EP 191: Advancements in Optics with Colby Kroff of Swarovski

Muzzle velocity, bullet weight, ballistic coefficient. Clarity of glass and the quality of glass, unbelievable. Pretty awesome piece of equipment. If you shorten the eye relief, you'll widen the field of view. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, Devin, we got you in the office here today. At least, you're always in the office. But we got you in this office. Drug you in here. Podcast room, I'm here. Great. Willingly. Willingly. Good. Wantingly. Good. Whatever you want to call it. We had to drag him in here. But anyway, it's good for him. Of course, we got Chris Peterson. We also have a special guest from Swarovski. We got Colby here. He's our rep there at Swarovski. Great guy, very knowledgeable. How are you doing? I'm doing well. It's good to be back. I think anytime you get invited back anywhere, it's a good sign, right? Yeah. Good to be back on. Appreciate it. Unless it's prison. Well, that's a good point. Well, there's a few places. Some people want to go back. I hadn't considered that. I guess.

Free food and a roof over your head. Huh? All right. So anyway, we've got a couple new products. We've had a little. Swarovski's been very innovative. It feels like in the last. It feels like 12 months. Of course, these kinds of products are in the works for probably 24, 36 months. Who knows? How long? How long does it take to make some of these new products? Years. Years and years. Like so our ATX. Yeah. Our ATX, STX spotting scope, we launched, what, seven or eight years ago? That was nine years in the making. Wow. This, I remember some features of this binocular, this new EL range being talked about when I started 10 years ago. Wow. So it's always, we're always in the process of making new stuff. When we talked about the NLs, wasn't it 15-ish years after the ELs? I mean, I'm rounding. Yeah. I mean, you're not going to just make something and then start making the next thing.

There's going to be a natural progression and technology before you say, hey, we can do that better now. There's some new. But it's. It's years. It takes a while. And also, it's the old saying, if it ain't totally broke, don't fix it. For sure. Yeah. But the consumer's demanding so much with these phones anymore. Yep. You know what I mean? Well, and with the equipment, with rifles and the stuff that we've now used, it's different. Look at that just in the last five to seven years. And that's advanced. I'm sure this elevated it in terms of a priority. Let's get this out. Absolutely. This environmental data, all the Bluetooth data for these longer range rifle shooters or just normal range, 400 to 500 yard rifle shooters just to add precision to your shooting. So yeah, it's exciting to talk about. You guys launched it, I guess, officially in terms of an announcement here in the last month.

Yeah. Yeah. The 15th of January. Yeah. I think two weeks ago. Yeah. And they're going to be available here within the next week to 10 days, you know, delivery time. So. Starting to ship February 1. There we go. Awesome. Starting to ship and shipping good quantities of them. Should be good quantities. Yeah. That's what I think is important to note is if you want a pair of these, you can get a pair. Yep. You're going to be able to get a pair. Yep. Yep. So we're pretty excited. So.

Where do we start? More of a personal question. I was just thinking. Oh. Okay. For Kobe. He's a hunter. Yep. But you know, this stuff just keeps going crazy. We just keep innovating and innovating and innovating. You've probably had the question like, how smart's too smart? Yeah. You know what I mean? Absolutely. How much technology is too much technology? And you're a hunter yourself. Yep. You know, but at the same time, I'm going to take stuff like this in the field. So. And people ask us that question. Yeah. Absolutely. There's absolutely an advantage to having technology, right? It doesn't. You still have to find the game. You still have to have some field craft and be able to know the area and all that. It doesn't. It's not a cheat by any means. It does make you more effective and more efficient. Yeah. And that's what I like about it.

And there are people that will completely reject all the technology anyway and just do it the way they've always done. And that's fine as well. Well, you take your way to choose your way to. Yeah. It's absolutely. And there's no problem with that at all. I think back to a long time ago when range finders were fairly new. Another manufacturer brought out a range finder that had 10 different reticle choices. And you had a bow mode and a rifle mode and all kinds of features, even a feature where you could measure an object at distance, you know, and they were so complicated that people rejected it at that time. Maybe it was ahead of its time. Right. Yeah. So I think you can go too far in that direction and add so many features that it becomes maybe marginally unusable. Yeah. You're so user-friendly. When it comes in time of war, you want to be able to kill stuff fast. Yes, exactly.

And that's what I think part of this is you get to – there's so many variables. You've got to do this. I've got to click. I've got to level the rifle. I mean, the whole process becomes such a process that the animal just walks away. Right. Or you miss it a few times or whatever. Right. And so you've got to be – it's one thing to have the technology, but you've also got to be able to use it. Yeah, you can't be a slave to it either. Yeah. If for some reason it doesn't work or whatever, right? You can't be a slave to it. It can't be something that – You've got to be able to go back. Yeah. You've got to have the fundamental skills of getting it done. Like those times the canyon fogs in really bad, and you can see enough to shoot, but sometimes you can't range it. You're like, I can't do anything. And then in the past – Pull the trigger. I'm going to spot you. Yeah. That's right.

A little higher. That's right. Well, and think about this. Once in a while I think about this is do you guys carry a compass nowadays? Just tell me. Do you carry a compass? No. I have one in my packet all the time. Okay. So I have one too. I haven't looked at it, I'll bet you, for 20 years. Same. Okay. And my kids, you think they have a compass? No way. My kids don't know how to use them, and we've talked about this other thing. Like we've got replaceable blade knives that we just have with our kids and all that. I haven't taught my boy how to sharpen a knife properly. And do you feel like you know how to sharpen a knife properly? Oh, I do because – I don't. I don't. I grew up shaving my arm – I've never been one that can sharpen a knife. With bare razor heads. My dad used bare razor heads or Zwickies, and you had to – Okay.

