Thermal Optics with Sawyer from XVision

This week the guys give ya a quick recap of Paul’s southern turkey adventures and Andrew’s preparation for a southern trip for hunting hogs. Paul got to spend a few days down in Florida chasing Osceolas.  Andrew’s heding to Oklahoma to learn from the Oklahoma Outdoorsman, John Hudspeth, about how to take down hogs. More to come on that trip.

This week’s talk is with Sawyer from Xvision Optics.  Xvision optics is the newest partner to the O2 Family, and they specialize in thermal optics.  If you’re not familiar with thermals, Sawyer does a great job of explaining the science behind the devices.  Consider it thermals 101 if you will. This is a fun talk, and a good educational experience in the latest technology.

Have a great week and enjoy the O2 if you get out into Ohio’s great Outdoors!

Andrew Muntz: What's up everybody? Welcome back to the oh two podcast. Andrew and Paul are here tonight. Get you a quick little intro rundown for this week's episode. Paul, how are you doing, man?

Paul Campbell: I'm doing all right, man. I'm back in Ohio. It's been, it's a long, dang man, almost two full weeks. Florida, my voice is still a little scratchy.

I don't know [00:01:00] what, I picked up something down there, so getting better. But no, man, I saw four Osceolas hit the dirt last week, last couple days, so that's good. Good week. Good way to start the Turkey

Andrew Muntz: season. Yeah, man, you guys are on it. You got yours. We, I think we talked about that, but the yeah.

Man, you just, you're out there with other people from down there and around the country, right?

Paul Campbell: Or, yeah. So I, the first day of, and I'm using this term very loosely guiding I was with Mike Pentecost from Woodhaven his son Isaac Mike's friend Phillip and and Dylan who did, Phillip and Dylan did some video work.

Dylan got to shoot a Turkey. Isaac got a shoot to shoot a Turkey. Mike and I we talked quite a bit and he's just man, that guys killed a ton of turkeys. He wants to get his son, and get him a to, a nice royal slam this year. It was cool, man. It was really neat to see them.

What I,

Andrew Muntz: what is a Royal Slam? So

Paul Campbell: Royal Slam is say the four main [00:02:00] subspecies, so the Osceola of the Eastern, the Miriams, the Rio Grande, and then the fifth subspecies that we have in the us just in small spots, but mostly in Mexico is the Gould Turkey. So that's a royal slam. What's a

Andrew Muntz: grand slam?

Like a, or the is there Grand Slam is just

Paul Campbell: the first force first. Osceola, Easterns, Rios and Mars. Okay. And then you add the Goulds and that gets you your royal slam. That's what that's considered. So Isaac's chasing that this year, and it was really neat. I helped I was. The facilitator, for the Osceola portion of that.

So it's actually a double royal slam. So he is gonna tilt, kill two of all of those turkeys. That's his plan. But it was really neat man being in the woods with those guys and being around like a guy like Mike Pentecost, who was a world champion caller. He's one of the best in the entire country at bricks and calling, which is what I do most of the time.

It was amazing. It was absolutely, I learned. I learned more in five hours with Mike Pentecost than I have him 15 years in Turkey Woods.

Andrew Muntz: Did you master that diaphragm call yet? No. He

Paul Campbell: doesn't even mess with those things, so I like, and I have no interest [00:03:00] in putting, using your mouth call . Yeah, it was really cool and disappointed.

And then my friend Duke came down from New York and we were and I, it was just Duke and I on that hunt and that was a really neat hunt. Same farm in Florida. We had scouted a couple days before, found some turkeys in the area. And we had two, two Toms gobbling hard and limb hit the ground.

They had three hens with them, which is normally that's really hard to combat. And they kept working across this field like just walking through. And the day before with Mike, he had, we'd had some head pressure. And the way that he called on this little cluck and per pot that Woodhaven makes.

And just the way that he called and how he called and how often, how aggressive. I latched onto that. I'm like, that's amazing. And I just replicated that and do those turkeys. It took about 20 minutes to pull off those hints, but they were just like, wow, we can't do it. We can't when we have to go see what's [00:04:00] going on over here.

And so these two big old times, I posted some videos to TikTok and Instagram and go album. of this Turkey gobbling after we had shot his friend. And it's 65 degrees, but it was the dew point was crazy. The fog was intense and this Turkey gobbles, and you can see. The breath coming.

It looks like a fire breathing dragon. It was really neat. Yeah, got that done for Duke. That was really cool, man. What

Andrew Muntz: a week. That was neat. I saw that video pop up. That was pretty sweet.

Paul Campbell: So Yeah, it was wild. It was good, man. Yeah.

Andrew Muntz: Check that out. Congrats on a successful trip and thank you man.

Yeah, I'm proud. Proud of you, Paul. Proud of you.

Paul Campbell: What away? Kick up the season the right way, as I

Andrew Muntz: say. Yeah. I don't have a whole lot to report from the great of outdoors. I'm trying to think. I probably did something. I'm still getting ready for this trip, which. We'll get into that in a second, but let's go through real quick and thank you to our partners.

Half rack, half-rack.com. Paul, we just got our hands on some hunter hangers. So these are the, [00:05:00] one of the new products they launched. Cool. You just screwed it into the wall and it can hang all kinds of stuff. So up to 50 pounds,

Paul Campbell: gear, bows, bags, all sorts of stuff. It's pretty

Andrew Muntz: neat. Yeah, not super we were discussing a little bit ago. There's a lot of things out there. You can hang stuff from hooks and different things, but they're not tacky looking. It's not a nail like it actually looks No, it's well done. They sell. It is, yeah. I like it. Pack a two or pack a 10 bunch of different colors.

