The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 557: Shooting with Sig

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

Steven Rinella speaks with Patrick Hanley and Daniel Horner from Sig Sauer, Janis Putelis, Garrett Long, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: When a guy dares to do a "stick 'em up" robbery of your dad's veterinarian business; getting schooled at shooting competitions; the Sig Cross; the "man bun" caliber; left-handed Clovis hunters; how Steve just wants a folded stock; MOA or MIL; the new long range record holder; image stabilizing binoculars and rangefinders; and more.  Connect with Steve, MeatEater, and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.

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and Patrick Hanley. I'm going to lay out some of these credentials. Garrett, can you fill in with what it means? Not as well as Daniel can. Okay. So are you still in the military? I'm finishing up my time in the National Guard.

Yep. So that means you got close to 20 years? Almost, man. That's a common move, right, in the service? Yeah, yeah. Finishing the National Guard. Yep. So that means you got close to 20 years. Almost, man. That's a common move, right, in the service. Yeah, yeah. Finishing the National Guard. Yep. Tried to.

Yeah, I've got two and a half years left. Hit 20. So you work at SIG. Right. And you're in the National Guard. Yep. And you enlisted at what age? 18.

Yep. So 2006, joined, and then did 13 years at the army marksmanship unit and how many years 13 yeah 13 years it was good it was good time did you come in being a shooter becoming being a marksman yeah so actually uh i started competing when i was 12 um i won a couple of national championships and that got the amu's attention and they invited me down for a one week tryout. So they bring you down, you're still a civilian, you shoot with them, but it's, it's not so much a test of your shooting ability. They want to see if they can stand you, uh, because you're on a little six man team and they want to make sure that they actually want to be around you 24 seven and travel. So I know you guys know how that is.

So you don't want to be attached. Like you can be the best shooter hunter in the world. If I can't stand to be around you for a week, like you got to go. Yeah. I was like, yeah. So your dad must've been a big time into it or mom.

Yeah. Yeah. It was crazy. My, uh, my dad was a veterinarian and, one day a guy walked in and robbed him, uh,

walked in and stuck a revolver in his face and went to rob the place. And he ended up, um, one day a guy walked in and robbed him, uh, walked in and stuck a revolver in his face and went to rob the place. And he ended up, uh, the guy put the gun down for just a second so he could try to get the, uh, the cash box. And when he put the gun down, my dad dove across and took the gun from him and went to work on him, put him in the hospital. And the dude did a ton of years. I think he's still in prison for trying to rob. Your dad got the drop on him and got it and hit him oh yeah oh yeah beat the brakes off the guy so yeah then then not shot him no he didn't shoot the craziest thing the guy jumped on my dad's back he turned around with a revolver put it up

under his chin and pulled the trigger and the guy got his pinky between the hammer and the firing pin that's the only thing that saved his life. Yeah. And they subdued him. The cops took him to jail. And then my dad was like, well, I'm going to – he had a gun. He had a pistol in the drawer that he was standing in front of, but the guy just walked in with a revolver and cocked it.

To rob a veterinarian. Yeah, not the tip of the spear of criminals. Because a lot of people go to the vet i'll be paying cash on a saturday on a saturday yeah yeah yeah like if yanni yeah when you when you paid up on mingus did you walk in there at ten thousand dollars and just count them out no no exactly so uh he he wanted uh he wanted to carry a gun in his pocket, and he decided that if I'm going to carry a gun, I have the responsibility to be able to do it the correct way.

And so we got involved with the local IDPA pistol shooting competitions, and I was a 12-year-old kid who was homeschooled. So I sat in the corner and taped targets and picked up brass, and then finally one of the old guys gave me a chance to shoot a shoot a stage. And I did it safely, you know, obviously not well, but safely. And they continued to allow me to, to shoot. And so just went on from there. So I would, I would get up early in the morning. I do my schoolwork and then I would go to the range and I would cut grass, paint targets, load ammo, whatever for, for a guy named D.R. Middlebrooks, who I worked for until I left for the army. And he taught me how to shoot cause he was a national champion. And, um, yeah, just took off. So did you like, was it that you were going to go in the army and you were going to shoot in

the army? Yeah. So you kind of had some level of guarantee. Well, yeah. Once I made it to the team, I had a slot. So I had to go into the basic training at Fort Benning, graduate infantry school there, and then was immediately assigned to the AMU. So I had a guaranteed path to that place. Now, you didn't have a guaranteed job, right? Just getting there was kind of the easy part. After that, you got to stay. But I was going to go to the army no matter what. And, uh, you know, my parents had invested so much in me. I wanted to go give

that a try. And then from there, I spent about half the time competing and about half the time, uh, teaching deploying soldiers. So I would, uh, there were many, many times I would teach for a week or two, go shoot a match on the weekend, and then immediately go back and continue training guys. So that was my life for 13 years. My old man told a story 100 times, and the older I get, the less it makes sense. Well, just to give you an example, we had this guy that we thought was our uncle, but he wasn't our uncle. And he had a stuffed monkey. And he always always told us and he was missing some of his fingers the monkey or the uncle no my uncle gunner was missing fingers and had a stuffed monkey

and he told us that that monkey bit my fingers and the zoo killed it and stuffed it and gave it to me so as an adult as an adult i called my mom and he said you know that that monkey that bit uncle gunner she's like a monkey that bit uncle gunner she said uncle gunner cut his fingers off on a lawnmower i don't know where he got that monkey just had that monkey hanging in his house that's awesome my old man tells you the story all the time where he's like growing up in chicago he said there's a butcher down the road from him okay and he said that a burglar comes in and for whatever reason lays the pistol to rob the butcher somehow lays

his rests his hand on the butcher block in this quick-witted not quick-witted that means you're funny this quick thinking butcher severs the man's hand with a cleaver and I'd share that story and then after a while I'm like I just can't picture robbing someone and going like

that you rest your pistol on the cutting board? Well, there you go. Lazy. There's a scenario in which it happens. Yeah, you told me that story a hundred times.

Stick them up. I just don't know, do you do that? I don't have a lot of experience robbing people with a revolver. Well, if you ever do, let me know if you find it,

if you find it necessary to rest your hand on the cutting board. He was just like a lazy robber. Like, he was just leaning up against the... He needed a stable rest. He wanted to like a lazy robber. Like he was just leaning up against the. He needed a stable rest. He wanted to make a good first shot.

You can make the first shot count. Yeah. So how did you guys meet Patrick now? You met through SIG? Yeah. So when I came to SIG, I was a rifle product manager and I was like at a point where I was like, you know, we had pistol shooters and I'm like, I want a rifle shooter. I want like somebody who can go compete for us on the rifle side. And I started digging in and I found a bunch of Daniel's videos.

And I was like, I went to our head of marketing. I'm like, this is the guy I want. And they're like, well, we got this guy and this guy. And I'm like, no, this is the guy. Like, this has to be the only guy. Come to find out the two guys that kind of got him up and going worked with us. And they were like, yeah, Daniel's the guy. Oh, that's cool.

And, uh, yeah, so he came on right about the time that we started working on the cross. So Daniel was like part of that first venture with me on that. And we did a bunch of hunts together when we first started the cross. So we kind of earned our friendship on the mountain together doing stuff. And like, we learned we have the same type of like, uh, creative, we're the idea guys, so like we go out and we're like, why can't you do it like this? And then we have the really good people that actually make things that make stuff happen that we have at the shop.

Yeah. Oh, I never got around to the credentials. 13 time USPSA. What's that stand for? United States Practical Shooting Association. 13 time USPSA multi-gun champ. Four-time three-gun national champ.

Three-gun meaning pistol, shotgun, rifle. Yep, pistol, rifle, carbine. Eight-time sniper champ. Two-time IDPA. Yeah, that's what allowed me to get a chance to go to the AMU and try out. What's the IDPA stand for? International Defensive Pistol Association.

National champ. Yep. And then former Army marksman unit member. You and I took the liking. I'll tell you what happened when I met you. Can we talk about that trick? Yeah. It wasn't that unsafe.

It wasn't unsafe at all. No way I heard. We're talking about people should listen. It wasn't a trick. It was a demonstration. Yeah. Not a trick. It wasn't like a shooting trick.

We were talking about form and shooting guns, shooting rifles and different mistakes people make. And I don't know what we got on. Oh, you know what we were talking about is a suppressor. Oh, okay. We got on the subject of a suppressor changes your zero, but we were also talking about posture and shooting form. And when you rest your, like if you were to rest your rifle on a rock or over a tree limb, you know.