And he said, when you cut your hair on your arm, they're ready to put in your quiver and go on with. Okay. So I learned that way. And I'm obviously much older than the rest of us. Well, and I always sharpen – I did the same thing. I was the knife sharpener sitting there. We had four knives, and I would do this one. You can do it. I've told this story before. I'm not even going to lie. I can't do it. I can't do it. But I tried. I used to shoot the Zwickies. I tried. But you know what made me feel good about it? It had to be sharpened a rock. And people used to use rocks. They used to chip rocks at that point. That's right. It was just – But it got cumbersome. It was really cumbersome. After a while, as I got older, I'm like – because every year, just from being an in out of your quiver or whatever else, they're like, you've got to touch them up.

And if you're just off, you can spend 10 to 15 minutes and make them worse. Make them worse. No. So I don't use those anymore. That was my point right there. Yeah, I don't use them anymore. Making stuff worse. But anyway, that was a digression. But we're all talking about, I guess, advancements to make us hopefully a better, more efficient hunter. You know, we all know the level of quality with Swarovski glass. And now we're taking the EO range, which has been around for years. I don't know how long. The regular EO range has been around in its ability to range. Do you remember? 10 years. 10 years? Yeah. Yep. And now adding the – I say the final components because I don't know what more there would be to add environmental data or other features. I don't really know. There's going to be more. I know. But our brains right now don't know what we don't know.

But by the end of this podcast, we come up with some ideas. I don't know. I really don't know. Then we need to patent those ideas. There you go. With everything that goes into these apps and the mathematics involved in the calculations. And I really don't know. So the big things are definitely accounted for. How many more minor things? And maybe that goes back to what you're saying, Kobe. You know, you can just keep adding, adding, adding. And maybe that's why stuff takes 8 to 10 years to really perfect. This is really what we're going to go to market with because I'm sure it started at this and now it's at this. Yeah, for sure. The stuff that doesn't make a difference as much like, you know, the other things, elevation or temperature, barometric pressure, all the different things that really can add up bigger. You've got them. You've encapsulated them.

So we're talking about the EL range TA for tracking assistance. Right. But as we get started on this, like, is this taking temperature? This? It is, yep. So let's back up a little bit. So I think 9 years was the old one, not 10 years. I just thought back. It was the very first product that was launched when I started working for Swarovski and it was right after I started. So I think it was 9 years. And in 9 years, we didn't really make any significant changes to that. We tweaked the outside a little bit, made some cosmetic changes, but it was electronically and optically the same unit for that long and still sold very well. So this one had to be really good to be the predecessor to that. It's kind of like the old classic Chevy. Like, you just, the late 90s. I loved them. Yeah. Huh? That's a matter of a person.

In 96, they went to the Vortec engine, but I mean, other than that, it's a little Chevy. All right. Keep going. So this does do that, Adam. It's got a little sensor right here. That's the sensor? Yeah, right there. That's a light. It takes temperature. That's a light? Barometric pressure. Yeah, that's how you know your Bluetooth is on. Oh, that sensor. Tiny dot. I thought that was a blemish in the code. So like a lot of these, I mean, if you have it blasting in your truck at 90 degrees and then step right out, it could have a little bit of variation when you drop out at zero degrees. It does update pretty quickly, though. If I see a 160-inch buck and I'm breathing hard, that's going to elevate this temperature and it's going to be off. What's this larger one you said is a light? That's a light. That's the indication light, so you know the Bluetooth is on. Oh.

And it's actually for calibrating the compass as well. Okay. Yeah. Gives you some information. So there it is for your environmental factors, barometric pressure, temperature. Yeah. So when you push the range button, it samples barometric pressure, temperature. It takes the angle into account and the distance, and it applies that to a ballistic curve that you've loaded into it with Bluetooth, and it gives you a shooting solution. Yeah, it's just math. It gives you a shooting solution in your field of view. It tells you what to dial your scope to. Does this little sensor do the barometric pressure, too? I believe so. Temperature, everything, and that little thing? Probably the only environmental. Oh, jeez. Not a scientist, but I believe. That's where the environmental. And all that's just pre-programmed into the app. You can. Yeah, so the app is actually really user-friendly.

In fact, the first time I showed this to anyone, I just handed them the binocular, handed them the app, and let them mess with it. And within about 10 minutes, they had their ballistic data loaded into the binocular, and we were off and running. So it's really user-friendly, really intuitive. But you basically put your muzzle velocity, bullet weight, ballistic coefficient in the app. It's actually got a big, long list of other things you can choose from. Your twist. Barrel twist. Yeah, put all the information in there. And it's just like anything else. The better information you put in, the better the result's going to be. You put all that in, you can do that for three rifles, and then transfers them over to the binocular. You choose whichever rifle you're using at the time. And it works great. Factory ammunition list. That's awesome. It's got a whole list.

In fact, there's stuff on there that I've never even heard of. European brands and whatever. That's nice, though, for a starting place. Well, ending place for some people. Like your 6.5, right? You're using locks. I use a 6.5 PRC with Federal. Yeah, 143 factory. That one, at the time, you couldn't find reloading components when I was developing that gun. Maybe you couldn't find brass, bullet, all that. But you could find factory. And I bought two cases. And it shot it great. My 6.5 PRC shoots the factory stuff. I'm like, I'm not going to change. So that would be in here. It's in there. Yeah. Nowadays, it's so consistent. You're good to go. In fact, that might be what's in there now. That might be the data that we were looking at earlier. For one year. Go get your gun. Go get your gun. Go get your gun. I saw it instead of way. But same thing. Yeah. That's really cool.

I would say the number one question I get with all range-finding binoculars across the spectrum is the app and user-friendliness. Yeah. Guys don't want to have to spend three hours on a Saturday trying to figure out how to work the app. And it's as easy as just picking your load from a list, telling it what your elevation is, and sending it to the binocular. That's as easy as it can be that easy. And if you wanted to simplify it, let's say you didn't want to do all your load data testing, as long as you went out to the range and your gun shot it well, one, 300 yards, whatever you want to do, and you felt comfortable with it, use that and take out a lot of the R&D of your own guesswork and reloading. I thought you were going to say send it all to Devin and Devin will send back to you. No, no, no, no, no. I just mean pick it from the suite. There's a demand there. Pick it from the suite.

