I’ve been around long enough to know that when fate hands you an easy hunt, you take it gratefully and savor it, because that kind of luck is rare. But still, I can’t help feeling a little bit like I cheated at elk hunting.
Half an hour before legal shooting light on day one of my first elk hunt ever, I was excited and nervous sitting in the cab of the truck on a hillside in Montana. I’ve been in the hunting industry 20 years waiting for an opportunity to hunt elk! When we felt we had enough light to navigate safely through grizzly country, my guide Jeff and I, along with a buddy, Dave, climbed out of the truck and gained just a little elevation before we began hiking along the mountain, with the peak to our left and a meadow to our right. Jeff kept laying out his hopes for the morning with “If we’re lucky” statements: “If we’re lucky, the elk will be down in the meadow and that bull will still be in the herd.” “If we’re lucky, they’ll wait until after legal shooting light to head up.” “If we’re lucky, they’ll go this way and not that way.”
We set up in front of a small brushy tree and I settled my Seekins Precision Havak PH2 on the shooting sticks, got comfortable, and chambered a round. “If we’re lucky,” Jeff said, “they’ll come up in front of us, not behind us. And if we’re lucky, they’ll walk up somewhere around that bush out there, which is about 175 yards.”
We were lucky, and they did. As if following Jeff’s script, not 10 minutes after legal shooting light, the herd headed up the mountain in front of us, ambling single-file just past that bush. “Four more cows will pass the big bush and then it’ll be the bull,” Jeff whispered.
After the trigger squeeze, I looked up while jacking another round into the chamber, and the bull was gone. I had a split second of panic until Dave whisper-hollered “He’s down!” On the first morning of my first elk hunt, only 15 minutes into legal shooting light, it was all over before I had really even experienced what elk hunting was supposed to be.
As I said, I’ve learned to take the easy ones when I can get them, and later that week, I used the same rig to shot a nice mule deer that didn’t make the task nearly so easy. Another hunter in our party killed his bull that first morning, too, but Dave and the fourth hunter in camp spent the next three days huffing and puffing up and down mountains, sucking wind, taping blisters and chasing bulls. You know — elk hunting.
I’ll almost certainly never experience such lucky elk “hunting” again, and the circumstances are what made it seem so easy. However, I’ve learned the hard way over the years that even the simplest hunting excursions can be sabotaged by faulty equipment, and the trust I had in the gear I was using made the shot in dim light a slam-dunk.
The hunt was sponsored by EOTECH to promote their brand-new Vudu X scope, which officially debuted to the world on January 1, 2024 and should be shipping to dealers by the time you read this. I chose a 2-12x40 with an illuminated BD1 reticle, sitting on that Seekins Havak PH2 chambered in 7mm PRC, shooting Hornady Precision Hunter ammo (175 grains). The Vudu X is EOTECH’s answer to a common problem they’d noticed with their popular Vudu line.
“We launched our standard Vudu line in 2016 and really grew it into a great product line,” EOTECH’s John Bailey told me in camp. “It has a pretty broad magnification range and first-focal-plane and second-focal-plane options. That line is doing extremely well tactically but not hunting-wise or recreationally. We discovered it’s just overpriced for that market. It’s really kind of high-quality, high-performance, Japanese glass, all that. Your tactical shooters will buy that, but your hunters just aren’t buying it.
“Then we looked at our competitors and what they are selling,” he continued. “We talked to dealers about what price point is the bigger seller. So we decided to make Vudu X, and our initial push is second-focal-plane scopes with magnification options that really work for hunting, 3-gun and recreational use. It still carries a lot of features and benefits of the Vudu, but at a more reasonable price.”
While I shot the 2-12x40, the Vudu X also debuted in a 1-6x24 “because LVPOs are just ridiculously hot,” John said. “You have to make one. We investigated, and still the most popular magnification sold is a 3-9x40 — but most of them sell under $199 MSRP or thereabouts. It tells us that that magnification range is what people are looking for. So we did what we think is a little bit better — we gave you a little less magnification on the low end, more on the other, so you still have your 3-9 but you have more capability either way. We think it’s a good all-purpose optic. You can hunt it in the East in brush and heavy forests on low power, or you can do what we did this week out West, where you’re going 300 to 400, 500 yards, and you have the magnification to do it.”
Indeed, while my elk was shot at around 200 yards, I killed a mule deer buck later in the week at a bit over 300, and had more than enough magnification to watch that buck work his way in from much farther out. But more importantly, the Vudu X didn’t let me down in low light. When that bull elk emerged from behind the bush just a few minutes into legal shooting light, there was absolutely no question what I was looking at and no problem seeing clearly to make a clean shot. Those first few minutes and last few minutes of legal light are where a scope either fails or rises to the occasion, and the Vudu X didn’t let me down.
Jeff, who has been guiding for elk for many years, agreed, and shared his thoughts on hunting scopes for the wide-open spaces of Montana: “If you’re going to be looking at stuff in low light, as we do all the time in hunting, I like a good quality scope so you can still see. I like a variable scope so you can have it at a low power then be able to crank the power up once you’re on a target and still retain clarity. We never push the time as far as shooting light, but with a variable scope, low power gives you a little more light in the first and last five minutes of legal shooting light. That said, there’s no reason to have more than 12 power in my opinion.”
