In this episode, the Epic Outdoors Crew gets a visit from Colby Kroff from Swarovski. Colby announces the brand new compact spotting scope from Swarovski. The new ATC/STC blazes new ground for Swaro and delivers a tiny spotting scope with Swarovision optics. The new scope weighs only 2 pounds and is only about 11 inches long. The scope features a 56mm objective and a 17-40x zoom. Mixed in with the regular Epic Crew jokers, Colby goes in-depth into what makes this new product stand out and what situations for which the spotter is perfect.
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Anything to do with Western big game.
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When you were, when you were gone, we were starting a podcast. We all tried to do that. Like you do. And none of us could physically do it.
Good
For something. Adam claims it’s a genetic genetically. It’s impossible for some people to do
That right there. Do it again.
I like yours better. You can’t do it. I can’t do it.
You can’t do that
Devin. I cannot physically do it.
Oh yeah, no problem. Just tell me,
Adam, genetically genetics,
Everybody. Jason Carter, the entire epic outdoors crew. Well, minus a couple, we got Wyatt. He thinks he’s got too much going on, so he can’t make it with us. And Adam he’s in Alaska just smashed caribou. So we’ll be able to hear that story. It’s pretty awesome. Video’s awesome. Super excited for him. Congratulations in advance, Adam. Good work. And anyway, we’ve been in the field hunting stuff that people want to know about that we’re not gonna talk about, right? Devin. I that’s it. So anyway, pretty, pretty fun time of year, September, and wouldn’t, you know, it’s September right in the middle of the hunts, swirled drops a new product Colby. We got Kobe crop here swore up Swaro rep good guy. One of the main guys there at Swarovski and, and kind of our initial point of contact and responsible for our account here at epic outdoors. We sh we so appreciate him. And here he is. Thanks for your person.
Yeah. Thanks for having me
Showing us the product. Why don’t we talk about a little bit?
Alright. Brand new spotting scope. We just launched last week. It’s ATC STC, compact spotter. We’ve been asked for a long time for something smaller than what we have out now. And, and we finally brought something out to the market. So ATC and STC and angled, ATC angled, telescope compact. We’re very, very creative with our goals and the STC would be straight telescope compact. So,
So in the, these are incredible. So when you, when you bring them in and you hold them, it’s like you’re holding two eye pieces. That’s, that’s what it feels like. The full length. I mean, yeah.
I piece on the angle looks just bigger than the objective, right? Probably if you cut it in half and wait it straight
Close. Yeah.
So anyway, yeah, the outside diameter is basically the same. It’s got, it’s a 56 millimeter objective on the end. It’s a 17 to 40 power, correct. Right. Variable. And I’m pretty awesome. The angle will come in orange and wouldn’t, you know what we’ve already had pre-orders for all.
And the orange is awesome. People love it. I know that burnt orange color is just
A little darker than it than it is.
It’s not like the safety, the same 40 square inches. That’s
Throw it over your shoulder. Not quiet. That’s a good idea. Yeah.
The a it’s the same orange as the NL 32. That, that kind of,
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, we, yeah, we ha we had to order a few of those because we actually had some pre-orders of that. But anyway, pretty incredible that I know they’re just over two pounds. I mean, this does not feel two pounds to me. You know what I mean? Yeah. Isn’t that crazy? So full length. I don’t know. What would you say just over a foot? I don’t know what it’s
Yeah. On the street. Yeah. Maybe 11 inches. Yeah.
And I’m like that with the cap, who knows? So tell us a little bit about the technology. I know Swaro vision, but what does that mean? And that’s everything seems like it’s swirl vision, but more or less does the, I w I want to know as a consumer, not as a dealer, just, you know, does this match up optical quality and clarity to like, say the X is the X model? You know what I mean? The modular system.
Yeah. Great question. And absolutely it does a Swaro vision. Go back to that. When you own the company, you can name everything after yourself. Right? So we get a lot of Swaro stuff, right? So our vision is a package, an optical package that we developed when we brought out the second version of the eel binocular. And basically it’s a combination of a field flattening lens in the eye piece, which removes all of the edge, distortion all size and shape distortion. And in HD objective or fluoride objective, depending on how you want to describe it. Those things mean the same thing, high Def, right? And, and then long eye relief and wide field of view. Usually you trade one of those for the other, but the technology in the eyepiece allows us to give you both a wide field of view and long eye relief.