Check out those guys. We have a code for them. Paul. Oh. I should have had that ready. If you go on their site and buy from them, our code is Ohio Outdoors 15. So let's get you 15. 15% off. Not a bad deal. That's a pretty good

Paul Campbell: deal, man. 15% off. There you go. Hunter hanger. They got the meat lug coming out here in a few weeks.

What? Mid-June? Something like that. I that super stoked. Yeah.

Andrew Muntz: What's that? Super stoked

Paul Campbell: for. Yeah. Pretty cool. Boon sling. That's my favorite thing that they sell that, that gun sling is pretty neat. So thanks to go guys. [00:06:00] half-rack.com. Find 'em on. Go wild. Find 'em on Instagram. Thanks to our brands at Gow Wild.

First talk about it. They got a ton of stuff for Turkey season. Check them out. Time to go wild.com. Download go wild.com. You can find the app on the Apple or Android. Find us on there. Oh two podcast, Paul Campbell. Man, they got some really neat stuff for the Turkey hunter this spring. Some really cool articles too.

Howtos gear setups. Really good information. You got the really cool community. You sign up, you get $10 off your first

Andrew Muntz: order. There still is time, I believe to enter. If you join, go Wild. You entered into the UTV giveaway, which is a sick, like $40,000. Get up. If you're, if you can send your code to people or your link to people, and I think that also enters you if they join.

Whatever. Totally worth the sign down there. Let's see. We've got Midwest Gun Works. So thanks to Cameron and the folks out there for being a supporter of [00:07:00] our show. They are your one stop shop there for all kinds of gun stuff, ammo, parts, pieces accessories, guns, and they, the customer service outstanding suite operation out there, they got it going on.

They've been selling stuff online since before. That was cool. And they got a really nice website to Get you headed down the right way. So check them out, Ohio

Paul Campbell: Outdoors. Five, save yourself 5% on your

Andrew Muntz: purchase. Yep. What else? We got first light. We saw your first light gear when you were out there killing those turkeys.

So

Paul Campbell: yeah, I'll tell you what that man I said last week that WIC. Short sleeved wick hoodie with the leafy phantom suit in that hot weather during Turkey season. Man, that is a life saver. It real, it really is. Yeah. And early tear season. There were days, dude, it was 90 degrees when I was hunting.

Yep. Hot, muggy, floored weather, man, that thing really did save the day. Hot.

Andrew Muntz: It's, what was that? I don't know. It was in Celebrity Jeopardy. [00:08:00] I think. If it's not cold, it's, I don't know. And you remember that Skid on Saturday Live?

Paul Campbell: I do not. No. I'll the, I'll do YouTube

Andrew Muntz: it. Next road trip buddy.

Next road trip. We come see Glen. We go see Glen. We're gonna watch it on the way up there. Yeah. All right. Fi, so last partner that we got here is Ex vision, right? And so this is what our talk, today's gonna be about. And I'm trying to put this in a nutshell cause I do recap some of it during the show.

It was me and Paul was out slaying turkeys. So I was the interviewer. And we talked to, I got you guys when I read your last, the last name. It's gonna be like, you see why it's taken me a second to find this? I wanna try to Sawyer,

Paul Campbell: that's his first name. We'll get that outta the way.

Andrew Muntz: Sawyer from Ex Visions Sawyer from Ex Exhibition last.

Follow.

Paul Campbell: We'll let him pronounce it. Don't

Andrew Muntz: even try to try to do it. I, that's how we started the show, so I should've just let that go. Yeah, there you go. Sawyer from X Vision. Great guy. But here's the deal. So X Vision is in the thermal optics business. They also do some night vision stuff, [00:09:00] but as he'll talk that night vision kind of world, I think it's, IR is considered the same thing as night vision that's tapped out, right?

So the future is in the thermals. It's picking up heat it and being able to. Things in the dark, that kind of stuff. He gives you all the specs. He goes through the visible spectrum and all that kind of stuff. So if you're really ready to geek out on that, here you go. For my pea brain, this is a new piece of equipment on top of a gun that trying to get it cited in and mess with the technology in there.

They've got a pretty simple platform. Like it's not hard to figure out. The product is very user friendly. I posted my one shot with at the groundhog. That was awesome. And get you, you can record it to your phone, all this kinda stuff. It's just, it's not, it's standard optic, it's not a piece of glass.

It is literally a computer screen that is doing all this and it's It's

Paul Campbell: sweet man, . It's really, it is sweet. It looks

Andrew Muntz: real wild and the technology of thermals like he'll talk about it, but [00:10:00] the potential there, it's going to continue to grow. When we were messing around with it up there in Michigan, Paul, it was like walk across the hardwood floor and you could see the prints of your feet, like the heat just still left on the ground.

It's just insane. It's insane. So it's very cool. Let me get, let's get the website pulled up here. Ex vision optics dot, so if you're hunting

Paul Campbell: coyotes or pigs, groundhogs, coon, something. I mean that, that thing's gonna be a really good addition

Andrew Muntz: to your rifle set up.

Yeah, absolutely. And they've got other things, just sites, binoculars, that kind of stuff. We didn't, I don't think we really covered it. I want to get the guy on someday, but the drone deer guy recovery, who's out of Ohio he uses the thermal on his drone to find the heat from the deer.

It's just really cool technology. It's that next greatest thing that we. We've been introduced to, so if this isn't your thing as far as night, honey and coyotes, hogs, any of that kinda stuff, I'd still sell you to give it a listen because [00:11:00] it's an interesting science and I have no idea where it'll go down the road.