Big difference. Lay the barrel on something. Anyways, we got to talk about this. I think it came into the conversation where we're talking about how a lot of people, when they get that rest, they like to put their hand on top of the barrel. I thought we were talking about what your suppressor does why your suppressor changes your zero so much anyways yeah uh dan had me line up on a target was maybe 100 yards away yep okay so i'm shooting a bolt rifle and we line up with a bipod on a target that's 100 yards away, and he presses my shoulder or arm to say, I'm going to put this much downward pressure.

Not much. No. Yeah. Like the weight of a beer can. Yeah, yeah. What most people would think would be insignificant. Yeah, the weight of a beer. A pound.

An insignificant press. And he puts his finger, not his hand, a finger on the end of that barrel. Not the very end. Not the part with the hole in it. He kind of corked the hole

with his finger. Toward the end, not the muzzle. Toward the end, not the muzzle, toward the end, downward pressure with one finger and I think that thing dropped nine inches

or something like that. It's insane. It's predictable, but it's way more than people give it credit for. Yeah. Point being, when you're shooting

and you're like, oh, I'm going to rest into some goofy position and my barrel's on a rock or something. Don't do that. Holy cow, that's a big difference. You'll go four foot over the back. So you guys are going to shoot with Yanni this week?

Yep, we're doing our elite training guide thing that we do every year, so he's coming out to shoot that. He's in the advanced class this year. He did it last year. I graduated. So Yanni, you graduated to advanced? He graduated to advanced, yeah.

What did you have to do to pull that off? We did that same trick where you press down the barrel and I had to make my bullet kind of shoot in a spiral like that down range. You're going to have to start doing his credentials for shooting when he comes on every time now. Yeah, lay it on me. I just went through the course that they set up last year, which was, I mean, we practiced a bunch of different positions,

shot off some tripods. The pistol shooting was the most fun for me. I never really had, I'd say, professional pistol instruction. And so I did that, just the instruction, and then they had a course set up where we kind of walked and you didn't know when or where the next target was going to be. You would just walk. And then someone would say, I forget, I didn't do it with you. I didn't shooting rifles or pistols pistols now. And, uh, all of a sudden they'd be like, all right,

right side, right next to the, you know, cedar. And you'd look over there and there'd be one and you'd shoot it and then keep walking. And, uh, it was fun. And you'd look over there and there'd be one and you'd shoot it and then keep walking and uh it was fun and you graduated yeah i guess so they invited me for round two but it's mostly guides and outfitters yeah and a lot of the reason we do that we do it with with both kind of walks of life but what we do a lot with the guides and outfitters that they don't get taught is like first of all like a lot of the guys that come there that are guides and outfitters they're not always great shooters they They're great hunters. Like they know how to find stuff, but when we send them product and we know they're going to be able to use the glass well, what we do with this is we're teaching them how to help other people. So you get a guy that comes up on a sheep hunt and he shoots twice a year, which a lot of these guys get.

And he's got the mental wherewithal to teach somebody a positioning, not to put your finger on the barrel, not to lean it on a bad spot. Like those are things that we teach these guys so that when they bring a client and it's like, how do you give a client a better experience with our product or whatever they're shooting by teaching them how to position right before they make a shot? Because a lot of it is like up to the moment is what the outfit is there for. Like they're bringing you to the spot, but what do you want to tout as an outfitter? Like 99% success rate, not like, Hey, you always get a shot. You want the success. So it's better for them. And the guys learn a lot at it to learn how to teach people how to shoot as well.

That's why we pair everybody up so that they work with the other person to kind of get them positioned, learn how to shoot off tripods, off backpacks, off all different scenarios. So you're kind of getting used to it and using range finders dialing moa versus mrad stuff like that you know garrett you've been winning any tournaments lately um man it's been like some high highs and low lows man uh i got third down in san diego in open light probably like the worst conditions match i've ever shot in there's like 30 mile an hour crosswinds when i signed up for san diego i thought like palm trees and stuff like that and it was actually high desert and sand um and miserable weather like 43 degrees raining and

wind um and uh came back from that did a mat a locals match and got steamrolled like bad. Didn't do good at all. Went to another match. It was a smaller match, but cleaned the match. I didn't miss a target during that match and was like thinking maybe I should quit my day job and just be a professional shooter. Did you win any money? No, you don't win money. There's no money

in the sport. So you've never gone to one of these and came home with a bunch of money? It's not like rodeo? It's not like rodeo? No, it's not like rodeo. Like in like the three gun world and stuff like that Daniel does, there's some money stuff in there, mostly in NRL, Hunter and all that. And even in PRS, a lot of times it's primarily product.

Like, so you can win a gun that might be worth five grand. Yeah. Right. And then that's like, you see a lot of these guys, eBay's accounts are just on fire. Right? Because they're just selling junk they won. They'll just like, they'll pick up a new scope, throw it on eBay. Yeah.

We got some dumb golfer down here, Brian Harmon. He's winning money by the millions. Yeah. It's not quite like golfing yet. I would advocate for that. I actually, I did compete the way I met Daniel. I competed against Daniel four years ago. Oh, you did?

The Burris Extreme that we had down. Who did better? The CompExpo, you guys. The CompExpo, that's right. Here's the deal. I'm going to get from my perspective. You're going to give who did better from your perspective? No, I'm going to give you like is that this is not like a basic summary of the match like a score thing all right

don't bore me with the details give me your perspective yeah well that might be for you with the details but um so this was like an invite only why I got invited. Doesn't matter. I shouldn't have been, um, an invite only match, um, for 10 dudes, right. That they kind of hand selected in the industry to shoot an NRL hunter match, a three gun match, uh, an archery match. NRL means. National rifle league. Okay. Right.

So long distance shooting. Yeah. Um, archery and trap so they took four different types of shooting and combined it into one and everybody had to do all of them the 10 guys had to do all of them right so i got invited um and again probably shouldn't have been because i showed up and i was like you know wearing my meat eater shirt uh everyone else is like daniel where they're like just stuck with logos everywhere because they do this for a living. They look like NASCAR drivers.

They do. They do. And I had like the shirt that says like your logo here kind of a thing. How many matches have you shot up to that point? I had done a couple NRLs, never done three gun. Yeah. And this is the finals of the NRL. Like the hardest NRL match of the year.

It's a world championship three gun match. And it's a sporting clays course that was put together by some like Olympic level sporting clays. Like no joke. Yeah. It was. And it was miserable, man. Like I've never felt so beat down in my life because, you know, we had to do an entire NRL match in a day, which usually they're two day matches.

20 stages. Yeah. 20 stages. What kind of distances for shooting? So we were shooting, you know, anywhere between like four and 1100. Okay. Right. Um, and it was just like high wind, miserable heat.

Like it wasn't like fun conditions. Um, the three gun stuff, I ran in there with primarily borrowed gear the only thing that wasn't borrowed was my p320 um and like i was using some like bullpup uh carbine too that just it was a mess right break open side by side yeah exactly you know like i just started picking up rocks and throwing at targets. You know. The sporting clays was 150 rounds of sporting clays. 150 rounds. It never ended.

Which broke open my cheek. So that was before NRL. I didn't have my shotgun fitted to me real well. I was using my three gun shotgun, four clays. And I had to the with that shotgun particularly i had to like put my cheek right on the the rise of the shotgun and so it just welted me open so then i went to the nrl match with this like i looked like i got in a fight right like i had this big well on my face um the nrl thing i did okay at i'll point out i might have actually

edged out daniel yeah he got did. Yeah, he got me. But then like everything else got destroyed. So I got ninth out of 10 people. And then Daniel actually did it in less time than anybody else because he had to go on a sheep hunt and then still won it by like a long shot. It wasn't that close. So you got number one. You got number nine out of 10.

Yeah. And then we got a sheep. Yeah, yeah. That was good. It was so funny because we did that and we flew out we we finished that match friday night and flew out at on a seven uh six o'clock flight saturday morning to go to alaska and got in we let you know how it's just plane after plane to finally get in there and we finally got into the back country grabbed our packs and we were what six miles six miles, seven miles in.

And we sat down, and Patrick gets an in-reach message, and he looks over at me. We're like sitting about this far apart, and he's like, dude, you won. And I was like, that's awesome. And that was it. That was the celebration. We were destroyed, man. But there's a bow shooting component to it. Yeah, it was a. That one Tack put on. Tack actually did that. So you shot a bow in it. Oh, man. Yeah. But there's a bow shooting component to it. Yeah, it was a.

