We’re just back from the annual ptarmigan hunt in Finnmark, Norway. This is what Alaska is to the US and as remote as it gets. What you see on the horizon in the image below is the Barents Sea. Next stop is Spitzbergen and thereafter the North Pole.
This area offers excellent ptarmigan hunting to anybody willing to walk up and down mountains for 6-9 hours a day. Before you get that far you have to carry a ridiculously heavy backback out to the cabin where you’ll stay for the hunt. When out hunting we carry both a shotgun and rifle. The shotgun is used for the near birds. The rifle is used for shots ranging from 50-200 meters. The rifle is carried in an Eberlestock pack.
The NeoPod was born out of these conditions. We wanted something light, fast to deploy, not making the gun tip-heavy and that would fit in the Eberlestock pack without snagging. Fast deployment is crucial. Shots have to made quickly at all angles and on a very uneven surface.
What you see below is a ptarmigan taken at 116 meters with a custom built Sako Vixen in .221 Fireball and with a NeoPod attached to a flush cup sling swivel. The bullet is a 50 grs Sako FMJ traveling at 832 m/s as measured with the SuperChrono. The PacNor 1:10 twist barrel delivers incredible precision. The silencer is interesting. It’s made by Tronrud Engineering using 3D printed titanium. The weight is only 220 grams and the gun is virtually silent.
The bipod is not restricted to light guns. It’s designed to handle any normal hunting caliber. It will be the first bipod engineered for the mountain range and not the shooting range.
We decided during the hunt to postpone production as we wanted to improve the user experience of the the leg adjustment button. It’s just a matter of adding a small thumb rest. This will delay launch with six-seven weeks.
The NeoPod Ultralight bipod will thus be on the market for Christmas 2014. The price will be around USD400 due to the high cost of the carbon fiber reinforced PEEK polymer. Below is a high resolution image of the bipod. Notice how sleek and simple it looks. It’s a masterpiece of engineering and on the cutting edge of molding technology.
It’s taken three years and countless iterations to get this far. You wouldn’t want anything else for Christmas this year.
Adaptors are in the works for standard sling swivel, flush cup vertical and horizontal, Picatinny, Blaser R93 and R8 Professional. There wil also be an embedded version and an add-on extender for silencers. For guns with wooden stocks and sling swivel mounted on the tip of the forearm, we recommend having your gunsmith install a standard stud or flush cup under the forearm.
The video below demonstrates the standard adaptor.