But definitely something that's very, Interesting. And to

Paul Campbell: your point, they do they, the ex vision, they do, they have a bunch of range finding binoculars and rangefinders and regular binocular. They got quite a selection of products.

Andrew Muntz: So they got some cool stuff. Very cool. So check 'em out, ex visions optics.com.

Like I said, we got the show here with Sawyer. This is part of, a, part of this show is we'll, I'll hopefully be able to report back to you next week. I'm gonna take a little trip down south to visit our friend John HUD Smith from the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast. Nick, I think Nick Otto's coming down the hunt of war.

So we're gonna do some hog hunting. Down there. I think I might swing by in, in Missouri. No, I know I'm swinging by in Missouri to hang out with Andy and Micah and go see if we can round up some coyotes out there and so hopefully, fingers crossed we can come back with some good stories and hopefully some good videos to show of what these optics actually can do.

Paul Campbell: Pretty excited. Yeah man. Good luck with that. That's gonna be a ton of fun. I wish I was [00:12:00] going.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah, it's I'm excited. We'll put it that way. So I got a lot to do before I go. such as life, right? So anyhow, yes it is. Oh. Do we get, we got news around the state. Look at me, I'm just

Paul Campbell: all, nah, there was a couple things that we had talked about, but I don't think there's anything.

Andrew Muntz: Okay. We'll go real quick. Read your rule book, right? Oh buddy. Future Foresters Camp Canopy. Registration is open, so OD N R. Division of Forestry is looking for new future foresters, biologists, and conservation leaders for tomorrow. So if you've completed the eighth grade, you're eligible for this.

This is kids students getting into any of those type of, i, career paths. And they want to take some time. It'll be June 11th to 16th. It is at ffa, camp Muskingham on Leesville Lake in Carroll. That's a pretty country out there, man. Oh yeah. So it sounds like it, it'd be a good, i, a good place to, if you're interested in that, you got kids interested in that, get 'em down there, see what they can get [00:13:00] into and build that desire to enter, the outdoors careers.

So the other thing I had Paul volunteers needed for the Ohio Sandhill Crane Survey. So a volunteer driven Sandhill crane survey to locate breeding birds in Ohio will be Saturday, April 15th. If you go to Odn R'S website, you can find more about this. They're coordinate coordinating this project as part of the Midwest crane count with the International Crane Foundation and the Ohio Bird Conservation Initiative.

So the, this year the councils will occur in these counties. I'm gonna read 'em off. There's a lot You probably aren't too far away from any given one, but Ashland, Columbiana, Delaware, Erie, Franklin, Fulton Gaga, harden Homes, Knox Lake Licking, Logan, Lorraine Lucas Mahoney, ma Morrow, Ottawa. Pick away.

Portage Richland, Sandusky Stark Summit Trumble, Wayne Williams and Wyandot. If you would like to go out and count Sandhill cranes, you can do that [00:14:00] in one of those counties. So go to check out odn r's website Ohio dnr.gov. And there is more information there, counting

the

Paul Campbell: birds. Paul, I saw a bunch of cranes down in Florida.

Yeah. Breeding. I saw little baby cranes running around. It's cool. The other thing that, that was really weird and we're gonna get off track here just a little bit. When I was down there, I saw a faw with spots in Florida. Brand new baby deer just hanging out in the second week of March.

Like, how crazy is that? I guess that's just their time to, to breathe down there. I'm trying to think. I don't know. I feel like this, I'm gonna send you, I'm gonna send you a picture right now. We're making great radio here, but ,

Andrew Muntz: I feel I feel like I've heard this, but they are, season is open like nine months of the year.

10 months. Their fall

Paul Campbell: Turkey season starts the last like July 28th. Isn't that crazy? Yeah.

Andrew Muntz: They got [00:15:00] different, it's just different I guess everything. So

Paul Campbell: yeah, we I saw bucks in velvet down there. It sure

Andrew Muntz: is a dough with spots. It's a fun, was fun spot. Yeah. How crazy as that.

Paul Campbell: Who knew? And I'm sure the guys down in Florida are just like, yeah.

So what about it? Gator bait? Innovate's all a bunch of those suckers.

Andrew Muntz: Ugh. Yeah, you can keep that. Anyhow, we will get to our show here with Sawyer from Ex. Ladies and gentlemen, we appreciate you, we appreciate everything. Reviews comments, interactions with us. Keep it up. Oh yeah.

Paul Campbell: Keep it

Andrew Muntz: up.

We're yeah, we appreciate you guys, especially as we get into Turkey and the walleye start running and different things. Share pictures with us and we will we'll pump 'em out there, so we appreciate you. Yeah, good stuff. Have a great week, everybody.[00:16:00]

All right, so today on the line. I've got Sawyer and Sawyer from Ex Vision Sawyer. I am not going to try to butcher your last name. Do you want to give that to everybody? And tell us about yourself.

Sawyer: Bains be DeLong

Andrew Muntz: ba what is the background of that last name? Where's it come

Sawyer: from? I. We've been in America a long time and I don't think you get 16 letters in your last name unless you're some kind of mutt.

, I would assume it is a combination of a lot of different heritages and a lot of people just putting letters together at some point and creating. What is my last name now? .

Andrew Muntz: That's great. No, I was talking to, with Glen and I was like, all right, I have no idea. And he rattled it off, and I'm just like yep.

Sawyer: Okay. We'll say that. It's fairly phonetic. It just, again, you look at it, it's fairly intimidating, so I get it. And I've heard it [00:17:00] pronounced a thousand different ways, so I wouldn't feel bad about it.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah. Soyer, what's your position over at X. .

