2. Upload a screenshot showing you are FOLLOWING me on X.com
3. Watch the Monterey Bay Road Trip video on my Travel Channel @MoondogGo. Hit the LIKE button and post a COMMENT saying “Winning and loving it” https://youtu.be/EkkRDRxxItk
This prize supplied by Vector Optics and is awarded at their sole discretion and direction.
RULES
NO PURCHASE OR DONATION IS NECESSARY TO ENTER. YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING DO NOT INCREASE WITH A PURCHASE. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.
1. Eligibility
Void where prohibited by law. Must be a legal resident in the USA. Moondog Industries employees, subsidiaries, affiliates, suppliers, advertising and promotion agencies, and employees’ immediate family members are ineligible to participate in the contest/giveaway.
Entrants must be willing and able to appear on YouTube to discuss the contest and post images of the prize on their social feed should they win the contest.
2. Sponsors and Platforms
Vector Optics (known as the SPONSOR)and Moondog Industries (known as the CO-SPONSOR) is a video Edutainment producer and game promoter based in San Francisco, CA. YouTube, TikTok, Rumble, X and online video platforms (known as PLATFORMS) are not SPONSORS or in any way affiliated with the contest or content.
3. Agreement to Rules
By entering the contest, participants agree to abide by the SPONSOR’s Official Rules and decisions. The SPONSOR retains the right to refuse, withdraw, or disqualify entries at their sole discretion. By submitting an entry, the participant agrees to accept the decision of the SPONSOR as final and binding.
4. Entry Period
Contest email entries must be received between: 12:00pm EST 31 Jan 2026 and 12:00pm EST 28 Feb 2026
5. How to Enter
This contest requires your skill in navigating your phone or computer controls to screen capture an image of the following YouTube channels/Social Media accounts. Subscribe or Follow and make a screen capture of those pages showing a greyed out Subscribe button or indicator that your account is Following that page. If the page is not functioning, please contact contest@moondogindustries.com . One entry per person or per Social Media account. Fraudulent methods of entry, photo retouched, or other methods of circumvention of the rules may result in the SPONSOR invalidating a participant’s entries.
6. Prizes
The winner must be able to receive the prize by e-mail or by physical mail. Prize may be substituted at the sole discretion of the SPONSOR. Acceptance of the prize grants SPONSOR permission to use the winner’s entry, name, and likeness for advertising, promotion, and trade without further compensation or remuneration unless prohibited by law.
7. Odds
The odds of winning are dependent upon the number of eligible entries received.
8. Selection and Notification of the Winner
The winner will be chosen at random by the SPONSOR from among the entrants who demonstrated the skill to navigate the electronic entry and have met the minimum requirements. Winners will be contacted via the email used to enter the contest. Winner must have a legal address within the US to ship the prize.
SPONSOR is not liable for the winner’s failure to receive notification of winning if he or she provided the wrong email address or if their email security settings caused your prize notification to go into the spam or junk folder. If a winner does not respond within 24hrs of sending a notification, the SPONSOR will select an alternate winner. Receipt of the prize is upon the condition of compliance with federal, state, and local laws.
9. Rights Granted by the Entrant
The SPONSOR, upon submission of an entry into the giveaway or contest, has the right to use the participant’s submission, voice, likeness, image, statements about the contest, etc., for publicity, news, advertising, promotional purposes, trade, and so forth, without any further notice, review, consent, compensation, or remuneration.
Participants shall defend or settle against such claims at their sole expense, and shall indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the SPONSOR from any suit due to damage of or by the prize.
10. Terms & Conditions
The SPONSOR reserves the right to modify, suspend, cancel, or terminate if unauthorized human intervention, a bug or virus, fraud, or other causes beyond your control impact or corrupt the security, fairness, proper conduct, or administration of the contest/giveaway.
11. Limitation of Liability
Entry into this contest constitutes the participant’s agreement to release and hold harmless the SPONSOR and PLATFORMS, subsidiaries, affiliates, employees, etc., against all claims, liability, illness, injury, death, loss, etc., that occurs directly or indirectly from participation in the contest or use/misuse of the awarded prize.
12. Disputes
As a condition of participating in the promotion, the participant agrees to resolve all disputes with an arbitrator designated by the SPONSOR in the state of California, without resorting to any form of class action. Entrants waive all rights to punitive, incidental, or consequential damages, and waive all rights to have damages multiplied or increased.
13. Privacy Policy
Participants agree to abide by all privacy and NDA laws in the State of California and any federal laws of the United State of America.
14. Winners List
Participants may request a list of winners by submitting a request in writing to Moondog Industries for up to 30 days after the contest ends.