Devin's custom shop. Unless you find some obscure ammo company that's not in there. But, I mean, all the major ones are going to be in there. Well, it's got to be close, even though, I mean, your lot of powder might be a little bit different. You know, factory, that's where I think where we're talking about with custom loads, if you get the exact, you went out and chronographed it, you got the exact speed. But it's going to be plus or minus. Yeah, for sure. And there's actually a way in the app as well to true the information, right? So you're always going to be best with an actual measured muzzle velocity. But there's an advanced part of the app where you can give it either the degradation of velocity over distance, if you have a way to measure that, which is kind of hard.

But you could also give it the factory speed, shoot it, and then go back in until it drops four more inches at this distance than what the binocular thought of doing it. Yeah, and it calculates it backwards. And you've got to do that, honestly, on our, I mean, because depending on the chronograph, and sometimes, you know, you're plus or minus 25 to 40 feet per second sometimes. It's never, I mean. You can leave your shells out in the sun for 20 minutes, and you can gain feet per second. That's what I mean. How much did you say? 40 to 50, maybe? Yeah, enough to. 40 to 50. Enough to just wipe it off. 800 yards to make a difference. Oh, it'll make a difference. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's what, you know, a good friend of ours, old Mark Thompson, talked about cooking your shells a little bit. Like, he's like, your barrel will get warm, and you're running some rounds through.

Don't just leave it in there and cook the round. You know, with your chamber being hot. That's right. You're shooting four rounds. Chamber one will sit there for 60 seconds. There's something to it. We've all been known to heat up a barrel, I guess. Yeah. Really? Kevin? Yeah. Maybe a moose hunt story we've got to pull up? Belt feeding? Whatever you want to call it. Feeding? Hey. I popped an extra. I always pop an extra one in, you know? Extra belt or an extra what?

Okay, okay. You want to move on? Yeah, let's move on. Okay. Which would you rather do? Run out of ammo or, you know, or knock something down? The moose came home with you. That's all you need to say. He's in my basement right now. He's in your basement. There you go. Just keep shooting until you run out. He's got a hole through the horn. Don't fall over. He's dead. It's a little bit lighter to pack it back to camp. It's not a big deal. Oh, not too bad. Anyway, we like to give it a little bit of hard time. So the app, I mean, it sounds like it's very simple if you're handing it to somebody without saying, hey, read the owner's manual and do this. Somebody that obviously is familiar enough with how to use that, how to, you know, download the app from the app store. Right. You know, I think a lot of it is just people don't know about. They don't know about. They don't know.

Apps are for millennial 20, 25-year-olds or something like that. And to some extent, I even fall into that. I don't have a lot of extracurricular apps on my phone. I have ones I use. And if I don't use them much, they're gone. This is one that I will definitely use. And they are very, like you said, you can add a few more layers of stuff, your sight height, and a few different things. But the basic stuff is very simple. Absolutely. That you may have already yourself or the custom gun manufacturer that built your rifle, built your load for that rifle. You're just going to get that right from them. And then it's just, as long as you don't fat finger a decimal point, there's something in there. You're going to fat finger something right now in the middle of winter. But anyway, you know, with these binoculars, I know guys like they'll have their grandkids

or whatever, help them get the app, right? For sure. And then they'll be like, hey, I'm never letting go of these binoculars. And I'm never selling that rifle and order me 1,400 more rounds. So they never have to change their situation, you know? So anyway, that makes it to where it's foolproof and they don't have to continually think about apps and things like that with people that don't want to do it. Yeah, but it'll get as advanced as you want it to get. So can you use this as just a range finder? You can. You don't even have to worry about it. It'll do just exactly what the old one will do. It'll give you angle compensated range.

It'll give you angle and degrees. It'll give you just straight line of sight. You can turn all the fancy stuff off if you want, not even use it. Which is why we'll call it the old now EO range is gone. It's not in production anymore. It will not be. And so those that are out there, they're still run. They function like you just described. But you're not going to be able to buy both models, the TA and the old model. This one replaces the old one. I wonder if they'll be worth more money, the old ones. Like a collectible. We have collectors out there. There's plenty of them out there. Usually to be really worth a lot, there can't be very many. Over nine years, we sold a lot. Yeah, that's right. I might hold on to mine anyway. They're special. So the one thing I think about these two is we're talking about the clarity of glass and the quality of glass. Unbelievable.

We had them right out here. Dude, I was ranging 1,800 yards, no problem. But then just glassing the country around. We're not talking buildings. We're talking trees and rocks and mountains and whatnot that we have around here. It was pretty impressive. It is. Unbelievable. Yeah, it's a huge step up. There was a bit of a compromise, quite honestly, in the old binocular to get it to do what it could do when we built it, when we designed it correctly. With the technology they have. Yeah, exactly. So it wasn't HD. It didn't have field flattening. It didn't have some of the other optical advantages that some of our other optics had at the time. This one has… But now you can incorporate it. Yeah, absolutely. It falls somewhere between the EL, current EL binocular, which is the flagship by which all other binoculars were measured for a long time.

It was the most amazing binocular ever built 11 and a half months ago. Yeah, absolutely. You know what I mean. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we're talking recent times. Yeah, and between that and the NL Pier, which is the new flagship. So a step above the, quote, we'll just call them old EL glass and the current NL. Yep, it does have all the Sguaro Vision package, which is HD objective lenses and field flattening lenses in the eyepiece. So just dummy it down for us. Is HD just a term? It can be a term. There's no… Well, there's no… Does it really mean… Yeah. Like, what does HD mean to Sguaro and what does Sguaro Vision mean? That's a good question. A really good question because it can mean nothing depending on who's talking about it. Or the company we're talking about. Yeah, there's no FDA for optics. Yeah, right. In order for it to be this, you have to… This meets the specification.