Sawyer: So I am the National sales Manager, so dealing primarily with the reps, the big box accounts and then buy groups and all the dealers and stuff like that as well.

But obviously here I am on a marketing side of it, so we are fairly flexible here at Ex Visions Optics. There

Andrew Muntz: you go. And ex you guys been around for a while or is this new you new to the game, or how's, tell me about the.

Sawyer: Yep. So we're a little over eight years old in total. I've been with the company going on close to five years now.

So we had a, we had an ownership change just shy of three years ago. So I was working with a couple other lines at the time as the national sales manager there and then Chris and Rich our owners now bought out the remaining percentage of the company back in 20 ah, End of 2019, they bought the first [00:18:00] chunk and then the end of 2020 they bought the second chunk.

And then I came with it. But yeah, I did that answer your question?

Andrew Muntz: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So did you guys start in the thermal world or

Sawyer: No. So digital IR was pretty much our bread and butter for the first handful of years. Infrared binoculars, stuff like that. The digital side makes it a lot more cost effective, A little more clear and some more options in terms of picture record and stuff like that.

That, that did very well with us. As we grew with that, we added some more traditional optics to our lineup within, for a couple years with Rangefinders red dots stuff like that. And we started getting into the thermals. So 20 at the end of 2021 was our. . Yeah, it was our launch into thermals and we launched with a thermal reflex, a thermal scope, and a thermal monocular.

And then have, yeah, just grown and added [00:19:00] from there. But yeah, thermal and infrared technology is where we'll stay in definitely our bread and butter.

Andrew Muntz: And so this for me and Paul's not able to join us today. He's still off in his Turkey rendezvous. We were introduced to this last year up at Deer Camp and I, I guess I've heard the idea.

Never really thought much about it, considered it, anything like that. I've listened and talked to the guys out at the Missouri Woods and Water Podcasts. They do a lot of coyote hunting. They're big on the thermal stuff. , but it's after having time to play around with the scope and whatnot.

It's very different. And it's not your standard optic. It's not like anything I've ever really used before, it's almost like a video game. And I jokingly have told people, it's like that stepbrothers line in the movie where they're like, what'd be better if you had this when you were 16?

It's better when you have it when you're 40, but it's like night vision. And when we were up in Michigan, we had that bear that just kept circling the cabin. It was like we could see him. [00:20:00] There's Terry who's walking back and forth and it's all this stuff that, it's a video game like almost.

And it's just not that, I ever thought I would have the ability to utilize. So I don't know, man. It's we're gonna talk about this scope that we're gonna take down to hunt hogs here in a week or so, oh, less than a week, eh, less than a week. So I don't know what's the science behind this, because it isn't your traditional optic, it's not a piece of glass with, a couple dials go up and down left and right, and all that kind of,

Sawyer: Yeah. And there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of moving parts there, right? Just to touch base on your first notes with feeling like a kid again it is, you, unless you've played with thermals before, right? You look at the price tags and you go, this is crazy. Doesn't make any sense.

The second you start using one or try one out, it is a mind blowing, I did not think this was possible, or, yeah, you're back in. Predator versus alien movies and stuff like that, except you can actually kill pigs, coyotes, and whatnot with it. And there's [00:21:00] a lot more applications too with tracking, scouting, scanning.

Even we have a lot of, farm and home guys for cattle, livestock electric fences, checking fence lines and stuff like that. You can see. Studs and exterior walls. For the first, like when we got our first prototypes in, I just watched my dogs run around the carpet in my house, and you can see those details in their paw pad.

The prints that they leave behind for minutes and minutes. It's, it is pretty cool. But the science behind it, I guess the best, and I don't wanna say the easiest way to understand where it's at, is, if you take our light spectrum, and I'll touch base on the IR side and don't quote me on these exact numbers cuz I'm a sales guy.

But like our visual light spectrum, and it's gonna be measured in nanometers which is just your wavelengths. But our visual light spectrum's gonna happen, somewhere between a hundred nanometers and say 250 nanometers. And that's where we'll have the different colors come into play.

And then pretty much at 250 nanometers. [00:22:00] Is where that red is taking over. So like some of our thermal products have, quick target acquisition lasers or lasers built in as an actual laser pointer. , but those are gonna be running like 650 nanometers, right? So you're taking over in that light side of the spectrum and you're getting farther down that spectrum.

And then ir, so a lot of like our competitors ir on the digital side. So you're outputting a, an IR light, you're outputting a light. It's on that light spectrum. It's just past our visual. mammals cannot pick it up and it does nothing for us, essentially. So as we get farther away from our visual light spectrum of that a hundred to two 50, you have, actual lasers around 600, give or take, right?

And then ir, most people run like 850 nanometer lights on 'em, and that's, you can see a small red hue coming out cuz that 900 nanometers is. We can't see anything. No red no, nothing, no light, whatever. And that's pretty, pretty consistent for mammals across the board.[00:23:00] Like our scope, our i, our scope will run 940 nanometers.

So you get a little bit clear of an image, I should say, a lot clearer of an image, but also it's completely invisible. And that's like you take, even, you took like a digital ir binocular took a strong ir. And, scanned it across a field in Pitch Black. It's gonna look just like a big mag light scanning across the field.

It's just, it's invisible, right? So there's, your IR cutter, your screens, your noise reduction filters, stuff like that on the digital or the technology side, that helps pretty much take the illuminated image that we can't see because it's past our visual light spectrum and spit it onto a TV screen so we can see it.