That one Tack put on. Tack actually did that. So you shot a bow in it. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He beat me at that too. He, he learned, he was telling me how he learned to shoot a bow like two weeks before that.

And I shot that with him and it just made me feel disgusting as a bow hunter that he got that bow two weeks before and shot that well. I went down to my buddy down in Fort Benning. He's like a national champion archer and i was shooting this hunting bow and and what made me go down to him was i was shooting it at like 50 yards and i'd shoot a good group and have one that was like off call and so i went down to him i'm like dude i don't know what i'm doing like fix me right it's definitely me and uh he's like man you just got the wrong equipment right like you're trying to you're trying to ask an f-150 do what a ferrari's supposed to do And I'm like, he's like, I run a bow shop,

so I don't want to be that guy that's like selling you a bow, but just try this. And he gave me that bow, and the thing just wanted to shoot in the middle, like every single shot. Yeah, it was great. I haven't found that bow yet. Does the Army own any bows? Not that I'm aware of.

Rambo. Just crossbows. Rambo took on what was left of the army in Vietnam. He was ahead of his time, though. He was a little out of the box. So they don't do any, this is not a bow thing there. I don't think they advertise that part. There's a back room of flaming arrows

that nobody goes into anymore. Hey, so I want to talk a little bit about, Yanni was just saying we should do a whole podcast about caliber battles. Garrett was saying how, let me set this up first because lately I even recommended this to Corinne. But my kids shoot the Sig Cross and 6.5. I proselytized that gun. I've had tremendous luck teaching my kids how to shoot it. Yep.

Because with kids, Yanni can back me up on this. You guys got kids how old? Two and four. I'm five and ten. And an 18-year-old. You're what age? Five and ten. Okay. They get all worked up about kick.

Yep. All they talk about. I was just talking to my nephew's boy. What's that make him? That's nothing. I could marry that kid. Relation. Something removed?

No. I don't know. Talking to my nephew's boy. And that's the whole primary thing he wants to talk about is the kick. What's the kick? What's the kick?

That's what my son asked me every time. They get all worked up and they conflate noise it's just there's the noise or the kick it gets turned into the same thing in their head right and it's they can't tell the one from the other and i've done things with them like in preparing to turkey hunt i'll have them shoot target loads right i'll put ear plugs in them i'll put foam ear plugs in them then i'll put ear muffs on them and have them shoot target loads and then never even tell them that i'm loading in a turkey load and then they get a

shot at a turkey and they never ever talk about this horrendous kick that's supposed to be so horrible so in teaching the kids to shoot it was a lot of stuff about kicking everything but i got i started them shooting a sig cross with a suppressor and a bipod like you know uh like a nice heavy bipod and they shoot and they giggle when they shoot and they shoot they can shoot good man like they're they shoot better than i ever they shoot better than i could shoot my, man. They shoot better than I ever... They shoot better than I could shoot in my 20s. They like to shoot steel plates.

They have a good time shooting the guns. They're just super shootable, so I'm always telling people about them. And then Garrett... I don't even really... I see this, but I didn't understand it. You said people love to hate the 6.5. Creed more. They creed more.

I feel like that's arguing about... It's a stigma. You said like people love to hate the 6.5. Creedmoor. Creedmoor, yeah. I feel like that's like arguing about. It's a stigma. Like the amount of memes out there about getting a 6.5. Because, well, it was trendy, but it's also like a light caliber for hunting, right? So it's kind of like, well, if you can't handle a man's gun, you get a 6.5. It's referred to as the man bun caliber. Right. They call it the man bun. Yeah you get a 6.5. It's referred to as the man bun caliber. Right. They call it the man bun.

Yeah. And, uh, there you go. That's why. That's the memes. That's what most of the memes are. There,

there's a lot of man bun. Yeah. References. And so it's, so it's, it's that it doesn't kick enough. Yeah. Kind of.

Yeah. Right. Right. Or it's not edgy enough. Like, cause it got a whole lot of marketing hype when it came out the the gate so like you know daniel and i were talking if you go to a match and most people are shooting six five creedmoors right if somebody is shooting that gun you ask them what are you

shooting most of the time they'll like look kind of down at the ground and be like oh six five creedmoor right they might be shooting like a less kicking gun like someone else might be shooting a less kicking gun like a six dasher or something like that oh i'm shooting like a six br right and they're proud about it but even the guys that are shooting six five creedmoors are a little bit like well you know shoot it's just the thing yeah there's a stigma to it so when you guys when you guys built when you when built it, how did you, were you worried about it? No. I mean, that, we were good. We were ready for the man bun.

We, when you look at the market for hunting rifles, 6.5 and.308 just dominate. Like, there's definitely, like, the West has changed a lot of that with bigger calibers and stuff, but. When you say.308, you mean like a 308? A 308. Okay. Not things in the 308 caliber. No, just those two calibers make up like 60% of the hunting rifles that sell. What?

It's insane. Still today? Yeah. Now that people are just like making up calibers every other morning. Yeah. And that's the thing is like calibers don't catch easy. Like the 308 was military and the fact that it caught on was kind of strange, but it was just available ammunition in its time.

And so everybody like took to it and it became a popular cartridge. Six, five kind of came along. I was actually, I was working at my prior company when Hornady brought it to us and we ended up doing a caliber called the 30 TC, which was the 30 Cal version of that six, five Creedmoor at the time. And that kind of like went up and died. But six, five was not popular for like five years.

It was like slowly getting there, but calibers don't just take off. Hold on a minute. 60% of the hunting rifles sold, however you categorize it, are in six, five Creedmoor and 308. Yep. It's insane. Like I looked at it, I was surprised however you categorize it, are in 6.5 cream or in 3.08. Yep.

It's insane. Like I looked at it, I was surprised when I looked at it, when you look at all the other calibers, they're all like even 300 wind mag is the biggest in like the Magnum category, but even it's not that big that you would think it is. It's like, it's a very, it's crazy how many

people buy those, but they're accessible cartridges to get. They're fairly cheap. And if you're a whitetail hunter, I mean, they work in most areas of the country. So. Do you know what the 308, uh, 6.5 breakdown is between those two?

Uh, we were, we were talking, we were talking about this the other day. It, it basically like out to like 300 yards, there's not a lot of change. I mean, if you're shooting. Are you talking like percentage of sales? Oh, percentage. Exactly. Uh, 6.5 is like an edge higher

Oh really? I got a handful I need to grow out me a little man I need to grow me out a little man bun I'm going to cut some of my daughter's hair off And make me a little man bun That goes on the back I'm back. Hey, folks.

Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers. You're irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Calibers are, it's a super interesting thing to me because we were saying this it's regional too like oh that's no i don't i don't i was gonna ask you now when you were a kid yeah you grew up hunting yeah what everybody shoot when you were a kid 30 30 oh totally it was if you were bad ass yep if you were bad ass you had a 30-odd set yeah and i was new england so it was the benoits it was the 35 wheel and it was a 7600 pump or or, uh, uh, like you had either a Henry or

Marlin or you had nothing like lever guns and pump guns. That was it. You never used a semi. What state? Uh, New Hampshire. Okay. New Hampshire and Maine. Cause the 7,600 pump was the, in Pennsylvania was known as the Amish machine gun.

It was, it was too. Yeah. Like it was the same way up in Maine. Like they just emptied it every time whether they needed to or not so uh yeah when i like when i was a kid i was born right at the 30 30 to like in our area in the upper midwest michigan it was like i was brought up in the transition of the 30 30 to the 30 out six you'd say that when yanni with the hunting guns uh where i grew up we couldn't use rifles well you guys were in the shotgun yeah we were in the shotgun zone so got it i killed my first deer all with 12 gauge yeah uh so what's

up with putting the cross like making sig crosses in a 300 that's all i ever shoot i don't shoot anything but i mean me personally that's what i like to shoot yeah i think because of the volume So what's up with putting the cross, like making Sig crosses in a 300? That's all I ever shoot. I don't shoot anything. But I mean, me personally, that's what I like to shoot. Yeah. I think because of the volume of the market, we did the short action first and the Magnum gun second, but we did that with the premise, knowing that if we made a Magnum action, if we designed it so that it could hold pretty much anything that was available, that we, we started 300 wind mag, and then the world is our oyster for making other calibers. Now, like we get, we have a 300 PRC we're doing we're doing a 7 prc once you have that length of the the action

you're pretty much able to do whatever you want so we did that out to 300 prc knowing we could do a bunch of other cartridges too what percent of guns in america are left-handed whoo it's an interesting thing because like if you look at it it's like 10%, but having worked in a lot of, like I used to travel around and visit with dealers a lot. And I think most people change to shooting right-handed because they can never find the left-handed gun they want. And the dealers don't want to carry them because it's like, sure, I'll get 10 guns and these cartridges and this bolt gun. And then I got to go do the same thing for left hand. So they're like, just give me a 308 and left

hand. So if the guy doesn't want that cartridge or whatever it is, like they don't have it. So it's, I think it's, it's a little bit weighted where I think more people would do it. Cause like left-handed shotguns seem like they're a lot more popular. Like people are pretty, like if somebody's

left-handed, they shoot a left-handed shotgun. But a lot of the people. Yeah, but I mean a left-handed shotgun mostly was just that. The ejection. Yeah, you remember that. Well, like I'm a lefty. You just learn to live with the ejection. But you know the Browning BPS?

