Ep. 009

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome everyone. This is the Meat Eater podcast. We're gonna
talk about binoculars, which I'd like to call knockers, and
rifle scopes an all manner of hunting optics. We're joined
right now by joined by or with no joined by

(00:21):
Doug dern Douglas dern Um and we're on Doug's family farm, Kasinovia, Wisconsin,
the Fame Driftless Area. This is the second installment of
the Meat Eater podcasts ever been recorded. These have been
recorded in many states, now many states. You get a
lot of You get a lot of states for your

(00:43):
buck on this show. And y honest you tell us
multiple countries as well, multiple countries. Also by y Honest
You tell us. Um, I can't mention Yann's name without
encouraging you to go to his website and by one
of his t shirts. Thank you hunting dot Com twenty
four bucks in stock now, also by Mark Bordman and

(01:05):
Paul Nice from Vortex Optics. I wish we had the
technological capability to broadcast live and take calls. I hate
that kind of thing, but it would be good or
Knox people call in and ask optics questions, you know.
Instead we will think of optics questions and the first

(01:26):
one I want to ask, and this is not this
isn't the main thing I want to focus on. But
we just we hunted turkeys this morning. Do you guys
sell a lot of scopes to guys that hunt turkeys?
I just don't get it. It's it's I know, I
shouldn't say that because you guys are in the scope business,
but I don't see. But other than it saves people
from themselves and it makes them aim, I don't see.

(01:49):
I don't see. Is that a big part of your business. No, No,
that's truly not. We we sell a lot of red
dot sites, and the red dot sites are probably you know,
a little bit kilm, and I think guys will use those.
But you know is you know, it's just it's a
it's a style of sight that projects an LED onto
a curve screen and so you simply see a red dot,

(02:09):
a single dot. It's just used it, you know, short
range typically it doesn't. No, No, it's not a projected image.
Is you view through it, it seems as though it
floats out in front of the gun, but it's it's
not a projected image like a laser would be for example,
and what do you call like, just explain that difference.

(02:31):
Where you see where you got a light that shoots out, Yeah,
that would be that would be a laser. And the
difference would be if you if you look in many
fish and game regulations, for example, a projected light is
typically illegal to use. And that's you know, that is
a laser beam. So if you if you were using that,
say on a turkey, and you look, there would actually

(02:53):
be a red dot on the on the dude next you.
Someone else could see it just as well. Right, Mostly
that stuff just probably found on like the pistols and stuff,
right for defense, Yeah, it is. It's used on handguns
a lot. You know. The the advantage to red dot
site it's it's very quick and easy to use. You know,
they're not you don't have to line anything up um

(03:15):
the way that they operate their their parallax free. So
when I'm talking about the actual laser one, where would
you find that one? Ah? Yeah, handguns? Defensive guns, that's right.
It's not like military and Lawford for for hunting stuff. Right.
So people will call up Vortex though, We'll be like,
hey man, I wanna a red dot site for shooting turkeys. Yeah,

(03:41):
they might say I want a red dot site from
my shotgun, you know, but it's something that you know,
turkeys would be one of the primary application you can
side in with one of those, right. Yeah, So you're
going like because we bet we were just trying to
explain it to their Dave, like, I think enough guy,
guys don't do enough of this. Turkey hunters don't do
enough of shooting the shotgun. And you're just like, if

(04:06):
you're gonna be serious about not if you're gonna be
serious if you're gonna go turkey hunting, I think you
just at some point you gotta take a piece of
paper out there, put a magic marker circle on it
and just see what happens, because you will see where
it is just always the pattern could be that if
you were to make the center of the pattern at
forty yards, I think could be I don't know more

(04:29):
inches consistently left right, high low. If you had that,
you didn't want to always remember I was just reading
this thing by this guy the other day. He says,
my whole life, I've been aiming high left on turkeys.
Because he's you know, you are using too. They're just
using a you know, a shotgun with an elevated rib
and a bead and they're they're just trying to basically
center that beat on top of the rib. But you know,

(04:51):
you move your head a little bit one way or
the other, and you know that pattern throws exactly differently.
So yeah, you could actually get like, if you want
to start shooting turkeys at seve in the eight yards,
like you know, with the right chokes and right loads,
people can do. Imagine that that red dot site that
would be helpful because you can you can turn that
thing in. You know, it would definitely become an advantage

(05:12):
of that point. And you talk about, you know, patterning
your shotgun. If you really want to figure out, you know,
what what the loads are doing that you're pushing through
your shotgun, you know red dots, that would be you know,
fantastic for that because you're gonna maintain that consistent point
errors exactly exactly and you might find, yeah, like your
high left or its stringing a particular way, and you

(05:33):
might find that you want to change the turkey load
that you've been using, you know, and find a better one.
We have the other day me and you're honest where
we had some very inexperience first time turkey hunters, very
inexperienced shooters and experienced hunters going turkey hunt. We're like, well,
let's gonna shoot a couple of targets. I'm telling you what. Yeah,

(05:55):
the first shot on a piece of paper, you would
this guy would have never killed that turkey. No, I
would have missed him clean. You would have been like,
what in the world happened? You know? It wound up
being user air. And what's funny is at one point
he had he didn't know, but he had the gun
on safe and he thought he had it on like

(06:16):
he got up and never put it on fire. So
which is instructive because when he pulled that triggar that
gun Joe way to the right, it never went off,
you know. And that's like I remember Yeaest was talking
about a tricker. You just tell you give someone a shell,
it's no good. No, you give him a rifle with

(06:37):
with or without, you know, cartridge in the chamber that
was ready to go when it's not ready to go. Yeah,
and you just kind of go through a couple with
a couple without, and you know, pretty soon you don't
know what's gonna you just base our hand today rifle.
You are treating it as it's live and you're you
need to aim at the target and squeeze the trigger
and you'll quickly see who flinches and he does who's

(06:57):
the I see with myself, I've been shooting my entire life.
But I'll see now and then I'll have something like
that happened, and I'll be like, I clearly moved that.
I clearly moved that chakraun and it didn't go bang
because I whatever. You know, you if you shoot enough,
you you generally know to some extent you know if
you pulled that shot a little bit. But that's where

(07:19):
I can see the red dot thing is we were
trying to because we had a guy today, UM hit
a turkey that fell down and got it ran away.
I think it's okay to name names. No one's gonna know.
I mean, all right, Doug's best during best well, Doug's protegee,
d protege doctor protegee. UM doesn't have a huge the

(07:47):
great guy doesn't have a huge technical interest in hunting
equipment and gear and whatnot. Roll to turkey and UM,
I wonder like, were the red dot if you would
have been being like, you know, one thing, you know,
you think you think about when you when you aim
for a fine spot, and that you know, that does
definitely increase that tendency to pick a spot and aim

(08:08):
for and on a turkey course, guy is gonna center
that up on the head and the neck. And but
just having that small dot, you know, I think it
would make a guy maybe concentrated a little more on that. Um.
The other kind of anything about the red dots is
you know, when you look, you have a small window
to look through that's about an inch square, so and
it's it's kind of a neat thing wherever that you

(08:30):
can see the dot and you can move your head
around from side to side and up and down and
and the because the device is parallax free, as long
as you see the dot visually, whether it's down the
corner of the right corner, you'd think it would drift,
but it doesn't. It stays constant to the image. And
so all you have to you know, as as soon
as you pick that dot up in that field of

(08:52):
view and it's on targeted, you're you know, you're good
to shoot, even if it's not centered in the window.
It's so they're you know, they're quick and they're friendly
to you. Explain parallax. That's one of the the things I
was going to say needs to be I never actually
understood parallax till I kind of understood it. But when
did we spent I spent a long time on the
phone call my own analogy. We could probably spend a

(09:15):
whole hour just talking about So we don't want to,
we don't want to, but but parallaxes, you know, it's
it's the it's the shift of that radical or that
point of aim on the target. And depending on where
the focuses are the the device or set at that
that point of aim can move around on the target
at different distances. And so you know, it leads to inaccuracy.