And that's in the digital IR side. And. as you grow, right? You're going through different wavelengths. But the next one, like thermal, and again, don't quote me on these numbers, but you're gonna live at 18,000, 20,000 nanometers, right? So you're, visual light, very small window for us to be able to see red, green, blue, yellow, [00:24:00] right?

All those fun things. Actual red laser pointers, 600 ir, 900 infrared. And then thermals, you. 15 plus thousand out, right? So it, it doesn't make sense necessarily connecting at all on one LA wavelength, but it's there. But thermal is gonna be more of an image sensing, right? And you can get into the weeds with cooled cores.

The biggest things in my mind that. Help you get a lot of clarity, help you utilize your thermal products that we make sure we put in there, right? Like your pixel size is gonna give you more clarity. So like 12 micron pixel sizes or micrometer pixel sizes, smaller pixels, better detail on that TV screen, essentially.

There is some, cost savings where we can hit better price points by marrying. and you gotta just slow me down when you need to slow me down or skip to the next subject cuz I could talk about this for the next five hours of our lives. But[00:25:00] but that, what we focus on are those kind of smaller, detailed specs.

The N A T D spec, which is for English is just your temperature, variation, detection range, or abilities. So like our thermals, that ts 200 in your hands. that's gonna be able to see like less than or equal to, I think it's 30 N E T D, which translates to 0.05. Degrees Fahrenheit. So one 20th of one degree Fahrenheit is the temperature variation it can detect.

So that's where you can go outside and you can look at a tree and you can see the branches. You can see the leaves, you can see the veins and the leaves. You can see, you put your hand against the wall, you can see your. your veins and your hand and stuff like that in the print. So it gives you a lot better clarity.

But it gives you more time in those situations. Tracking, scanning, stuff like that. It's gonna be a lot more sensitive. But again, it's, you're thinking of like a black and white type where it needs to be really sensitive to give you that good [00:26:00] clarity wherein, normal non-digital real.

we get that clarity because in, in a weird way, our eyes have really small pixel sizes we can pick up, right? But we have the color, we have the contrast, we have the shadings. So you have to work a little harder on the thermal side or IR side to get that better clarity. Which comes into play with the pixel size specs.

Your any TD spec or your temperature variation detection spec. and then you got herz, right? Your frame rates, right? So on digital you gotta worry about, if you're looking at a traditional IR or something like that where it's amplifying surrounding light, not outputting light and putting it on a TV screen, right?

So having a higher herz or refresh rate, right? You're eliminating all that leg that you would get from, a digital product, so to say. And it's gotten a lot better over the years. It's just those. Those are those things that we can hone in on with our products, make 'em more cost effective for the consumers [00:27:00] but still deliver a very good, clear quality product.

Andrew Muntz: Very good. , I think I got all that. I just, for if you never used one and realistically, we'd screwed around with the, I guess that was just the. reflex site.

Sawyer: Yep. That little

Andrew Muntz: compact one. Yeah, that's what we had up there in Michigan. But when I started screwing around with this one, this thing is so much smarter than I am.

It's incredible. That doesn't say a lot, but it's you're literally looking through this scope. I'm gonna turn mine on here real quick, but there's like a computer screen, a little TV screen on the inside. So if you've never used one, , this little screen pops up and then, you get your crosshairs and everything and right away it'll start picking up heat on different stuff.

And, the picture shows up and voila, you're ready to see what you're, going after. Part of this, the learning curve, I think besides the fact that it's really smart and can do a lot of things, It's not just like turn left, turn right [00:28:00] to be up and down. And you, even when I was going to shoot it for the first few times, I had to figure out a way to get a target that was hot or warm enough that I could see it. Yeah. And stand out. So I hung little hand warmers up there on my board just trying to get myself something to shoot at, which worked. It was fine. Yeah. Is and, but is there other ways when it comes to. Thermals in, cause I, I see somewhere you can buy like actual thermal site or

Sawyer: targets.

Yep. Yeah. And we'll a lot of our products will come with like little, I don't have any on my desk, but they're essentially foot warmers. But they're just a solid circle. I use foot warmers quite a bit just because they already have the sticky side. You put it on a piece of cardboard and you're good.

But I've cited these in with, you can have a nail, right? You just put a nail in the center, cardboard, take a lighter, a torch, heat it up, it's gonna show hot and your point of center for, 10, 20, 30 minutes. I've cited in our reflexes by four by just licking my thumb, putting it on the [00:29:00] center of a normal target, stepping back, taking my time and being able to do it that way.

But there are thermal targets you can buy. , they're expensive. Usually they're a one and done type of target. I, I would never, I wouldn't recommend 'em. They work great. It's just, it's a lot of money for a one and done target when a foot warmer is gonna do the same thing when a nail will do the same thing.

And like tin foil works well as, as well. So just that tiny heat differentiation with the tin foil compared to the cardboard, it's. So I've, I've used like insulation tape essentially that's tin foy, but sticky on one side and just made an x. So there are a million ways to skin that cat, but just always remembering that you need some kind of heat differentiation to be able to have as a, a point of center reference point with thermals is, is definitely critical to citing '

Andrew Muntz: em in.

And I'm gonna go through some of the questions that I've had along the way and I'm, I've been bothering you with, I can shoot this during the day, right? Yep. Assuming I have that heat source, it's not gonna [00:30:00] damage it or anything like that.

Sawyer: Yep. Before there was concern with longevity of those thermal cores and Durability of those thermal cores or thermal sensors.

