is it is it drives further out. It's
Speaker 1: it's constantly falling, and so with increasing distance, the user
Speaker 1: has to find a way to adjust it for more
Speaker 1: and more and more bullet drops it go if you
Speaker 1: want to shoot past that hundred yards distance. And what
Speaker 1: a what a BBC radical does is it gives you
Speaker 1: points of reference on the radical itself to compensate for
Speaker 1: that bullet drop at various distances. And to keep it simple.
Speaker 1: What what we did with that radical and and and
Speaker 1: it's this is this technique is used by other companies
Speaker 1: as well. Is you try to think in hundred yard increments,
Speaker 1: which which which a lot of shooters and hunters do.
Speaker 1: To keep it easy. We can't just put a you know,
Speaker 1: a million marks on that radical. So what we try
Speaker 1: to do is think about the rifle being zero to
Speaker 1: a hundred yards and having a mark at where a
Speaker 1: two hundred yard point of impact would be a three hundred,
Speaker 1: four hundred and a five hundred yard and for distances
Speaker 1: in between that, the shooter would just sort of hold
Speaker 1: between those marks. And so what happens those marks come
Speaker 1: below the center of the cross there, because what is
Speaker 1: that is you're shooting at increasing distances. What you're really
Speaker 1: doing with that radical is you're you're incrementally raising the
Speaker 1: muzzle of the gun. If you think about it, marks
Speaker 1: are lower. So you bring the rifle up to line
Speaker 1: those marks up. And it's a little tricky because what
Speaker 1: happens is you're doing one radical pattern and is any
Speaker 1: you know, anyone who's done shooting those there. You know,
Speaker 1: there are a million different cartridges, loads, bullet weights, velocities, altitudes, temperatures, pressures,
Speaker 1: all those things affect bullet drop. And so when we
Speaker 1: give you a radical and it has these five little
Speaker 1: marks on it, you have to keep in mind that
Speaker 1: those are those are drawn up and designed around h
Speaker 1: You know, we just crunched a lot of numbers. We
Speaker 1: looked at it most of the popular center fire hunting cartridges.
Speaker 1: You know, picked an altitude and a pressure and a
Speaker 1: temperature and and came up with drop numbers that we
Speaker 1: felt could match the widest possible selection and your user
Speaker 1: the manual, the user manual that comes with it gives
Speaker 1: you kind of a way to understand. It gives you
Speaker 1: an overview of that talks about different uh do even
Speaker 1: list like like like I can't remember how you guys articulated,
Speaker 1: but kind of like muzzleoaders. Yes, it does. It will
Speaker 1: break firearms into different classes. You know, say a standard
Speaker 1: hunting rifle, a magnum hunting rifle, as you point out,
Speaker 1: maybe muzzleloaders, maybe rim fires, because those those different groups
Speaker 1: all have have very different bullet drop rates. And then
Speaker 1: within each of those groups, of course, you know what,
Speaker 1: they're even finer rates um there are. There's one of
Speaker 1: the things that's really key about that, and I'll mention quickly,
Speaker 1: and it is very widely misunderstood, is that, for the
Speaker 1: most part, in in rifle scopes that are commonly sold
Speaker 1: for hunting and BBC radicals are they are a hunting device.
Speaker 1: That is Yeah, it's not a it's not a high precision,
Speaker 1: tactical or target style radical. It is a big game
Speaker 1: hunting radical. That's the purpose of that. They're they're commonly
Speaker 1: put in the style of rifle scope that that demands
Speaker 1: that there's only one power that they function at, and
Speaker 1: this is this is glad. But let me stop you
Speaker 1: because you're you're gonna enter into first vocal plane, correct
Speaker 1: second vocal point, and I want to do that, but
Speaker 1: let me I wanted to like set this up a
Speaker 1: little better. Let's just jump Let's just jump into that
Speaker 1: before before we do the first vocal plane, second focal plant.
Speaker 1: I want to say about the BBC thing. What I
Speaker 1: understand on a user manual for your scopes that has
Speaker 1: BBC radical, The manual doesn't written most of the manual
Speaker 1: doesn't say that those if you're on the manual doesn't
Speaker 1: say when you're on max power, it's one for m
Speaker 1: o A one five to five, seven and a half
Speaker 1: and eleven. Okay, why does the manual? Is that not
Speaker 1: a good I would think that may it may list
Speaker 1: that in there, but it's on your website. I was
Speaker 1: wondering if you guys don't if that's not a good
Speaker 1: way to think about it for something, it probably isn't.
Speaker 1: Because if you're if you're gonna, if you're gonna take
Speaker 1: a BBC radical and you're you're going to adopt it
Speaker 1: and use it. If you if you start thinking in
Speaker 1: those minutes of angle, you're you're sort of you're transitioning
Speaker 1: into the style of shooting that would not typically use
Speaker 1: a BBC. And and this is you know this. It's
Speaker 1: a little complex. But for example, someone who would shoot
Speaker 1: with m O A numbers or if it was a
Speaker 1: Mill scope, they would be m I gotta stop you
Speaker 1: one more time. But I hate to do this by
Speaker 1: I just want to bring m A is. Imagine you're
Speaker 1: standing in a circle earth a minute of angle. God,
Speaker 1: I hate trying to explain this. It's one six one
Speaker 1: degree if you imagine that you're standing on a flat line. No, Paul,
Speaker 1: explain this, Mark, explain this. I think the easiest way
Speaker 1: I found it explain this is is people should they're
Speaker 1: they're Basically there are two formats that are used for
Speaker 1: for adjusting turrets in the scope or using radicals, and
Speaker 1: so that's either minutes of angle or Miller radians and
Speaker 1: basically there too. If I think that, one way that's
Speaker 1: always helped me to explain is think about sort of
Speaker 1: a clock face. What we're talking about is angles in
Speaker 1: that clock face. And the reason angles are important is
Speaker 1: because if you think about what we're what we're doing
Speaker 1: with that rifle when we're trying to adjust for long range,
Speaker 1: is we're working with angles were you know, we touched
Speaker 1: on it earlier about how those marks on the radical
Speaker 1: dropped down and we bring the muzzle of the rifle up.
Speaker 1: So think of it, you know, picture maybe like an
Speaker 1: artillery gun. You know, we're to to shoot further distances.
Speaker 1: We're increasing the angle of that muzzle. Really by dialing
Speaker 1: the scope or using turrets, we're bringing it up at
Speaker 1: an angle. And so what those minutes of angle or
Speaker 1: those mill ratings are doing, they're representing that angle that
Speaker 1: we adjust and they're just two different scales of doing it.
Speaker 1: They're just simply two different ways of calculating angles. But
Speaker 1: let me throw this out you what if you'll talk
Speaker 1: about if you hear a term sub m a accuracy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what that would mean is that the rifle is going
Speaker 1: to shoot a less than one inch group at So
Speaker 1: if you imagine this angle we're talking about one degree,
Speaker 1: it grows as it gets farther away. At one yards,
Speaker 1: the distance between the lines and that angle is one inch.
Speaker 1: At two hundred yards, it doubles. It doubles at four
Speaker 1: yards on out. So if you have m o A accuracy,
Speaker 1: mean you can shoot a one inch group at one
Speaker 1: hundred yards, you're shooting a two inch group of two
Speaker 1: hundred yards, three inch group of three yards, a four
Speaker 1: inch group of four hundred yards as you get farther out.
Speaker 1: So that's if people were talking about when they say
Speaker 1: like sub m o A accuracy in this measurement, which
Speaker 1: is like cryptic plays into all the stuff. So now
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop talking and let you run with and
Speaker 1: let you run with what you were getting into. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what what? What? What? I was going to touch on
Speaker 1: there quickly. We were just talking about those those angles,
Speaker 1: and those angles relate to the to the marks and
Speaker 1: the radical. Remember we were going, why would you go
Speaker 1: from the hundred yard two hundred yard, three hundred yard
Speaker 1: four hundred to the one and a half four and
Speaker 1: a half, seven and a half and eleven. And the
Speaker 1: reason I was saying, the guy that buys that BBC Radical,
Speaker 1: what he's looking for is a quick and s away
Speaker 1: to compensate for long range shooting. It's easy, it's fast.
Speaker 1: Everyone can wrap their head around. I'm zero to my
Speaker 1: crossairs are onto the hundred. That next market is two
Speaker 1: d next is three. It's very it's easy to do.
Speaker 1: If I tell you now that you know on that
Speaker 1: let's say, on that five yard shot you need ten
Speaker 1: minutes of angle, you've just made the whole thing a
Speaker 1: lot more complex to that guy. You know, Now he's
Speaker 1: got to think, well, what you know? You see now
Speaker 1: you go back to the Matthew we're saying, and you think,
Speaker 1: you know, so how much drop is that that works?
