The first time I pulled the trigger on my new custom Stealth Vision rifle, the target was 500 yards downrange. By then, I’d spent most of the day with the people who built it. I’m glad the shooting came last. It gave me a chance to understand what I had in my hands.
I came to Stealth Vision already knowing their glass. We run Stealth Vision scopes on every rifle we hunt with at Dying Breed Television. What I wanted to know was how an eye doctor named John McCall came to build the scope I’d be looking through that afternoon.
I call him Doc. He’s the founder and CEO of Stealth Vision, an optometrist by profession, and a hunter who takes his own equipment into the field. Spend a day with Doc and his crew and you come away believing these folks get up every morning wanting to build the best hunting optics in the world. I felt that same care in the way they welcomed me, the time they took to tell me how the company got its start, and the attention they’d given my rifle before I ever sat down behind it.
One detail in particular stuck with me. You can settle the crosshairs right where you want them and still have the rifle tilted. Doc’s team put a level indicator inside the sight picture, where you can see it while your eye is still on the target. That little light made more sense to me after getting to know the man behind it. Doc has spent his working life thinking about what the human eye can pick up, and his time in the woods thinking about what a hunter might miss. Both show up in his glass.
We finished the day at the Stealth Vision range. I settled in at the bench, put my eye to my custom Stealth Vision scope, and took that first shot. Later, Doc and I stood beside the targets you see in the film. That’s the part of the day I’ll remember. There I was, looking at the paper with the man who founded the company, after seeing that same target through a rifle and scope his people had built for me.
As a hunter, there’s a difference between knowing what a fine rifle is capable of and knowing what I can do with it. That afternoon gave me my first real measure of both. For me, and I think for a lot of hunters, that’s the value of time on the range. When a buck steps into a shooting lane, you want to know your equipment well enough to recognize the shot you can make and have the judgment to pass on one you can’t.
Doc, I appreciate the day you and your crew gave me. The next time I settle in behind that scope on a hunt, I’ll know the people whose name is on it.