And really that is the most expensive part of the, the product you got right now, right? Like any thermal, the cost driver is gonna be the quality of that thermal sensor in it. But now the thermal cores we have there is. , there is no differentiation between night and day. And a lot of that was solved by getting those smaller temperature variation detection ranges.

So the more, the bigger range I can sense on that heat differentiation, the better detail clarity I'm gonna have. Where at night, not everything was getting heated up by the sun, so to say. Where during the day everything's heated up by the sun. So years ago, you'd have some more blurriness, some more overflow of, objects running into other objects. Where now it is, it's not a concern. It's not an issue at all, which [00:31:00] is great. And in terms of thermal core longevity, these thermal sensors will outlast your, it, it will. 10 years longer than you ever wanted to because it's gonna be 20 years old and there's gonna be way cooler stuff out at that time anyways.

So it's definitely come a long way. It's still, that's the awesome part about thermal where we still have a long ways to go and it's exciting, right? Coming out with new products or reflex, is a good example. We launched that last year. To think that something that small, compact, lightweight, and versatile could have a detection range of 1500 yards.

It wasn't possible five years ago. So there are definitely some more cool, exciting stuff. And we got a couple fun things for you guys in the hopper next year. That is the cool part about thermal. Like it's still very much so growing. We're still discovering a lot of things we can do with the technology.

Where with ir we're fairly limited out right now. We'll get to see farther, [00:32:00] but. It's a different world and you can only shine a light so far. Even if it is invisible.

Andrew Muntz: Let's talk about some of the more basic functions of this, because that's where my brain is.

Yeah. . The first thing I noticed, because, I just start screwing around twisting knobs and different things, is that I've got hang on a second. , all these different color choices to choose from. Green hot pallets, white hot, is that what we're calling pallets? Blue hot. Yep. Iron adjustable red hot.

So what's the difference on those? Is that just a preference on your eye or it

Sawyer: I would say it's almost entirely a preference. You can have, like depending on your environment you're in, right? You can tailor. To a specific environment where red Hot might work better, but it also ties into your radical style and radical colors.

If I really, if I mean with my eyes and I can see colors, but some people might not be able to see red, right? Where they need to have green. Then I wouldn't use the green palette setting. And you might wanna [00:33:00] do a red hot setting where the background is red so you can clearly or better see that radical and that contrast.

Essentially the op optical image and that crosshair. So it just it helps tailor that product or the product to the customer, across the board with different eye capabilities, different preferences, stuff like that. And you can tailor it to the environment. It just the level at which these scopes can see now and the clarity that you.

The tailoring your pallet to your environment doesn't affect it very much at all anyways. So I've never, I like white hot, right? And I like a green cross hair, and it's a good contrast for me. It looks very clear. I think it is a clear. Pallet of all the pallet options, but it is just pretty much my preference at this point.

With all my thermals at home, all of our products, they are pretty much all set to white hot with a green red .

Andrew Muntz: And that's another thing we can change the [00:34:00] color of the radical, right? How many colors? Yep.

Sawyer: Eight. Six. Radical colors. Radical style. So you got 10 radical style. I wanna say this one.

I'll. What's that?

Andrew Muntz: This has 10 radical styles, I think.

Sawyer: Yep. 10 radical styles and they show six radical colors or those 10 different

Andrew Muntz: styles. Yeah. I'm trying to think. It has the ability to zoom, right? Yeah, obviously once you're focused, you got your knobs for focusing, but then you can zoom in and out and that's really easy.

And does really nice job, keeps it clear and anything like that.

Sawyer: Yeah, and that's, again, comparing where thermals were even three years ago, and Some of our competitors, but that's the hard part with magnifying, especially on. On higher powered thermals, right? Where you're gonna pretty much have your base optical magnification, and then everything past that is gonna be a digital compound, ma magnification, right?

So in reality, you are, you're just magnifying, you're taking a magnifier to a little TV screen, right? So that's where it's really [00:35:00] important to have those small pixels and those better details in the scope where you can zoom in all the way and still get a clear. Where before, you'd have something that's, you can go to 15 times magnification, but it has a really low thermal sensor, thermal core resolution and hot large pixels.

So by the time you got to six times magnification, it looked really pixelated, really blurry. By the time you got to 15 times magnification you have no idea what you're looking at. So I'm glad you say that, but yeah, I agree. That's, those are where those smaller details.

Come to play in as well, more so just because of that magnifying factor of digital magnification over optical magnification. But yeah, I mean in terms of the zoom, especially with these scopes, like these scopes are a little bit more of a challenge for us just because we we have a very, I dunno if this is the right way to put it, but we have a very, keep it simple, stupid.

Process in terms of operating a product, right? [00:36:00] So you look at any of our products with the reflexes, with the scopes even our night vision products, right? They are very user friendly. Cause nobody reads a manual out of the box regardless if they spend $6,000 on a scope or not. So being able to pull these out of the box, turn it all yourself, right?

And you can, these, these scopes you got picture record, internal memory, stadium tric, range finder picture and picture hotspot tracking. You got a lot of bells and whistles. You got the phone applications that can run everything, that iPhone, Android, whatever. You can run it on a tablet.

The wifi output. So it has its own wifi router in there, right? To connect to multiple platforms at the same time. It's got 150 yard range on that wifi router. There's so much, but I think a lot of companies got caught up in all the, can I swear on this, all the cool shit you can put in here. Right?

And you just kept adding more buttons. More buttons, and. , it makes it very frustrating when you're in the field trying to hunt for something. You gotta click four buttons before you can pull a trigger, right? So our goal is, I, [00:37:00] if I have any buttons at all, I need to click press or do a only one.