Speaker 1: And that's that's commonly the techniques that are used by
Speaker 1: by precision shooters. Snipers for example, would use that style.
Speaker 1: You can use ballistics calculators that will take some basic
Speaker 1: inputs about a bullets BC and it's muzzle velocity and
Speaker 1: the and the temperature and altitude that you're at, and
Speaker 1: they will very very accurately calculate the bullet drop. And
Speaker 1: then that same program take that bullet drop and it
Speaker 1: can it can put it it can you know, express
Speaker 1: it in minutes of angle if you'd like, it can
Speaker 1: express it in the mill ratings. We're talking one of
Speaker 1: those programs called Shooter. That's one of the best ones,
Speaker 1: mainly just to get an understanding of the stuff. But
Speaker 1: with with the BBC like I do what you say,
Speaker 1: not not that we say not to do. But I
Speaker 1: in my biny harness, like I can't write a knockers
Speaker 1: in my binarts. There's this little pocket. And what I'll
Speaker 1: do with my rifle in the in the lower tim shooting,
Speaker 1: I'll draw a picture. That's that's a very good way
Speaker 1: to do that. I draw a little picture of what
Speaker 1: my BBC cross the radical looks like. And I just
Speaker 1: saw I have for a memory, guy, I take the
Speaker 1: m O a thing and I got my zero, so
Speaker 1: I do two yards zero usually, and then I have
Speaker 1: each hash mark what it is exactly, what the top
Speaker 1: of the post is on the bottom exactly. And then
Speaker 1: I put and I write down exactly what the half
Speaker 1: marks are, so my little car will have a thing.
Speaker 1: And I also put into one yards in case you
Speaker 1: want up like shooting at a kyle or something, I'll
Speaker 1: put like the one yards, so the one hundred yard.
Speaker 1: I know I'm a little bit high, you know. Then
Speaker 1: I have the two zero line, and then I have
Speaker 1: a mark for between that it might be that the
Speaker 1: two zero line and the next hash mark halfway between
Speaker 1: might be like two thirty. The next line might be
Speaker 1: down the line and there's enough numbers on there for
Speaker 1: me that if I was a look through my range
Speaker 1: finder and no, I'm gonna look down and feel very confident, right,
Speaker 1: you know what, I have many of those numbers in there,
Speaker 1: just sort of. I also know in my head. I
Speaker 1: know in my head the hash marks. But if I
Speaker 1: ever like feel like just just for sense of security,
Speaker 1: or if I'm in a situation, I know that I
Speaker 1: can pull that thing out and I got like, oh
Speaker 1: two D seventy three ten, and I'm never like going
Speaker 1: I'm never aiming between those any more than just splitting
Speaker 1: them in the middle. But I have an array of
Speaker 1: things where like any animal, did I have any business
Speaker 1: shooting at, I'm gonna know exactly where holding without taking
Speaker 1: the cap off and start clicking on the skull. That's right,
Speaker 1: you know when the advantage to that, to using that
Speaker 1: radical is that's quick and it's fast. The guys that
Speaker 1: will sit there and use those ballistics programs we talked
Speaker 1: about and calculate those drops and minutes of angle. The
Speaker 1: downfall of that is kind of this slow deliberate process.
Speaker 1: You you have to, you know, first range an object.
Speaker 1: Then you have to enter that range into that ballistics calculator.
Speaker 1: It has to then give you that correction. Then you
Speaker 1: have to either reference that correction on the radical or
Speaker 1: reach up and dial it on a turret. So it's slow,
Speaker 1: and that's that's the The big advantage to BBC radicals
Speaker 1: is speed when when you boil it down, they're fast
Speaker 1: and they're easy to use. The disadvantages they're not as
Speaker 1: accurate as calculating those minutes of angle or mill radians
Speaker 1: out And what you probably do is, you know, we
Speaker 1: touched on the fact that a BBC radical is is
Speaker 1: calculated sort of, you know, it's it's putting a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of cartridges together and blending them and coming up
Speaker 1: with a set of numbers that gives you a really
Speaker 1: general ballistics curve that's going to be common, you know
Speaker 1: for what the most big game calibers. Yeah, and perfectly
Speaker 1: and perfectly suitable for the vast majority videos and the
Speaker 1: guys that want higher accuracy out of that what they
Speaker 1: can do on our on our website, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a ballistics program called the l RBC and that'll pull up.
Speaker 1: You have to enter some basic information in about the
Speaker 1: bullet BC and the velocity and environmental conditions. But you
Speaker 1: can go to a tab on there that says radicals
Speaker 1: and you can do just what you described. You can
Speaker 1: pull up a graphic of that BBC radical And the
Speaker 1: slick thing about that program is it will take the
Speaker 1: specific data that you put in there about the load
Speaker 1: and the bullet you're shooting, and it will do the
Speaker 1: math for you and it will show rather than that
Speaker 1: simple two D four hundred five hundred, it'll do the
Speaker 1: math and it might display it'll, it'll and those numbers
Speaker 1: are exact, so you can sort of take that to
Speaker 1: the bank. Those those are much more tightly tuned. When
Speaker 1: you do that technique, it's just, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: something everybody can do that. It's easy to use, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's out there. I was just gonna say it's good.
Speaker 1: You can say you can take it to the bank.
Speaker 1: But I feel like verification at the range has to
Speaker 1: be done. Always want to do that. I was shooting
Speaker 1: with these market ball I feel like, you know what
Speaker 1: you gotta shoot. Yeah, too many people plug those numbers
Speaker 1: in like I'm going hunting. No, you should plug those
Speaker 1: numbers in and go to the range. Get some gongs
Speaker 1: out there, stuff and check. Because it happens to me
Speaker 1: almost every time I go. I'm like, all right, I know,
Speaker 1: like a little calculator it says four and a half
Speaker 1: minutes up right, I shoot that talker three times in
Speaker 1: a row and I miss it. All right, there's a reason.
Speaker 1: There's a reason for that. You know. What's interesting is
Speaker 1: those programs have gotten very good now. They're much better
Speaker 1: than they were, say four or even five years ago.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've really improved. The things that change that
Speaker 1: people don't understand is even if you take a chronograph
Speaker 1: and you measure the speed of the bullet coming out
Speaker 1: of your rifle, and your chronograph says feet per second,
Speaker 1: you could take five other chronographs that same day and
Speaker 1: line them up and get a spread of different velocities.
Speaker 1: They typically are not very consistent, and so that has
Speaker 1: a drastic effect on those curves. And so when you
Speaker 1: pick a number, maybe you got it off the box
Speaker 1: of ammunition, or maybe you have your chronograph and you
Speaker 1: measured it and you throw that into that program, it
Speaker 1: may or may not be accurate. It may not really
Speaker 1: be telling you the true story. And the other the
Speaker 1: other key piece of information there is the ballistics coal
Speaker 1: efficient of the bullet, the BC. And so a program
Speaker 1: is going to ask you for one BC number and
Speaker 1: for for your listeners, you know BC number, that's sort
Speaker 1: of a way it predicts how efficiently a bullet flies
Speaker 1: through the air. And and basically long skinny bullets with
Speaker 1: pointed noses and pointed tails are you know, they fly
Speaker 1: the best. They'll stay stable, and they stay stable at
Speaker 1: lower velocities right right there, and they maintain their velocity better.
Speaker 1: So if you took a long, skinny boat tailed bullet,
Speaker 1: maybe exactly the same grain weight, you know, let's say
Speaker 1: it's a hundred and sixty grain bullet, and you contrasted
Speaker 1: that with a rounded nose bullet with a flat base
Speaker 1: on it, if you went out at five yards and
Speaker 1: measured the velocity that long skinny pointed bullet, even though
Speaker 1: with the same powder charge behind them and the same
Speaker 1: muzzle blossie, it would be traveling faster at that. So
Speaker 1: that's a key thing. And the thing about bcs. Quickly
Speaker 1: I was going to touch on the program just ask
Speaker 1: you to put in one BC number. But the thing
Speaker 1: about BCS is they constantly change that that BC varies
Speaker 1: from the incident leaves the muzzle the gun so as
Speaker 1: that bullet slows the BC number. Actually, so it's you know,
Speaker 1: while the programs use a single number, it's not. It's
Speaker 1: not really what goes on, all right, I got I
Speaker 1: want to jump in and interject. I want to back
Speaker 1: up a little bit in comment on something. We're talking about,
Speaker 1: the thing I carry in my pocket or the thing
Speaker 1: I can remember by no pouch. I want to give
Speaker 1: you like a real world situation of how I how
Speaker 1: I think about this. We were running Cou's Deer in
Speaker 1: Arizona this year and at one point in time, like
Speaker 1: some deer stepped out, A bunch of does stepped out.