Yep. Oh, it had that little thumb. Oh, yeah. On the wrong side. The tang, what do you call it? Like a, I think it's a tang safety. Yep, tang safety. Yep.

That just made it ambidextrous. Yep. The fact that the shells are spitting off across your face is just like you're never gonna solve that problem yeah but that would be like a lefty but i'll just say i like i grew up like hendrix like hendrix had that was left-handed but played a right-handed guitar yep so for me like all shooting all those shotguns that had a safety on the trigger mechanism when i grab a gun i still if i'm holding the shotgun my finger i'm still wrapping my hand around like that's just my my hand i can't explain it i guess i walk around with my middle with my left middle finger reaching under the trigger guard and that rests on the safety.

If you're like trying to jump bird and still haven't undone that. I still catch myself. Cause you just don't have them. Yeah. Like if you're like, you just shoot hand-me-downs like for most people, but these dudes did this thing where they were looking at clove, you know,

the Clovis point is I've tried to refine this, but I looked at it a long time ago and actually quoted it in something these guys are trying to figure out the prevalence of left-handedness among ice age clovis hunters and they were looking at re-sharpening flakes on clovis points so after you made the point and hafted it and you can tell when they re flaked it and they're like they were going by the fact that i can't remember i think they're going by the fact that if you were a lefty you would have held the foreshaft in your left hand so that's how they were able to tell meaning you're holding it and you're holding it and you're pressure flaking and then flipping

to pressure flake. And these dudes had determined, I can't remember what it was, 17% of Clovis hunters were left-handed. It seems like some total BS, dude. But yeah. Makes sense. So they had left-handed stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

You're just on a self-validating mission there is all that was. Yeah. But I don't, you know, I haven't been able to refine that, but I ran into it one time and just surprised because the sporting goods world is mean to left-handed people. Yeah, they are. And that's why I said, I think most people just like most of the people that work at SIG, when we came out with that bolt gun, they were like, oh, I've been shooting righties my whole life.

Like they don't, they just don't, they're used to not doing it. So they teach themselves the other way. I think that in the future, being able to fold your stock. Yep. Because I've had a handful of folding stocks. When it comes to putting your stuff on your backpack, man, God, it just changes the whole game, dude. People make all kinds of crazy ways to carry guns on a backpack. You know, with those little kangaroo power chips and all that once you fold the stock it just click click you don't there's no i mean it gives you like something to grab onto yeah yeah

i never owned anything but a traditional gun and like traditional style rifle growing up and even when i worked when i got the sig and uh a lot of that started like i took one of our one of our better longer suppressors on a hunt on a traditional style rifle before we made the cross the SIG and, uh, a lot of that started, like I took one of our, one of our better, longer suppressors on a hunt on a traditional style rifle before we made the cross and me and my boss went out and, uh, we ended up shooting an elk and we were walking out and I got hung up on so much deadfall. And I think I turned that rifle like 10 waves from Sunday to try to reposition it on the pack. And I'm already tired. We're walking out with meat on our backs. And I just remember sitting there with him and I'm like, why do we do this?

Like, I'm thinking of all the guns we make at work and I'm like, why doesn't like more rifles fold? And he's like, well, you know, hunters, they like traditional style stuff and it's hard to get into that world. I'm like, I think it's because they don't know. I feel like they just need to know that they have no other options.

Yeah. I think it's not known. It's such a difference. And same thing with short barrels. Like part of that is some of the new England in us because we, like, I never saw a long barrel rifle growing up, but if you look at rifle barrel sales, it's 24 inch, like big time, like that's a lot of what sells in most calibers. But when you look at most calibers, if you did it properly, every caliber would have a different length barrel.

Like it would be 23.2 or 19.6. Like its own sweet spot. Yeah. Where the point of diminishing returns hits, like you don't, once you stop burning powder and you're getting minimal gains, how much longer do you want to carry with you? And that was how Daniel, he worked with me on

developing the first cross barrel lengths was he literally bought rifles and took a hacksaw and went one inch at a time and recorded data. And we went through it and we're like, cause we wanted to have suppressor length barrels that you put a suppressor on and it's not some crazy length now. Yeah. We were on a conference call and everybody was like, well, what barrel length should we go with? And everybody was throwing out ideas. And I was like, well, do, do we know? And me and Patrick started really like pressing guys on like, why do you feel this way? You know, what, what's making you say that? And nobody really had any justification. So yeah, we just went out and bought, bought two guns and bought the, the four

most popular hunting ammunitions and went down to the range. And I started at 24 inches, shot five rounds over the chrono, cut an inch off all the way down to 16 and a half inches. Talk about what happened on the, what happened with this? How does that work? Like, what are you looking for? So to, to see when you see that massive step off in velocity. So when, when you cut off an inch from 24 to 23, you might lose 40 feet per second or 30 feet per second. And, but when you step from 17 and a half inches to 16 and a half inches, you might lose 130 feet per second. So there's somewhere where it's like, you know, we're still making efficient powder burn and we don't want to cut into that portion of the barrel. We want to,

so what we found with the, uh, six, five Creedmoors, we lost a lot of velocity between 18 and 16 inches. So that's why the short cross has an 18 inch 6.5 creamer barrel, but a 16 inch 308 barrel. And to get into the nerd side of it. So how long is the three? What's the sweet spot for three? Or not the sweet spot. What's the diminishing return on the 300?

20. Like 22, 22. Oh, so they need to be long. Well, you got to get that powder burn yeah so if you think it's it's it's relative to the volume of the barrel if you really want to go down like the nerd route so if you think about how much volume is in a 65 barrel versus 308 barrel maybe you pour the liquid in there and then measure it out yeah how much is in there i mean we could do the math on it but it's it's significantly more if you think of the area of the circle is it in

tablespoons i mean it'd be in of- Is it in tablespoons? I mean, it'd be in whatever we put it in. We could use- No, I never thought about that. Yeah. How much volume is in there? Yeah. Well, it's actually significantly- Like a couple, like a shock glass.

This is really interesting to me. You're transferring that chemical energy into the bullet, right? So that's what you're trying to do. And the face of that bullet is where it's absorbing all that energy from the bullet, right? So like that's what you're trying to do is you're in the face of that bullet is where it's absorbing all that energy from the powder burning. So the larger the face of that bullet has to absorb the energy of the powder, the more energy will be transferred into that projectile. So if you think about a small bullet, like it can't be accelerated over the same distance

as quickly because it's not exposed to as much pressure in the same area. So that's why you can get these shorter barrels on fatter bullets to go equally fast as the lighter bullets of the smaller caliber. Yeah, well, that doesn't jive with what you're just saying, that 22 inches for, like, that's a bigger bullet. So, but it's relative. So, it's where you see the giant velocity drop, right? So, in a.308, I've got 40 grains of powder. In a.300 wind mag, I've got 78 grains of powder. So, I've got to burn 30, I've got 30-some more grains of powder burning.