Like I only get one. And 90% of the time that's gonna be your magnification, right? Your pallets, radical styles, radical colors, all. , all that backend stuff is gonna happen ahead of time when you're in the field. Gimme an easy way to access my magnification. And that's all I want, right?

So this is nice where on these, the TS 200 that you have in the TS 300 you have that, that smooth zoom on that right turret which is nice to be able to toggle through it that way. But you can also click on into the side. . So there's, it's a little button on the side of that turret that you can click in and that'll toggle through your magnification as well.

So you can do your smooth zoom or you can click to toggle quicker. But other than that, your left turret is the plug and play battery rechargeable battery. Yeah. Which that, that's been a, that was nice going through that learning curve four or five years ago, where being able to have batteries that you can [00:38:00] pop in and out in the field is.

because I went through a year with the earlier products. We didn't have plug-in play batteries. And they died after five, six hours of running around. And then you gotta plug it in and wait, right? Or use an ancillary battery pack. So these are great. They all come with two batteries.

You run through 5, 6, 7 hours. The first one dies or gets close. Just pop it out, pop it in new one, and you're good for another six, seven hours, right? I went a little down a rabbit hole. No. You're one specific question. You

Andrew Muntz: are good. You're covering a lot of these topics that I was thinking about.

All so when it comes to citing it in you got your heat source up there that you're shooting at the now? I'm, this is where I'm, my time screwing around with it has stopped, but I've been working off the 50. Setting. Yep. And then because you don't have a left right up, down dial to screw to mess with you guys.

Ha. You go in and you mess with the access, right? [00:39:00] Yep. X y yeah. You got your X access. Y access if you need to go up or back or down or whatever. You just work with that. It's very easy. All that kind of stuff. Can you explain to me though, because this has got, I've only done the 50 meters, but it goes what, a hundred, one 50.

200? Does it go up to 300?

Sawyer: I think it goes up to 500. 500. Okay. So I think you got 50, 100, 200, 300, 500. So does that,

Andrew Muntz: essentially you can set the settings for each one of those and then it's okay, at a hundred meters it's this.

Sawyer: Okay. Yep. Yeah, and it's, to be honest, right? It's a little overkill.

Again, it's once we write the program, it's easy to put in there regardless, and why not? More options. If you want 'em, great. They're there. If you don't use 'em. But yeah, and like in my mind I, I'm not especially most of my hunting, unless we go pig hunting down south, right? Most of my hunting is gonna be like max of a 2 25, 2 50 yard shot.

Which keeps me in that sweet [00:40:00] spot. Especially with the 5 56 or 2 23 is the best example where if you get it cited in at say, 25 yard. You're gonna have your point of impact, crossing your line of boar or your, sorry, your point line of sight crossing your line of boar at 25 yards, right?

And you're gonna have some raise yet on that bullet. So you might raise, I would say, max of an inch and then it'll come down and you'll have a second site in essentially, naturally with your caliber at about 2 25. So depending on. , like with the 200 s and 300 s, You're gonna bump up your calibers, right?

Compared to the reflex where you're running one to four times magnification, on the TS 200 you have, you're running 2.3 to 9.2. So you might want a 3 0 8, a six five, a 2 43, right? And even in an AR 10 platform or just a bolt or you might wanna stretch that out, but those are gonna be, you're gonna be closer to that 50 meters where if I cite in my 3 0 8 at 50.

I don't know what the [00:41:00] six five is though, so I won't go down that road at hole, but say I cite in the 3 0 8 at 50 yards or 50 meters, I'm gonna have that second point of impact or zero, at 205 meters, right? It's that's how I usually run it where I'm just running off my two points of impact.

And then if I'm going, 400 yards out, I'll have my selected b d, c radical or a radical, one of those radical options that I know. My four 500 yard distance is gonna be at the second cross here. So I'm a little more, I don't wanna say old school. A little more rudimentary on that front when I'm using our products in this sense.

But absolutely you could site in, you could site in different, so you can site it in having different grains, right? You can site it in using those different distances or you can save site ins for multiple different platforms. But those distances are just an extra Hey, if I do wanna confirm my zero at 50, Confirm my zero at two 50 and confirm my zero at [00:42:00] 500.

You could set those site in saves to it. So if you were in the field, you could just switch to the 500 yard spec and know that you can put your cross air straight on center.

Andrew Muntz: Gotcha. Makes sense. So if I'm in the stand. And I I'm basically planning for 50 yard shop and then I got one at a hundred.

I just click over to the hundred, assuming it's all Yeah,

Sawyer: you can, I, again, in my mind, like you're gonna be within an inch for sure, regardless and my. Shooter ability, or whatever you want to call that word, is I'm happy with an inch regardless. You could, fine tune it more. That's where I said it's a little overkill where if I sit it in at 50, I know I'm gonna be on till probably two 50 and then I might be an inch low at 300, which again, I don't care about.

So I, in my mind, I am high or low an inch or on from zero to 300 yards and. I'm not pulling a trigger past 300 yards. Gotcha. But those people that can and want to be [00:43:00] more specific, they can, cite in the 300 where, okay, I am driving a attack at 300 yards. I'm not an inch low or two inches low, depending on your caliber in grains.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah, I don't have that problem. I'm getting more with you. Like it get me close. Cuz it's never the gun's fault. I can guarantee that. Yeah.

Sawyer: Or the site. It's been the gun's fault a few time on my side. I just, that's what I tell people

Andrew Muntz: recently. . I think hang on notes. I got here the.

Coolest thing, and I've showed a lot of people this is the ability for it to go to your phone. And I know a lot of things nowadays have apps, every day's an app for that, and. this thing. You hit the wifi, you log into it, from the phone. The only thing you can't do is pull the trigger on the gun, right?