Speaker 1: It remembers, okay, no buck, but some does stepped out.
Speaker 1: Absolutely I would have. And it was a trail. It
Speaker 1: was like a little trail through an opening. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just a picture. You're looking at the hillside and there's
Speaker 1: a big brushy bottom and the first thing you see
Speaker 1: is the open hillside with a trail across it. I
Speaker 1: hadn't noticed the trail to I see some deer walking
Speaker 1: down it. Totally I could have thrown up and taken
Speaker 1: the shot. Right, there's no buck. Then the deer walk away,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, man, a buck could totally just come
Speaker 1: walking down that trail. At which point, even though I
Speaker 1: would have taken the shot, I pulled out my little
Speaker 1: thing took a distance reading on those doughs. And they're like,
Speaker 1: so if he shows up on one of the three
Speaker 1: days that I'm gonna be sitting here watching this Hilson,
Speaker 1: what exactly is going on? And I look, I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that shot is dial because I actually know now now
Speaker 1: it's beyond like me being like, yeah, it's probably right,
Speaker 1: ACCOUSI is not a tall animal. No, No, we're talking
Speaker 1: about hundred pound white tails. So I remember looking at
Speaker 1: that thing and being like, man, if a buck comes
Speaker 1: down that trail, I know, like what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm gonna do, and I could
Speaker 1: have done it anyway, but you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like in that way, I use that thing. No
Speaker 1: another thing I want to strow. We're talking about this
Speaker 1: long like long distance stuff, and long distance shooting is controversial,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not controversial to shoot long distances at
Speaker 1: a range. There's a big debate right now. I was like,
Speaker 1: what's too far? I say it's too far when you
Speaker 1: wonder about whether you're gonna hit it or not, if
Speaker 1: you're you know, whether whether you're gonna make a good head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the minute you take a shot where you're like, I
Speaker 1: wonder if I can hit that, you are definitely shooting
Speaker 1: too far. But I my philosophy on this stuff is
Speaker 1: I take I like to take long range technology, long
Speaker 1: range skill sets, and apply it in a hunting situation
Speaker 1: to normal hunting situations. Where first time I went antelope
Speaker 1: un my brother's shot antalopen three, our response was, Wow,
Speaker 1: he hit it right. Nowadays it would be I'll say
Speaker 1: exactly why I'm hit that antelope in a lot of
Speaker 1: conditions would be a chip shot. So long distance shooting
Speaker 1: for me, in a real world hunting situation is taking
Speaker 1: shots like making it be there where you know you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot his heart out. Push that distance. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's a hundred yards mute. If you got into the
Speaker 1: long range, if you got into all this thinking and
Speaker 1: the proper equipment and the proper practice, you might get you.
Speaker 1: I was talking a guy there day who teaches you
Speaker 1: guys introduced me to him. The guy that teaches the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps. Yeah, he hunts a lot of He shoots
Speaker 1: a lot of doughs on some farm land. And he says,
Speaker 1: at two yards, I shoot him in the head. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I can't. I would never do that. But I'm like,
Speaker 1: he knows at fifty like me shooting a deer at
Speaker 1: fifty yards, I probably have the degree of certainty that
Speaker 1: he has a two hundred yards. Right. This guy teaches
Speaker 1: shooting and shoots and he understands that stuff in and out.
Speaker 1: So for me to say, like, what's too long for
Speaker 1: Tony to shoot? Well, for his job, he shoots eight
Speaker 1: hundred yards, right, I would if you put a target
Speaker 1: at eight and a targeted too and tolds to hit
Speaker 1: the bull's eye, I would be like, you gave me
Speaker 1: the two hundred yards and him the eight hundred yard.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, I bet this dude's gonna win the bat? Right,
Speaker 1: what's too far? You tell me that? That's definitely one
Speaker 1: of those topics. You could spend a whole another hour,
Speaker 1: and every editor, every editor at every hunting magazine, has
Speaker 1: taken his shot at saying it. But it's unsolvable. It's
Speaker 1: just like I been trying to find a way to
Speaker 1: solve it, and it'd be like when you have questioned
Speaker 1: about where you will hit, it's too far. And for
Speaker 1: a lot of guys, I'm telling you it's unfortunate to
Speaker 1: say a lot of guys, hundred yards is too far.
Speaker 1: It is you don't know what you're doing. The first
Speaker 1: time I ever hunt of Wisconsin, I shot a deer
Speaker 1: in the tember has ninety yards away, actually arranged it
Speaker 1: after I shot it. You know, the guys came back
Speaker 1: and they're like, wow, man, that is a fantastic shot.
Speaker 1: You know, and I'm from I wasn't. I'm no expert, Marchman.
Speaker 1: You have pretty solid understanding of the things that we're
Speaker 1: talking about right now, right, but it was just interesting
Speaker 1: for me to hear from them like that. Seemed like,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty long shot. And I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: for the circumstances in the Timber, I guess that is
Speaker 1: a someone long shot for sure. But if you've ever
Speaker 1: spined deer at a hundred fifty yards, I might say, man,
Speaker 1: you know what, you're shooting too far right, because you're
Speaker 1: a long If you spined a deer at that distance,
Speaker 1: you might as well you could have if that bullet
Speaker 1: was the other direction, just blue his kneecap off. You're
Speaker 1: that far off, And I think, and I think you
Speaker 1: always they spy like, yeah, went down. You see hunting
Speaker 1: shows all times, so dude, spines deer just both they're
Speaker 1: jumping up in high five and I'm like, dude, you
Speaker 1: have just chopped You're you're that many inches off. You
Speaker 1: shot too far, dude. It's all relative to you know,
Speaker 1: every everybody's different. The level equipment now is definitely better
Speaker 1: than it was before. But you know, you make a
Speaker 1: good example, Steve. They're they're probably been as many deer
Speaker 1: wounded at a hundred yards as there have been. I
Speaker 1: have seen it all times. I think I think your
Speaker 1: definition of that's probably the best I've heard. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's gonna depend on the individual, their experience, their equipment,
Speaker 1: their understanding of that equipment, all those varials, variables come
Speaker 1: into play as to how effective marksman that person is
Speaker 1: going to be. And and you can't apply a general
Speaker 1: definition across the board everybody because everybody's looking for that number. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some numbers here. There are some numbers I hear.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into it. There's some numbers
Speaker 1: I here, I'm like, yeah, that's too far. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you see you see it. I mean, you see that
Speaker 1: out on the internet when that's happening. What I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of is you it gets there's a certain distance in
Speaker 1: a certain kind of country where you just don't know
Speaker 1: what the wind is doing over there. And also it
Speaker 1: takes the bullet a long time to get there. And
Speaker 1: when you're looking at a deer and it's let's say
Speaker 1: you're looking at it elk and he's traveling up a hillside,
Speaker 1: he's he's a bull. He's got a bunch of spoot
Speaker 1: cows strung out in front of him. Right, he pauses,
Speaker 1: looks back. That deer could be into his That elk
Speaker 1: could be into his second step should he leave, should
Speaker 1: he start walking at that moment, he could be into
Speaker 1: his second step by the time your bulle gets over there.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about thousand yard shot, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know, I you know, I hate teaven throw numbers
Speaker 1: out there, but that you know, that range is is
Speaker 1: just that's a non starter for hunting. That's just too far.
Speaker 1: It's just because there's a lot of a lapse time,
Speaker 1: you know. All right, let's hammer through some more stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: I got a quick question, well two part question. One.
Speaker 1: We noticed I was talking to Marks. I was trying
Speaker 1: to get a new scope, and I was looking for
Speaker 1: a forty millimeter bell. That's what I was like, Man,
Speaker 1: I don't really have a lot of those. Everybody wants
Speaker 1: to fill fifty millimeters, and so I'd like to know
Speaker 1: why that is and if there's like this perceived um
Speaker 1: benefit and what is the actual benefit you know, to
Speaker 1: someone's eye or you know, the hunting conditions, and what's
Speaker 1: the drawback? And then the drawback? And then two is
Speaker 1: um A big question we get in all the time
Speaker 1: is like how much money should I spend on the
Speaker 1: scope to put on my rifle? Sometimes you hear, you know,
Speaker 1: double the amount that you've got into the rifle for
Speaker 1: your optics, you know. And for most of us hunters,
Speaker 1: I think probably nine plus percent, including myself, rarely shooting
Speaker 1: past three yards. So what level of scope and how
Speaker 1: much money do I need to spend to like always
Speaker 1: be happy out to that you know distance? You know,
Speaker 1: if I'm never going past it, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: For like the Wisconsin deer hunter. Right before you answer that, though,
Speaker 1: let's just take a quick break here from our sponsors.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so uh in response to your seven part question,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of dude, you're asking like what
Speaker 1: objective lens? Bells objective? Like what objective lens do I want?
