hey everybody brandon mason here with eastmans and it seems like every year about this time
we're coming up with another gear review just like this one on new sig sauer products
and this year's no different sig has a whole new line of rangefinders coming out this year 2021
and this is the first of several models that we're going to review for you so that you can see what
they're up to and how they're on the cutting edge and while i got you here don't forget to subscribe
to our youtube channel if you haven't already done so and turn on your notifications so we can send
you more helpful useful gear reviews just like this when we come out with them almost every week
okay so what sig sauer has done over the last few years is they have changed the game when
it comes to range finding technology and what i mean by that is they have enabled rangefinders to
work quicker with the engines that are inside of each and every one of their range finders
and they have also come up with bluetooth connectivity between riflescope rangefinder
and our one of our wonderful smart devices that it seems like we use for everything anymore
and what we're going to talk about today is this particular first one of the new
sig sauer rangefinders in their kilo k series for 2021 and basically what the k means is how many
thousands of yards out there that it can range flat surfaces under ideal conditions this one
is the 5k they have the kilo 6k 8k and 10k also coming out but they're so new we don't even have
them in hand yet so the first one we have is the 5k and we're going to take a look at that today
but overall we're going to talk about the technology that's in all of these range finding
devices no matter which one of these products that they have so they're even going to be updating
their popular kilo 3000 bdx range finding binoculars with this k series also so what makes
the k series so different first of all they have extended range capabilities most of the the sig
bdx rangefinders and the whole system was good to about 800 yards and which for many of us that's
that's way farther than i even planned to shoot but it's fun to mess around with at the range it's
a great confidence builder and for those that do push the envelope when it comes to distance
you know that 800 could kind of get you there well now there's on-board applied ballistics
calculations for that distance even beyond what the bdx bluetooth enabled features have in those
devices and if you're not familiar with bdx make sure you check out our other reviews that we have
on the bdx system they came out with a bdx system a few years ago and then last year the bdx 2.0
system which has a whole slew of features in each and every one of their rangefinders and scopes
with simple technological updates that you can do on your own from the comfort of your home
or even when you're out in the field if you have cell phone service now you get to use
these products even when you're out of cell phone service but when you're doing the updates you just
have to have the cell phone service to facilitate the updates so the kilo k series again this is
the 5k this can range flat targets reflective targets out to 5 000 yards it can range trees
and light type cover that can reflect the range back to the rangefinder out to 2500 yards
and deer or big game size animals out to 2 000 yards in ideal circumstances so you're probably
wondering well that's great but why in the world would i need to know if something is that far
away there's no way i'm going to shoot out to 5 000 yards well i agree with you i wouldn't
either i wouldn't even encourage anybody to do that but here's the power in being able to range
out to those extended distances especially out west when the country is just huge so when you can
actually use this a good range finder and range distances when you're planning a stalk on an
animal and see if it's logical with the amount of daylight you have left well knowing the distance
and knowing when to be realistic with yourself is key because man i've been i've been there in
the high country where you'll see a deer or an elk from miles away and you think man let's go
stalk on them or let's relocate camp and get to them and pretty soon you're five miles deeper
into the back country than you even intended to be and that can get you into some very dangerous
predicaments and it's just not safe it's just not smart to hunt that way so in addition to that
sig sauer teamed up with a mapping app company called base map and if you have the app on your
smart device and it your smart device and the rangefinder can bluetooth connect basically it
just means they're like remote controls for one another and they can talk to each other
you can range a target if it's connected to the basemap app and it'll drop a point
to what you're ranging on your map and that's not only handy for planning a stalk but
what we found last year they didn't even have this technology but we got ourselves thinking
we always are using mapping apps on our phone and we're using range finding technology in the
field well scott reekers shot a really nice mule there up in the high country and he shot him from
i think it was about 320 yards away he shot him the buck tumbled down straight down this mountain
that was like this and he stopped in some cover which sounds logical we thought we'll just hike
down hike back up it's getting close to dark and we should walk right up to him well this country
is so enormous even from 330 320 yards away that we were by the time we descended the vista that
we were on went across the valley went up to the other side it looked completely different
and if we would had a system like this we could've ranged exactly where we saw the buck stop in the
clump of trees we couldn't see him anymore but he didn't come out from below the clump of trees and
he definitely crashed into him and we were pretty sure he was dead right in that clump of trees and
but when we got over there everything looked the same and it took us a while to find him plus we
were dealing with a problem black bear in the area and we were feeling a little anxious before it got
dark because we had so much to get done um in a short time well if we had a way to range it drop
an exact location hike to that location and find that buck it would have saved us a lot of time and
