by Charlie Jacoby
You see your animal through your binos, you shoot, it drops out of sight. Now Swarovski has come up with binos that help you find the carcase. The new EL range, launched in 2021, has a ‘tracking assistant’ that not only rangefinds your animal but places it on a digital map on an app on your phone.
The EL binos are already the most popular quality binos owned by Fieldsports Channel viewers, so is Swarovski perfecting or over-egging the mixture with its new tech launch?
Due for sale in a store near you by the spring, the new EL binos include ‘Tracking Assistant’ electronics that work out your game’s location on your smartphone. You use Swarovski’s ‘Configurator’ app to tell you where to go.
Launching it from Swarovski’s headquarters in Absam, Austria, Wolfgang Schwarz says: “This feature does not guarantee that your you will find a drop of blood, and it cannot replace your hunting dog, but it helps and supports in certain situations.”
It’s a neat idea and it can even help with hiking. Suppose you spot the place you are trying to get to, you can now mark it and get the GPS data for it.
Launched in 1999 and last updated in 2019, the Swarovski EL and ELO Range binoculars have always been designed to combine Swarovski quality with a rangefinding capability. All of them boast top-of-the-range 91% light transmission. The 8x42s offer a 7.8° field of view and the 10×42 6.3°.
They come in the standard deerstalking sizes of 8×42 and 10×42 and include an easy-to-use rangefinder. Simply point them at your target, click the button on top of the binos, release, after a couple of seconds, you get the range in metres. And now your phone gets it, too.
The Configurator app also gives you the clicks you need to adjust your scope, based on your ammo, and other data.
The new EL range offers rangefinding from 10m to 2,000m. It only comes in green, but likely to come soon in orange.
The old model ELO – the ‘O’ stands for ‘orange’ – are that colour so if you put them down on the hill you will easily be able to find them again.
Here is Michael Ott from manufacturer Swarovski to explain them:
Buy the old model binos on Amazon:
Want to see these Swarovski binos in action? We take them on a hind cull in Scotland:
Michael Ott from Swarovski shows off the old ELO range