You can call it a new Wazoo HD. You can now call it HD. That's what I want. Or, yeah, whatever. Yeah, so what HD means to us and to any real reputable manufacturer is that the presence of some kind of apochromatic system, which reduces color fringing. So when light passes through glass and prisms, it kind of splits a little bit into different spectrums of different colors of the spectrum. And HD or an apochromatic lens system does a really good job of putting those colors essentially back together before they get to your eye. And it's usually done, in fact, most commonly done with fluorite, glass high in fluoride or fluorite glass in the objective, right? That's what it is. That's what it means. It's been… I don't know what the proper term is. It's been dumbed down in the industry for a long time, mostly by less reputable manufacturers as some kind of an HD coating or whatever.

But that's why sometimes you'll see… That's how you define it. We call it HD. You'll see other… In the camera system, you'll see a lot of APO or… What do you call it? Apro… Apochromatic. Yeah, like I'm not going to say that. You're not going to say that. And it doesn't sell well. Yeah. HD sells well. HD, exactly. So that's what it is. So it has that. It has a fluorite objective lens essentially. And then it has… The other part of Saguaro Vision is in the eyepiece, the design of the eyepiece, there are filled flattening lenses in there which remove all of the size and shape distortion from the image. And also the design of the eyepiece gives it long eye relief and a wide field of view which are two things that are usually mutually exclusive. Generally, if you shorten the eye relief, the eye relief is how far from your eyeball the binocular has to be to get a full picture.

If you shorten the eye relief, you'll widen the field of view. And you can think about looking… Put your hand out there. Look through a circle it made with your hand and move it closer to your face. Unless you see a wider field, right, as you move closer. Same thing with binoculars. This has long eye relief. I think it's 17 millimeters. It might be longer than that, which is long, which makes it easy for eyeglass users to use and people that have weird shaped faces or whatever. And it has a wide field of view. It's actually wider than the regular EL. So that's why I was… Because of that, that's that same technology we've talked about back in the NL, right? I think it was, I want to say, 17 to 20 percent. I can't remember. Bigger field of view in the 42 millimeter than the old 42. And maybe that had to do with eye relief. Yeah, it's a little different. A little different in these?

In the NL, that's accomplished by tilting the prism in the actual housing to get that wide field of view. In this, it's the design of the eyepiece that just tweaks the field of view a little bit better than what the regular EL has. And what I think is really cool about this, and you asked about the old model and the differences in that. The cool thing about this new model is it does all of these things. It's so much better optically than the old one. It's so much better optically than most range-finding binoculars out there. And it's only 7 percent more expensive than the old one. So it's not like it's a crazy… We added a lot. Yeah, and we added a ton of features to it. So what do we add? Let's say 30 percent. Feels like. A 30 percent upgrade with a 7 percent cost increase. Well, that might be 30 percent in the optics.

And then you've got to add the percentage increase in all the data and environmental data. It's 50 percent, it feels like. I mean, a huge jump. Let's talk about the TA. The TA on the end. It's EL Range TA Tracking Assistant. We talked about that a little bit when you first got here. Of course, looked at some of the different maps and whatnot on your phone and how it connects to those. We'll just let you take the floor. Yeah, this is one of those features that was talked about years ago when I first started the company. We were starting to brainstorm some ideas of wouldn't it be cool to be able to project a waypoint with your range-finding binocular. And basically what this does, the tracking assistant, this binocular has a built-in compass, built-in magnetic compass.

And so anytime you press the button and take a range, it knows not only the distance that you ranged, but it knows the bearing of that range as well. So then it can be used as a navigation aid to either get you to the point that you ranged or get you somewhere else to another point that you've specified, right? And the binocular actually will store the last three measurements on board. And there's two things you can do with that. You can just use the binocular itself to navigate to one of those points. It has a standalone without cell service, without whatever. You can do that. Go ahead. And maybe tell us the other option, maybe through the app, and then maybe tell us how you would actually use them. For sure. Absolutely. So then the other two options there are is if you have it Bluetooth to your phone, but you don't have cell coverage,

it will just give you kind of like a compass needle on your phone to navigate you to that point. Or if you have cell service, it will overlay your range on Google Maps. And so you can actually look at an aerial photograph of where you just ranged. You shot. You see. Yeah. Here's your point. Start tracking blood there. Yeah. And so that's exactly what it's made for. Exactly that is to get you to a point that you ranged. And so the scenario is exactly that, right? I shot something. I have to go over three ridges to get to where it is because everybody shoots fire now. Left. Left. Exactly. You stay in one place. You better get your loan, and now you need something like this. Right. And we've got a lot of thick hillsides. And we're shooting long range. Yes. Exactly. Where everybody's shooting farther. And so by the time you get to where you think it was now, sometimes it's not where it was.

And if you're lucky enough to have seen it fall or whatever, that makes it much easier. Or it's dark. You know, 30 minutes and it's dark and you get there. I mean, so sure. I think so many times I could have used that in the last couple of years. Well, and that's the scenario. That's the scenario that happened to us on an Arizona hunt a little while ago, before this actually came out. And it would have been super helpful. We missed where we should have been by a couple hundred yards down the ridge. And it was dark, and we stomped around forever until we stumbled on. Figured out we were way too far down the ridge. Right. So the way I would use it, I would probably mostly use it, probably because most of the places that I would use it, there's no cell coverage, but I would probably mostly use it in the binocular. So the... Yeah. Talk us through that. Yeah. So what you do...