And also, I've got, if I light off all that powder at the exact same time, my pressure is way higher on a 300 wind mag. It's higher anyway, but if you use the same speed powder, it would be, it would be a bomb, right? So you got to use a slower powder that kind of pushes that bullet. So I raise up to 65,000 PSI and I stay there as long as I can while that bullet's in the barrel and then it drops off. And so that's where these guys play, try to play the powder game to get a slow pushing powder for your big bullets because that bullet's in that barrel longer. Whereas if you're in a 308, I've got less powder. And I also know that the bullet's not going to be in the barrel as long, so I can use a little bit quicker burn rate powder. But you know, you're starting it. If I, if I got a 24 inch 308,

I might go from 2750 on a 24 inch barrel to 2550 in a 16 inch barrel on a 300 wind mag. I might go from 3,100 feet a second in a 24 inch barrel to 2,500 feet a second in a 16 inch barrel right so it's like i go from 31 50 at 24 to 29 50 at 20 no one really cares but if i go from 29 3 000 feet a second to 25 100 feet a second like why not just shoot a 308 i got less oh recoil right yeah i'm with you yeah um you what I asked you about before, but I can't remember what you told me. It's being like the speed of powder burns. What is the main thing that's going wrong when you get your rifle too hot at the range? Because I'd heard like so many different things. Like some people say you chamber the round and it heats the powder up and the powder burns at a different because it's hot now.

Yeah, and it's true. That is true. It is true. But you got to be really running on the ragged edge. Like nothing that you're going to go get from the store is going to do that. So what is the main, when your gun gets too hot and you start shooting wild, what is the main thing going wrong? I, there's a little bit of black magic to long range rifle shooting, and I believe it's the expansion of the metals.

So you, you have, you have that that long, think about that barrel, right? And it's long and skinny, and there's a hole roughly in the middle, right? But we all know, if you look down a bunch of barrels, that hole's not in the specific middle every single time. Really? Yeah, 100%. Like, that's a a big long hole to, to drill perfectly straight.

Um, so, or hammer for whatever, however that your particular barrel gets made. Um, so if you have any portion of that barrel expanding at a different rate than the other portion of the barrel, it's literally bending. Yeah.

But then the other, the biggest thing is, and people talk about like barrel burning ammo and like that, that is true to a degree, but it's a lot of that heat cycling. Right. So it's like, if I get that, if I get the throat of that barrel, super, super hot, and then continue to put 65,000 PSI on it, you're just hitting it with a little plasma cutter. Every time that thing goes off, you're going to eat up the erosion or you're going to erode

the throat of that thing. And then you're going to start marring and scarring bullets. And the gun's going to stop shooting well. And it is a function of volume of bullets, I would say. But it's more likely that it's a function of the heat cycles you put that barrel through. Before you start seeing bad accuracy due to barrel wear. On high volume stuff. I don't mean accuracy due to barrel wear, but just the fact that it goes to shit when

it gets hot. That's still what you're saying. Same thing. Yeah. Thin barrel. I mean, me and Patrick shot guns that you can't get more than three bullets through because the barrel is so daggone skinny that when it heats up, it's the things warping. I've owned some of those. Yeah. Yeah. And they're great for carrying and, but you just got to know,

like I better, I better get it done in three shots or this thing's going to go haywire. Yeah. That's why when you're shooting them and you get zeroed and then you go and shoot from a cold bore later and it's like not even anywhere close. Yeah. You realize, cause it's like you're zeroed on, there's no consistency. And then you, if you really want to go down, it's like you're zeroed on there's no consistency and then you if you really want to go down it's like you start heating these things up on a on a fatter barrel right like a competition rifle you've got a steel barrel going into aluminum receiver into titanium rings into aluminum scope into glass and all that stuff's heating up at different rates and and expanding at different rates and so that's why we all chase a tenth or two-tenths of a mil, you know, quarter, half inch, zero, all of the time.

Did you shoot MOA or mil in the military? Mil. Yeah. Mil, everything. But it's like kilometers and miles per hour, right? It doesn't change the velocity of the car. It just tells me how fast I'm going with different numbers. But you learn to think in mil.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I feel like it's easier to shoot comps in mills, particularly with wind holds, but it's easier to hunt when I'm talking somebody through like where they need to hold for wind in MOA for me, right. Not having spent as much time in mills because

like if, you know, when you and I are shooting together, right. And I see you hit nine inches left on a 900 yard target i'm just immediately going to tell you oh you're a minute off yeah right i want to do i want to do something for people that are at home correct me not correct me but i'm trying to picture the picture you're at home there and and you're at a you're sitting at a table and the table never ends it's a table that goes for an eternity away from you now like you can imagine your head when we say a 45 degree angle so imagine from your table you shoot a 45 degree angle and and that angle also goes forever right picture that you're measuring

the distance between the table and where it hits that 45 degree angle at an eternity right the measurement grows at a predictable amount but now imagine that you shoot an angle that's not 45 degrees but you shoot an angle that is a one degree angle at an eternity. No, but it's actually a 60th. Yeah. Okay. Now imagine, so there's your one degree angle and picture what that's going to look like.

Now imagine that you shot an angle that's one 60th of one degree. Is that what it is? One 60th. Okay. You shot an angle that's off that table. That's one 60th of one degree is that what it is one six okay you shot an angle that's off that table that's one 60th of one degree well at 100 yards that line sits one inch above that table yep and uh not much that's what makes makes MOA nice in my head. And so when you click nine out of 10 scopes, maybe 10 out of 10 scopes, nine out of 10

scopes, when you click it, when you go click, when you're adjusting it, it has now moved it a quarter of a 60th. Yeah. Yeah. It's moved it a quarter of a 60th of a degree, meaning it moved at, if you go down that table, 100 yards, it's moved that line down that one inch line. One click has moved it to a three quarter inch.

It'll measure three quarter inches off the table. Yeah. One click. One click would be a quarter inch off the table. Yeah. Okay. Do that for me with mills. Three tenths of a.

No, no, but give me where it all comes from. So a mill mill is not based off of degrees yeah so it's and you know there's some nerds out there that'll probably correct me but there's it's like 3 700 and some mills in a circle oh so and then they they tone it down says the army the british so here's the interesting thing. A mil to my understanding, it's not an angular

measurement. It's a unit. It's a weird unit. A mil is, if you go a thousand units away from the point of origin, and then you go up one unit, that's a mil. So if I go a thousand meters away,

and then I go up one meter, that angular measurement is a mil. Oh, really? Yeah. So it's not a, it's not an angular measurement in the way that we think of a degree. Got it. Yeah. And so like. See, I found a lot of comfort in the MOA is even like, it even stems to the same concept as navigation.

Yeah. Yeah. But here's the crazy thing. The Army just came up and said that there's 3,600 mils in a circle. Because they had to make some. Yeah. Because you can't divide by 3,700 or whatever it really is equally. And so they use it for artillery corrections and stuff.

And so they needed something that fit. But it's like 17.7 mils in a degree where there's 60 minutes in a degree. My dad called artillery in World War II and he would talk about, I feel like they would talk. That was mils back then? That was mils. I mean. But he would talk about calling it a click or something like that. So a lot of times they'll say like kilometer is a click.

So a thousand meters. Yeah. I can't, maybe I'm messing up how he would describe how they would do it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's what everything nowadays that I'm aware of is all the call for fire is all adjusted in Mills. So like, that's why all these binos have like gross 10, five, 10, 15,

20 mil adjustments so they can see it and then correct from their location. Mills is also more trackable. If you explain, uh, like a seven, like if someone says they have a seven mile an hour gun, right? Yeah. Mills is really handy.

Can you explain that? A seven mile an hour gun? Yeah. So it's, it's a wind formula. So if you have, so let's say we're shooting 500 meters. Okay. And just bear with me and I'll explain it. But so we're shooting at 500 meters.

If your gun is a three mile an hour gun, you're going to hold 0.5 mils, whichever direction we're going to say left 0.5 mils left. And that is going to account for that three mile an hour of drift. If you shoot a six mile an hour gun, you're still going to hold left 0.5 and it's going to account for a six mile an hour drift. The reason that it would change is the ballistic coefficient of the projectile. And so you can look at the ballistic coefficient of your projectile and say, okay, my gun is a three mile an hour gun, four mile an hour gun. I can't sit here and act like I understand. Well, so I'll bring it back, I hope. is when you're trying to shoot rapidly at distance, the 100 meter or yard, whatever you're using, range is your wind that you're going to hold off

to account for that mile an hour. So at 200, you hold 0.2. At 300, you hold 0.3. At 400, you hold 0.4. At 500, you hold 0.5. And if you're shooting a three mile an hour gun, that accounts for a three mile an hour wind at that distance.

So I can hold the yard line. Okay, so let's say it's that, but it's 20 miles an hour wind at that distance. So I can hold the yard line. Okay. So let's say it's that, but it's 20 miles an hour wind. Then, so wind's linear. So a 10 mile an hour wind blows a bullet twice as far as a five mile an hour wind.