You start the recording, you can zoom in, you can change the settings, all this kind of stuff. And like you were saying, there's 150 yard wifi. . So literally somebody could be sitting in a truck and you're 150 yards [00:44:00] out controlling it from your phone, which is just insane. But I think the other thing that's really cool is that it gives you the ability to record that to your phone.

Yep. And I guess one question, does it, it has a memory card built in, so is it recording those videos to the memory card as well?

Sawyer: Yep. So you had 16 gigabytes built in memory in the scope. So you can either, you can manage it on your phone. What I do is just every time I come back from a.

I'll just clear the scope, save them on my, save them on my phone and clear the scope. But yeah, there is internal memory there as

Andrew Muntz: well. You pull the memory card out then and clear it off of there?

Sawyer: Nope. You can either do it via your phone or tablet or whatever is connected from the wifi. Or you can connect it, plug it in with the cords that comes with to your laptop.

Gotcha. As well. So a couple options on cleaning there.

Andrew Muntz: But yeah, so I'm not super tech savvy, but that part of it, to get to your phone, do a quick editing. I sent you over the video, the groundhog that was causing disruption in my backyard. I'll touch on that real [00:45:00] quick. It's posted on our Go Wild account.

I think it's on Instagram unless they've censored it off, but That was the middle of the day. I had a ground hog at about 50 yards and I was, I'm comfortable with where that scope was hitting when I was practicing, so I was, I wanted to give it a real shot and yeah, he, that thing exploded.

Now, the gun caliber probably a little bit too big for a ground hog, but. The visual of it when you see the guts flying out the back and you can see pieces and parts of this thing flying all over and through the screen and through the video. Yeah. It's not a blur. Like you can see legit chunks. It's picking up the heat.

Yeah. From that was insane to me. Also funny, it was the cat that was hiding in the bushes behind me that I didn't really realize the cat was there. And I don't think the cat really realized what, what was happening either , it took off running the other direction. But that, no

Sawyer: it's, did you have ballistic tips on Yes.

Andrew Muntz: That

Sawyer: helps. Yeah. , yeah. They did a, they had a, one of [00:46:00] our pro staffers sent me a video that might have been a year ago now, but he had a 3 0 8 with ballistic tips and he shot a coyote with it and it was, Very similar to your groundhog, just a little more bits and pieces flying through the air. So it's insane.

Yeah. That's a good

Andrew Muntz: video. Man, I'm sure there's like a million and a half other questions I'll have for you, but we

Sawyer: just, oh, go ahead. Just real quick, Andrew, to touch, with your, the wifi comment and stuff like that, right? Our. . The only, when we launched thermals the first time, the only thing that had wifi and then the picture record internal memory and stuff was that TM 100 or thermal mono.

And it, definitely user feedback in terms of there are people that want the picture record, right? And they're gonna, they're gonna pay whatever to just have the picture record. But we had quite a bit of times, the nice part about my job is we get to go qualified tests and we usually have a year cycle between getting our.

Production or pre-production units in finalized and just getting to beat 'em up, going, testing hunts, we'll call 'em.[00:47:00] And get that, real life field user experience. At least that's my excuse to ownership to keep going on Hunts. But Right. But it does. A, it not only ticks our boxes in terms of, or checks our boxes in terms of knowing okay, yeah, I did, I threw it in the water and I left it there for 45 minutes.

R IP 67 Dustproof waterproof rating is valid cuz it, that's setting the bar at 30 minutes, right? Especially when you're going in Texas and stuff like that. You are putting these things through not good conditions. But the big part of that, in terms of wifi, right? And going through a year or so without having wifi capabilities and being able to share it there's a lot of moments.

And then trying it out with some where if, yeah, you brought it up exactly. You're running around in a side by side, a truck, right? You can send one guy out to scan a field. Everybody can see the same thing. We have a. We did the last time we [00:48:00] went out is just set up a tablet with the wifi on the scope.

It was actually the mono, but hooked up the wifi with the mono set, the tablet in there. One person just runs out and everybody in the truck can see the tablet on the front, console and see everything that's happening. So it does help bring your group together. But we also noticed, and me going out with friends and industry people, right?

There's usually only one, maybe two people in the group that. The really nice thermal the six 40 by four 80 or 400, the better thermal end and being able to have everybody connect their phones or their tablets or whatever. And just having one guy that can cover a thousand, 2000 yards out and getting onto the pigs and getting into that, 4, 3, 200 yard range where everybody else can use it then, or their own products.

So it was a nice learning curve. But yeah, definitely the wifi. . It makes it a better hunt, makes it easier, makes, the connection with other devices, but also the [00:49:00] people that you're going hunting with is great. Yeah.

Andrew Muntz: For sure man. We'll get you on again here to talk about the rest of the product line, we focused on this TS 200 scope here. We're gonna give it a whirl down there in Oklahoma and then actually maybe in and Missouri. And then come back and maybe we can talk about what else is you guys have going on over there at Ex Vision, if that sounds good. Yeah, that sounds great. Cool.

Sawyer, I appreciate your time today and yeah, I'm look pretty exci, pretty excited to get out there and give it a shot.

Sawyer: We'll touch base before you start pulling the trigger again, I'm sure. But yeah, good luck and. Have fun. For sure. It is. It is so much fun to use the thermals, pig hunts, coyote hunts.

Yeah, no, I'm sure you'll have plenty of fun. Thanks. Appreciate it. Perfect. We'll talk to you soon, Andrew.[00:50:00]

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