(09:38):
Let me let me just let me stop going side
in the state like to to to the to the listener.
Imagine that you're looking at you're looking at the rifle
scope and you got the cross air center on the
bull's eye something that had that's not parallax adjusted. You
could move your eye around so you got the crosstairs
or of the bull's eye. You could move your eye

(10:00):
around still keeping your eye looking through the scope, you
can move your eye around and there would be a
perhaps perceptible maybe inperceptible to you, but the cross hair
will have some movement. Yeah, it will be. It will
appear almost to just to float around and move depending
on where the eye is behind the And when people
talk about like for that reason when people talk about

(10:21):
consistently shoulder and you're gunn and doing everything the same
way all the time, is if you bring your face
you could feasibly sight your gun in. Then bring your
faith to the to your rifle and do your cheek
well and look through the scope and you might be
different than you normally are, but still look like you're
dead nuts, but you're not because and so parallax is
a thing that can fix that. And I'll talk about

(10:43):
like fifty yards, hundred yards, rim fire all that stuff. Yeah,
there's you know, parallax. Depending on where an optic is
is set at when it's assembled or some of them
have adjustable lenses that that can be adjusted. They'll be
set for a particular distance. So in a big game
hunting scope that's that's non adjustable. Typically they would be
said at a hundred yards distance. As you focus on

(11:04):
something closer further than a hundred you can see some
of that parallax movement. Some rifle scopes have adjustments, either
an an adjustable objective out on the far end of
the scope or a side focus. You guys make anything
that doesn't we make. We make both. We do both.
The advantage is to a you know, a scope that
does not have any sort of adjustment is typically they're

(11:25):
they're simpler, they're less expensive for a lot of guys.
You know, a guy deer hunting in this country here,
for example, you know you're probably not gonna shoot much
beyond two d yards that it doesn't come into play
as far as hunting accuracy. You're you're not going to
get enough shift to you know, to miss the lethal
zone on a deer. If a if a rifle scope,

(11:45):
a magnified optic is going to have a parallax adjustment
on it of some fashion, it'll generally not always be
a scope that's ten power or more, just because that
that parallax becomes more of a factor chat greater distances.
In a room fire scope, we'll have a fixed yeah,

(12:10):
might have what you can imagine on a rampire scope.
Of courses you're shooting shorter distances. So a typical rim
fire range might be twenty five out to fifty yards
or so. And so when we we have a couple
that we do and we would set those at fifty yards,
and so there's you know, at fifty the right on
the money is you come in closer than fifty, you
could have a little bit of shift, and as you
go up beyond fifty, you could have a little bit

(12:31):
of shift too, But it brings it closer to sort
of the practical range that a rim fire shot at.
You know, when I was trying to explain all this
stuff in writing, the image that kept the stuck in
my head is like, let's say you're you're in the
passenger seat of a car good example, good example, and

(12:53):
you're looking at the spedometer right, and from your perspective
it looks like you're going thirty five for the knee
those themes that be from the driver's perspective you're going
for just looking at different angles. That's that's not entirely right,
but it kind of is a little know what it
does because what happens if you if you if you
were to sort of look at the mechanics of that spenometer,

(13:15):
and the needle is obviously it's it's come off the
plate of the surface, and that sort of represents that
that internal gap in in parallax in the scope if
the scope is focused correctly. If we had that scope
that was set at a hundred yards and you were
shooting at a hundred yards effectively in your example, the
needle of the spedometer would be just flush with a

(13:38):
backplate an incident. You know, no matter which angle you
looked at, it all the same speed. Yeah, all right,
so round rifle scopes. Prior to the next rifle scope.
We're gonna take a quick break, alright, So still on
the subject, rival and yahn jump in, man, jump in
what you want. But I'm gonna jump to And this
one isn't like, this isn't a huge thing because I

(13:58):
don't get a lot of quiet. Like I'm in some
way trying to relay to you guys, questions that we
get from people to watch Mediator or whatever, listen to
the show, or just people who are looking for advice. Okay,
this is one that doesn't get asked that much. Let's
not spend a ton of time on it. But why
in the hell did scopes used to have a one
inch okay the tube. Everything used to be like a

(14:21):
one inch tube, or maybe I'm wrong, it feels like
it was. No, there's still lots of one inch tubes.
And now you see like one inch and you can
pick you can buy a scope like suck X scope
and one inch or thirty millimeter why or larger? Yeah?
Like what like? And there are even some forty millimeter

(14:42):
tubes out there if you can believe that. So and
you got to match the tube with your rings that
you purchased. So why why did Why did this is
just some people can sell more stuff. Well if you
if you go you know, if you track it back
far enough. It was just as as sort of this
the scope industry get going and built scopes in the

(15:03):
United States. Traditionally one inch was just sort of adopted
as as as a common size that companies were using.
In Europe, thirty millimeter was was adopted. And you know,
those those two numbers are actually not too far apart.
They were they were sort of a practical size and
dimension to sit on top of a of a rifle.
So we're the crowd shooting at American gis with millions

(15:24):
during world War two. That's a really good question. My
dad never forgave the Germans how many millimeters is one inch? Then?
So I can the gap. It's twenty five point four,
so it's four point you know, small small difference in there.
There are some you know, what's really interesting about that question,
and widely misunderstood, is that there are some there are

(15:46):
some differences between the two. The big misconception about that
is that the larger tube provides a brighter image to
the shooter, and that's it really isn't true that that
really has nothing to do with a tube size. So
what are you getting for what? Well, again, the history
is that it was just one size used in one
area another another. But there are some advantage of when

(16:07):
you look at these scopes that go from one inch
to thirty to thirty four to thirty five, obviously that
tube is getting bigger and bigger. Seeing a cutout of
a rifle scope would would help to make this easier.
But inside the scope there's a there's another tube inside there.
It's called an erector tube, and it can It contains
the zoom lenses and the erecting lenses which which flip
and invert the image that tube has to move inside

(16:32):
the main tube of the SCUPE. So it effectively it's
it pivots and moves up and down, and that's controlled
by the turrets on the scope. And so what a
larger scope tube can allow, not necessarily, but it can
allow is a greater swing of movement inside for that
erector tube. And so for the guys that shoot very
long distances, they need to be able to adjust for

(16:53):
a lot of bullet drop at extreme distance. And so
the more internal swing is available in the scope, the
more the scope can handle that sort of thing. So
there are some theoretical advantages there. Now I had I
had no idea. That depends that's what it was. Yeah,
well it's you know, if you think heavier, bigger scope,

(17:14):
bigger rings. Yeah, but it depends on the relationship to
if you think about it between that outer tube and
that inner tube, and if the if the inner tube
grows at the same rate the outer tube does and
the and the movement is the same, well then there's
no advantage to it. So that has to you know,
you need to increase that gap inside what percentage of
what do you guys sell? It's it's because you guys

(17:37):
kind of like you guys push the thirty You guys
seem to like the totally wrong. No, not necessarily. We
sell a lot of one issues we have. We we
have a pretty strong emphasis on long range stuff. That's
a that's a big focus of workings. So in that view,
those typically are are going to be thirty millimeter or
thirty four and some of the big tactical scopes we

(17:58):
do like a long excuse me, like a long range
scope that will generally start like at thirty millimeter, Like
that would be like generally your starting point and then
like Paul said, you'd go up into you know, potentially
a thirty four even a thirty five. Have you guys
started making we do? Yeah, we do right now. We
have both thirty four and thirty five millimeter two scopes.

(18:18):
The thirty five is part of our Razor series. That scope,
for example, has been used in some of these really
extreme long range three thirty eight lapooh magnums, you know,
fifty b mgs where guys are shooting out past two
thousand yards with it. They're getting tremendous bullet drop, so
they need a way to compensate for that. We had
a guy with that scope that had a confirmed engagement

(18:41):
with a target. Excuse me, and I want to say
two point zero seven miles if I remember correct, like
an actual like a combat situation. No, it was, it was,
I mean it was. It was. It was like at
a out of range like you know, but but it
was like you know, a big metal plate point seven miles.

(19:01):
That's a long way out there, two point zero seven miles. Yeah. Wow,
that's a poke though, But so he used, I want
to say, and you know, I could be quoting us incorrect,
shooting a something three farms over. What's your head? What's

(19:21):
your thing doing? Way up there, Doug? I was just
listening and I thought, you know, I'm gonna start breathing
heavy because of all this scope talk, and you know,
starts getting tis get me so excited. So I just
took the microphone away so I could have a little
time with myself over here. Anyways, like shooting before, Doug

(19:43):
durn Fell sleep be shooting a deer in town from
the long drive, Well, Doug's place here, I bet you'd
be pushing it to get a three yard shot. Probably
you might have a spot or two, but you know,
and so we think about that to two point oh
seven miles. That's in the neighborhood. A third five hundred yards.
I remember while as a kid my brother shot at

(20:03):
deer hundred seventy yards. Seemed like this infathomable distance. It
was like unfathoml distance. My father shot a deer on
this farm at a quarter of a mile all the
way across the forty one shot. So there's there. He
stretched it further than that. That is why he is
known as the quarter mile buck hunter. He's got it

(20:25):
on a hat, all right. Yeah, and he's throwing a
good optics question you see all the time to keep
him with scopes. We'll switch to knockers later. Yeah. Um,
like all the distinctions, Yeah, I just had a good one.
Well yeah, the main one being like, no, you go ahead.
I don't want to stop. I don't want to take
your turn. No go ahead, I'll think of a better one.