Speaker 1: What are the pros and cons of a forty and
Speaker 1: a fifty and the thirty, and what's too much to
Speaker 1: spend on the scope. Let's let's let's do all the
Speaker 1: damn questions. We'll get through as many as we can.
Speaker 1: So and so objective diameter, right, like i'd say, in general, Paul,
Speaker 1: just to explain what that is. So that's that's the
Speaker 1: diameter of the end of the rifle scopes lens that
Speaker 1: you're not looking through, so not the ocular. So that's
Speaker 1: the I never commared ocular. Ocular is what your eyes
Speaker 1: up against exactly, and that holds true boculars right, same
Speaker 1: terms ocular objective, And you're just expressed in millimeters. So
Speaker 1: when when when you're saying forty and fifty, that's just
Speaker 1: simply the diameter of that in millimeters. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's how big is that lens as you look at it? Exactly?
Speaker 1: So so in general, right, you know, a larger objective
Speaker 1: is going to you know, essentially bring in more light. Right,
Speaker 1: so you're gonna have better light transmission. Some whe people
Speaker 1: talk about rifle scopes. You know, light transmission is a
Speaker 1: really big deal because you know, game is oftentimes most
Speaker 1: active at donna, dusk and in the low lights scenarios. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: with a good scope or good binoculars, it's when you
Speaker 1: look through it, it's lighter than what your eyes giving you. Right,
Speaker 1: you can look at the hillside that's too dark and
Speaker 1: you look through binoculis be like, ohly should just do
Speaker 1: you stand over there? Right? Because it's giving it's giving
Speaker 1: you light. So and I'm not I'm not an optical engineer, right,
Speaker 1: but so there's a lot of a lot of factors, right,
Speaker 1: you know, the glass quality, uh you know is fully
Speaker 1: multi coded. You know, the quality of those uh those
Speaker 1: multi coodings. Um. The optical design you know, I talked
Speaker 1: to you know, our optical engineers at the office, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I mean really optical design is
Speaker 1: really as much and art as it is the shape
Speaker 1: just everything and the layout number of every system. So
Speaker 1: I mean that that is you know, but that is
Speaker 1: one one variable that does affect you know, light transmissions.
Speaker 1: So um, I think you know, oftentimes people you know,
Speaker 1: bigger is better, you know, a little bit bigger is
Speaker 1: better mentality, you know, whether it comes objective diameter or
Speaker 1: or you know, larger calibers, right, you know, but I
Speaker 1: mean it is it is hamburgers, other stuff we have,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, we don't really exercise good portion control
Speaker 1: in this country. Maybe downsize our hamburgers. Give Mark a
Speaker 1: quick hand with that though. One one thing that's really
Speaker 1: important to understand is it's it is not always an
Speaker 1: advantage to have a bigger bell. It may give you
Speaker 1: a brighter image, it may not it is guaranteed that
Speaker 1: it's going to make the scopes it higher. Off. Here's
Speaker 1: here's the trick. One of the things to remember when
Speaker 1: when you sort of calculating brightness through an optic one
Speaker 1: of the most simplestic basic forms of estimating brightness is
Speaker 1: to divide the magnification into the objective lens, and that
Speaker 1: gives you a number called an exit pupil. And let's
Speaker 1: say you had a rifle scope. Let's say it's a
Speaker 1: variable scope. You have a turn to five X. And
Speaker 1: let's just say you have a fifty millimeter bell out there.
Speaker 1: If you divide that very simply, you get an exit
Speaker 1: pupil of ten millimeters. I think every Yeah, that's pretty easy,
Speaker 1: everybody can do that. Here's the thing to remember, though,
Speaker 1: the ultimate limiting factor in all this is the pupil
Speaker 1: of your eye. So that light has to come through
Speaker 1: the scope and before it gets to your where you're
Speaker 1: you know, the the optic nerve and your brain interprets it.
Speaker 1: It has to go through the pupil of your eye.
Speaker 1: Even when you're young, in your eyes at their maximum flexibility,
Speaker 1: you're going to get at best maybe seven millimeters. So
Speaker 1: any an exit pupil that goes beyond seven millimeters, it
Speaker 1: goes beyond the perimeter of your pupil. It's it's unusable.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing that's fifty millimeter bell that that
Speaker 1: example I just gave you. We came up with a
Speaker 1: ten millimeter exit pupil. Well, your I cannot it can't
Speaker 1: use tensi than you need. So you's the thing. You've
Speaker 1: achieved the maximum though, right, you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about the equipment. You've achieved the maximum, But you've spent
Speaker 1: a little more for the skull. You have a heavier sculle,
Speaker 1: and it's a taller scope, so it sits higher off
Speaker 1: the rifle. Your head placement may not be as nice
Speaker 1: as it was with that forty millimeter bell, which hits
Speaker 1: lower on the rifle. Now the fifty does where you
Speaker 1: have to follow that though, you have to kind of
Speaker 1: follow that rabbit trail of that. The fifty comes up
Speaker 1: with an edge at the upper end of the magnification range.
Speaker 1: So as you get say eight, ten, twelve, sixteen next,
Speaker 1: now that fifty comes into play and makes a difference
Speaker 1: out there. So you have to think about the size
Speaker 1: of that lens in relation to the magnification that you
Speaker 1: want to run. And that's the reason. You can look
Speaker 1: at a little one to four variable that you know
Speaker 1: from one power to four power, and that's it doesn't
Speaker 1: go any higher than that. And they're typically matched up
Speaker 1: with a twenty four millimeter lens. It's about an inch
Speaker 1: in diameter. Looks small, but that that scope is just
Speaker 1: as bright as as any equally priced fifty millimeter scope
Speaker 1: at higher magnification. But you haven't gotten you haven't gotten
Speaker 1: into site picture yet though well site picture will you
Speaker 1: know that relates a lot to magnification lower lower powers
Speaker 1: typically give you a wider field. They're easier to see.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're comparing a four. You always see more
Speaker 1: every all thing, everything you don't know you're you're see.
Speaker 1: Another misconception is that that that big lens out there
Speaker 1: gives you a wider field of view, and that's that
Speaker 1: all things being equal. Yeah, same manification saying you're saying
Speaker 1: you can't always see more out the fifty. Now, many
Speaker 1: many times you may not see any difference whatsoever between
Speaker 1: the two of them. If it's a bright day, the
Speaker 1: image could look absolutely identical between the forty. And I
Speaker 1: mean if I had my body run out of the
Speaker 1: field and I directed, I'm looking through my scope, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, he's gonna shoot a scored a spray paint
Speaker 1: on one edge and then shoot a scored a spray
Speaker 1: paint the edge of the other edge of my view,
Speaker 1: and I do the same thing with a forty. He's
Speaker 1: gonna the spray paint is gonna lie with edge. It might.
Speaker 1: That has nothing to do with the objective I want
Speaker 1: to try. You want to try a neat tricks to you,
Speaker 1: I'd like take a fifty millimeter scope out or any
Speaker 1: scope and and restrict three quarters that objective lens cover it,
Speaker 1: put a cover on, you could put a little pinhole
Speaker 1: through it. On a bright day, field of view is
Speaker 1: exactly the same change. Yeah, it's it's a great way
Speaker 1: to illustrate. It's pretty neat. And actually, on a bright
Speaker 1: sunny day, if you were to restrict that lens and
Speaker 1: allow less light to come through, you see, the image
Speaker 1: quality would look better. Actually, it would get contrasting more defined.
Speaker 1: A lot of bent trest guys that do that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, they actually will restrict the aperture of their
Speaker 1: scopes on a bright day for those reasons. All right,
Speaker 1: So why is it? Though? I know, I think I
Speaker 1: was talking to the mark like, I'm not talking about that.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about what people want, right, people want fifties?
Speaker 1: They do? Are they just wrong? Many times they don't
Speaker 1: get the whole picture, you know, the things we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, The fact that doesn't automatically mean it's brighter.
Speaker 1: It doesn't automatically have anything to do with field of view.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody wants a wide field of view and
Speaker 1: everybody wants a brighter image, but the fifty doesn't always
Speaker 1: get you that. And so what does what does it
Speaker 1: get you? So what he is what he gets you? Though?