a lot of you know i guess a little bit of stress really when you think about it trying to figure
out all the things we had to get done before dark or shortly after dark and to make sure we
get that animal packed up and out of there so in order to make the range finders the k series range
finders from sig sauer and the base map app talk to each other you simply fire up the base map app
and when you have that up and running and you want to make sure that you pair the device pair the
your rangefinder with the app you tap on the lower right hand corner there's a plus symbol in the app
where it says tools we type on that and then a sub menu slides in from the right and the first
thing you'll see is base map connect you tap on that and you can turn on your bluetooth feature
and it will recognize as long as you have the rangefinder turned on which is just pressing
the range button it'll get the rangefinder active and it'll recognize that this particular
rangefinder is in close proximity to your smart device and then you go through the pairing steps
which includes the rangefinder giving a pin number which you can see by looking through it
you type in the pin number on the base map app and boom they're connected base map and sig sauer
worked a lot together so that every time you were ranging you weren't dropping pins all over the
place if you didn't want them there and so what you have to do is again that plus symbol on the
bottom right corner of your screen you hit that and this is a pretty intentional feature like
it's not just for when you're scanning and and uh you know just getting a rough idea of the terrain
around you this is when you're being really intentional and you're planning a route to a
specific location you have the time and after that sub menu for tools slides in from the right on the
bottom right corner again you'll see remote marker you simply tap that and it'll say range target now
you range it and it'll come up with a compass direction your azimuth basically and you get to
drop that pin right where the rangefinder shot a distance for you and then you save it and
not only does it save the waypoint but it also saves all the handy-dandy information that the
sig sauer rangefinders collect from your ballistic profile from the atmospheric conditions around you
and it all goes into that waypoint so later on even years down the road you can tap on
that waypoint in your app and lo and behold those conditions will be there and it's kind of a nice
journal you know it's a good um way to compare trends in where you're hunting and where the
animals are found and and some people uh you know mike eastman for years has been had been preaching
to the choir about having a a handwritten journal so that from year to year you can not only
log your hunts and the conditions and where you're finding animals and their locations but then you
start to see patterns and trends over time well essentially in the mapping apps we have now today
you get to do that and it's all electronic right at the tip of your fingers it's extremely easy to
use even if you aren't very tech savvy now when i go out in the field anymore i always have my
smart device it's my gps it's my camera it's my weather app it's everything all in one i know some
people that are kind of anti-technology and they say i don't need one of those smart devices well
this isn't just a smart device in fact one of the least impressive things that our devices do
is make phone calls and go on social media this is a tool box use this toolbox to your advantage and
also to keep you safer and more efficient while you're in the field we do it all the time here at
eastmans and it just saves us a ton of headache when we're out in the field and quite honestly
keeps us safer and and makes us better outdoorsmen it it it isn't something that we rely on a hundred
percent because sometimes technology does fail or your battery dies on you and you don't have a
charger so you always got to know how to navigate and and learn how to stalk on animals without that
stuff but man it is such a great backup plan in conjunction with what sig sauer is doing um
in this partnership with base map and this particular feature that the rangefinder offers
is a base map is offering for a limited time 20 off of their pro memberships so that's
something you want to check out too you want to save a little money now's the time to do it
one of the things that i love about the new rangefinders too from sig sauer is that they
have a couple extra features besides the ones that i've already talked about and one is an ex feature
which is an extended range feature which again is nice to range things at extreme distances to
plan your stalk or to plan how to get to an animal one of the other features is a fog feature i don't
know if you can tell but we're in the middle of wildfire season and in 2021 this has been
a year for the records books there's wildfires all over the west we're here in northern wyoming
we've been i sound kind of nasally and congested we've been breathing in smoke for man two or three
months already the the temperatures have been in the 90s and the hundreds it's been a really
weird year and when i first started messing around with this sig sauer the new k-series rangefinder i
was having a hard time getting ranges well then i thought i had it on the extended range mode
i turned it to the fog mode which helps in foggy or drizzly conditions also in smoky conditions
which is pretty cool because as soon as i turn it to that mode boom instantly got my range instantly
had it talking to the base map app even through the the smoky slash foggy conditions that we're
dealing with today and it's probably not going to change into the start of hunting season we're
going to need cooler temperatures and also you know some precipitation to come with it which
fingers crossed we're supposed to be getting at this week those are the highlights
of the new k series rangefinders the kilo k series rangefinders from sig sauer stay tuned we're going
to be using more of their models again this is the 5k they have the 6k the 8k and the 10k and
we're going to be bringing you more information more use in the field on those rangefinders too
and thanks for joining us in this review today and remember be safe and be prepared in the field