I have handed them all over to a friend for testing. My plan is to launch a youtube channel this year where I test airguns and gear.
Basically he doesn't have the money to buy them himself and I don't have a property where I can regularly shoot pest animals.
So he gets to borrow the scopes in the hopes he will shot some videos for me.
I will probably be handing out scopes to more people as he now has 5 scopes and having him trying to record videos for me might be too much work.
I will see if I can offer pest control to some farms or something. Otherwise I might just make some videos with animal shaped lures at different ranges.
He has been testing the Zulus now for about a month, has shot videos shooting racoon dogs, a crow and a duck.
He unboxed the DS35 to try first and has shot a rat with it.
So far he likes the Zulus the best because of it's small form factor but the LRF isn't working correctly, at 20meters it shows 23meters. His other LRF and the DS35 show 20m. I will have to take a look at it once the snow is gone.
Once the snow is gone in a few months I will take them to the range to shoot several videos there.
I don't know a single "reviewer" who puts out what I would consider a proper review of anything, reason being that shortform videos you pump out as fast as you can make more money than proper videos where you truly test products.
I also have a last gen ATN 4K scope I might make a video about. Problem is people longer than 15 minutes are "too long" to keep peoples attention.
Youtube also had some rule that videos needed to be 10 minutes which resulted in people just adding filler to drag it out.
Not sure what the best form factor is now days but I guess I'll see how the channel develops.
Currently the plan is to test the following: 13 guns from Hatsan, Skout Epoch, Huben K1, LCS-SK19, Altaros M24. If I have the money I might buy the DRS Pro or some other FX gun to test.
For scopes I intend to test mostly digital ones: Pard, HikMicro, ATN, Arken and a few china specials.
I have all of the above except for the Hatsan rifles that I should receive sometime in Feb or March. I will order the Altaros M24 as soon as the new stocked version comes out. I don't have the HikMicro as none of my suppliers have received it yet but might be able to get one in Feb or March.
I started with my life savings of about €10 000 and I have about €3000 left over so hoping to get everything going this year.
I have basically spent my life savings on my airgun store and hope to make some videos, if I make any money back is questionable as youtube doesn't like "gun" videos and I live on a small island with basically no market so I won't be selling much either.
I'm a sick pensioner so it's something I can spend my time doing, if it doesn't pan out I can try to sell everything and hope to get around 50% back.