But I think we’ve found with the NLS, or like even like the 42 is not just a 42 anymore in relation to, you know, your field of view. And so, you know, with this new technology, a lot of people would wonder, you know, Hey, that doesn’t even look 56 millimeters, right. It looks a lot smaller than that. But, and then, and with the new technology, it’s actually better than say a 56 from 20 years ago. Let’s just say something.
Sure. Everything has gotten way better. Our ability to produce things, just really tight tolerances, improved coding technologies have improved our ability to grind glasses improved. Everything’s gotten better over the years. So, but yeah, this is absolutely is the same optical qualities. The ATX STX series, just in a much smaller, lighter, more portable package. You do lose a little with the 56, like compared to an ATX 65, you’ll lose a little bit of, of light and real low light conditions, but you can go down to 17, right? So you get some of it back by having that lower magnification,
Right? So you do top out at a 40, do you see them making a doubler or anything?
I doubt it. In fact question, this doesn’t come apart. Like the ATX STX, it’s a, it’s a fixed system yet set up system. But you know, there are times when you can’t use more than 40 anyway, and it doesn’t like a day like today, it’s going to be 110 degrees down here. Yeah. You won’t be able to use 17 new, right. There’ll be too much heat and heat waves and stuff in the air. So in this package, 40, 40 is about all you’d be able to get out of it anyway. And, and it’s just spectacular. We, we, when we had a meeting in Colorado, we were on a ranch, humongous ranch in the back of the ranch was like eight or nine miles away. And there’s a big peak back there. And in fairly low light conditions, we were looking at elk at eight miles away with this, you know? So it’s, it’s, you know, you wouldn’t
Know, you’re not going to judge them
And you can’t tell
on the front end.
You can see that they were elk. And you could tell, you know, what, you
Were looking basic pole or from academy. Yeah.
So it’s, it’s, it’s strong. It’s, it’s very, very usable. And, and the, the pack ability of it is, oh, it’s spectacular.
I mean, geez, I’ve got lunches that are more than that.
Gas station burrito is more
Than what was going to say, what’s your favorite burrito down there? Maverick is that like the big movie ground, the green, the green package. I mean, that’s a balance
That’s smaller than the burrito. Josh gets. Sometimes
That’s smaller than the breakfast burrito that he has a lunch every single time. That’s true. It’s so why, it’s why it’s sensitive to spicy foods. So every time we go down Mexican, he has a breakfast burrito every time it’s like, I don’t know if he just likes him or if he’s being kind to us because he knows we like Mexican food. Anyway. That’s about right. That’s, that’s a breakfast burrito size. So on this there’s this shelf. Tell us a little bit about it, you know, it’s movable. Yeah.
Yeah. We call it a half shell. It actually, it, it screws into the bottom where you would screw your tripod in that there’s a quarter 20 hole there, of course, to put a tripod foot or whatever in there. Okay. And, and that attaches in that spot. You can put it on or take it off. It’s very lightweight, like maybe abs plastic or nylon reinforced plastic. I’m not sure, but, but it’s intended to be that to allow you to use it sitting on a surface. So it doesn’t interfere with your focus wheel.
So, so basically there’s a, there’s a little bit of gap between the shelf and the focus wheel. And so you can rest this on something,
A pack, or
Maybe it’s not on, if it’s not on a tripod, you’re resting it on something even a shorter hand. And then you can still spin the focus wheel and not have to. Yep. Okay. That’s the idea. That’s
The whole reason.
Yeah. And I saw your pictures. They were handholding on a website and I just handheld it out here just cause I was curious and at 35 power, I was reading license plates. It like 400.
You must’ve had a smoke just recently. Cause usually you’re shaky guy. Miranda. Don’t get mad. No, it’s true though.
Yeah. If you had to quickly verify something and it’s so small, you can have it right on your pack, reach back, pull it out, check something real fast. Yeah. You could. Yeah. It would work.
Yeah. A lot of the marketing, which is we put out actually the people are holding it in their hands.
I’m not sure I was laughing. Okay. I’m just like, jeez. You know, but do we ever handhold anything? We hardly even hand hold our eights out of a truck. You know what I mean? But, but having said that, it’s nice that
If you had to, in a hurry,
You could,
You could. I think you
Could. Yeah. You guys would expect me to feel judged on the record.