So I'm sitting in my shooting position. I shoot something. Right. And so to navigate to that position, before I walk away, I would turn it into the track... I'd put it in the tracking mode. Okay. Which is just a couple of button presses, puts it in tracking mode, and actually will give you... When you do that, it'll give you the last three measurements to pick from. So you pick the measurement that's the correct one. Right? So now you're in tracking mode, and you walk toward your destination. You get halfway or however far you get, and you turn around, range back to your shooting position, where you shot from, and it will tell you how far you need to go... The 180 degrees. How much further. Or whatever. Yeah. And left or right. Back and left and right. So it will... And the display in the binocular will tell you, go this way 34 yards... Jeez. And go back 100 yards or whatever.

And it's pretty accurate. So it's doing your math and just telling you right, left, and the yardage. It is. And the... I've got an upgrade for it already. Oh, yeah. We could integrate Siri in there. Well, Jason, go left. Go back. But anyway, so it's telling you, go back, left, or right. And because the laser rangefinder is so accurate, and we should talk about accuracy of the rangefinder at some point, but because it's so accurate, the distance part of it works really, really, really well. The bearing part can be a little off because of magnetic interference or whatever. Human errors. Yeah. So you may get to that spot, and you may have to search back and forth a little bit. But the range is... But the distance is... Yeah, it's dead on. It's... And so if you had... And so that one, you navigate through the...

Through the vinyl field of view as you're trying to make your leapfrogging over to it. Correct. And if you don't have sole service, you use it on the compass-only feature on the app? Yeah. On the app? Within the app? Yeah. And then you would have a virtual compass on your phone, essentially, that would walk you to the same point, giving you the same information, right? This direction. And is that through the app? Through the app. The regular shooting app, whatever that... Yep. What's the app called? Load app. The e-all range app. E-all range app. That's what it's called. E-all range app, and it's all within their navigation. And it's got the mapping. Yep. And it's got the load app. Shooting and load stuff. Yep. So it's just a different tab within the app. Yep. Not two apps. It's all one app. Yeah. And if you have cell phone service, it will download an area of photograph.

Yeah, you're done. It's easy. And it's like overlay. You're just internet, just like your phone and everything. You're just watching yourself. Yeah, just like using any navigation software. Yep. So when Devin shoots a javelina at 1,400 yards on a thick hillside... Wow, nice shot, Devin. He should be able to... Belt feeding, mind you. Okay, belt feeding. Okay, let's... It's probably... Walks one in. He walks one in. He walks one in at 253 yards. He walks one in. You're going to find that thing.

You can find those by smell. I probably could just take a metal detector and figure out where he was roughly shooting at. Who knows? All right. It's a cool feature. Is it a game-changing feature? Well, it could be at some point for somebody. Oh, in certain situations, this is going to save us all waiting until the next day or whatever. Who thought of that? You know, I'm not sure who thought of it. And I'm not sure what the exact scenario was that made somebody think of it. But I'm sure glad they did because it's super helpful. Yeah, it's got to be... I mean, hunting related. I mean, I'm sure there's non-hunting reasons that you would want that. A birder didn't come up with that. No, I don't... I can't think... No, there's no... I can't think of any other reason other than shooting and retrieval or, hey, I'm over here on the ridge. I broke my leg. Oh, I see you over there. And boom.

I mean, that's rare. But I mean, really, it's for... You're by yourself or you're in such a hurry. Shoot it. You all take off. And you know, some canyons, it may take you an hour to cross 500 yards in some... And everything looks different when you get there. Oh, yeah. Right? And that's what the scenario we used to use was we'd leave somebody there with a spotter and you'd guide them in with hand signals or whatever. But if it gets dark, he's doing you no good now either. So pretty neat. Pretty neat. You're alone. Man, it's a cool feature. Pretty cool. So let's talk about... You alluded to it a minute ago, the accuracy of the range finder. And let's talk about what the advertised distance is. Sure. A lot of people ask that. But then let's talk about the accuracy or precision of the range. Yeah. One place we got a little heat on our old range finders, it wouldn't give you...

It wouldn't display a range below 30 meters. Yeah. What a bow hunter squawk. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, 30 meters. 33 yards. Yeah. 33. What's that? 33 yards. 33.3. Yeah. And there were reasons for that. It's not because we can't figure out how to make that work. We certainly can. There were actually some patent reasons for that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Come on. Oh, yeah. Like you can't compete with other range finders or something? There's just some patent that we can fringe on. Lawyers tell you certain things. Now you're good? Yeah. We're good now. The design of this apparently has fixed that. So this one will go from 10 yards to 2,200 is what we advertise. Yeah. Yeah. And so depending on conditions, it will work a little less than that or it'll work more than that, right? Yeah. We're always very conservative when we advertise our specs, right?

So we'd rather have it, say it works to 2,200 yards and have it work further than that than say it works to 2,200 yards and have it work not that far, you know? So, but I've, it's a good strong range finder. It's really accurate.

No, I can't remember it exactly off the top of my head, the beam divergence, which is generally what makes a range finder accurate. The further out there you go, the bigger the beam, laser beam is essentially. If you think of a flashlight, you know, same kind of thing. And, and the beam divergence on this is quite small. It's about one mil radian high and one and a half mil wide. So at a thousand yards, that would be roughly three feet high and a foot and a half wide, right? So it's pretty small beam divergence. You have to bounce a certain amount of that back to get it arranged. Yeah. The, the, the, the accuracy is plus or minus, um, plus or minus one yard or even less than one yard, I believe out to 1,500 yards and then plus or minus a very small percentage beyond that. And that's generally how it's, um, but if you stack it up against the other range finders

that are out there, those specs line up quite well. In fact, they best most of them. So, yeah, it's really, really accurate. Really precise laser. Yeah. Devin, do you want to ask him the question you've been dying to ask him? I got, I just, there's a lot of things. Um, ELO. Oh, yeah. The orange. Will it be available in orange? I was like, I, yeah. Devin likes orange. No? We sold, we sold. We sold. We sold. We just have, we have people ask for it. I don't know if it's people who are spending really good money and they don't want to lose them, but I mean, they're on your chest 90% of the time. I don't know. I don't know how you could lose. You don't want to get shot in the chest. If you only hunt in Utah and Colorado and every time you go, you got your orange on. It's kind of important to have. I wonder if in Wyoming.