(20:49):
Dog got dog jumping in with the optics question. So
I have vortex optics on my rifles. Say, say I
run vor Tex optics. Do you want to sound cool
as ship? I run flortex optics on my rifles, and
uh is cooler? I noticed that when you hang out

(21:11):
with Steve Rinella. After a while you start talking like
him and well you know that, No, there's a cadence
and everything. Uh BDC radical. Um, I have a BBC
radical on one of my rifles and I don't on
another one, dear rifle. Both our thirty six is UM

(21:33):
and I like both. I seem to prefer the BDC
even though I'm not shooting that far. How should I
set that up? Can I can? I? Can? I can? I? Yeah,
I can't. Why about who I asked the permission? Great question, Doug,
But can you take it a step further, like just
explain what the hell that means as opposed to like

(21:54):
like start with what start with radical and then and
then build up to ducks questions. Sure that mean that?
That is? It's a very very popular radical that we sell,
and it's a it's a commonly used term in the
industry too. I think everybody is familiar with a you know,
a radical being a set of crosshairs in a rifle
scope and of course the you know, the user aims

(22:14):
with the target on the center of the crosshairs. What
a BBC is, that's it's it's called a bullet drop
compensating radical, and you know. What we're trying to do
is you, as you sit in a rifle at a
fixed distance, say a hundred you're adjusting the center of
the crosshairs to be zeroed in commonly at a hundred
yards on the target. But of course that you know

(22:35):
that bullet is it is it drives further out. It's
it's constantly falling, and so with increasing distance, the user
has to find a way to adjust it for more
and more and more bullet drops it go if you
want to shoot past that hundred yards distance. And what
a what a BBC radical does is it gives you
points of reference on the radical itself to compensate for

(22:57):
that bullet drop at various distances. And to keep it simple.
What what we did with that radical and and and
it's this is this technique is used by other companies
as well. Is you try to think in hundred yard increments,
which which which a lot of shooters and hunters do.
To keep it easy. We can't just put a you know,
a million marks on that radical. So what we try
to do is think about the rifle being zero to

(23:18):
a hundred yards and having a mark at where a
two hundred yard point of impact would be a three hundred,
four hundred and a five hundred yard and for distances
in between that, the shooter would just sort of hold
between those marks. And so what happens those marks come
below the center of the cross there, because what is
that is you're shooting at increasing distances. What you're really

(23:40):
doing with that radical is you're you're incrementally raising the
muzzle of the gun. If you think about it, marks
are lower. So you bring the rifle up to line
those marks up. And it's a little tricky because what
happens is you're doing one radical pattern and is any
you know, anyone who's done shooting those there. You know,
there are a million different cartridges, loads, bullet weights, velocities, altitudes, temperatures, pressures,

(24:03):
all those things affect bullet drop. And so when we
give you a radical and it has these five little
marks on it, you have to keep in mind that
those are those are drawn up and designed around h
You know, we just crunched a lot of numbers. We
looked at it most of the popular center fire hunting cartridges.
You know, picked an altitude and a pressure and a

(24:24):
temperature and and came up with drop numbers that we
felt could match the widest possible selection and your user
the manual, the user manual that comes with it gives
you kind of a way to understand. It gives you
an overview of that talks about different uh do even
list like like like I can't remember how you guys articulated,
but kind of like muzzleoaders. Yes, it does. It will

(24:49):
break firearms into different classes. You know, say a standard
hunting rifle, a magnum hunting rifle, as you point out,
maybe muzzleloaders, maybe rim fires, because those those different groups
all have have very different bullet drop rates. And then
within each of those groups, of course, you know what,
they're even finer rates um there are. There's one of

(25:09):
the things that's really key about that, and I'll mention quickly,
and it is very widely misunderstood, is that, for the
most part, in in rifle scopes that are commonly sold
for hunting and BBC radicals are they are a hunting device.
That is Yeah, it's not a it's not a high precision,
tactical or target style radical. It is a big game

(25:31):
hunting radical. That's the purpose of that. They're they're commonly
put in the style of rifle scope that that demands
that there's only one power that they function at, and
this is this is glad. But let me stop you
because you're you're gonna enter into first vocal plane, correct
second vocal point, and I want to do that, but
let me I wanted to like set this up a

(25:53):
little better. Let's just jump Let's just jump into that
before before we do the first vocal plane, second focal plant.
I want to say about the BBC thing. What I
understand on a user manual for your scopes that has
BBC radical, The manual doesn't written most of the manual
doesn't say that those if you're on the manual doesn't
say when you're on max power, it's one for m

(26:17):
o A one five to five, seven and a half
and eleven. Okay, why does the manual? Is that not
a good I would think that may it may list
that in there, but it's on your website. I was
wondering if you guys don't if that's not a good
way to think about it for something, it probably isn't.
Because if you're if you're gonna, if you're gonna take

(26:38):
a BBC radical and you're you're going to adopt it
and use it. If you if you start thinking in
those minutes of angle, you're you're sort of you're transitioning
into the style of shooting that would not typically use
a BBC. And and this is you know this. It's
a little complex. But for example, someone who would shoot

(26:59):
with m O A numbers or if it was a
Mill scope, they would be m I gotta stop you
one more time. But I hate to do this by
I just want to bring m A is. Imagine you're
standing in a circle earth a minute of angle. God,
I hate trying to explain this. It's one six one
degree if you imagine that you're standing on a flat line. No, Paul,

(27:26):
explain this, Mark, explain this. I think the easiest way
I found it explain this is is people should they're
they're Basically there are two formats that are used for
for adjusting turrets in the scope or using radicals, and
so that's either minutes of angle or Miller radians and
basically there too. If I think that, one way that's

(27:47):
always helped me to explain is think about sort of
a clock face. What we're talking about is angles in
that clock face. And the reason angles are important is
because if you think about what we're what we're doing
with that rifle when we're trying to adjust for long range,
is we're working with angles were you know, we touched
on it earlier about how those marks on the radical

(28:08):
dropped down and we bring the muzzle of the rifle up.
So think of it, you know, picture maybe like an
artillery gun. You know, we're to to shoot further distances.
We're increasing the angle of that muzzle. Really by dialing
the scope or using turrets, we're bringing it up at
an angle. And so what those minutes of angle or
those mill ratings are doing, they're representing that angle that

(28:29):
we adjust and they're just two different scales of doing it.
They're just simply two different ways of calculating angles. But
let me throw this out you what if you'll talk
about if you hear a term sub m a accuracy, Yeah,
what that would mean is that the rifle is going
to shoot a less than one inch group at So

(28:50):
if you imagine this angle we're talking about one degree,
it grows as it gets farther away. At one yards,
the distance between the lines and that angle is one inch.
At two hundred yards, it doubles. It doubles at four
yards on out. So if you have m o A accuracy,

(29:11):
mean you can shoot a one inch group at one
hundred yards, you're shooting a two inch group of two
hundred yards, three inch group of three yards, a four
inch group of four hundred yards as you get farther out.
So that's if people were talking about when they say
like sub m o A accuracy in this measurement, which
is like cryptic plays into all the stuff. So now
I'm gonna stop talking and let you run with and

(29:33):
let you run with what you were getting into. Yeah,
what what? What? What? I was going to touch on
there quickly. We were just talking about those those angles,
and those angles relate to the to the marks and
the radical. Remember we were going, why would you go
from the hundred yard two hundred yard, three hundred yard
four hundred to the one and a half four and
a half, seven and a half and eleven. And the

(29:55):
reason I was saying, the guy that buys that BBC Radical,
what he's looking for is a quick and s away
to compensate for long range shooting. It's easy, it's fast.
Everyone can wrap their head around. I'm zero to my
crossairs are onto the hundred. That next market is two
d next is three. It's very it's easy to do.
If I tell you now that you know on that

(30:17):
let's say, on that five yard shot you need ten
minutes of angle, you've just made the whole thing a
lot more complex to that guy. You know, Now he's
got to think, well, what you know? You see now
you go back to the Matthew we're saying, and you think,
you know, so how much drop is that that works?
And that's that's commonly the techniques that are used by
by precision shooters. Snipers for example, would use that style.

(30:40):
You can use ballistics calculators that will take some basic
inputs about a bullets BC and it's muzzle velocity and
the and the temperature and altitude that you're at, and
they will very very accurately calculate the bullet drop. And
then that same program take that bullet drop and it

(31:01):
can it can put it it can you know, express
it in minutes of angle if you'd like, it can
express it in the mill ratings. We're talking one of
those programs called Shooter. That's one of the best ones,
mainly just to get an understanding of the stuff. But
with with the BBC like I do what you say,
not not that we say not to do. But I
in my biny harness, like I can't write a knockers
in my binarts. There's this little pocket. And what I'll

(31:23):
do with my rifle in the in the lower tim shooting,
I'll draw a picture. That's that's a very good way
to do that. I draw a little picture of what
my BBC cross the radical looks like. And I just
saw I have for a memory, guy, I take the
m O a thing and I got my zero, so
I do two yards zero usually, and then I have

(31:45):
each hash mark what it is exactly, what the top
of the post is on the bottom exactly. And then
I put and I write down exactly what the half
marks are, so my little car will have a thing.
And I also put into one yards in case you
want up like shooting at a kyle or something, I'll
put like the one yards, so the one hundred yard.
I know I'm a little bit high, you know. Then

(32:07):
I have the two zero line, and then I have
a mark for between that it might be that the
two zero line and the next hash mark halfway between
might be like two thirty. The next line might be
down the line and there's enough numbers on there for
me that if I was a look through my range
finder and no, I'm gonna look down and feel very confident, right,

(32:34):
you know what, I have many of those numbers in there,
just sort of. I also know in my head. I
know in my head the hash marks. But if I
ever like feel like just just for sense of security,
or if I'm in a situation, I know that I
can pull that thing out and I got like, oh
two D seventy three ten, and I'm never like going