Speaker 1: Think about back that exit puple discussion, and let's say
Speaker 1: we've got a four to sixteen scoll, very popular size
Speaker 1: for us. We a lot of them. It's like, in
Speaker 1: my mind is the perfect Yeah, it longer ranges. That's
Speaker 1: that scope is gonna be turned up to sixteen X
Speaker 1: and use so you know you do that mass now
Speaker 1: and now even at sixteen X, you're you're underneath that seven.
Speaker 1: Your eye is gonna use every bit of light that
Speaker 1: can because dividing fifty five exactly. So now you're the
Speaker 1: point where, yeah, that fifties doing something for you. It's
Speaker 1: it's making a noticeably brighter image that here's a question
Speaker 1: to make smoke comm oud of you, guys, ears or
Speaker 1: something people always ask. I mean often we'll say, like
Speaker 1: I predominantly hunt white tails. I'm gonna I'm gonna turn
Speaker 1: it into a specific but it's it's just like I'm
Speaker 1: averaging a ton of questions together. I live in Missouri,
Speaker 1: I generally hunt white tails. Every other year we go
Speaker 1: out to hunt elk in Colorado. Someday I'd like to
Speaker 1: go on a doll sheet hunt. I can't side what
Speaker 1: scope to buy. They have to you have to get
Speaker 1: phone calls like this, and that's and that's when I
Speaker 1: sell that person multiple rifle scopes. So yeah, so let
Speaker 1: let's deify the question. I mostly hunt white tails. Occasionally
Speaker 1: I'll do a Western big hunt, big game hunt. I
Speaker 1: can't be throwing tons of money at this stuff. I
Speaker 1: want to buy a scope. I want to get five, six,
Speaker 1: ten years out of it. What scope do I want? Well,
Speaker 1: that's a tricky one. I mean, that's that's tell him
Speaker 1: what scope you want. I could probably actually pick one
Speaker 1: from me out of our lineup that that for me
Speaker 1: would be the best fit. Can I guess first? Can
Speaker 1: I guess? Then you're honest guest. Then you guys tell
Speaker 1: us what you think. Okay, we'll critique. Oh you don't
Speaker 1: want to pick an actual model? No? No, no. If
Speaker 1: you want picking a magnification range, okay, no manification range,
Speaker 1: objective lens, oh, all around whitetail okay, hunts white till
Speaker 1: every year, Yeah they do. Okay. He goes out to Colorado. Oh,
Speaker 1: three D nine by forty okay, yeah, me too, probably four,
Speaker 1: just because I don't know why. So I'll give you
Speaker 1: I'll give you mine, and I concur with the four
Speaker 1: to six team by fifty because to me, I find
Speaker 1: it to be like an incredibly versatile magnification range. And
Speaker 1: I always, I always I like magnification, right, so I'll
Speaker 1: edge towards the skill that has higher manifications. So but
Speaker 1: to me, that scope is like, it's awesome for the
Speaker 1: tree stand in the timber. You know, you can crank
Speaker 1: it down to four and then you can also you know,
Speaker 1: engage you know, targets or animals at extended ranges as well.
Speaker 1: I've shot the four to sixteen to a thousand yards
Speaker 1: and shot deer out of a tree stand with that
Speaker 1: same right. That's why I like the three nights kind
Speaker 1: of the same thing. But when I'm walking around, I
Speaker 1: don't care where I'm walking around. I could be walking
Speaker 1: around out in eastern Montana on the flattest ground in
Speaker 1: the world. I carry my scope on four because if
Speaker 1: you jump something up, I never wish in a in
Speaker 1: a practical honey experience, I'm talking like a deer stands
Speaker 1: up in thick ass brush twenty five yards away. I've
Speaker 1: never had on four power. I can find that thing.
Speaker 1: But I've raised enough rifles to my face where I
Speaker 1: don't do the like look for it. Like when I'm
Speaker 1: looking at something, my eye stays on it, my scope
Speaker 1: comes to my eye. My eye doesn't go to my scope.
Speaker 1: My scope comes to my eye, and that thing is
Speaker 1: right there in the center of the scope. I've never
Speaker 1: been I've never lost an animal or I would have
Speaker 1: gotten him with the one power scope, Like it's all
Speaker 1: I always can find. I can find running stuff in
Speaker 1: the four power scope. But when I'm sitting there and
Speaker 1: I see, like, holy sh it, there's like a deer
Speaker 1: laying over there. You know what's going on? Kresniki shotting there?
Speaker 1: Turn up to sixteen man. You see like his eyelashes
Speaker 1: and stuff. You know. It's just like I love having
Speaker 1: it there. I'm always looking at stuff do there? Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I would agree with Mark. That's a really
Speaker 1: good effective zoom range. You can kind of do anything
Speaker 1: with it. I have a you know, I I spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time hunting in the mountains. I have
Speaker 1: a tendency to like lighter weight scope, so I would
Speaker 1: my personal choice would be to give up a little
Speaker 1: bit of that light gathering and go to a slightly
Speaker 1: smaller objective forty or forty two. Maybe, Um, you're gonna
Speaker 1: lose a little bit of weight. Um, you have that
Speaker 1: advantage that touched on earlier. Typically the smaller objective means
Speaker 1: the rifle can the scope can sit a little bit
Speaker 1: lower on the rifle, and that can aid you better
Speaker 1: head placement on the stock. You you you you probably
Speaker 1: will shoot a little more accurately with that. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty fine distinction though. You know, that's almost my my
Speaker 1: sort of personal lean as opposed to someone else's. Um,
Speaker 1: there's not you know, it's one of those things. Are
Speaker 1: definitely not a black or white right or wrong answer
Speaker 1: to that type of thing. You know, I'm willing to
Speaker 1: trade off this and gain that so much exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I hunt the mountains a lot, and I'll I'll
Speaker 1: suck it up and take that that weight penalty because
Speaker 1: to me, like the magnification is like outweighs that advantage
Speaker 1: for myself. But you know a lot of stuff like
Speaker 1: Paul's is, like we're talking about that just comes down
Speaker 1: to personal preference. You know, I'm not as weight like,
Speaker 1: I'm not as weight obsessed some people are. Because I
Speaker 1: find that you can sit around talking all day. This
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a digression from from optics.
Speaker 1: Do you sit around talking all day like how many
Speaker 1: ounces you save by the scopeboard asco dude, you want
Speaker 1: to talk about save an ounces? Do you bring a
Speaker 1: tent or not bring a tent? Now we're talking about
Speaker 1: now we're talking about six Yeah, we're talking about six
Speaker 1: pounds now. So it's like I generally like, I don't
Speaker 1: you know like guys who are like cutting their toothbrush
Speaker 1: handle and half and stuff. I mean, you gotta get
Speaker 1: you have to have your kids so dialed at the
Speaker 1: point where you're where you're realizing that you're getting more
Speaker 1: miles every day because you ran that forty millimeter not
Speaker 1: the fifty millimeter scope. Like you have to be a
Speaker 1: very detail oriented backpack hunter with a ton of packing
Speaker 1: experience where that is the issue. There are some pieces
Speaker 1: of equipment when you think about when you're on a hunt.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're on an extended you know, eight ten
Speaker 1: day hunt. Did you carry every day all the time
Speaker 1: with you and there you know the rifles one of
Speaker 1: them that that you know, the tent set up. You're
Speaker 1: not packing that ten around everything. You're not packing so
Speaker 1: there are pieces of gear where shaving weight off is
Speaker 1: more valuable than others. In that sense, rifle you're gonna
Speaker 1: have with you all the time. I did a lot
Speaker 1: of hunting with a rifle that I was shocked one
Speaker 1: day when I put it on a digital scale and
Speaker 1: the rifle scope combo was twelve pounds nine ounces. I
Speaker 1: had totaled it all over. And then I got a
Speaker 1: rifle where the rifle scope combo came into eight and
Speaker 1: a half. It felt like I was carrying a chopstick.
Speaker 1: But you know, you know that that's leaving a tent
Speaker 1: or not. The flip side, too, is that a lot
Speaker 1: of times those heavy rifles are easier to shoot. Like
Speaker 1: so there's all there's there's so many different angles. My
Speaker 1: brother shoots a big like I actually gave it to him. Um,
Speaker 1: he shoots a big what's the what's the main ruger
Speaker 1: rifles like seventies things like it's a three d win
Speaker 1: big old thick barrel heavy stock. He carries the thing ever,
Speaker 1: because because you know what, when I laid that thing
Speaker 1: over my backpack, I looked at the scold like this
Speaker 1: thing is gonna die because it's like it just it's
Speaker 1: like it's like thump, you know, that rifle lays down
Speaker 1: there and you're not. He's like, I just settled and
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I'll tear that bullets gone. And then
Speaker 1: light rifles you just never get that feeling I've had.