We’ve had a lot of questions, like, does it, can you put it on a tripod? Does it even have a tripod Mount? But yeah, it doesn’t, it’s not immediately apparent in the pictures, but
’cause all the, all the media and promo material is showing it, not on a tribal. Correct. You know, so yeah. It’s totally mountable and man, unbelievable. I just, I can’t get over it basically in both my hands. It’s the whole unit, you know what I mean? It’s not bigger than both my hands. So
That angled scope. Right. They’re smaller than some of our rifle scopes. We shoot on our rifles.
Oh, for sure. Yeah. Like it weighs about the same. So like the typical like kind of heavy, long range rifle scope is 32 to 36 is about the same. Right?
Yep. So anyway, well pretty, pretty incredible great technology involved in this. And then the one piece, it looked like it was waterproof to three feet,
13, 13, 13. It’s more waterproof than you are.
Point
Waterproof shockproof, fog proof. It is one complete unit. It’s got a big helical focus in the middle, just like our big spotting scopes do. So it’s really easy to use with gloved hands that the zoom is the same big and easy to get to. They turn smoothly, like all the rest of our stuff. It’s just a nice little unit. There’s a couple of cool little things. Like if you take the, take the objective cap off yep. It’s sized perfectly to actually fit inside.
Oh, there
You go. The IPS cap. So you don’t lose it. I don’t know if that was by design or if it’s just a happy accident, but you won’t lose it. And then the eyepiece diameter is exactly the same size as the ATX STX. That’s
What it felt like. So if you have a phone scope
For some, some other thing you use to ditch scope with it, it’ll it’ll fit this.
And they’re also promoting this with some digital scoping.
Yeah. Our VPA verbal that’s our, that’s our kind of universal phone adapter. It fits most phones. Oh it has ring sized.
Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, they were promoting that too. So they’re getting on that whole bandwagon, you know, probably a lot for the birding seems like was heavy into birding and people want to video their hummingbird outside their window, you know, but anyway,
The goal, I guess, or what’s a guy want one of these four, I mean obviously other than pack ability it’s stuff was what was kind of their goal there.
Well, you know, what’s interesting is we were, we’re a hundred percent sure where exactly this would hit when we started talking about it. Right. What we found though, since we’ve launched it, since we’ve been talking about it, people that don’t typically use a spotting scope, people that are in the Southeast or places where a spotting scope, maybe not, maybe isn’t helpful for hunting. This is perfectly sized to fit in your range bag to go to the range. Absolutely resolve bullet holes at a hundred yards. No problem. And so that’s an application. It is somewhere where, where you wouldn’t traditionally take a spotting scope or mess with, you know, carrying all the weight. The other thing too is, is exactly that backpacking, you know, it cuts off a pound, at least a pound from an ATX 65 or from anybody else’s lightest weight spotting scope without giving up much performance at all. So those are the scenarios where we see
You can pull it. If there’s a sick, let’s say the 65 goes to 60 power, which it does. I mean, you know, a lot of times you’re not on max power, you’re just not on max power, rarely, you know? And so, I mean, 40 people are like, you know, tell me, is it, you know, w what’s the max power on it? And we’ve said 40. And I think initially people are like, oh, you know, is that enough? That’s enough in a lot of cases. I mean, if you’re counting rings on sheep at three miles, yeah. You need, you need the best class and it’s worth packing the extra weight, but this does have its application. I can totally
Like the window of the Corolla
At first, I’m thinking like, so Josh, he makes the trip over here and he’s always spot in game. He thinks he’s the world’s greatest spotter. And I would say, there’s no other competition.
That’s good. At $5 a question I’ll answer any of your spotting needs.
What’s your, what’s your current Corolla? Optical.
It’s honestly, it’s like an old loophole thing, but it’s, it’s a similar type school. That’s like 11, 11, but it’s like an 11 to 33. But for that kind of situation where you’re just like, Hey, what’s that bull. And it’s just out of range of the by nose. And you want it to look really quick like that.
As far as Devin’s concerned, you wouldn’t even need the window Mount.
That’s true. That’s true. I wouldn’t even need to, but I’m telling you try it. Go ahead. It’s not. So you’re saying I won’t even have to come to a full stop, like a slower on drive, slow roll. Don’t hit the rumble strips that won’t help.
Oh, I was going to say, while we’re talking about window mounts, one thing about this it’s so small, we had to make a few compromises and in the design to get it that small. So it doesn’t rotate on the Mount, like, like a normal scope of it.
So it doesn’t have that knob on the side that rotates. And
So if you intend to use it on a window Mount, you might straight up for the straight in fact, the interesting thing is we sell probably 80% angled and 20% straight and we’ve had really good.