So just for easy math, right? We're going to say our gun is a five mile an hour gun. So, and we're going to shoot 500 yards, right? So I'm going to hold 0.5 mils for a five mile an hour drift. And that's going to put me center.

If I've got to hold a 20 mile an hour wind, that's four, five mile an hour increments. So I'm going to hold 0.5 four times, which is two mils. So I'm going to hold left two mils. And that's going to drop me in center at 500 based off that math. And I know it's like super in the weeds and super nerd stuff, but it's true. And you're running that in your head? Yep. You want the super nerd thing that I can do in my head?

Give me a target size in inches, like somewhere between 10 and 30. 20. 20, all right. And then give me a mil anywhere between one mil and 30. 20. 20. All right. And then give me a mil anywhere between 1 mil and 3 mils. 2.5. 2.5.

So that would be 8, 10. That's easy. What was the size of the target? 20. So it's 200 meters away. You should have made it like 16.2. So you do your target size in inches divided by your mil times 4

gives you your range in meters. So, yeah. You really want to get nerdy? I can get nerdy. So that's how you're milling targets. Like when we were talking, you know, we were talking the other day about pre-range finders. Yeah. Right.

And like trying to determine how far away a target is right before we all could just laze it. Yeah. You know, we've seen guys come in from the um amu without range finders and run nrl hunter matches as a team and only mill targets because they know the dip see you guys you ever hear of a old he's he passed away uh duncan gilchrist i don't think he probably not i mean he was a very accomplished hunter um in a guide and he used to write he wrote these really great books like great great books he wrote uh

a book called all about bears he wrote a book called hunt high um now people think that was totally different laws of change uh hunt high he a bunch of books anyways he would explain this method he was he would always shoot like a straight four scope or whatever the hell it was and i even used this method where he'd say take your scope and crank it up to nine every scope back then you'd have a straight four you have a three to nine right crank your scope up to nine have your buddy go out 100 yards with a tape measure we did this buddy go out 100 yards of the tape measure turn your scope to nine and measure how many inches fit between when your reticle goes from fat to skinny measure how many inches fit there between those points and measure how many inches fit between the post where it goes

thin and the horizontal crosshair then he'd be like most antelope are 18 inches high or 16 whatever the hell it was he's like most mule deer bucks and he'd be like i've measured 120 mule deer bucks they're 24 inches high back back to brisket okay so you now know that like at 100 yards a mule deer is 24 inches high at 100 yards a mule deer fits between what and what on your scope so if you're looking and all of a sudden you'd be like oh no he's only half as tall as he's supposed to be. He must be, right? He's only a quarter as tall as he should be in there. So he must be blank.

And that was, that was. So that's it. That's how, that was like how he suggested. And I tried to use it with, with limited success. And it would work. It's just like the hardest way to do it. So we, it's exactly what a sniper's doing. It's just sniper has mill dots in there that gives him the precise measurements

instead of. But you gotta know, then he must know what a normal person's shoulder width is. Right. What do you learn on a person? 20 inches. Is what?

Shoulder to shoulder. 12 inches from the break in the shoulder to the top of the head. That's just a normal guy. That's what they say. 40 inches from the break in the shoulder to the top of the head. That's just a normal guy. That's what they say. 40 inches from the break of the crotch to the top of the head. They got to come up with something. It's got to be a standard.

So it's 40 inches from the crotch to the head. Yep. 20 inches shoulder tip to shoulder tip. 12 inches from the break in the shoulder to the top of the head. That one doesn't work very well. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. work very well, but yeah. Huh. Yeah.

They come up with a standard and it's like, I look out there and it's like, okay, I know he's 40 inches tall and I'm milling him at two mils. He's 500 meters away. So doing exactly the same thing you're doing with the antelope, right? But it varies because if you're wearing baggy clothing or like that's a big antelope or a small antelope. If you change your dimension by 10%, your range is off by 10%. And that's if you milled it perfectly. Hey, folks.

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What did you think about that Ukrainian dude that supposedly got the new world record? I didn't see that. Did he get? Really? There's going to be some Canadians that are upset. A Ukrainian dude. What's that gun the Ukrainians are making? It's called the Lord of the Skies

or something like that. You didn't hear about this? I did not. How far? It had to have been two and a half miles. Type Ukrainian longest sniper shot. Are you still teaching how to mill just in case

a range finder goes down? It's like a legacy thing. It's, uh, it's, I mean, nowadays guys have, they've got the range finder on their gun.

Their buddy's got a range finder on their gun. They've got better ways to, to come up with that based off GPS. Uh, there's ways to, to come up with it. I mean, everybody's going to carry a handheld laser range finder so like there's so many redundancies because you cannot shoot accurately without range

like you must have range you can kind of fudge the rest of it but you must have range um and and milling works great inside of 600 meters on big stuff but it it doesn't work on small. That's why I said, when you, when I asked for your example, it had to be greater than a mil, because if you start rounding anything under a mil, you're off by more than 10%. And you're going to be like, you can kind of fudge it. You're like, okay, well, I know, I know I fudged it fat. So I know it's going to be closer or I know I fudged it skinny. So I know it's going to be further. And you kind of guess. That's like me taking measurements on when I'm cutting something with a skill saw.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like heavy three quarter. Heavy three quarter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a light out. Cause we'll do anything not to use the metric system. It's like a white three quarter. That's my pet peeve, sockets and standard,

like what's the next size up? Sure. I got your Ukraine news. He was a 58-year-old ex-businessman turned expert sniper, 2.4-mile shot. Hundreds of yards of wind drift. And the name of the, man, it is like the Lord of something rifle. Does it say how many yards of wind drift? Hundreds of yards of wind drift.

Horizons Lord. Yeah. Horizon's Lord. Yeah, Horizon's Lord. No, it doesn't say. The barrel length looks as tall as me. Just seeing two and a half miles. That's a long way. I wonder how many shots he took. Yeah.

There's video of it. Yeah, there is. You can see it. There's video of it. Did he have like a video on his scope or was it something like an external? I can't remember. There's video of it. Did he have like a video on his scope or was it something like an extra? I can't remember. Someone shot the video.

The wind was projected to alter the trajectory of the bullet by about 200 feet. Oh, 200 feet. Sorry. I mean, people love to talk about spin drift, but spin at that range, like what is that? That's crazy. Not that. Change it over here. I mean, that's got to be like. By the time I'm five,

they were interviewing some people about it. And there was some people saying that at a point, it's just, you also got pretty lucky. Well, that's what I'm saying. How many shots did he take? There's an element of luck. Well, no, it didn't. I don't think they did.

Well, I'm saying like over the course of him being out there though, like how many times are you shooting? And then. Oh, oh. The story went, as I remember it, they were doing some, they were doing some, some guys were doing some chore type activities and a guy came out and started pointing around

like do that or seem to be instructing some people in something. And they identified him as an officer and this guy. And then I'm like, like minutes later, whatever the hell it. Bullet finally fell out of the sky. He falls over. Falls over. I don't know. Wow.

Yeah. You think one minute at that far is 44 inches. So if your gun were to hold a minute at that distance, it's still shooting a 44-inch group. Which it's not. There's no way. No. But if it did.

Yeah. There's an element of luck. Hey, Patrick, tell me a story about when you were going to get in trouble because you made a bolt gun at SIG. Because they just didn't do that. Yeah, it was uh when i got here i came from uh another hunting company and the ceo knew when he hired me that i was a bolt gun guy and um so basically i had a uh i had a little bit of um excitement in me to do that when i got here and the first thing he said to me was like, no

bolt guns. And anybody who knows our CEO, he's big reason why I like working there. Like he's a pretty dynamic dude. Like he's very, he's very clear when he tells you you're not doing something that you're not doing something, but he's also very like, he's more of a product guy than anybody in the

company. Like he wants to see new, cool. Hey, like he loves seeing new products. That's like his favorite thing to do on a Friday is go to engineering and just poke around and check stuff out. So we, uh, uh, a couple of years went by and I worked on what I was working on there, did a lot of stuff on the rifle line. And, uh, I got some data on at the time it was the, uh, the Ruger rpr and ruger had been doing really well with that gun like very very well and my kind of conversation with him the first time was like you know it just because everybody for years had said to him we should do a bolt rifle a hunting gun and i think

what he saw from it was like it wasn't genuine to sig it wasn't going to look like a something that sig did well and that was going to be perceived hard from the market. Other companies have tried it. Like they try, it's no different than a hunting rifle company trying to make a pistol. It doesn't look authentic. So you're working twice as hard to gain people's like buy into it. So, um, my kind of pitch to him was like, it doesn't need to be a traditional gun. Like we can do something that kind of meets the criteria of what our customer would be looking for.