Speaker 1: I had a rifle that we're getting wet. This is
Speaker 1: the whole subject. I had a rifle, I decided it
Speaker 1: was too light, had a different barrel put on it,
Speaker 1: just because not nothing with accuracy. I had a different
Speaker 1: barrel put because I just couldn't stand how light it was.
Speaker 1: It never felt settled in. But let's jump the knockers,
Speaker 1: because there's not a whole lot to discus us on knockers.
Speaker 1: With numbers, people are always like ten, like the most
Speaker 1: obvious one, eight power, ten power or whatever. What's your
Speaker 1: spiel what's what? What? What's the vortex spiel Ford? Well,
Speaker 1: those are you know, those are the those are the
Speaker 1: two most popular magnifications sold eight and tenant And you know,
Speaker 1: for that simply refers to how many times that binocular
Speaker 1: is magnifying with your I S S. So in one
Speaker 1: instance something is eight times bigger, in the other instance
Speaker 1: it's ten times bigger. Not a big difference. You know,
Speaker 1: I think it's there. You want to think of the
Speaker 1: terrain in the country that you're using it in and
Speaker 1: and typically Western hunters definitely gravitate towards ten powered binos.
Speaker 1: You have a little extra edge, a little more magnification.
Speaker 1: You're using them at greater distances typically, and so that
Speaker 1: ability to magnify something a little bit larger is of benefit.
Speaker 1: The drawbacks to it are is the field of view,
Speaker 1: the image that we talked about that you were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier with the rifle scope. Typically in the tent X,
Speaker 1: if everything else is equal, it's going to be narrower.
Speaker 1: You're gonna look at a smaller image when you're looking
Speaker 1: at something. So the guy with the spray paint cans,
Speaker 1: the guy with the spray paint cans, he's only going
Speaker 1: to see three quarters of what he could see in
Speaker 1: the eight power by now. And the other thing is
Speaker 1: that when you're trying to hold that binocular, what you're doing,
Speaker 1: you know, you're just picking up in your hands and
Speaker 1: holding it. The higher the magnification is, the harder is
Speaker 1: to hold that thing steady. It's gonna wiggle in your hands.
Speaker 1: And if you carry that to an extreme and you
Speaker 1: looked at a twelve or fifteen power binocular and you
Speaker 1: try to hand hold it, that image is gonna be
Speaker 1: wiggly and shaky, and so you lose some of the
Speaker 1: benefit of having that magnification ten x is it's to
Speaker 1: the point most people can hold him pretty steady, comfortably.
Speaker 1: I disagree on this one thing. I have a very
Speaker 1: firm opinion on about this. I find that I used
Speaker 1: to not be able to freehand tense. Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: where you're going. I learned. I learned to freehand tense. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I really don't think anyone can freehand
Speaker 1: a pair of twelve powers with all the game. Well
Speaker 1: you can, but it's just free. There's gonna be a loss.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be lost. And obviously, you know you're a
Speaker 1: big fan of tripod use. We certainly are too. I
Speaker 1: grew up doing that as well, using any of these
Speaker 1: baculars on a tripod. Taking your hands out of the equation,
Speaker 1: huge difference, giganic difference. Obviously, can realize that, yeah, you
Speaker 1: put the things on a tripod, like a pair of
Speaker 1: tens a tripod, like powers on a tripod, they're fast
Speaker 1: proved more effective once I started tripod glassing, Like, now
Speaker 1: I don't like it if I'm not Tripod's annoying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it realized all the stuff you're missing. Like when I
Speaker 1: when I had cous here for the first time, that's
Speaker 1: when I was like really introduced to you know, hardcore
Speaker 1: tripod glassing, like really tearing the country side apart. And
Speaker 1: that's actually like affected all my other hunting, Like I
Speaker 1: apply that to all my western hunting. Yeah, because you're like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: there's a quail a mile away over there, but just
Speaker 1: aw run between two bushes. You've never seen that thing,
Speaker 1: you know. But back to the eight tending, I will
Speaker 1: often say, and I'm gonna let you have the last
Speaker 1: word of this. I'll often tell people, if I had
Speaker 1: to really be super general, if you hunt like the
Speaker 1: east east of the Big Bend in the Missouri, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, eight. Yeah, good advice that the and the
Speaker 1: and the guy with the eight he's not gonna go
Speaker 1: wrong if he takes that eight power out west and
Speaker 1: hunts it's it's gonna work. Just funny. I wouldn't, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't. Yeah, I know we're on the same page
Speaker 1: on that. But talk about twelves, fifteens, all the craziest.
Speaker 1: So what happens is, you know, will agree to disagree
Speaker 1: on tense. I think that's the that is definitely. Do
Speaker 1: you think anyone can free hand a pair of tense not?
Speaker 1: Not to the same level of effectiveness. No, definitely not.
Speaker 1: You know, I wouldn't say anybody can pick up a
Speaker 1: pair of tens and they're gonna be effective with it.
Speaker 1: You really have to, you know, as you point out,
Speaker 1: sort of learn the tricks. You're gonna you know, you're
Speaker 1: gonna tuck your elbows, you're gonna brace your hands, you're
Speaker 1: gonna hold on your hat. You find ways to help
Speaker 1: stabilize that by no or that. What do you call
Speaker 1: when you can screw the eye cups in and out? Well,
Speaker 1: that that would be something you would set whether you
Speaker 1: were eyeglasses or not. But I find I used to
Speaker 1: dial them all the way in and then put my
Speaker 1: finger for stability, that I put my finger on my
Speaker 1: eyebrow and bring the cup to my finger. It would
Speaker 1: get a lot of stability like that. Now I find
Speaker 1: that I screw them all the way out, and I
Speaker 1: just kind of have a sweet spot where screwed all
Speaker 1: the way out. I just know where they're supposed to
Speaker 1: be in my eye socket, and it's just like shooting
Speaker 1: a bow where you have the same anchor point. When
Speaker 1: I bring my bandacres up, like I know how that
Speaker 1: I cut feels and I get great. I would definitely
Speaker 1: you know that that is absolutely one of those tricks.
Speaker 1: You know when I when I talk about using tents,
Speaker 1: you you they have to touch your face if you're
Speaker 1: just holding them out in space and they're off of
Speaker 1: your face and floating there. Yeah, I mean I agree
Speaker 1: with you completely. They are you know, very hard to use.
Speaker 1: You have to brace, they have to touch your face.
Speaker 1: You know, I tended I have more deep set eyes.
Speaker 1: I tended. I mean, driving pretty hard on my my
Speaker 1: eyebrow ridge. But that's all you know, that's what's helping
Speaker 1: stabilize them and make him steady. You know when you
Speaker 1: let like a picture that you're trying to look into
Speaker 1: a window with your hands where you make that little like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you kind of like you find ways of doing that
Speaker 1: that gives you law stability with your right and that
Speaker 1: you know, having your hands up there too. You know
Speaker 1: you're blacking that sidelight, that lateral light from coming in
Speaker 1: on him. But once you go beyond tend, you know,
Speaker 1: it's pretty much it's black and white. At that point,
Speaker 1: you're you're into the zone. Now that that really you're
Speaker 1: going to get the most benefit by using a tripod.
Speaker 1: Ryan Callahan three hands, and I've done honestly, I talk
Speaker 1: bad about him behind his back. Yeah, I've done it too,
Speaker 1: because we're like, there's no way he's pretty as he
Speaker 1: sat down behind him on a on a tripod and
Speaker 1: he's done. He's done. He's like an eyed he's done
Speaker 1: a ton of hunt. In our defense, we knew it
Speaker 1: behind his back. We also do it to his face.
Speaker 1: I'll be like, dude, you can't honestly tell me that
Speaker 1: you're free hand. He likes to set up with a tripod.
Speaker 1: His deal is this, likes to look through a tripod
Speaker 1: on a mountain hunt, backpack hunt. He doesn't want to
Speaker 1: carry too loves doing. He spends most of his time
Speaker 1: tripod knocking. So yeah, if he's walking up the trail
Speaker 1: and something catches his eye, short quick clip, he'll have
Speaker 1: a short quick look. I ran the same pros and cons,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I value that. What is that quick look?
Speaker 1: To the point where I'm I'm willing to suffer behind
Speaker 1: the tripod in order to have like a more stable
Speaker 1: quick look. Yeah you're well, you're you know, you're definitely
Speaker 1: gonna get more detailed doing that. Absolutely, you know, he
Speaker 1: he may be able to quickly ide an animal, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it's he's not going to see the level
Speaker 1: of detail that he will do. He's like, he's like
Speaker 1: that bears eight and a half, not eight. Before I
Speaker 1: started really picking apart the hillside cous deer hunting and
Speaker 1: elk hunting in Arizona, I learned these binoculars in Colorado
Speaker 1: from the my the senior guys that I worked with,
Speaker 1: and their whole thing was, as we're still hunting through
Speaker 1: quaky patches or the edge of quakies and timber looking
Speaker 1: for elk they were coming out to feed, They're just like,
Speaker 1: always just bring up your binoculars. Being up your binoculars,
Speaker 1: you can only see eight yards with your eyes, a
Speaker 1: hundred yards of your eyes. As soon as you bring
Speaker 1: up those binoculars, you just X rayed another thirty yards.