(32:55):
I'm never aiming between those any more than just splitting
them in the middle. But I have an array of
things where like any animal, did I have any business
shooting at, I'm gonna know exactly where holding without taking
the cap off and start clicking on the skull. That's right,
you know when the advantage to that, to using that
radical is that's quick and it's fast. The guys that

(33:17):
will sit there and use those ballistics programs we talked
about and calculate those drops and minutes of angle. The
downfall of that is kind of this slow deliberate process.
You you have to, you know, first range an object.
Then you have to enter that range into that ballistics calculator.
It has to then give you that correction. Then you
have to either reference that correction on the radical or
reach up and dial it on a turret. So it's slow,

(33:39):
and that's that's the The big advantage to BBC radicals
is speed when when you boil it down, they're fast
and they're easy to use. The disadvantages they're not as
accurate as calculating those minutes of angle or mill radians
out And what you probably do is, you know, we
touched on the fact that a BBC radical is is

(34:00):
calculated sort of, you know, it's it's putting a whole
bunch of cartridges together and blending them and coming up
with a set of numbers that gives you a really
general ballistics curve that's going to be common, you know
for what the most big game calibers. Yeah, and perfectly
and perfectly suitable for the vast majority videos and the

(34:20):
guys that want higher accuracy out of that what they
can do on our on our website, there's a there's
a ballistics program called the l RBC and that'll pull up.
You have to enter some basic information in about the
bullet BC and the velocity and environmental conditions. But you
can go to a tab on there that says radicals
and you can do just what you described. You can
pull up a graphic of that BBC radical And the

(34:42):
slick thing about that program is it will take the
specific data that you put in there about the load
and the bullet you're shooting, and it will do the
math for you and it will show rather than that
simple two D four hundred five hundred, it'll do the
math and it might display it'll, it'll and those numbers

(35:04):
are exact, so you can sort of take that to
the bank. Those those are much more tightly tuned. When
you do that technique, it's just, you know, it's it's
something everybody can do that. It's easy to use, you know,
it's it's out there. I was just gonna say it's good.
You can say you can take it to the bank.
But I feel like verification at the range has to

(35:25):
be done. Always want to do that. I was shooting
with these market ball I feel like, you know what
you gotta shoot. Yeah, too many people plug those numbers
in like I'm going hunting. No, you should plug those
numbers in and go to the range. Get some gongs
out there, stuff and check. Because it happens to me

(35:46):
almost every time I go. I'm like, all right, I know,
like a little calculator it says four and a half
minutes up right, I shoot that talker three times in
a row and I miss it. All right, there's a reason.
There's a reason for that. You know. What's interesting is
those programs have gotten very good now. They're much better
than they were, say four or even five years ago.
I mean, they've really improved. The things that change that

(36:07):
people don't understand is even if you take a chronograph
and you measure the speed of the bullet coming out
of your rifle, and your chronograph says feet per second,
you could take five other chronographs that same day and
line them up and get a spread of different velocities.
They typically are not very consistent, and so that has

(36:30):
a drastic effect on those curves. And so when you
pick a number, maybe you got it off the box
of ammunition, or maybe you have your chronograph and you
measured it and you throw that into that program, it
may or may not be accurate. It may not really
be telling you the true story. And the other the
other key piece of information there is the ballistics coal
efficient of the bullet, the BC. And so a program

(36:52):
is going to ask you for one BC number and
for for your listeners, you know BC number, that's sort
of a way it predicts how efficiently a bullet flies
through the air. And and basically long skinny bullets with
pointed noses and pointed tails are you know, they fly
the best. They'll stay stable, and they stay stable at
lower velocities right right there, and they maintain their velocity better.

(37:16):
So if you took a long, skinny boat tailed bullet,
maybe exactly the same grain weight, you know, let's say
it's a hundred and sixty grain bullet, and you contrasted
that with a rounded nose bullet with a flat base
on it, if you went out at five yards and
measured the velocity that long skinny pointed bullet, even though
with the same powder charge behind them and the same
muzzle blossie, it would be traveling faster at that. So

(37:40):
that's a key thing. And the thing about bcs. Quickly
I was going to touch on the program just ask
you to put in one BC number. But the thing
about BCS is they constantly change that that BC varies
from the incident leaves the muzzle the gun so as
that bullet slows the BC number. Actually, so it's you know,
while the programs use a single number, it's not. It's

(38:00):
not really what goes on, all right, I got I
want to jump in and interject. I want to back
up a little bit in comment on something. We're talking about,
the thing I carry in my pocket or the thing
I can remember by no pouch. I want to give
you like a real world situation of how I how
I think about this. We were running Cou's Deer in
Arizona this year and at one point in time, like

(38:21):
some deer stepped out, A bunch of does stepped out.
It remembers, okay, no buck, but some does stepped out.
Absolutely I would have. And it was a trail. It
was like a little trail through an opening. Yeah, it's
just a picture. You're looking at the hillside and there's
a big brushy bottom and the first thing you see
is the open hillside with a trail across it. I

(38:42):
hadn't noticed the trail to I see some deer walking
down it. Totally I could have thrown up and taken
the shot. Right, there's no buck. Then the deer walk away,
and I'm like, man, a buck could totally just come
walking down that trail. At which point, even though I
would have taken the shot, I pulled out my little
thing took a distance reading on those doughs. And they're like,

(39:03):
so if he shows up on one of the three
days that I'm gonna be sitting here watching this Hilson,
what exactly is going on? And I look, I'm like, oh, yeah,
that shot is dial because I actually know now now
it's beyond like me being like, yeah, it's probably right,
ACCOUSI is not a tall animal. No, No, we're talking
about hundred pound white tails. So I remember looking at

(39:25):
that thing and being like, man, if a buck comes
down that trail, I know, like what I'm gonna do.
I don't know what I'm gonna do, and I could
have done it anyway, but you know what I mean,
it's like in that way, I use that thing. No
another thing I want to strow. We're talking about this
long like long distance stuff, and long distance shooting is controversial,
it's not. It's not controversial to shoot long distances at
a range. There's a big debate right now. I was like,

(39:47):
what's too far? I say it's too far when you
wonder about whether you're gonna hit it or not, if
you're you know, whether whether you're gonna make a good head. Yeah,
the minute you take a shot where you're like, I
wonder if I can hit that, you are definitely shooting
too far. But I my philosophy on this stuff is

(40:07):
I take I like to take long range technology, long
range skill sets, and apply it in a hunting situation
to normal hunting situations. Where first time I went antelope
un my brother's shot antalopen three, our response was, Wow,

(40:27):
he hit it right. Nowadays it would be I'll say
exactly why I'm hit that antelope in a lot of
conditions would be a chip shot. So long distance shooting
for me, in a real world hunting situation is taking
shots like making it be there where you know you're like,

(40:47):
I'm gonna shoot his heart out. Push that distance. Maybe
it's a hundred yards mute. If you got into the
long range, if you got into all this thinking and
the proper equipment and the proper practice, you might get you.
I was talking a guy there day who teaches you
guys introduced me to him. The guy that teaches the
Marine Corps. Yeah, he hunts a lot of He shoots

(41:07):
a lot of doughs on some farm land. And he says,
at two yards, I shoot him in the head. I'm like,
I can't. I would never do that. But I'm like,
he knows at fifty like me shooting a deer at
fifty yards, I probably have the degree of certainty that
he has a two hundred yards. Right. This guy teaches
shooting and shoots and he understands that stuff in and out.

(41:28):
So for me to say, like, what's too long for
Tony to shoot? Well, for his job, he shoots eight
hundred yards, right, I would if you put a target
at eight and a targeted too and tolds to hit
the bull's eye, I would be like, you gave me
the two hundred yards and him the eight hundred yard.
I'd be like, I bet this dude's gonna win the bat? Right,
what's too far? You tell me that? That's definitely one

(41:50):
of those topics. You could spend a whole another hour,
and every editor, every editor at every hunting magazine, has
taken his shot at saying it. But it's unsolvable. It's
just like I been trying to find a way to
solve it, and it'd be like when you have questioned
about where you will hit, it's too far. And for
a lot of guys, I'm telling you it's unfortunate to
say a lot of guys, hundred yards is too far.
It is you don't know what you're doing. The first

(42:12):
time I ever hunt of Wisconsin, I shot a deer
in the tember has ninety yards away, actually arranged it
after I shot it. You know, the guys came back
and they're like, wow, man, that is a fantastic shot.
You know, and I'm from I wasn't. I'm no expert, Marchman.
You have pretty solid understanding of the things that we're
talking about right now, right, but it was just interesting

(42:32):
for me to hear from them like that. Seemed like,
you know, pretty long shot. And I guess, you know,
for the circumstances in the Timber, I guess that is
a someone long shot for sure. But if you've ever
spined deer at a hundred fifty yards, I might say, man,
you know what, you're shooting too far right, because you're
a long If you spined a deer at that distance,
you might as well you could have if that bullet

(42:53):
was the other direction, just blue his kneecap off. You're
that far off, And I think, and I think you
always they spy like, yeah, went down. You see hunting
shows all times, so dude, spines deer just both they're
jumping up in high five and I'm like, dude, you
have just chopped You're you're that many inches off. You
shot too far, dude. It's all relative to you know,

(43:14):
every everybody's different. The level equipment now is definitely better
than it was before. But you know, you make a
good example, Steve. They're they're probably been as many deer
wounded at a hundred yards as there have been. I
have seen it all times. I think I think your
definition of that's probably the best I've heard. I mean,
it's gonna depend on the individual, their experience, their equipment,

(43:35):
their understanding of that equipment, all those varials, variables come
into play as to how effective marksman that person is
going to be. And and you can't apply a general
definition across the board everybody because everybody's looking for that number. Yeah,
there are some numbers here. There are some numbers I hear.