15. Social Media Platform Rules
Winners will agree to post a photo of the prize on their social media channels in such a way as does not violate any rules of that platform. The winners also agree to appear for an interview where they will discuss the prize and its performance. If there are functional problems with the prize, the winner agrees to make a good-faith effort to resolve all issues with the SPONSOR prior to posting reviews or opinions about the prize.
16. Affirmation of Acceptance of and Agreement to All of the Official Rules
By entering the contest, the entrant has affirmatively reviewed, accepted, and agreed to all of them.
Stopping at the Vector Optics booth at SHOT Show 2026. Among the promotional banners announcing their new Frenzy green dots, and micro thermal optic, they walked me through a rundown of improvements to their flagship line of Continental long-range scopes. These scopes utilize German-made Schott ED glass and highly refined construction and in Q2 they will release the Gen2 models.
The Gen2 updates include a 50% increase in range of turret adjustment, a shorter 10-yard minimum focus, and the most welcome feature to me: shake awake. Auto-sleep/Motion Activation has become a manditory in red dots. Finally, a scope maker has introduced similar technology to an illuminated reticle scope. As in red dots, this promises to radically improve a scope’s battery life. This feature has the potential to be a game-changer in the category.
I’m back from SHOT Show 2026. Let’s talk about what I saw. This video is sponsored by Aura. Stop leaving yourself vulnerable to data breaches. Go to my link https://aura.com/moondog to get a 14-day free trial and see if any of your data has been exposed.
This episode is sponsored by Matt Hat beef jerky. Use code: MOONDOG to get 15% Order a free sample using my link https://matthatjerky.com/products/sample-pack?ref=moondog
EARLYBIRD Clue:
THIS WEEK
Moondog2A
Moondog Reviews
Moondog Go
BRAND CONTEST CLUE
This brand is a Large Language Model Chatbot which takes its name from a verb coined by science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein in his 1960’s novel “Stranger in a Strange Land.” It was picked up by computer geeks in the 1980’s and means “To understand deeply.”
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression. In copyright law, there are a lot of different types of works, including paintings, photographs, illustrations, musical compositions, sound recordings, computer programs, books, poems, blog posts, movies, architectural works, plays, and so much more!
GUEST
David Lavine is an attorney
CONTESTS
This month, there are two contests you can enter and win a prize. Enter both.
At SHOT Show 2026, Discovery Optics showed off the prototype of an innovative internal electronic angle level in their ED and XED scope line. This electronic feature displays a green dot on either the left or rght side of your view indicating if your scope is not level. Canting (tilting) a scope can cause your point of impact to shift due to the position of your scope above your barrel.
Long-range shooters have relied on externally mounted spirit bubble levels. This internal electronic level allows the shooter see when their scope has lost level without breaking their shooting position or cheek weld to look at an external level indicator.
This new internal level feature will come standard in all of their ED and XED scopes, which will dramatically differentiate their scopes from other long-range optics.
The XR is the newest micro reflex red dot from OSight. It features an enclosed emitter body and significant performance upgrades. It adds two options for the size of its dot (2 MOA and 6 MOA) and adds additional charge capacity to its cover (5x instead of 4x), for a jaw-dropping +30 years of runtime.
This RMR footprint optic has a clear window at the rear to protect the rear of the lens from weather, moisture, and debris that could render traditional reflex sights useless. The unit has a relatively low deck, though not low enough for me to co-witness my Glock’s factory sights. The unit has a set of spring-loaded pop-up rear sights built into the rear deck, which can be utilized with some practice.
OLight flashlights surprised the firearms community when they launched the OSight two years ago. Their flagship product was the first magnetic recharging micro reflex sight red dot. This pistol red dot charges using a unique protective cover that also functions as a wired USB-C charger or detached as a mobile power bank for the OSight. The OSign XR has clever LED indicators to inform the user about the internal battery level and the battery level of the cover, so there should be no surprises at the range or on the job.
The HT4030CMI is Sunwayfoto’s tallest heavy-duty, large-diameter inverted-leg tripod. Unlike most tripods, the locking rings of the legs are located at the top of the leg near the tripod hinges. This position allows the shooter to easily reach the locking rings from a shooting position without having to break position to reach half-way down the leg as in traditional designs, while retaining the same extended length. This tripod is not only extra strong due to its 40mm diameter legs but also tall at over 6ft from foot to the tripod’s baseplate.
Main Material: Carbon fiber and Aluminum Leg Sections: 3 Leg Diameter: 40mm Max Height: 68.5 in./ 174cm Min Height: 3.9 in./ 9.8cm Length with legs folded: 31 in./78.5cm Net Weight: 4.9 lb./2.2kg Load Capacity: 66.1 lb./30kg Screw Thread: 3/8″ Leg Angles: 20°、55°、85° Top Plate Diameter: 2.68 in./6.8cm
You won’t find more vociferous groups of fanboys and haters than Vortex and Arken owners. Online, each is convinced their scope is the best. Today we are going to compare their 5-25×56 FFP long-range scope offerings and see who is right: the Strike Eagle (street price $700-$800) and the EP5 GenII 5-25×56 (street price $335-$535).