Speaker 1: And that's where those eight intense. I feel like, just
Speaker 1: really that's what we hadn't gotten. You could be still
Speaker 1: hunting for snowshoe hairs. I feel do even like that's
Speaker 1: a whole It's great you bring it up because that's
Speaker 1: like a who older kind of but not like all
Speaker 1: this tripod talk and all that, not being like, oh,
Speaker 1: can I extend my vision? It'd be like, what's fifty
Speaker 1: yards away? Binoculars have great Like you ask any burder
Speaker 1: people who will look at birds, They're like, they're like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about what's I'm looking at a bird ten
Speaker 1: yards away? Man, But I want to know is it
Speaker 1: you know, does you have like a slight yellow crown?
Speaker 1: You know, So that's the whole other aspect of of
Speaker 1: using binoculars is like finding deer in the brush, right
Speaker 1: that they're laying right in hiding in plain slight right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's you know, that's the reason that you know,
Speaker 1: people will end up with different sizes of binos. And
Speaker 1: you know, going back to the rifle scopes, you know
Speaker 1: that we sell guys four or five six different rifle
Speaker 1: scopes because at the point that you can afford to
Speaker 1: do that kind of thing, of course, you can, you know,
Speaker 1: you can key on specialties doing it. So when a
Speaker 1: guy's saying like when a guy's kicking around, he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna buy eight. So let's say eight by thirty two.
Speaker 1: How does it usually go like? There's usually like a
Speaker 1: round thirty, some variability around forty around fifty objective lens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty common. And when you hear when someone says
Speaker 1: eight by forty eight by are, what they're talking about
Speaker 1: is eight power fifty millimeter objective lens, right, just the
Speaker 1: same way the rifle scopes were on that. If you're
Speaker 1: weighing between forty and fifty objective lens, is it fair
Speaker 1: to say you're just asking yourself a weight, a weight
Speaker 1: and clunkiness versus image quality or is it more complicated
Speaker 1: than that. It's maybe a little more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: You know you can you can use those same exit
Speaker 1: pupil numbers we talked about earlier, dividing magnification into objective
Speaker 1: lens size to get kind of a crude way of
Speaker 1: estimating brightness. And typically the binos are all they're not
Speaker 1: going to go much beyond that that's seven millimeter range,
Speaker 1: so they're typically they're all going to give you a
Speaker 1: workable range where there's concrete benefit from going from that
Speaker 1: thirty two to the forty, to the forty two to
Speaker 1: the fifty. But for each user you have to you know,
Speaker 1: you have to decide on that because as that lens
Speaker 1: goes from thirty to forty to fifty, you can envision
Speaker 1: that the size and the weight of that binocular go
Speaker 1: up correspondingly. So while you do, you know, you do
Speaker 1: increase the low light performance by doing that, you you know,
Speaker 1: you're carrying packing around a larger, heavier binocular, typically a
Speaker 1: longer binocular when you go to those bigger objective lenses.
Speaker 1: So there's always a there's a there's just a trade
Speaker 1: off in there, and and everybody comes in at a
Speaker 1: different spot. Someone who would buy a you know, a
Speaker 1: lower power binocular with a big objective lens, obviously you're
Speaker 1: buying something there that's made to really be focused on
Speaker 1: low light performance, and the tradeoff is it's probably going
Speaker 1: to be a bigger, heavier binocular. You know, that's not
Speaker 1: all that practical during daytime use. So it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's a matter of picking what matches what you're doing,
Speaker 1: you know, what what activity are you doing. I found
Speaker 1: that through the years, as I've gotten more interested in
Speaker 1: glass and more interested in glassing and optics. I found
Speaker 1: that I've gone. I've tended to go in binoculars higher
Speaker 1: magnificate from eight to tens than bigger objected lens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: part of it was switching to a binol carrier. Makes
Speaker 1: a binal carrier like just around your neck. You feel
Speaker 1: those ounces in a binyl Carrier's kind of like Honestly,
Speaker 1: if I'm walking around my bino carry on and you
Speaker 1: and you, I couldn't tell you if you like secretly
Speaker 1: switched mind to a fifty, I wouldn't know. Nfi I
Speaker 1: pulled him out. It's just it's just like it's just
Speaker 1: not there. It's like the weights distributed when you're crawling.
Speaker 1: They're not like banging you in the nose, and very
Speaker 1: valuable piece of gear. You wind up getting a good
Speaker 1: carrier and you can carry a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: more binocular It just doesn't bother you. That's one other
Speaker 1: thing we should hit on really quickly, Steve, because as
Speaker 1: we've chatted through this, I keep meaning to say that.
Speaker 1: And one of the things you know, for example, in
Speaker 1: our lines of binoculars, we have four or five different
Speaker 1: tiers and you see the same size, say that ten
Speaker 1: by forty two, repeated in one series and the next,
Speaker 1: next to the next, and the next, and we get
Speaker 1: that question a lot about why is that what different
Speaker 1: ten forty two's And what's really important for people understand
Speaker 1: when we talk about brightness and exit pupils and these
Speaker 1: quick ways of calculating that the one thing that they
Speaker 1: can't take in effect or take into consideration is the
Speaker 1: quality of the piece and the user or the fellow
Speaker 1: applying those mathematical formulas. So you could you could take
Speaker 1: let's say, let's say it at tend by fifty binocular
Speaker 1: fairly common size. You do the math, you have that
Speaker 1: five millimeter exit pupil. You let's say you you took
Speaker 1: a binocular that may be retailed for a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: and contrasted that with a high end binocular to say,
Speaker 1: retailed for two thousand dollars, same exit people exactly between
Speaker 1: the two of those that five millimeter exit pupil. And
Speaker 1: so someone might say, well, that's the same number. These
Speaker 1: should be equally bright binoculars, right they you know, they
Speaker 1: both come out ahead in the same formula. But the
Speaker 1: thing about optics is the quality of glass it's used
Speaker 1: in the quality of the coatings that are applied to
Speaker 1: that glass, and how many of those codings are applied,
Speaker 1: and the the you know, the design of the optic,
Speaker 1: the layout of the lenses, how many lenses are used
Speaker 1: in there. Those are all at least as important as
Speaker 1: those simplistic numbers of calculating exit people. And that there's
Speaker 1: no way you can't you can't build that into that formula,
Speaker 1: and so that expensive to him by fifty very typically
Speaker 1: is going to drastically outperform that, you know, that less
Speaker 1: expensive model. Is it easier for you guys to answer
Speaker 1: the question what makes shitty optics shitty or what makes
Speaker 1: good optics good? I think it's easier to concentrate on
Speaker 1: the on the goods. Well get all the time, like
Speaker 1: why the hell would I spend because they look better? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, if you can what it is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, building the things. If you can build something
Speaker 1: tighter and the mechanical tolerances are tighter and those lenses
Speaker 1: are more precisely held in a line, it's gonna increase
Speaker 1: optical performance. It's gonna make the piece more expensive to build.
Speaker 1: Whether it's a bocular, it could, ye, sure it could. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the quality of the glass it's used. You know, there's
Speaker 1: glasses is a simple commodity. It can it can be
Speaker 1: had in very low end for formulations that are full
Speaker 1: of chromatic aberration and distortion. It varies widely. Coatings that
Speaker 1: are applied to the glass have a huge effect and
Speaker 1: that and what codings do is they they reduce light
Speaker 1: loss to reflection. So it's light hits a lens, a
Speaker 1: certain amount of it is reflected back off that lens
Speaker 1: rather than going through it into your eye. And so
Speaker 1: any reflective coatings reduce that and they allow more the
Speaker 1: light to come through. And so the higher the quality
Speaker 1: of that coding, and by increasing the number of layers
Speaker 1: of that that are applied, you keep bumping up that
Speaker 1: that light transmission number. That's where you get that term,
Speaker 1: you know, fully multi coded opting. You see that catalogs
Speaker 1: all the time, and I feel like that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that just way over people's heads, idiots, you
Speaker 1: know what kind of you see it so often used
Speaker 1: that it just kind of blurs into the background. That's
Speaker 1: what it means. That's what it means. Loss is the idea. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: how long we've been talking to Okay, Doug concluding thoughts questions,
Speaker 1: doing it off quiet? Well, if you just said, they're
Speaker 1: replaying that awesome turkey out this morning, it was how
Speaker 1: can that Steve Gut just talk to those turkeys? Well,
Speaker 1: it was, it was, It was incredible. But U and
Speaker 1: I certainly have a new appreciation for you, or enhanced
Speaker 1: the wider appreciation. I learned a lot about optics today.