(43:56):
I don't want to get into it. There's some numbers
I here, I'm like, yeah, that's too far. Yeah, and
you see you see it. I mean, you see that
out on the internet when that's happening. What I'm thinking
of is you it gets there's a certain distance in
a certain kind of country where you just don't know
what the wind is doing over there. And also it

(44:17):
takes the bullet a long time to get there. And
when you're looking at a deer and it's let's say
you're looking at it elk and he's traveling up a hillside,
he's he's a bull. He's got a bunch of spoot
cows strung out in front of him. Right, he pauses,
looks back. That deer could be into his That elk
could be into his second step should he leave, should

(44:38):
he start walking at that moment, he could be into
his second step by the time your bulle gets over there.
If you're talking about thousand yard shot, yeah, yeah, And
you know, I you know, I hate teaven throw numbers
out there, but that you know, that range is is
just that's a non starter for hunting. That's just too far.
It's just because there's a lot of a lapse time,
you know. All right, let's hammer through some more stuff. Well,

(45:00):
I got a quick question, well two part question. One.
We noticed I was talking to Marks. I was trying
to get a new scope, and I was looking for
a forty millimeter bell. That's what I was like, Man,
I don't really have a lot of those. Everybody wants
to fill fifty millimeters, and so I'd like to know
why that is and if there's like this perceived um

(45:21):
benefit and what is the actual benefit you know, to
someone's eye or you know, the hunting conditions, and what's
the drawback? And then the drawback? And then two is
um A big question we get in all the time
is like how much money should I spend on the
scope to put on my rifle? Sometimes you hear, you know,
double the amount that you've got into the rifle for
your optics, you know. And for most of us hunters,

(45:43):
I think probably nine plus percent, including myself, rarely shooting
past three yards. So what level of scope and how
much money do I need to spend to like always
be happy out to that you know distance? You know,
if I'm never going past it, you know what I mean?
For like the Wisconsin deer hunter. Right before you answer that, though,
let's just take a quick break here from our sponsors.

(46:09):
So yeah, so uh in response to your seven part question,
there was a lot of dude, you're asking like what
objective lens? Bells objective? Like what objective lens do I want?
What are the pros and cons of a forty and
a fifty and the thirty, and what's too much to
spend on the scope. Let's let's let's do all the

(46:37):
damn questions. We'll get through as many as we can.
So and so objective diameter, right, like i'd say, in general, Paul,
just to explain what that is. So that's that's the
diameter of the end of the rifle scopes lens that
you're not looking through, so not the ocular. So that's
the I never commared ocular. Ocular is what your eyes

(46:59):
up against exactly, and that holds true boculars right, same
terms ocular objective, And you're just expressed in millimeters. So
when when when you're saying forty and fifty, that's just
simply the diameter of that in millimeters. It's you know,
it's how big is that lens as you look at it? Exactly?
So so in general, right, you know, a larger objective

(47:21):
is going to you know, essentially bring in more light. Right,
so you're gonna have better light transmission. Some whe people
talk about rifle scopes. You know, light transmission is a
really big deal because you know, game is oftentimes most
active at donna, dusk and in the low lights scenarios. Right, Yeah,
with a good scope or good binoculars, it's when you

(47:41):
look through it, it's lighter than what your eyes giving you. Right,
you can look at the hillside that's too dark and
you look through binoculis be like, ohly should just do
you stand over there? Right? Because it's giving it's giving
you light. So and I'm not I'm not an optical engineer, right,
but so there's a lot of a lot of factors, right,
you know, the glass quality, uh you know is fully
multi coded. You know, the quality of those uh those

(48:04):
multi coodings. Um. The optical design you know, I talked
to you know, our optical engineers at the office, you know,
and uh, you know, I mean really optical design is
really as much and art as it is the shape
just everything and the layout number of every system. So

(48:25):
I mean that that is you know, but that is
one one variable that does affect you know, light transmissions.
So um, I think you know, oftentimes people you know,
bigger is better, you know, a little bit bigger is
better mentality, you know, whether it comes objective diameter or
or you know, larger calibers, right, you know, but I
mean it is it is hamburgers, other stuff we have,

(48:50):
you know, Yeah, we don't really exercise good portion control
in this country. Maybe downsize our hamburgers. Give Mark a
quick hand with that though. One one thing that's really
important to understand is it's it is not always an
advantage to have a bigger bell. It may give you
a brighter image, it may not it is guaranteed that
it's going to make the scopes it higher. Off. Here's

(49:11):
here's the trick. One of the things to remember when
when you sort of calculating brightness through an optic one
of the most simplestic basic forms of estimating brightness is
to divide the magnification into the objective lens, and that
gives you a number called an exit pupil. And let's
say you had a rifle scope. Let's say it's a
variable scope. You have a turn to five X. And

(49:32):
let's just say you have a fifty millimeter bell out there.
If you divide that very simply, you get an exit
pupil of ten millimeters. I think every Yeah, that's pretty easy,
everybody can do that. Here's the thing to remember, though,
the ultimate limiting factor in all this is the pupil
of your eye. So that light has to come through
the scope and before it gets to your where you're

(49:55):
you know, the the optic nerve and your brain interprets it.
It has to go through the pupil of your eye.
Even when you're young, in your eyes at their maximum flexibility,
you're going to get at best maybe seven millimeters. So
any an exit pupil that goes beyond seven millimeters, it
goes beyond the perimeter of your pupil. It's it's unusable.

(50:16):
So here's the thing that's fifty millimeter bell that that
example I just gave you. We came up with a
ten millimeter exit pupil. Well, your I cannot it can't
use tensi than you need. So you's the thing. You've
achieved the maximum though, right, you don't have to worry
about the equipment. You've achieved the maximum, But you've spent
a little more for the skull. You have a heavier sculle,

(50:37):
and it's a taller scope, so it sits higher off
the rifle. Your head placement may not be as nice
as it was with that forty millimeter bell, which hits
lower on the rifle. Now the fifty does where you
have to follow that though, you have to kind of
follow that rabbit trail of that. The fifty comes up
with an edge at the upper end of the magnification range.
So as you get say eight, ten, twelve, sixteen next,

(51:00):
now that fifty comes into play and makes a difference
out there. So you have to think about the size
of that lens in relation to the magnification that you
want to run. And that's the reason. You can look
at a little one to four variable that you know
from one power to four power, and that's it doesn't
go any higher than that. And they're typically matched up
with a twenty four millimeter lens. It's about an inch

(51:22):
in diameter. Looks small, but that that scope is just
as bright as as any equally priced fifty millimeter scope
at higher magnification. But you haven't gotten you haven't gotten
into site picture yet though well site picture will you
know that relates a lot to magnification lower lower powers
typically give you a wider field. They're easier to see.

(51:44):
Let's say you're comparing a four. You always see more
every all thing, everything you don't know you're you're see.
Another misconception is that that that big lens out there
gives you a wider field of view, and that's that
all things being equal. Yeah, same manification saying you're saying
you can't always see more out the fifty. Now, many

(52:06):
many times you may not see any difference whatsoever between
the two of them. If it's a bright day, the
image could look absolutely identical between the forty. And I
mean if I had my body run out of the
field and I directed, I'm looking through my scope, and
I'm like, he's gonna shoot a scored a spray paint
on one edge and then shoot a scored a spray
paint the edge of the other edge of my view,

(52:27):
and I do the same thing with a forty. He's
gonna the spray paint is gonna lie with edge. It might.
That has nothing to do with the objective I want
to try. You want to try a neat tricks to you,
I'd like take a fifty millimeter scope out or any
scope and and restrict three quarters that objective lens cover it,

(52:47):
put a cover on, you could put a little pinhole
through it. On a bright day, field of view is
exactly the same change. Yeah, it's it's a great way
to illustrate. It's pretty neat. And actually, on a bright
sunny day, if you were to restrict that lens and
allow less light to come through, you see, the image
quality would look better. Actually, it would get contrasting more defined.