The Strike Eagle ships with both a throw lever and sun shade. The EP5 ships only ships with a sun shade but in the past, Arken has offered a bundled promotional “Accuracy Pack”: a throw lever, scope rings, and bubble level. The EP5 tested is one such scope.
Physically, the EP5 appears more stoutly constructed. The EP5 has the better-quality turrets. Its clicks are loud, crisp, and precise. The Strike Eagle feels mushy by comparison. The EP5’s turrets are also quite tall and oversized turrets which provides more physical space for larger and easier-to-read numbering.
Optically both scopes are surprisingly similar. The Strike Eagle also offers a more forgiving eye box. The Strike Eagle has a brighter and higher contrast image but with slightly more chromatic aberration at high power. Both scopes performed identically in resolving detail in my US Air Force reference chart.
In the end, both scopes’ optical performances were so similar that it’s pointless to claim one is “better” than the other. The Strike Eagle had a slightly brighter image but with more chromatic aberration. The Arken Long-range shooters will be well served with either scope for their similar optical performance. But for conscious shooters, the Discovery Optics ED-PRS is the clear winner.
I’ve been invited to be a Booth Influencer by Vector Optics at SHOT Show 2026. I’ll be filming Shorts of Vector’s scopes, making announcements, giving out swag and an optic or two. If you are attending SHOT, come to the Vector Optics booth and say, hi.
Will Chat GBT Large Language Models take your job? Maybe. But there’s a new A.I. paradigm coming which could take over. Lets learn about it from Paul Dravis of Future Pefect Machine. This video is sponsored by Aura. Stop leaving yourself vulnerable to data breaches. Go to my link https://aura.com/moondog to get a 14-day free trial and see if any of your data has been exposed.
This US gaming company owns Maxis Software, the creator of The Sims and Sim City. Games that popularized simulated models of cities, life, and the universe. It’s in the name.
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)
Large Language Models (LLMs) are powerful AI systems, built on deep learning (like Transformers) and trained on massive text datasets, that understand, generate, summarize, and translate human language, essentially predicting the next most probable word in a sequence to perform complex tasks like answering questions, writing code, and powering chatbots, with examples including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok.
GUEST
Paul Dravis is a former Managing Director of Bank of America, a former VP at JPMorganChase, and the founder of Future Perfect Machine, a technology analysis and consulting company focused on emerging technologies. That’s how I become friends with Paul as he was an early adopter of VR technology. https://www.futureperfectmachine.com/
CONTESTS
This month, there are two contests you can enter and win a prize. Enter both.
Whether to improve accuracy or to comply with your state’s unfair restrictions on semi-automatic AR rifles, bolt-action AR’s are now a thing. Bear Creek Arsenal (BCA) debuted its BC10 and BC15 bolt-action AR uppers at SHOT Show earlier this year. BCA is known for producing some of the most affordable ARs on the market, and this complete AR10 pattern rifle is indeed budget-friendly. The BC10 is available in several calibers, including 6.5 Creedmoor, .277 Fury, and .308, which they sent me to test.
The BC10 I received definitely looked budget. The handguard felt a little sharp and unfinished. The action felt rough. I mounted a Discovery Optics LHT 3-12×42 lightweight crossover tactical scope. For the 100-yard tests, I shot Winchester white box 147gr FMJ.
Recoil was exceptionally noticeable. Because it’s a bolt-action, the recoil buffer in the AR10 isn’t utilized. Moreover, the AR10’s MilSpec, flat-faced plastic stock made the recoil unpleasant to say the least. Fortunately, I added a Missouri Tactical M27/HK416 recoil buttstock pad to the end of the stock, which was a tangible improvement in the shooting experience.
Loading single cartridges directly into the chamber, I discovered that the AR10’s bolt catch would lock the bolt open on the empty magazine and prevent me from closing the bolt until I depressed the paddle. Out of the box, the BC10 shot an unremarkable 4-inch group at 100 yards. While the ammo wasn’t special, I can only hope the groups improve after the barrel is broken in.
To say that my BC10 has a rough action would be a gross understatement. It was the most difficult bolt-action I’ve ever operated, sticking after every shot and going into battery with occasional difficulties. Often, its lugs would fail to rotate and release after a shot or require a hard slam to work them. Undoubtedly, it would run better after a break-in period, but for now, it is frustrating. BCA has a poor reputation for QC, and this rifle certainly hasn’t helped that. What the BC10 does have going for it is its ridiculously affordable price and a MilSpec design that allows for upgrades.