Okay. Could you bond, could you say that again? One more time? Just so we can get that.
There’s a lot less straighten people out there that angle, where are you guys going with
This older guys are all straight
Telling us these younger guys that’s our orders. We just put in an order and I want to say it was like a 40, 60, you know, 60 angled. But, but you’re right there. I cannot believe the demand for angle because it’s hard for me to be,
Well, it used to be 10 years ago. It was 50, 50, almost right down the middle. And then when the ATX STX came out, it started to really migrate toward angled. And, but this, for some reason, it seems like the Strait is appealing to more and it may be because it will fit in a water bottle pocket.
It’s got a kink in it. So it’s harder to fit it in the pack. I mean, you know, it’s small enough good grief,
But yeah, you’ve really got to get them in your hands to, oh,
I was like, there’s no way I’m buying one yet. There’s no way I’m not buying. I mean, when I, when I looked at it, I’m like, well, I’ve got a 65, you know, the, the STX. Yep. 65. I love it. No, I’m not, I’m not buying it. This wouldn’t make sense for me. Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. I’m buying
It. That’s super cool. Turn down.
I wish the straight came in orange. Cause I might just buy orange just to be that guy. Yeah. Just to have orange. And you know what? You guys made a point about Wyoming. You have, you seen the Wyoming guys don’t really use blaze orange. Have you noticed that it’s like the most,
Yeah.
40 year old orange
In the world.
They run it through a lot of bleach.
There you go. Now look at that
Two pop. Well, no, we saw what we got
The size. If you stack one monster and one regular pop, like a Coke, it’s almost the exact
Same. Exactly the same
16. And what’s this and 8, 12, 16 fluid ounces. The 12 fluid ounces on top of each other. That’s what you’re dealing with. Actually, those are a little more girthy than that one.
You know what I, I, the other day I actually tried it. The, you know, the koozies that you get, they give away for free everywhere you go actually fits right over this pretty well and would like protected in your path. The cat cozy on each end. And those are free.
John gore, 14,000 koozies.
All right. I’m no plans for us on our part, but I know of to make case to make a case for it. Yeah.
Because more or less, this is like my sock.
You throw the
Sock.
There you go.
I mean, it’s literally, yeah. I mean, that’s a kid soccer.
I was going to say not a full grown man sock, either
Full grown man. Suck. All right. Well sounds good. Yeah. It’s pretty awesome. I mean the price points incredible. It’s I mean, you’re under $2,500 with full retail. And so anyway, anybody that’s interested for just over two grand, why give us a holler, definitely worth putting it in. And there’s some guys there’s some guys that have every piece swirl has ever made no matter what. And I can’t believe the pre-orders that have come in with a sight unseen. Yeah. Just, just basically looking at the advertisements. But I don’t, I don’t understand the advertisements. When I looked at it, I did not expect this. It shows it maybe even a little bit bigger. It’s great quality and high Def photos and whatnot, but this is smaller.
Yeah. Yeah. There’s nothing really for reference in the, in the pictures, but for turned out great. We’re pretty excited about it.
Yeah. And I take it on that pre-order list. If you want to get on, just give us a call 4 3 5 2 6 3 0 7 7 7. And we’ll put your name on there. It’ll save your place in line. And then just when they’re available, we’ll give you a call and finalize the order.
You can also email us [email protected]. You can DM Josh runs our Instagram. You can DM him. Of course. He loves that. Hi Josh. Oh
Yeah. You do
Hit him up on there. Tell us you want on the list. We’ll put you on the list. We’ve put in a pretty big order there with swirl and probably gonna add to it. Pretty, pretty incredible piece of equipment right here. So thanks Colby for coming by. I know you’re a busy guy. Anytime a new product comes by you basically. Aren’t going to be helpful to hunt for the next 30 days. Yeah, that’s right. Pretty much pretty busy. Yeah. So anyway, you’ve been hunting though. Already haven’t yet? No, you haven’t been in the field yet. What’s Keshin grouse. I’ve been fishing. Fishing. Yeah. How was fishing? Patients’ great. In Alaska. It’s hard to not catch stuff in Alaska. So it’s been good. Laska. Be great if it wasn’t for all the water rain mist. Yeah. From every direction. It’s crazy. All right. All right. Sounds good. Everybody. A pretty awesome product there. Swarovski, if you have any questions, give us all. Or like John said 4 3 5 2 6 3 0 7 7, 7.
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