(53:09):
A lot of bent trest guys that do that sort
of thing, they actually will restrict the aperture of their
scopes on a bright day for those reasons. All right,
So why is it? Though? I know, I think I
was talking to the mark like, I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about what people want, right, people want fifties?
They do? Are they just wrong? Many times they don't

(53:35):
get the whole picture, you know, the things we're talking
about here, The fact that doesn't automatically mean it's brighter.
It doesn't automatically have anything to do with field of view.
You know, everybody wants a wide field of view and
everybody wants a brighter image, but the fifty doesn't always
get you that. And so what does what does it
get you? So what he is what he gets you? Though?
Think about back that exit puple discussion, and let's say

(53:56):
we've got a four to sixteen scoll, very popular size
for us. We a lot of them. It's like, in
my mind is the perfect Yeah, it longer ranges. That's
that scope is gonna be turned up to sixteen X
and use so you know you do that mass now
and now even at sixteen X, you're you're underneath that seven.
Your eye is gonna use every bit of light that

(54:17):
can because dividing fifty five exactly. So now you're the
point where, yeah, that fifties doing something for you. It's
it's making a noticeably brighter image that here's a question
to make smoke comm oud of you, guys, ears or
something people always ask. I mean often we'll say, like

(54:37):
I predominantly hunt white tails. I'm gonna I'm gonna turn
it into a specific but it's it's just like I'm
averaging a ton of questions together. I live in Missouri,
I generally hunt white tails. Every other year we go
out to hunt elk in Colorado. Someday I'd like to
go on a doll sheet hunt. I can't side what

(55:01):
scope to buy. They have to you have to get
phone calls like this, and that's and that's when I
sell that person multiple rifle scopes. So yeah, so let
let's deify the question. I mostly hunt white tails. Occasionally
I'll do a Western big hunt, big game hunt. I
can't be throwing tons of money at this stuff. I

(55:22):
want to buy a scope. I want to get five, six,
ten years out of it. What scope do I want? Well,
that's a tricky one. I mean, that's that's tell him
what scope you want. I could probably actually pick one
from me out of our lineup that that for me
would be the best fit. Can I guess first? Can
I guess? Then you're honest guest. Then you guys tell

(55:44):
us what you think. Okay, we'll critique. Oh you don't
want to pick an actual model? No? No, no. If
you want picking a magnification range, okay, no manification range,
objective lens, oh, all around whitetail okay, hunts white till
every year, Yeah they do. Okay. He goes out to Colorado. Oh,

(56:08):
three D nine by forty okay, yeah, me too, probably four,
just because I don't know why. So I'll give you
I'll give you mine, and I concur with the four
to six team by fifty because to me, I find
it to be like an incredibly versatile magnification range. And

(56:31):
I always, I always I like magnification, right, so I'll
edge towards the skill that has higher manifications. So but
to me, that scope is like, it's awesome for the
tree stand in the timber. You know, you can crank
it down to four and then you can also you know,
engage you know, targets or animals at extended ranges as well.
I've shot the four to sixteen to a thousand yards

(56:53):
and shot deer out of a tree stand with that
same right. That's why I like the three nights kind
of the same thing. But when I'm walking around, I
don't care where I'm walking around. I could be walking
around out in eastern Montana on the flattest ground in
the world. I carry my scope on four because if
you jump something up, I never wish in a in
a practical honey experience, I'm talking like a deer stands

(57:14):
up in thick ass brush twenty five yards away. I've
never had on four power. I can find that thing.
But I've raised enough rifles to my face where I
don't do the like look for it. Like when I'm
looking at something, my eye stays on it, my scope
comes to my eye. My eye doesn't go to my scope.
My scope comes to my eye, and that thing is

(57:35):
right there in the center of the scope. I've never
been I've never lost an animal or I would have
gotten him with the one power scope, Like it's all
I always can find. I can find running stuff in
the four power scope. But when I'm sitting there and
I see, like, holy sh it, there's like a deer
laying over there. You know what's going on? Kresniki shotting there?

(57:56):
Turn up to sixteen man. You see like his eyelashes
and stuff. You know. It's just like I love having
it there. I'm always looking at stuff do there? Yeah, Yeah,
I mean I would agree with Mark. That's a really
good effective zoom range. You can kind of do anything
with it. I have a you know, I I spend
a lot of time hunting in the mountains. I have
a tendency to like lighter weight scope, so I would

(58:17):
my personal choice would be to give up a little
bit of that light gathering and go to a slightly
smaller objective forty or forty two. Maybe, Um, you're gonna
lose a little bit of weight. Um, you have that
advantage that touched on earlier. Typically the smaller objective means
the rifle can the scope can sit a little bit
lower on the rifle, and that can aid you better

(58:39):
head placement on the stock. You you you you probably
will shoot a little more accurately with that. It's a
pretty fine distinction though. You know, that's almost my my
sort of personal lean as opposed to someone else's. Um,
there's not you know, it's one of those things. Are
definitely not a black or white right or wrong answer
to that type of thing. You know, I'm willing to
trade off this and gain that so much exactly. I mean,

(59:01):
like I hunt the mountains a lot, and I'll I'll
suck it up and take that that weight penalty because
to me, like the magnification is like outweighs that advantage
for myself. But you know a lot of stuff like
Paul's is, like we're talking about that just comes down
to personal preference. You know, I'm not as weight like,
I'm not as weight obsessed some people are. Because I

(59:22):
find that you can sit around talking all day. This
is a little bit of a digression from from optics.
Do you sit around talking all day like how many
ounces you save by the scopeboard asco dude, you want
to talk about save an ounces? Do you bring a
tent or not bring a tent? Now we're talking about
now we're talking about six Yeah, we're talking about six

(59:43):
pounds now. So it's like I generally like, I don't
you know like guys who are like cutting their toothbrush
handle and half and stuff. I mean, you gotta get
you have to have your kids so dialed at the
point where you're where you're realizing that you're getting more
miles every day because you ran that forty millimeter not

(01:00:04):
the fifty millimeter scope. Like you have to be a
very detail oriented backpack hunter with a ton of packing
experience where that is the issue. There are some pieces
of equipment when you think about when you're on a hunt.
Let's say you're on an extended you know, eight ten
day hunt. Did you carry every day all the time
with you and there you know the rifles one of
them that that you know, the tent set up. You're

(01:00:26):
not packing that ten around everything. You're not packing so
there are pieces of gear where shaving weight off is
more valuable than others. In that sense, rifle you're gonna
have with you all the time. I did a lot
of hunting with a rifle that I was shocked one
day when I put it on a digital scale and
the rifle scope combo was twelve pounds nine ounces. I

(01:00:47):
had totaled it all over. And then I got a
rifle where the rifle scope combo came into eight and
a half. It felt like I was carrying a chopstick.
But you know, you know that that's leaving a tent
or not. The flip side, too, is that a lot
of times those heavy rifles are easier to shoot. Like
so there's all there's there's so many different angles. My

(01:01:08):
brother shoots a big like I actually gave it to him. Um,
he shoots a big what's the what's the main ruger
rifles like seventies things like it's a three d win
big old thick barrel heavy stock. He carries the thing ever,
because because you know what, when I laid that thing
over my backpack, I looked at the scold like this
thing is gonna die because it's like it just it's

(01:01:30):
like it's like thump, you know, that rifle lays down
there and you're not. He's like, I just settled and
I'm like, yeah, I'll tear that bullets gone. And then
light rifles you just never get that feeling I've had.
I had a rifle that we're getting wet. This is
the whole subject. I had a rifle, I decided it
was too light, had a different barrel put on it,
just because not nothing with accuracy. I had a different

(01:01:50):
barrel put because I just couldn't stand how light it was.
It never felt settled in. But let's jump the knockers,
because there's not a whole lot to discus us on knockers.
With numbers, people are always like ten, like the most
obvious one, eight power, ten power or whatever. What's your

(01:02:11):
spiel what's what? What? What's the vortex spiel Ford? Well,
those are you know, those are the those are the
two most popular magnifications sold eight and tenant And you know,
for that simply refers to how many times that binocular
is magnifying with your I S S. So in one
instance something is eight times bigger, in the other instance
it's ten times bigger. Not a big difference. You know,

(01:02:32):
I think it's there. You want to think of the
terrain in the country that you're using it in and
and typically Western hunters definitely gravitate towards ten powered binos.
You have a little extra edge, a little more magnification.
You're using them at greater distances typically, and so that
ability to magnify something a little bit larger is of benefit.

(01:02:53):
The drawbacks to it are is the field of view,
the image that we talked about that you were talking
about earlier with the rifle scope. Typically in the tent X,
if everything else is equal, it's going to be narrower.
You're gonna look at a smaller image when you're looking
at something. So the guy with the spray paint cans,
the guy with the spray paint cans, he's only going
to see three quarters of what he could see in
the eight power by now. And the other thing is
that when you're trying to hold that binocular, what you're doing,

(01:03:16):
you know, you're just picking up in your hands and
holding it. The higher the magnification is, the harder is
to hold that thing steady. It's gonna wiggle in your hands.
And if you carry that to an extreme and you
looked at a twelve or fifteen power binocular and you
try to hand hold it, that image is gonna be
wiggly and shaky, and so you lose some of the
benefit of having that magnification ten x is it's to

(01:03:37):
the point most people can hold him pretty steady, comfortably.
I disagree on this one thing. I have a very
firm opinion on about this. I find that I used
to not be able to freehand tense. Yeah, I know
where you're going. I learned. I learned to freehand tense. Yeah, sure,
I don't think. I really don't think anyone can freehand

(01:03:57):
a pair of twelve powers with all the game. Well
you can, but it's just free. There's gonna be a loss.
There's gonna be lost. And obviously, you know you're a
big fan of tripod use. We certainly are too. I
grew up doing that as well, using any of these
baculars on a tripod. Taking your hands out of the equation,
huge difference, giganic difference. Obviously, can realize that, yeah, you