Or if a guy left his sitting on a log somewhere and he's not going to let that happen. I can see that. And if it happened once. And then you want to be different. Yeah. Who wants to all be green? I have a friend who likes the Denver Broncos. He likes the orange one because he likes the Broncos. Really? In fact, he has two orange ones. He takes them to the game and they're just like... Have you seen an orange truck in our parking lot? Yeah. Maybe. Bronson? I like it. But I don't like these, the vinyls. I just... Yeah. I mean, I don't want... It's a different orange, though. I'm bow hunting and I know... Also, it's a safety orange. Yeah. It's safety. And it's... That guy probably takes them to Denver Broncos game, slaps a sticker on them, and he tries to act like he gets the only Benno Bronco pair ever made. And he's really not. Probably doubles his money. Might. Never know. But...

No orange, huh? There's... Right now, there's no plan to make them an orange. Yeah. But, you know, we're always... Everything always changes. You never know. What are the other questions? I was just thinking about applications with the tracking assistant. Like, can you... Is there any way you could share those points? Share those points with somebody else? From the app? There is not. No, currently. We've also been asked about, you know, different mapping software. Will it speak to OnX or BaseMap or any of those other mapping softwares? And they don't really even use those in Austria at all where this is designed. So, it wasn't really something that was a priority. But the cool thing about electronics, right, and apps is that they're malleable and you can change them and make them do other things. Oh, yeah. If a relationship... Yeah. I totally see... You foster a relationship. For sure.

I totally see in the future stuff like that. Yeah. Who knows? I'm not saying that's going to happen. Now that it's made. Yeah. But who knows? Yeah. Yeah. But... And future features, right, that could be added. It's taking in a lot of information. And there are different ways to use that information that it's not using it now. And so, the fact that it's, you know, Bluetooth and has some pretty sophisticated electronics in it make it so it can probably do other things at some point as well that we could add. So, adaptable. That's awesome. I don't want these mapping companies to be able to track me. Yeah. And I can see it happening. Where are my binoculars? Well, they're 1,400 miles in a southeasterly direction. So, not only that, but they can actually look through your vinyl and see Jason's got a big buck in his mouth. That's right. Right now. I know where you are.

So, I hate the government tracking us. I'm just saying, all of this, I have it all. I love it all. Satellite radio, all this stuff. But they, I just don't like the government knowing what we're doing. I was going to say, let's talk about the body of it. Yeah. Because, for the bow hunters out there, you know. Oh, we skipped that. We skipped that. And I want to, you know, this mode button is down underneath where your left thumb would be. Yeah. And it's kind of quick and easy. Yeah. So, yeah. So, the other heat we took, besides it only working, the last one working, not working below 30 yards, 33 yards, was that the button was on the left side, which for a right-handed archer was difficult to use, right? You're holding your bow on your left side, left hand. So, the button on this is on the right side. So, you've officially ticked off a bunch of left-handed archers. Chris is now fuming.

Chris is now, he's the one. Chris? It's unusable. Now, you know what we've gone through for the last 10 years. Yeah. You guys can take it for the next 10. I already knew what you go through because I've been dealing with it for the last 20 years. Okay. Okay. 20. So, yeah. That's a feature I'm excited about. I mean, I know there's a few lefties out there that probably aren't, but- Well, you get your bow in your right hand, you grab your binos. It's natural. 90-10. Well, 90% of people are right-handed, 10% are left-handed. Really? Well, thank you. That's the real breakdown. That's what Google says. It's science. Google doesn't know everything. Yeah, they do. No, they don't. It's a fact. You only know what the government tells them. The other changes to the housing, the buttons on the right side, right? And there's also a forehead rest for this as well, like the forehead rest for the NL.

I can't get used to the forehead rest. It's a love or hate thing, right? But if you want to- Yeah. You know, if you're really shooting long range, maybe you're in a competition and you want to- I mean, that's the one maybe thing that I can see, Jason, over some of the monocular type rangefinders. I can see that. They're seven power and they're harder to hold like that. It's much, much easier. Versus a two-handed vinyl. And when you're shooting long range, too. Yeah, and you're breathing and you're trying to get a range and jump back on your gun. I mean, I can see some things like that. And in a situation where you're- I'm sold. Are you trying to sell me on a pair?

No, I'm just saying if you're long range, if you're in a competition and you're shooting 1,000 to 1,500 yards and you're maybe in a competition, not always in a hunting situation, but that little extra stability is going to help that divergence, whatever you're talking about. Yeah. Getting the laser back to you. And if you one-hand it, it's going to give you that extra point of contact. Another point of contact. Yeah. One-handed with a forehead rest. That's what I mean. I mean, you're just trying to get a range. That's right. And when you're moving- I can see that. You increase the inability for that laser to shoot back and hit you. Well, like even out here without the forehead rest. Okay? So I'm out here. I'm ranging 1,800. It's all over a house. It's all over the yard. You know what I mean? It just- Oh, 1,800. Yeah, it's- I mean, you're all over, right? Yeah.

That's what he's talking about on your- Even- I've found even at like 600 to 800 yards out in the field with a monocular, you're not getting accurate ranges. You're all over. You're resting. You've got to rest it on something. Yeah. Coos deer. Yeah. Yeah. I can't even see him sometimes in the rangefinder. Devin's Hevelina. You know? You're not seeing that. You need to. You're not seeing that. 400 Hevelina. You need to. I've never shot one either, and I'm not- I haven't either, but I don't want to eat one. That's not on- And you've got to eat what you kill. Yeah. I don't want one. Anyway. Well, all right. Speaking of Coos deer, I guess, Kobe, you just got back. Yeah. Did you take this? I can't call it a prototype, but your pair, I guess, the pre-February 1st pair that you had down there? It was not yet available to me. Oh, was it? I wish I would have had it. Oh, wow.