Speaker 1: Before this discussion, I was thinking about this Charlie Brown
Speaker 1: cartoon about are you near sighted or far sighted? One
Speaker 1: of the like Lionus has classes on him and he said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know what does that mean. And they said, well,
Speaker 1: nearsighted means that you see things close. And they're kind
Speaker 1: of explaining to him, and uh, he says, glasses make
Speaker 1: me see better. So all of this I was learning
Speaker 1: what I know about. Boil it down, that's good optics
Speaker 1: make me see better. Bam. Yeah, you're it's a leap
Speaker 1: of faith, like you're sort of know it's not a
Speaker 1: leap of faith because I had this like I had
Speaker 1: this moment in my life that I always thought about
Speaker 1: where I never had good knocultors. Okay, I've never had
Speaker 1: It's that what I say him it's not what I
Speaker 1: had tons of money laying around. I just didn't have
Speaker 1: money therefore didn't have good bnocutors. I was hunting caribou
Speaker 1: this guy, and he had it's got done guiding on
Speaker 1: the Alaska Peninsula for a year and some At the
Speaker 1: end of the guiding season, he came into a pair
Speaker 1: of good bnoctors were sitting in our caribou camp. A
Speaker 1: grizzly bears walking up the bank on the opposite of
Speaker 1: the river. I'm looking at it's like a brown blob.
Speaker 1: I throw up chuck knockers and I looked through it
Speaker 1: and I can see cow licks moving across the bear
Speaker 1: from the wind. Yeah, and I'm like, let me see
Speaker 1: that again. I had an epiphany like that too. I
Speaker 1: you know, my background is guiding. I guided for many
Speaker 1: many years in the state Idoa before doing this, and
Speaker 1: I followed the same course. I went from incrementally increasing
Speaker 1: the quality of my optics every year. And I had
Speaker 1: an epiphany. One year I was hunting with a couple
Speaker 1: of great, big, overweight to Hawaiian guys that showed up
Speaker 1: with piles of brand new gear in boxes and we
Speaker 1: sat out the evening. We came into camp. It was
Speaker 1: an elkhant climbed up on a ridge just that night
Speaker 1: to climb out and look. And I had a mid
Speaker 1: priced pair of I think it was Pentacs binoculars at time, decent,
Speaker 1: decent optics. And this guy pulls out out of his case,
Speaker 1: this this big boxy hard case, and he flips it open,
Speaker 1: and he's got a brand new pair of like As,
Speaker 1: which is very nice, high end brand of optics, and
Speaker 1: he pulls them out and we're at that point, we're
Speaker 1: looking into kind of a low setting sound, tough, tough glassing,
Speaker 1: and I'm sort of struggling to see much because I'm
Speaker 1: getting all kinds of reflections coming into my binoculars. And this,
Speaker 1: this great, big guy with zero Western hunting experience whatsoever,
Speaker 1: picks this pair of binoculars out of this box. Minutes
Speaker 1: he's picking out elk coming out of the trees, and
Speaker 1: I just I couldn't believe it. I thought he was
Speaker 1: seeing things. It just could not believe. And I had
Speaker 1: finally had to reach over and look through his binoculars
Speaker 1: and and it just it was stunning, you know, low
Speaker 1: and behold, I mean elk here and out there and
Speaker 1: out there, and that at that. I mean, I still
Speaker 1: remember that to this day. It was it really it
Speaker 1: was like me. I came out of there being like
Speaker 1: I don't care what, I don't care if I got
Speaker 1: to move into a new apartment. I'm from that point on,
Speaker 1: I saved every tip I had for two years, and
Speaker 1: I bought a pair of the exact same. Like my
Speaker 1: takeaway and I can take it from what you guys
Speaker 1: both just said. It will be my closing statement will
Speaker 1: be that to really see that both of you guys
Speaker 1: describe experiences that happened in the field in certain situations,
Speaker 1: certain light. A lot of these. A lot of people
Speaker 1: go to Dicks or the Big five and or Sportsman's
Speaker 1: and compare binoculars inside underfluorescent lights at you know, max
Speaker 1: range of whatever that is maybe sorry trying to read
Speaker 1: the end caps and they all look great, and they
Speaker 1: do not look great when you're looking into that setting sun.
Speaker 1: It makes a huge, huge difference. So yeah, well you
Speaker 1: just buy a bunch of stuff in vortex. No one,
Speaker 1: you're gonna return it all like I want one everything.
Speaker 1: A couple of days later, this massive it's except editors
Speaker 1: marked that that's at one. Go to your sporting store
Speaker 1: and be nice, seem reasonable, offer to leave your driver's
Speaker 1: license and and see if you can go out in
Speaker 1: the park and not have a look and try to
Speaker 1: do it, you know, late in today, early in the morning,
Speaker 1: Like you know, don't just look at the end cap
Speaker 1: down the road, down the but go out. See you
Speaker 1: go outside, look at it. Try to go look at
Speaker 1: a bird. Do his feathers look sharp, to the point
Speaker 1: of his beak look clear? I'll say this, and Mark
Speaker 1: Boran concluding this, Well, this is just my one concluding
Speaker 1: thought is that whether I work for an optics company
Speaker 1: or not or whatever, I what I work for Vortex.
Speaker 1: Good quality optics are unequivocally one of the most important
Speaker 1: pieces of gear. And you're hunting arsenal, dude, I I
Speaker 1: know I've had like three concluding thoughts. I absolutely agree.
Speaker 1: I absolutely I would rather if you told me you
Speaker 1: can hunt with boots and no binoculars or barefoot with binoculars,
Speaker 1: I would have a very difficult patch. I'd be like,
Speaker 1: how about I get socks, Paul, including thoughts. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we've touched on a lot of great things here.
Speaker 1: I mean it's hopefully it's been abuse to some of
Speaker 1: your listeners out there, and um, oh yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to say thank you for just unbelievable job explaining some
Speaker 1: of those like millimeter bell thing. I mean, that was
Speaker 1: awesome and I enjoyed chanting about you know, we I
Speaker 1: just talked about that, that experience I had in the field,
Speaker 1: and really at that point it to me that sort
Speaker 1: of set a real interest in optics from that point
Speaker 1: out use him and I percussed in a hunting for
Speaker 1: big horn cheap, which is extremely optics intensive. You know,
Speaker 1: I've had that interest in love and that ever since.
Speaker 1: So it's I enjoyed talking about it. It's been a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. Not now I have something concrete to
Speaker 1: refer when people ask these questions, will just be like,
Speaker 1: if you have an hour and thirty minutes the internet connection,
Speaker 1: I'll be happy to answer that question for you. All right,
Speaker 1: Um yeah, go to go to hunt dot com by
Speaker 1: the teach shirts so you look cool. Um, Doug, if
Speaker 1: you land you want to manage low and Oak Interests?
Speaker 1: Is that is your company named after that oak over there?
Speaker 1: Yes it is. I'm looking at the damn oak right now.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, lowing out, Uh, call for if you
Speaker 1: could have a guy. I want one last thing I
Speaker 1: want to touch on. If a guy has a question,
Speaker 1: he calls Vortex, someone answers the phone. This this is
Speaker 1: gonna sound awful, but someone who's like fluent in English
Speaker 1: answers the phone absolutely, and they're welcome to the same
Speaker 1: questions we've been talking about here. Anyone can call in
Speaker 1: and ask any of those questions or you know, any
Speaker 1: number of us there that are happy to help out.
Speaker 1: And if the warranty you have it's good for any
Speaker 1: optics in your line or not. Yes, absolutely, like you
Speaker 1: buy it's just something not right, it's the warranty is cool,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's yeah. It covers the original buyer and
Speaker 1: anyone else down the road that buys it. It covers
Speaker 1: anything really outside of losing it. What we're having we've
Speaker 1: seen come in with bullet hole, so we've already seen it.
Speaker 1: That's that's a true story. So but any like like
Speaker 1: I like that, like the razor stuff is great. By'm saying,
Speaker 1: if someone just can't pull that off financially, he gets
Speaker 1: a same warranty. Absolutely absolutely doesn't that that has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with it. So what's you know, so sort
Speaker 1: of losing them once you buy them. You're cool, You're covered.
Speaker 1: You are covered all right, um okay good. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us to take care