(01:04:18):
put the things on a tripod, like a pair of
tens a tripod, like powers on a tripod, they're fast
proved more effective once I started tripod glassing, Like, now
I don't like it if I'm not Tripod's annoying. Yeah,

(01:04:39):
it realized all the stuff you're missing. Like when I
when I had cous here for the first time, that's
when I was like really introduced to you know, hardcore
tripod glassing, like really tearing the country side apart. And
that's actually like affected all my other hunting, Like I
apply that to all my western hunting. Yeah, because you're like, oh, hey,
there's a quail a mile away over there, but just

(01:04:59):
aw run between two bushes. You've never seen that thing,
you know. But back to the eight tending, I will
often say, and I'm gonna let you have the last
word of this. I'll often tell people, if I had
to really be super general, if you hunt like the
east east of the Big Bend in the Missouri, I'd

(01:05:20):
be like, eight. Yeah, good advice that the and the
and the guy with the eight he's not gonna go
wrong if he takes that eight power out west and
hunts it's it's gonna work. Just funny. I wouldn't, Yeah,
you wouldn't. Yeah, I know we're on the same page
on that. But talk about twelves, fifteens, all the craziest.
So what happens is, you know, will agree to disagree

(01:05:40):
on tense. I think that's the that is definitely. Do
you think anyone can free hand a pair of tense not?
Not to the same level of effectiveness. No, definitely not.
You know, I wouldn't say anybody can pick up a
pair of tens and they're gonna be effective with it.
You really have to, you know, as you point out,
sort of learn the tricks. You're gonna you know, you're
gonna tuck your elbows, you're gonna brace your hands, you're
gonna hold on your hat. You find ways to help
stabilize that by no or that. What do you call

(01:06:03):
when you can screw the eye cups in and out? Well,
that that would be something you would set whether you
were eyeglasses or not. But I find I used to
dial them all the way in and then put my
finger for stability, that I put my finger on my
eyebrow and bring the cup to my finger. It would
get a lot of stability like that. Now I find

(01:06:25):
that I screw them all the way out, and I
just kind of have a sweet spot where screwed all
the way out. I just know where they're supposed to
be in my eye socket, and it's just like shooting
a bow where you have the same anchor point. When
I bring my bandacres up, like I know how that
I cut feels and I get great. I would definitely
you know that that is absolutely one of those tricks.
You know when I when I talk about using tents,

(01:06:47):
you you they have to touch your face if you're
just holding them out in space and they're off of
your face and floating there. Yeah, I mean I agree
with you completely. They are you know, very hard to use.
You have to brace, they have to touch your face.
You know, I tended I have more deep set eyes.
I tended. I mean, driving pretty hard on my my

(01:07:08):
eyebrow ridge. But that's all you know, that's what's helping
stabilize them and make him steady. You know when you
let like a picture that you're trying to look into
a window with your hands where you make that little like, yeah,
you kind of like you find ways of doing that
that gives you law stability with your right and that
you know, having your hands up there too. You know
you're blacking that sidelight, that lateral light from coming in

(01:07:29):
on him. But once you go beyond tend, you know,
it's pretty much it's black and white. At that point,
you're you're into the zone. Now that that really you're
going to get the most benefit by using a tripod.
Ryan Callahan three hands, and I've done honestly, I talk
bad about him behind his back. Yeah, I've done it too,

(01:07:49):
because we're like, there's no way he's pretty as he
sat down behind him on a on a tripod and
he's done. He's done. He's like an eyed he's done
a ton of hunt. In our defense, we knew it
behind his back. We also do it to his face.
I'll be like, dude, you can't honestly tell me that
you're free hand. He likes to set up with a tripod.

(01:08:13):
His deal is this, likes to look through a tripod
on a mountain hunt, backpack hunt. He doesn't want to
carry too loves doing. He spends most of his time
tripod knocking. So yeah, if he's walking up the trail
and something catches his eye, short quick clip, he'll have
a short quick look. I ran the same pros and cons,

(01:08:37):
and I'm like, I value that. What is that quick look?
To the point where I'm I'm willing to suffer behind
the tripod in order to have like a more stable
quick look. Yeah you're well, you're you know, you're definitely
gonna get more detailed doing that. Absolutely, you know, he
he may be able to quickly ide an animal, but yeah,

(01:08:58):
you know it's he's not going to see the level
of detail that he will do. He's like, he's like
that bears eight and a half, not eight. Before I
started really picking apart the hillside cous deer hunting and
elk hunting in Arizona, I learned these binoculars in Colorado
from the my the senior guys that I worked with,
and their whole thing was, as we're still hunting through

(01:09:20):
quaky patches or the edge of quakies and timber looking
for elk they were coming out to feed, They're just like,
always just bring up your binoculars. Being up your binoculars,
you can only see eight yards with your eyes, a
hundred yards of your eyes. As soon as you bring
up those binoculars, you just X rayed another thirty yards.
And that's where those eight intense. I feel like, just
really that's what we hadn't gotten. You could be still

(01:09:42):
hunting for snowshoe hairs. I feel do even like that's
a whole It's great you bring it up because that's
like a who older kind of but not like all
this tripod talk and all that, not being like, oh,
can I extend my vision? It'd be like, what's fifty
yards away? Binoculars have great Like you ask any burder

(01:10:02):
people who will look at birds, They're like, they're like, no,
I'm talking about what's I'm looking at a bird ten
yards away? Man, But I want to know is it
you know, does you have like a slight yellow crown?
You know, So that's the whole other aspect of of
using binoculars is like finding deer in the brush, right
that they're laying right in hiding in plain slight right. Yeah,

(01:10:23):
And that's you know, that's the reason that you know,
people will end up with different sizes of binos. And
you know, going back to the rifle scopes, you know
that we sell guys four or five six different rifle
scopes because at the point that you can afford to
do that kind of thing, of course, you can, you know,
you can key on specialties doing it. So when a
guy's saying like when a guy's kicking around, he's like,
I'm gonna buy eight. So let's say eight by thirty two.

(01:10:47):
How does it usually go like? There's usually like a
round thirty, some variability around forty around fifty objective lens. Yeah,
that's pretty common. And when you hear when someone says
eight by forty eight by are, what they're talking about
is eight power fifty millimeter objective lens, right, just the
same way the rifle scopes were on that. If you're

(01:11:08):
weighing between forty and fifty objective lens, is it fair
to say you're just asking yourself a weight, a weight
and clunkiness versus image quality or is it more complicated
than that. It's maybe a little more complicated than that.
You know you can you can use those same exit

(01:11:28):
pupil numbers we talked about earlier, dividing magnification into objective
lens size to get kind of a crude way of
estimating brightness. And typically the binos are all they're not
going to go much beyond that that's seven millimeter range,
so they're typically they're all going to give you a
workable range where there's concrete benefit from going from that

(01:11:48):
thirty two to the forty, to the forty two to
the fifty. But for each user you have to you know,
you have to decide on that because as that lens
goes from thirty to forty to fifty, you can envision
that the size and the weight of that binocular go
up correspondingly. So while you do, you know, you do
increase the low light performance by doing that, you you know,

(01:12:12):
you're carrying packing around a larger, heavier binocular, typically a
longer binocular when you go to those bigger objective lenses.
So there's always a there's a there's just a trade
off in there, and and everybody comes in at a
different spot. Someone who would buy a you know, a
lower power binocular with a big objective lens, obviously you're
buying something there that's made to really be focused on

(01:12:33):
low light performance, and the tradeoff is it's probably going
to be a bigger, heavier binocular. You know, that's not
all that practical during daytime use. So it's you know,
it's a matter of picking what matches what you're doing,
you know, what what activity are you doing. I found
that through the years, as I've gotten more interested in

(01:12:55):
glass and more interested in glassing and optics. I found
that I've gone. I've tended to go in binoculars higher
magnificate from eight to tens than bigger objected lens. Yeah,
part of it was switching to a binol carrier. Makes
a binal carrier like just around your neck. You feel
those ounces in a binyl Carrier's kind of like Honestly,

(01:13:17):
if I'm walking around my bino carry on and you
and you, I couldn't tell you if you like secretly
switched mind to a fifty, I wouldn't know. Nfi I
pulled him out. It's just it's just like it's just
not there. It's like the weights distributed when you're crawling.
They're not like banging you in the nose, and very
valuable piece of gear. You wind up getting a good

(01:13:38):
carrier and you can carry a hell of a lot
more binocular It just doesn't bother you. That's one other
thing we should hit on really quickly, Steve, because as
we've chatted through this, I keep meaning to say that.
And one of the things you know, for example, in
our lines of binoculars, we have four or five different
tiers and you see the same size, say that ten
by forty two, repeated in one series and the next,

(01:14:00):
next to the next, and the next, and we get
that question a lot about why is that what different
ten forty two's And what's really important for people understand
when we talk about brightness and exit pupils and these
quick ways of calculating that the one thing that they
can't take in effect or take into consideration is the

(01:14:20):
quality of the piece and the user or the fellow
applying those mathematical formulas. So you could you could take
let's say, let's say it at tend by fifty binocular
fairly common size. You do the math, you have that
five millimeter exit pupil. You let's say you you took
a binocular that may be retailed for a hundred dollars