And if I had had it, the tracking assistant would have been clutch. Oh, is that that 200, that situation you were just talking about? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, you were down there. Awesome hunt. You've killed a great Coos deer down there. I have. Yeah. Giant. I didn't. Great big one. Maybe I didn't say that. I'll show you a picture. Okay. I'd like to. Back in the day. A few years ago. A few years ago. Oh, that one. Not the one a few weeks ago or whatever it was. Not a few weeks. No, I didn't. I didn't see one a few weeks ago. Yeah. We saw some decent deer. Yeah. It was a rough year, but it's cool to just get out. Especially that time of year. It was just a rough year. How warm was it down there? It was cold. What was it? It was the coldest I've ever had down there. Did you have the late December? Right after Thanksgiving. So the early December.

Yeah. And it was cold. And there were days it didn't even warm up ever. Usually it'll get up into the 70s or whatever that time of year, and it didn't. It didn't. It was cold. But it was a good time. Lots of deer. Plenty of deer. Lots of deer. Southern Arizona's got stuff behind every corner. I mean, it's crazy. The number of quail and javelina. Even cotamundi. Saw a couple of cotamundi. No way. Are those legal to shoot? Yeah. Did you? They moved too much. Did you launch a belt? No, they never stopped moving. I could have. There was an opportunity to. In fact, a coworker of mine did. But they just never stopped moving. You know, they are always on the move. Scavenging, looking for weird animals. You've got to build feet on those ones. Like the cross between an ant eater and a raccoon and maybe something else. Like a raccoon monkey. Yeah. They're wild.

I'd walk over to it and not know how to pick it up. Let alone gut it. How are you going to gut it? They're a strange animal. Yeah. But there's no shortage. It's amazing that that country can hold that much wildlife. Really, really cool. That is what's cool. That's what's amazing. Got to use the 115 down there. Did you? Yeah. You like it? Killer. Yeah. Yeah. So some people are saying the 115 and the 95, they're saying they don't see as big a difference. And then other people are saying it's monumental. Yeah. You know, on the difference. I see a big difference. I see a big difference in a couple of ways. The balance of the 115 on the BTX, it balances perfectly. You don't need any weird balance rail or a great big huge tripod head or whatever. It balances very well. So that difference right there to me is significant. Noticeable when you're... Especially with the BTX. Not so much.

It goes the other way with the ATX, though. It makes it way front heavy. Front heavy. But the other place I see it is in really low light. There's a huge difference in the surface area of that lens compared to the 95. And it does give you a much larger exit pupil. And then taking pictures through it. Okay. That's the biggest difference. If you take pictures through it with a DSLR, even your phone, it makes a big difference. Well, and who doesn't? Yeah, everybody does, right? Phone scope or whatever. Who doesn't? It's just big and unwieldy. It's a... It is big. So the one I was using, I was just like, this is big. Yeah. It was giant. Not just big, it was giant. Yeah, it's giant, but it works awesome. Anyway. There's a place for it. No question about it. That place for it, Southern Arizona. Yeah. Real quick, let's touch on the new DS Gen 2. DS Gen 2.

So a couple of years ago in the U.S., we launched a laser range-finding rifle scope that had actually been out in Europe for a few years before then. And it's our DS. And it has all the same technologies that this EL range has, except for the tracking assistant. But it does the same thing. You load your ballistics into the scope via a Bluetooth app, via app, via Bluetooth. When you push the button, it... Resets. Samples barometric pressure, temperature, range, and angle. And it gives you an illuminated point of aim in your field of view to be your... And it's Bluetooth to your phone. You've downloaded your data to that rifle, everything. Yep. Yeah. And it works great. It works awesome. No kidding. Yeah. And it works out to like 1,130 yards, I think, is the max distance. It's probably far enough. Yeah, absolutely. For something like...

If you're going to shoot further than that, you're going to want something different than that anyway. And a big target. Yeah. So that we launched a few years ago. It's great. Sold really well for us. We've added some features to it and launched the Gen 2 version of it. The housing essentially is the same tiny tweak to it, but it's, for all intents and purposes, the same housing, 40 millimeter tube. It has all of the same features of the old one. And we've added the ability to select a couple of different kinds of reticles. You can select from a circle dot and some others. You know, it used to just be a dot. You're talking electronically or when you order it? Electronically. Electronically? Yeah, with that. And change in between different hunts. So one thing we saw when we put this scope into practice is people would... It made sense, right? They would look through it.

They would range it. And then it would give them a point of aim. And they would use the center crosshair instead of the point of aim and shoot low. Right? So one of the options, one of the reticle options is like a big arrow pointing to... Yeah, there you go. Pointing to aim here. I want dummy proof. Yeah. It also does... It has a cant indicator inside of it, a level inside of it to tell you if your rivals can't... Just turn the color or something? I haven't actually looked at it because I haven't touched the new version yet, but it's three... It looks like to be three illuminated bars that you kind of line up, right? To other. And then it also has more... It displays more information than the old model. It has four lines, I believe, of text. So you can hit time of flight and energy on target at that distance and whatever. Come on.

And there's something more configurable about the wind holdoffs as well. Is it three to 18? It's 525. 525. 525. 525, yeah. That's the new one? The old one was too. It's the same. Oh, okay. Yep, 525. Gotcha. And it's a great optic. It's spectacular. It works really well. And the new updates will make it just a little more usable. Wow. And there are a few things that we're doing with the app that will benefit anybody that has the old version as well. You can use a G7BC in the new app. You couldn't in the old app. And there's a much more user-friendly truing function in the app. Wow. If what actually happens when you pull the trigger isn't what you expected it to be. Re-aim, set your crosshair. Yeah, you can tweak it. So it all needs to be. Wow. Ground truth. It all needs to be, yeah, for sure. What did you call it? Ground truth? I don't know. Yeah, ground truth. Yeah, exactly.