And I pitched really, really hard that, you know, coming from where I came from, I told him, I was like, with working with these guys for two years, I had the best resource for a bolt gun out of any company in the industry, I would argue. Cause I had these military guys that were former snipers. I have pro shooters. I have guys that are hunters. I have guys like I had a whole mixed bag. And what I ended up doing was when we started

this, I had 25 guys in a room and like picture politics at Thanksgiving. That's what this sounded like every time we would do this because everybody had an opinion and everybody else's opinion was wrong. But it was the, it was the, probably the coolest launch I've ever done because of that. Because you get so much feedback from people that would be

like, they've, they were, they carried it in the army and they're like, no, you never want to do that with a book. I'm like the, the mag release was like, it was full war. Yeah. Like nobody could agree on a mag release. So like a lot of PRS guys, you have the guys that wanted to drop it fast and you guys didn't want to leave it all laying out in the woods.

Cause it fell off when you were walking. Well, that was, that was the funny part. It was actually the, the guys that were more military it fast and you guys that want to leave it all laying out in the woods because it fell off when you're walking well that was that was the funny part it was actually the the guys that were more military that were like don't ever put a paddle on the outside of that trigger guard because you're going to get out there and you're going to find your magazines gone so we went back and forth with that you gotta you gotta find a magazine not one of your magazines we found a bag no what magazine did we find uh no was a, wasn't that a pistol mag? No, no, no. Yeah. No. It might've been a Sig mag.

It was out of a. It was fine. There's a tree down, there's a tree down over the trail. Yeah. So you tell people we're getting all squirrely. Yeah.

Probably with horses or whatever trying to get around and you can see somewhere left one laying there. It was, I tried to put it in my Sig and it wouldn't fit my Sig. Oh, okay.

P320, yeah. But. And you gotta like go into like who some of those people were like, like the guy that hired me into the AMU, like my good friend, Robbie, uh, he's vice president of product management,

product management. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and then the guy, so he was in third Ranger battalion sniper platoon when it became like the sniper platoon for, for theanger battalion sniper platoon when it became like the sniper platoon for for the entire battalion and then the guy that actually stood up the platoon as a platoon sergeant was

his boss and he's at sig also and so him and me and robbie and then there's what probably four other snipers that are in there and then you've got the hunters and it was like it was it was serious business like there was some feelings but i think that's what the snipers that are in there. And then you've got the hunters and it was like, it was, it was serious business. Like there was some feelings. But I think that's what the. Did the snipers and the hunters not see eye to eye on it? Well, it's just different opinions on how things are. But I think that was actually one of the best things

because I think, like I had said earlier, like as hunters, that was my thing is like, we get lost in tradition. We get lost in the sense of like, we don't do it in our bows. Like you look at bows and every year they're like, oh, five feet per second faster. And people go buy a new thousand dollar bow.

But when it comes to rifles, it's like, oh, I've had this for 32 years and it does the trick. But it's not about in this day and age, accuracy is becoming an expected thing out of a lot of rifles. Like companies are getting really good at making rifle barrels. So features are becoming a big thing.

Like you got to figure out how to do things better and make it more appealing to people outside of just how the rifle shoots. You got to have other features like folding stocks and things like that, that you can come up with that make it different. And that gun, one of the big things that the, uh, those guys gave to us, meaning the military guys was the receiver idea. Um, instead of like, we get that thing referred to a lot as a chassis gun. That's what that category is called, but a true chassis gun, you're putting a receiver into an action that has action screws.

Action screws are a point of failure for a lot of guns. And so having a monolithic receiver with just that barrel nut on there, like basically if your barrel shoots good, your gun shoots good. There's no other variables. So that's what's so unique about that design that uses kind of a barrel extension, instead of having a full receiver, the receiver is just there

to run the bolt and to squeeze the trigger. There's no, there's no pressure, no operation. No, no, no, I understand what you're saying. Yeah. So it, it, first of all, it made the gun interchangeable easily, but the other big part of it was, was like, you just make a good barrel and you have a good shooting gun.

All the other variables are out of it, which was one of the like super interesting things that I learned while I was talking to them, because it's like, you're always like 700 action versus this action or that action. And when it gets down to it, like you take all that out of the mix and you just need to make a good barrel. And that's what most companies, like I said, most companies nowadays are making better barrels than ever because of machinery. Like you can see 300 guns out there, $300 guns that shoot one MOA. I mean, they advertise it. Um, it's becoming a common thing now getting consistency of accuracy

and making like barrel after barrel. In other words, shoot that same, uh, quality is hard, but, uh, it's changed a lot, but we found with these guns just out of the gate being new to being making bolt guns, we were making accurate bolt guns like immediately and it was because of the fact that that design made it much more simplistic and it kind of it kind of caught on pretty quick and as far as like and it's underappreciated how big a deal that is you know like me and robbie have sat out on the range torquing action screws and and you would have guns that would shoot good at 65 inch pounds of on action screws or, or not. And then you loosen them down to 55 inch pounds on the action screws. And all of a sudden they start shooting well. And it's like, that's very difficult to ensure

is correct when you're actually using the thing in, you're not in a competitive environment where you can check that all the time. So we eliminate a huge point of potential failure by get, just getting rid of it. Like you just, it's not, it's not something you can mess up anymore. And there's a bunch of stuff like that. But we, uh, yeah, so we, we got that group together. We had our secret meetings and, uh, I had an engineer that was a PRS guy that loved this project. And, uh, the key was making one.

Cause I knew if I could make one, it would get his interest. And the firing conversation of me leaving the company would go way down. Like I just had to let him see like what it would be like. And we made up one gun and I put it in front of him and it's, it sounded like it was gonna go salty at first. But then he was like, this is interesting. Like I've never seen a bolt gun like this. And he started playing around with it. And, uh, you know, the points I made that I think were important is I watched the, that

industry for so long, I was part of it and everybody would outside of just traditional guns, everybody would kind of piece together guns. So they'd be like, it has a 700 trigger. It has, you know, this and this, Oh yeah. And there was no new people coming into that category that were like, we're making a new gun. And this gun had 128 new parts to it. Like every part on that gun was new. The only thing that was not made by SIG was the

magazine for Magpul, which was an AI mag. Other than that, every other part we made in house. So now you're truly making your own gun. You're, you're controlling the manufacturing, you're controlling, you know, things not saying like, oh, we're just bound to whatever the last guy did by making the design work with his

trigger. Everything was like that. And the guy who made that trigger, he is like our, our NASA engineer. Like you go to this place, it's, it's crazy. Like the walls crawl with engineers in this company. Like I never saw anything like it coming from

where I came from. We had like 10 or 12. I came here and, uh, we're at like, I think we're over 300 now. Yeah. And like, that's the, the CEO's thing. Like he loves innovation. So like an engineer walks down the road and

it's like, you get in here. So we got guys in Oregon at our optics facility. We got guys down South at our ammo facility. We got guys down South at our ammo facility. And then we got a bunch up at New England and those guys are all like top notch pulled out of other areas. And the thing is like, you would think you'd need like that. The world of like true gun makers was such a big thing for a while. The shop I worked at before we had this place called the chapel, which was like where everything was done on a bridge port and like guns were designed in there. Now you have these guys with like, uh, as our buddy calls them, the cartoon drawings, the,

the 3d and like what these guys are capable of doing. And it's gotten so unbelievable that you can take a guy out of college and some of the stuff these guys come up with, you're like, I never would have thought of that. That's what drew drew me to sig when i was leaving the army was you know i got a chance to meet our ceo ronco and ask him how he built such a business and he said he hires the best people in the world he pays them what they're worth and he lets them do their job and i'm like man like what else can like here's all the rope like you know phil. Phil the engineer is listening in on this right now. I don't think he is. He perked up when he said his name.

It is a very unique environment there. Like, when I came here, I saw, like, it's weird for all of us because being inside the walls and being there, I've been there now for seven years. And when I first got here, like we just won the M 17. So the army's handgun pistol contract. And so that was a really big deal for the company. And then go back a few years and we won the belt fed contract. We won the Tango six T optic for the, uh, SDMR rifles. We won the, uh, sniper ammunition for the three under wind mag.

So we were just winning all these contracts. And, you know, it's, it's like a lot of things like you look at the guy, Robbie, he was referencing, used to make that comment. It's windy at the top. Like we went from the underdogs that everybody was pulling for, and now we're like on that full force, like running away with it.