With high-quality AR-coated glass, the Vudu X scopes are crystal clear, even on the highest magnification setting. They’re built on a 30mm tube and have capped turrets (MOA based) with a simple zero reset feature, and the magnification throw lever is removable if it doesn’t suit your purposes. You can get it in a simple crosshair reticle or the BD1 reticle with circular ballistic holds at 2MOA intervals — this reticle is my personal preference. Both reticles are illuminated and run off a CR2032 battery. Front and back flip-up scope caps are included, which is a nice touch that every optics company ought to be offering standard, in my opinion.
EOTECH’s regular Vudu line starts off at an MSRP of about $1,400, but the Vudu X I used retails for $859 — a considerable savings without a big trade-off in features or glass quality. The 1-6X retails for $799.
Bailey admits that hunters have a perception problem when it comes to EOTECH optics. “There’s a benefit but you also get hurt a little bit when all you’re known for is the military stuff,” he said. “On the other hand, you have the reputation that you build gear for the military. And we always try to communicate that that stuff carries over — we test our Vudu scopes, our pistol sights, all that stuff, on the same equipment, with the same parameters, that we test the holographic sight that’s built primarily for the military. If you ever go to our factory, you’d be amazed at how much testing equipment we have to really make sure that what you’re buying matches the performance and quality you expect.”
Banking on that military-grade reputation is one way to steer a potential customer toward EOTECH scopes. But what else can mom-and-pop retailers tell shoppers when they walk in to buy that 3-9x40 from the same brand their grandpa always bought from? “In our engineering and design, in our work with partners, we try to knock down every barrier,” Bailey told me. “We know people are going to walk in and they’re going to want to buy a Vortex or they’re going to want to buy a Bushnell. They don’t know why they want to buy that; it’s just the brand that they know. We have to break all those barriers down.
“So price is one thing — you have to be competitive on price and obviously on performance. EOTECH has always been a have-to-see-it-to-believe-it kind of thing. You know, when you see a holographic sight, it kind of opens your eyes. To that end, we make sure the glass is really clear, so if somebody’s doing a side-by-side comparison, they don’t know if the turrets are really going to dial perfectly, but when they look through it, the clarity’s really solid and the illumination’s really good.”
And breaking down barriers doesn’t just apply to consumers — EOTECH knows it needs to make a dealer’s job easy to help you sell more scopes. “From a dealer standpoint, we want to make sure that they get solid or better margins than our competitors, so that breaks down that barrier — because they want to make money,” Bailey said. “We have a quality product, competitively priced, so the dealer makes money, and we support our dealers through programs and things like that. So why wouldn’t they want to bring EOTECH up when somebody walks through the door?”
The bottom line? Hunters don’t need the highest-tier scope money can buy in order to make reliable shots on game at moderate distances in low light. High-end optics are great and absolutely have their place, but top-tier glass isn’t a requirement to successfully hunt out West or anywhere else. You don’t even need to drop a grand on a mid-range scope from one of the classic big-name brands for a big-game hunt of a lifetime. Do clarity and light transmission matter at those critical moments at dawn and dusk? Absolutely they do, but they can be had affordably from a brand you might have previously associated with tactical optics.
“Vudu X has a lot of the same characteristics as Vudu, and we didn’t make the Vudu line to displace any of the big brands in the industry,” Bailey said. “But we know optics extremely well, and we’re one of the only American-brand optics in America. We focus so much on quality and precision and functionality, that whether it’s Vudu X or any of the other optics products we make, you’re going to get a good product. We back it up with a ridiculous warranty. Vudu X is a brand extension, but it carries the quality and perception of what our brand does.”
The EOTECH Vudu X line, which will be expanded beyond the two initial offerings, brings EOTECH’s military-tough testing and production quality to the hunting world at a price that will leave your customers room for their taxidermy bill.
The Author’s Western Hunting Gear
For this hunt, I carried a Seekins Precision Havak PH2 chambered in 7mmPRC. With a stainless steel barrel and a Seekins carbon composite stock, it was built for the elements, and at 7.2 pounds unloaded, it wasn’t a burden to haul around. At the same time, the 7mmPRC chambering is long-range capable, with excellent ballistics and plenty of knock-down power.
I used Hornady’s Precision Hunter ammunition, built for accuracy and terminal performance, with a 175-grain ELD-X projectile. Accuracy at the range was impressive, and although my sample size is limited to two animals, both dropped where they stood, so I’m more than pleased with the effectiveness. Using the company’s proprietary Heat Shield tip, Hornady has made this to be two bullets in one — at less than 400-yard velocities, it’s designed for 50 to 60% weight retention, while at 400-yard-plus impacts at lower velocities, the tip drives backward into the bullet to initiate expansion, and hunters can expect 85 to 90% weight retention and an impressive mushroom.
It was unseasonably warm in November in Montana, so I layered up using gear from DSG, including the Ava 2.0 jacket and pant. DSG makes hunting clothing specifically for women in a huge range of sizes, and is worth a look if you’re not currently carrying a women’s line. I paired my DSG gear with a pair of Rocky’s Sport Pro 7-inch boots, with an aggressive outsole and 800 grams of Thinsulate insulation, neither of which I ended up needing on this particular hunt — but the boots were more than comfortable and required a surprisingly short break-in time.