(01:14:40):
and contrasted that with a high end binocular to say,
retailed for two thousand dollars, same exit people exactly between
the two of those that five millimeter exit pupil. And
so someone might say, well, that's the same number. These
should be equally bright binoculars, right they you know, they
both come out ahead in the same formula. But the
thing about optics is the quality of glass it's used

(01:15:03):
in the quality of the coatings that are applied to
that glass, and how many of those codings are applied,
and the the you know, the design of the optic,
the layout of the lenses, how many lenses are used
in there. Those are all at least as important as
those simplistic numbers of calculating exit people. And that there's
no way you can't you can't build that into that formula,

(01:15:27):
and so that expensive to him by fifty very typically
is going to drastically outperform that, you know, that less
expensive model. Is it easier for you guys to answer
the question what makes shitty optics shitty or what makes
good optics good? I think it's easier to concentrate on

(01:15:48):
the on the goods. Well get all the time, like
why the hell would I spend because they look better? Yeah,
it's you know, if you can what it is, Yeah,
you know, building the things. If you can build something
tighter and the mechanical tolerances are tighter and those lenses
are more precisely held in a line, it's gonna increase

(01:16:11):
optical performance. It's gonna make the piece more expensive to build.
Whether it's a bocular, it could, ye, sure it could. Yeah,
the quality of the glass it's used. You know, there's
glasses is a simple commodity. It can it can be
had in very low end for formulations that are full
of chromatic aberration and distortion. It varies widely. Coatings that

(01:16:35):
are applied to the glass have a huge effect and
that and what codings do is they they reduce light
loss to reflection. So it's light hits a lens, a
certain amount of it is reflected back off that lens
rather than going through it into your eye. And so
any reflective coatings reduce that and they allow more the
light to come through. And so the higher the quality

(01:16:56):
of that coding, and by increasing the number of layers
of that that are applied, you keep bumping up that
that light transmission number. That's where you get that term,
you know, fully multi coded opting. You see that catalogs
all the time, and I feel like that's one of
the things that just way over people's heads, idiots, you
know what kind of you see it so often used
that it just kind of blurs into the background. That's

(01:17:18):
what it means. That's what it means. Loss is the idea. Yeah, um,
how long we've been talking to Okay, Doug concluding thoughts questions,
doing it off quiet? Well, if you just said, they're
replaying that awesome turkey out this morning, it was how

(01:17:42):
can that Steve Gut just talk to those turkeys? Well,
it was, it was, It was incredible. But U and
I certainly have a new appreciation for you, or enhanced
the wider appreciation. I learned a lot about optics today.
Before this discussion, I was thinking about this Charlie Brown

(01:18:05):
cartoon about are you near sighted or far sighted? One
of the like Lionus has classes on him and he said, well,
I don't know what does that mean. And they said, well,
nearsighted means that you see things close. And they're kind
of explaining to him, and uh, he says, glasses make
me see better. So all of this I was learning

(01:18:30):
what I know about. Boil it down, that's good optics
make me see better. Bam. Yeah, you're it's a leap
of faith, like you're sort of know it's not a
leap of faith because I had this like I had
this moment in my life that I always thought about
where I never had good knocultors. Okay, I've never had
It's that what I say him it's not what I

(01:18:52):
had tons of money laying around. I just didn't have
money therefore didn't have good bnocutors. I was hunting caribou
this guy, and he had it's got done guiding on
the Alaska Peninsula for a year and some At the
end of the guiding season, he came into a pair
of good bnoctors were sitting in our caribou camp. A
grizzly bears walking up the bank on the opposite of
the river. I'm looking at it's like a brown blob.

(01:19:13):
I throw up chuck knockers and I looked through it
and I can see cow licks moving across the bear
from the wind. Yeah, and I'm like, let me see
that again. I had an epiphany like that too. I
you know, my background is guiding. I guided for many
many years in the state Idoa before doing this, and
I followed the same course. I went from incrementally increasing

(01:19:35):
the quality of my optics every year. And I had
an epiphany. One year I was hunting with a couple
of great, big, overweight to Hawaiian guys that showed up
with piles of brand new gear in boxes and we
sat out the evening. We came into camp. It was
an elkhant climbed up on a ridge just that night
to climb out and look. And I had a mid
priced pair of I think it was Pentacs binoculars at time, decent,

(01:19:57):
decent optics. And this guy pulls out out of his case,
this this big boxy hard case, and he flips it open,
and he's got a brand new pair of like As,
which is very nice, high end brand of optics, and
he pulls them out and we're at that point, we're
looking into kind of a low setting sound, tough, tough glassing,
and I'm sort of struggling to see much because I'm
getting all kinds of reflections coming into my binoculars. And this,

(01:20:19):
this great, big guy with zero Western hunting experience whatsoever,
picks this pair of binoculars out of this box. Minutes
he's picking out elk coming out of the trees, and
I just I couldn't believe it. I thought he was
seeing things. It just could not believe. And I had
finally had to reach over and look through his binoculars
and and it just it was stunning, you know, low
and behold, I mean elk here and out there and

(01:20:41):
out there, and that at that. I mean, I still
remember that to this day. It was it really it
was like me. I came out of there being like
I don't care what, I don't care if I got
to move into a new apartment. I'm from that point on,
I saved every tip I had for two years, and
I bought a pair of the exact same. Like my

(01:21:04):
takeaway and I can take it from what you guys
both just said. It will be my closing statement will
be that to really see that both of you guys
describe experiences that happened in the field in certain situations,
certain light. A lot of these. A lot of people
go to Dicks or the Big five and or Sportsman's
and compare binoculars inside underfluorescent lights at you know, max

(01:21:26):
range of whatever that is maybe sorry trying to read
the end caps and they all look great, and they
do not look great when you're looking into that setting sun.
It makes a huge, huge difference. So yeah, well you
just buy a bunch of stuff in vortex. No one,
you're gonna return it all like I want one everything.

(01:21:50):
A couple of days later, this massive it's except editors
marked that that's at one. Go to your sporting store
and be nice, seem reasonable, offer to leave your driver's
license and and see if you can go out in
the park and not have a look and try to
do it, you know, late in today, early in the morning,

(01:22:10):
Like you know, don't just look at the end cap
down the road, down the but go out. See you
go outside, look at it. Try to go look at
a bird. Do his feathers look sharp, to the point
of his beak look clear? I'll say this, and Mark
Boran concluding this, Well, this is just my one concluding
thought is that whether I work for an optics company

(01:22:31):
or not or whatever, I what I work for Vortex.
Good quality optics are unequivocally one of the most important
pieces of gear. And you're hunting arsenal, dude, I I
know I've had like three concluding thoughts. I absolutely agree.
I absolutely I would rather if you told me you
can hunt with boots and no binoculars or barefoot with binoculars,

(01:22:56):
I would have a very difficult patch. I'd be like,
how about I get socks, Paul, including thoughts. No, I mean,
I think we've touched on a lot of great things here.
I mean it's hopefully it's been abuse to some of
your listeners out there, and um, oh yeah, I want
to say thank you for just unbelievable job explaining some

(01:23:17):
of those like millimeter bell thing. I mean, that was
awesome and I enjoyed chanting about you know, we I
just talked about that, that experience I had in the field,
and really at that point it to me that sort
of set a real interest in optics from that point
out use him and I percussed in a hunting for
big horn cheap, which is extremely optics intensive. You know,
I've had that interest in love and that ever since.

(01:23:39):
So it's I enjoyed talking about it. It's been a
lot of fun. Not now I have something concrete to
refer when people ask these questions, will just be like,
if you have an hour and thirty minutes the internet connection,
I'll be happy to answer that question for you. All right,
Um yeah, go to go to hunt dot com by

(01:23:59):
the teach shirts so you look cool. Um, Doug, if
you land you want to manage low and Oak Interests?
Is that is your company named after that oak over there?
Yes it is. I'm looking at the damn oak right now.
I think, yeah, lowing out, Uh, call for if you

(01:24:21):
could have a guy. I want one last thing I
want to touch on. If a guy has a question,
he calls Vortex, someone answers the phone. This this is
gonna sound awful, but someone who's like fluent in English
answers the phone absolutely, and they're welcome to the same
questions we've been talking about here. Anyone can call in
and ask any of those questions or you know, any

(01:24:43):
number of us there that are happy to help out.
And if the warranty you have it's good for any
optics in your line or not. Yes, absolutely, like you
buy it's just something not right, it's the warranty is cool,
it's it's it's yeah. It covers the original buyer and

(01:25:04):
anyone else down the road that buys it. It covers
anything really outside of losing it. What we're having we've
seen come in with bullet hole, so we've already seen it.
That's that's a true story. So but any like like
I like that, like the razor stuff is great. By'm saying,
if someone just can't pull that off financially, he gets

(01:25:25):
a same warranty. Absolutely absolutely doesn't that that has nothing
to do with it. So what's you know, so sort
of losing them once you buy them. You're cool, You're covered.
You are covered all right, um okay good. Thanks for
joining us to take care

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Steven Rinella

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 009