Trump just announced a 90 day tariff pause for countries that reached out to negotiate. At the same time, he hit China with an even higher tariff since they decided to retaliate.
It appears that those of us who thought that Trump is doing his usuall thing: reframing the argument and seeking separate direct bilateral deals between US and other countries were correct.
He is also showing all of these countries that he is not afraid of a trade war, no matter who it is with (China is helping him with that message).
What does it mean for us? Mostly, that we should settle down and wait a little. Trump is very good in coming off batshit crazy and he is a little bit crazy. However, he is perfectly sane when it suits him.
If China does not back off, there will be a reshuffling of the world economy and a rather more active new-ish cold war. I do not think China has the cojones for that long term.
For the sporting optics market, companies that build in the US or work closely with Japanese and Phillipino manufacturers will be OK. For all of the chinese made stuff, it is going to be one hell of a rollercoaster.
Quite a few optics companies I know have been quietly trying to do as little as possible in China for some time now. That will intensify.
For the people at Burris that I just visited, this is mostly a good thing. I talked about some of their stuff yesterday, but, as you can imagine, we discussed a lot of new things as well. None of the prototypes and concepts shown or discussed were from China.
Binocular and spotter market will be hit very hard.
With riflescopes, we have more options.
Everyone has some exposure to China, but not equally so.
Leupold, Trijicon, Burris/Steiner are pretty well positioned here.
With red dot sights, Sig, Shield, Leupold and Trijicon have an opportunity, assuming PA’s HTX1 does not eat most of their lunch (probably not enough manufacturing capacity for that).
Meprolight just got an opportunity to make their move. We’ll see if they act on it.
With thermals, Pulsar, Armasight and N-Vision will likely ber the biggest winners, but there are several other companies very capable of doing things in the US without too much trouble.
These are interesting times, but this little bit of sanity goes a long way.
Zeiss makes quite a few binoculars. Aside from an occasional misstep (Terra...), most of them are pretty good.
As with any product line, some models come together better than others.
Zeiss' SFL product line is something I looked at briefly, but never dwelled on it too much. They seemed like nice binoculars, but I never really looked at them carefully.
Imagine my surprise when the folks at Zeiss reached out and asked if I want to take a look at their new 12x50 version of the SFL.
They know I live out west, so they must have heard I have the space to really work out where the limits of a 12x50 binocular are.
Given that sending me a product to look at involves certain risks (until I am pretty much done with the review, I ignore marketing literature and any and all attempts from any company to tell me what to say), I figured that they either decided to live dangerously or that they are pretty damn confident of how good the product is.
I do not know for sure which one it is, but the ...
DNT's 7-35x56 has been here since February and I have managed to have some reasonably significant amount of time with it to date. This video is mostly in the nature of a "first look", although a bit more extensive than that. I will follow up with a careful examination of the reticle and low light performance.
https://amzn.to/4iGPl9w
So far, I am quite impressed with what the scope offers for the money.
Talking to one of the owners, he said he wants to be the undisputed bang for the buck champ under $1k. It is too early to be sure, but he might have a point there.
So far, I am quite impressed with the optic for what it costs and everything I have heard about customer support has been good.
The scope I have did have a minor glitch with the focus cell (I talk about that in the video), but it seems to have worked itself out. Perhaps there was some sort of a minor machining mark somewhere in there that got polished out.
Beyond that, it has been a good scope for me. I tried it on a ...
Here is another scope that has been here entirely too long without a formal review.
Delta Javelin 4.5-30x56, along with Athlon Ares ETR 4.5-30x56, stands at the top of the ladder of Chinese-made precision scopes I have seen to date.
To be fair, there are some new ones that are popping up that I have not tested yet (like the Telson 5-25x56) and some excellent ones that are less expensive (like DNT 7-35x56). Still, of the ones I have had a chance to spend some serious time with, it is Javelin and Ares ETR. Athlon has a Gen2 of the ETR that was announced this year, that I am very curious to test against the Javelin. Compared to the Gen1 ETR, I thought they were extremely close optically, but I slightly preferred the turrets and the reticle in the Javelin. We'll see if Athlon's Gen2 will change that.
