Skoped Vision – Record Your Hunt on Your Phone!

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We’ve all tried it.  Sitting in our deer blind sticking our phone up to the optic attempting to take a photo or video through the magnification.  And we all know how difficult it is to get proper alignment.  Skoped Vision now eliminates the difficulty of the alignment as well as making it possible to actually film your shot.

 

I tested the Skoped Vision extensively on a prairie dog hunt in Wyoming earlier this year.  Here are a few of highlights (graphic warning):

Setting up the Skoped Vision takes a little time.  Don’t expect to bring it out into the field and slap it on your rifle right before your game reveals itself.  It takes a bit of tweaking to get the proper eye relief and then alignment for your phone itself.  Unless you are lucky enough that your phone’s camera sees the reticle perfectly straight you will have to use their app to adjust brightness, focus, and alignment.  The app only crashed on me once.  My main issue with the app is that it takes nearly as long as you filmed to “process” the earlier recording.  So if you filmed for 2 minutes, took a shot, then stopped recording you will be waiting for that long afterwards until it has processed to record another session.  I also had trouble a few times in the bright Wyoming sky to get the brightness adjusted down enough to not wash out like this screenshot below:

Washed out with the brightness completely out of adjustment with Skoped Vision.

And yes, the above screenshot is the raw image that you will have.  Don’t expect to instantly post a picture perfect clip without a bit of video editing to crop.  This is a better screenshot of when the brightness adjusted properly:

Raw Screenshot of Skoped Image video clip.

A handy part of the app is that once you get it setup you can save that profile and quickly reset it when you replace it the rifle again.  It still might require a small adjustment since reinstallation, or even bumping it, could result in canting the image again.

Using the phone scope wasn’t as natural as using the naked optic, but it was easy enough to adapt.

Shooting is a little awkward with the unit between you and the glass.  It also seems to change acquisition for some reason.  But all in all, it is useful for the purpose and makes easy to record the actual shooter’s point of view.  I was using it successfully in a high volume/quick acquisition hunt without much negative effect.  Using it for hogs or deer should be very easy.

You might also be wondering if you could use the screen to aim.  I suppose you “could” but the manual says several times that you “shouldn’t”.  But someone off to the side could live view what you see.  This could lead to training possibilities.

If you want to gear up with the Phone Skope this season you can pick it up for $179.  It fits a variety of iPhone and Samsung devices: https://www.phoneskope.com/

 

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1 Comment

  1. JD says:

    This is a really bad idea. People looking thru a scoped, loaded rifle: what could go wrong?