Proofed or trued. If you're shooting it like that, it's a little true. It just goes back to the chronograph and things like that earlier. You know what it's saying it did or you know what it did last time, but it's 40 feet different now in this condition or this temperature or whatever. Go back, tweak your velocity. Or those rounds are 10 years old or whatever. Yeah. Aged a little bit. Well, pretty awesome. It feels like there can't be anything new in the works is what it feels like right now. I mean, you've got the 115 just came out. You've got the scope. We've got the EL range, TA. You've got the NL peers. I mean, I don't know if it's going to be 10 years before we ever need you back on a podcast or not. It's been a while, six months. I don't know, but it's been a crazy. He gets to rest now. Yeah. I don't know. They've had him busy checking stuff out. We are always working on it.

You're one of the first, it seems like, that comes up with this stuff and checks it out. We generally, yeah. Yes, exactly. And we generally, as a company, are years ahead of the game. Like, we, you know, we have, we're always working. In fact, our motto is constantly improving that which is good, right? So if something is good now, there's no reason to stop and rest on your laurels. So you probably know things you're working on that you can't tell us about right now. I might. I actually don't. I don't. I don't. Quite honestly. Well, I was going to say, you've just blown all of these new things in the last six months. For sure. You just want to watch this snowfall now. Yeah. And get, and grab this new stuff and take it home. I want to go to a show. Oh, yeah. Gosh, dang it. Well, this would be, talk about a year.

This would be like the Western Hunting Conservation Expo we're missing here in a couple weeks. Yeah. You'd have the 115, the NLs, these. I mean, what a, and not just there. I mean, well, it's Safari Club Dallas or. That's actually how I met Colby. Was it? For all the shows. Airports. Because we were all going back to Utah. Yeah. Same flight. That's how we started our dealership, too. Right. Visiting with you to show. That's what we're going to show. That's what we're going to show. So, yeah. Anyway, speaking of which, anybody that's looking to order a pair of these, give us a holler. 435-263-0777. We're cranking out products every day and helping members acquire some of the best equipment around and happy to do it at the best prices. Yeah. And by the time you hear the podcast, it may be February 1st. So, like I said, they should be shipping. Is that right, Colby? Yep. Next week. Yep.

In fairly large quantities. Yep. Hope so. So, call us fast. If you've got the old ranges, you're getting rid of them, you want the new ones, call us fast, get on the list. We should be able to get these taken care of for you here right away so that you can get them to use, play with the new app and all that. Ground truth, all your weaponry with it. That's right. At least three of them. At least three. At a time. You can delete one, put a new one in. I mean, it's, but have plenty of time before this false hunt. So, yeah, give us a call. Anything else we left out? Colby, you don't think we highlighted enough about this awesome piece? You know, one of the questions we get right off the bat is, and this is maybe something that somebody out there is wondering about, is why we didn't use applied ballistics, right? You see all these units that come out that have the applied ballistics.

Yeah, AB, right? And I've been using applied ballistics forever. My Kestrel has applied ballistics in it, and it works really, really well. Works fantastically. And I honestly don't know the reason that we don't use AB in this. There's a multiple. It comes down to money. It could be, right? It could be too expensive to license it. I don't know. Everything in life. Or maybe there's some exclusivity with applied ballistics with somebody else. Relationships. No idea. But what I do know is I've used applied ballistics. I've read Brian Litz's book twice, right? None of it's foreign to me. I've used applied ballistics for a long time in my Kestrel, and I have lined this up with my Kestrel as far as this thing will work, and math is math, right? That's right. It doesn't matter how you get. Math is math. Math is math. Bullets drop how they drop. That's right.

It's aerodynamics and trajectory, and this thing has a solid solver in it that works very, very well. And I doubt anybody will be disappointed in that. I called you the other day, and you were cranking on it. Yep. Anyway, so. Yeah, I've beat it up. Yeah, let's call it that. Just trying to gain whatever your confidence based on where your brain and your system's been. Yeah. Formerly. For sure. You know you're going to be on a podcast. Yeah. Well, or just. Deal with a lot of questions. He knows where his weaponry and him work and what they all. And now, okay, does this mirror what I've already been using? It's solid. Yeah. They did a really, really good job with the solver. You're going to miss a coos deer. You're going to be ticked. It doesn't do things like crosswind jump or Coriolis or spin drift, which are things

that if you're going to account for those things in your shooting, you're probably going to have some other way to figure that out. You probably are. This is fast. It's convenient. It's all in one package. This is a hunting application. We're hunters. Designed for hunting application. If you're thinking about the spin rate of the earth before you kill a big buck. You might need to get closer. Move up. I agree. If it's 200, move close. That's when you need to range the halfway distance between you and the animal with the new TA and walk to that spot and then shoot from there. Eliminate the Coriolis. Is that what it is? Coriolis. Coriolis. Yeah. Hey. Yeah. Hey, these comets back in 40 years too. People talk about it. There are people out there that will wonder if it does all that stuff. Yeah. And it's anyway. Yeah. Well, we appreciate you stopping by. No, we appreciate you having me.

We really do. It's awesome to get our hands on these. And, you know, highly anticipated, I guess that's the way we'll put them. And it's the world we're living in to some extent in terms of with the data that we're able to capture now, incorporate into a precision range finding device. So pretty awesome piece of equipment. Again, anybody who wants to buy them, give us a holler, 435-263-0777. Or you can get an old classic pair. I think Wyatt's trying to sell a classic pair. Let's call them the. We'll call them the classic pair. The classic. The classic. The classic. Old sounds used and tattered. Yeah. Just the classic. The nice thing about Wyatt's is there's probably been some big critters, glass drills. It's got good juju. They're green, by the way, too. They're green. And I'll bet you if you want them, he'd probably sign them with a Sharpie. Come on. He would. Yeah, he would. Yeah.

Matter of fact, he would. All right. Give us a call. All right. All right.