I talk about Delta a good bit, but the brand is still not very widespread in the US. Still, there are several people selling them including Don at @AnnexDefense . Since he is a member here, I...
Is there a way to make a target card by using lrf binos that can communicate with a weather meter like a kestrel or Garmin, without touching the weather meter?
NOVA has a special on testing effectiveness of Revolutionary War weapons. Here is an interesting article on it.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/new-nova-doc-puts-revolutionary-war-weapons-to-the-test/
Apparently, Easter also qualifies for discounts. I glanced through my email and saw a couple of things that appeared to be of interest.
Palmetto is clearing out Crimson Trace Rad Max red dot sight for $89. It is pretty decent RDS and at that price is very worthwhile.
https://alnk.to/3J7YBql
Also at Palmetto, they have subsonic 300Blackout at a pretty decent price. I bought a few boxes last time they had it discounted and it has worked very well for me.
https://alnk.to/9bvt0Km
My home defense gun is a suppressed 300BLK Honey Badger set up for subsonic use. However, practicing with it gets expensive because of the cost of subsonic ammo. This stuff makes occasional practice a little less damaging to my wallet.
Tract has the discounted 4-25x50 with the MRAD Eagleman reticle on pre-order for under $1344. It is a good deal and I like the reticle.
https://tractoptics.com/toric-uhd-4-25x50-34mm-ffp-mrad-eagleman-long-range-hunting-rifle-scope/?dm_i=5GBO,OYQH,3ZZ4CE,2YC8N,1
I saw this scope ...
Well, since I was running a little low on AAC Precision 175gr 308 ammo, I ordered another batch. This one came from a different lot than the batch I had before.
I have about 13 months left to be in my 40s, so I figured this is my last opportunity to get cheeky with this project title.
As I mentioned during last week's livestream, I am kicking off a large review encompassing seven different riflescopes that really share only one thing in common: their objectives are in the 42-44mm range.
Here is a comparison table of the specs for the scopes I have on hand. Note that the Swampfox Warhawk 2-10x44 is not going to be in this comparison very much. I'll do a separate video on it. The biggest reason for that is simply that this spec table is becoming too long and comparing so many scopes all at the same time is exponentially more difficult. I was going to take out either the Warhawk or the Blackhound since neither of them have a zero stop, so I flipped a coin and Blackhound got to stay. I will go over it a little bit below the table.
I did not set out to have this particular line-up in mind, but I like this riflescope type, so I ended up with all of these on hand.
Some of these scopes I have lready reviewed quite thoroughly, namely the Blackhound and Tract.
If you look at the specs carefully, you'll see that these range from true ultrashort designs (GPO and March), to "kinda short" designs (Leapers, Delta, Leupold and Blackhound) to a conventionally sized Tract Toric. Some of these lean toward the MPVO category. Some are unabashedly aimed at the Crossover market. Tract stands alone as a relatively conventional hunting scope, except configured very nicely to do everything as necessary. Another scope that would fit this category very well also that is no longer here is Vortex Strike Eagle 3-18x44. I might reference it occasionally.
I have a good amount of mileage with all of these, although I have not yet released a final review on every design. Still, I can offer some initial thoughts in order of ascending price.
Like any self respecting firearm enthusiast I always have some number of projects going on concurrently. One of them is a fast twist 22-250 bolt gun.
Every once in a while Tikka makes a run of 22-250 T3x rifles with 1-8” twist barrel and I happen to have one. That dramatically changes the varminty character of the 22-250. With a modern 80gr bullet, it is a nicely viable hunting rifle for small and medium game (just about perfect for pronghorn). It is also a very capable long range number. At the altitude where I live, it does not go subsonic until you get to about 1400 yards.
1-8” twist will not stabilize the heaviest available 22 bullets, but works well enough for anything up to about 80grains, depending on the bullet construction.