And it's very interesting to see like how that demeanor has changed, how people are like, you're not the underdog anymore. You're like, you're standing on the top of the mountain and everybody's aiming up at you. Oh yeah, man. And it's, it's, it's pretty crazy, but it's, it's a cool, what people don't see and what is

like the coolest part about Sig to me is it's literally what he said, it's work ethic. Like you walk in this place, we'll get a contract and where, you know, a lot of companies will submit what they have. These where, you know, a lot of companies will submit what they have. These guys, these engineers, like these dudes sleep under tables and just stay there. And it's like this hoorah mentality.

We're going to get this done. We're going to give them what they want and we're going to win it. And it's, I've, I've never seen a place with so many crazy people that like, if somebody asks for, if they ask us to make a gun that shot the moon down, they'd be like, we can figure this out. How big a moon you got. Yeah, exactly. But you know, to me, it makes a lot more sense if you look at it, not as a company, but as like a sports team.

Like if you look at the sports teams, if you've got a team that's dominant and winning, who do you want to go play for? Right. You want to play for the winning team, right? So now not only is Sig winning, but now Sig has the pick of the litter. So you, it's just, it just snowballs. Yeah. Yeah. That image stabilizing you've seen on the binoculars.

Yeah. Um, that had military relevance. That was Daniel saying like, we use these, we've used these things for years. Why don't people use these when they hunt? You know, years ago we wanted to get our neighbor in Alaska a present and we bought them some, I don some marinal's old like

I guess it's roof prism. Yep. Image stabilizing binoculars. Yes. Which was like the only people that used them, he used them out of boats. But then he thought it was they were too nice to keep in his boat.

So he just left them on his counter. But that was the only pair of image stabilizing binoculars I'd ever touched. And I just saw them as like ship captains. Yeah. And I think the, the idea behind it, like I said, Daniel was one of the ones when we were out, uh, we were in Alaska and he had said to me, he's like, why don't people use image stabilizing for this stuff?

Cause we were watching the guide at the time, like every five minutes, stop, take off his pack, put down his tripod, glass a hillside. And we took the first couple sets up on the next trip to Alaska. And Daniel had like the prototype pair and the guy's taking his tripod out. And Daniel's like, oh, there's a couple of use on that hillside. And he's like reading out to the guy and the guy's like, can I check those out for a minute? And I realized after that, when we got back, we're all like, Hey, I think we got a tiger by the tail here.

Like it was pretty crazy to see how quickly it took off, but it's just, that's why I said like one of the advantages we have is we have multiple areas of people with experience that you can get technology from other categories that as hunting companies, a lot of the time, it's like, you know, this is what we always do. And to have people that are like, how come you guys don't do it like this? It's kind of cool to be like being on the other side, like not, uh, not being a hunting company, trying to figure something out, but instead working with people from the military that are like, why don't hunters do this?

And you're like, and then you put it in your own sense. Like, I think about all that stuff as these guys say it to me, like he's telling me about image stabilization. I'm like, yeah, I don't know why. I don't have an explanation why we wouldn't use that on everything. No, it's, it's, it's cool, man. And we got it on range finders now. To hunt with like, use it for hunting turkeys

and stuff. Yeah. It's cool. Cause there's no way I'm going to set up a tripod hunting turkeys. Yeah. I, I carry my 10X as turkey hunting in my, either in just my little chest rigger or in my

pocket. Like I can put those things in my pocket when I deer hunt. You're just looking for like a head. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You were just turkey hunting with them. Yeah. Mississippi. Yeah. Yeah. You were just turkey hunting with them.

Yeah. Mississippi. Yeah. Yeah. No, I liked it, man. Oh, and. Cause like I said, I'm not going to set it on a tripod. Yeah.

All the Western. Walking up on whatever openings and clearings, whatever, just to give a quick little scan in there. Oh yeah. Way different. Yep. And all the Western hunters. Then I wound up sitting there like looking at, I was trying to figure out.

So I wound up sitting there, I turned them off and on. Yep. And I remember looking at a was trying to figure out so i wound up sitting there i turned them off and on yeah i remember looking at a light switch yep and and looking across the room at a light switch and focusing on the screw yeah you know the screws that hold a switch cover yeah like that level i'm like damn man yeah there's no i mean you can get where you can see like the details of a light screw looking across the room free handing it and then I just wanted to see like up close to get a sense of how it works. Yeah.

We added that. That's a, there's a target mode in those now. So the original ones were just image stabilization. So they were made to scan. And then we added that target mode, which adds 40% of stabilization. So if you're like looking at a buck and you're

trying to identify if it's something you want to go after, you lock that thing back and push it forward and that light turns orange, it increases that. So if you try to start scanning, it's something you want to go after, you lock that thing back and push it forward and that light turns orange, it increases that. So if you try to start scanning, it's going to skip. And that's because it's trying to lock on what you're looking on. So you're getting like that extra, like, it's literally like being on a tripod at that point.

Yeah. Hey, you know what I want to ask you about? Oh, what's up? Oh, we're out of time. Yeah, I guess. I mean, yeah, go figure. We're going along here. You got I guess. I mean, uh, yeah, go figure.

We're going to work on this thing, Steve, where people are trying to give you silent messages and then you call attention to it. Um, I feel like, uh, like, you know,

we were talking about the image stabilizing and stuff like that. And, um, you know, what folks are going to learn pretty soon is that we're going to be working pretty closely together across optics and guns and ammo. We have like a lot of those same questions. Like we go out in the field and we're like, why can't you just build Swarovski glass night forester ability with a SIG laser? And, you know, it's obviously got to be hard yeah right but like when we work with

internal brands we work with like first light um we get to help build pants you know right and we're like all right now we have a cool pant that we get to bring to the audience i'm kind of i'm excited to go down that same rabbit hole with optics ammo and and the cross, right? Like there's things, we sat and looked at targets all morning, right? To look at group sizes. There's still improvements to be made, but now we get to just like be kind of a part of that process.

Yeah, like can it be left-handed? Yeah. Let's not get crazy, Steve. Well, let me ask one, I want to ask one last question. Did you say to me one time, I feel like you said to me one time you couldn't win a tournament with a um monolithic bullet did you tell me that um i i feel like i've yeah pointed to their accuracy before um like i i think uh bonded i i i think you could like with a like you take like a barns

or something like that i think in the past bonded hasn't always been built for accuracy right um i would argue like the winner is acubons right like they've been doing it for a long time um so we've been having that conversation um but like when we did that copper versus lead video, um, the bonded I was using at that time was by far the hardest to get in the gel at 500 yards. Right. Like my spread was just, it's just like relative

to cup and core match ammo. And then like some of the good barn stuff that's out there, it just hasn't really, that hasn't been the focus of the bullet design. When you're shooting in tournaments, do you shoot, all your bullets you shoot in tournaments have, have a lead component? Yeah.

Really? Yeah. And one thing, like there, there's a lot of reasons, but one of them is the, that lead's so more, so much more dense. You get a higher BC because that copper's lighter in density. So it's always going to have more drift.

The same exact bullet design externally with a lead core will weigh more than the exact same bullet made out of copper i see yeah and so yeah so like a lot of times like you'll even see with your hunting ammo like a copper bullet that's lighter will be going slower right than a heavier lead bullet because they can't get like that sectional density. You can't put the spin on it, right? To stabilize like you can a lead bullet. Why aren't people putting tungsten in bullets? They have.

They're very expensive, but they're extraordinarily effective. Do they mushroom? Depending on what you design them to do, they'll do about whatever you want them to do. And I mean, there's some guys that you can punch through just about anything you want to with those things.

As far as arm penetration, the other thing is they'll, they'll put dust in there. So it will, it'll have almost no over penetration, but it'll have massive foot pounds of energy. But they're expensive. Super expensive.

Like a bismuth. Way more. Well, I don't know more than that from my understanding. Yeah. Yeah, you're stepping up another notch just because of manufacturing. And cost.

Yeah. Yeah. But insane performance. But if you want to spend $14 a bullet. Oh, is it bad? It's, yeah, it's not a small step up. That's worse than a turkey load. I know.

Yeah, you got to want a turkey bad, which I do. Shooting that stuff. Can we talk about the new high test ammo? Sounds like we got to get off to it. Is that too early? The hybrid? Yeah.

We can't talk about it, Corinne says. All right, man. You guys got to come back. It's really cool. I'll tell you that. Is it? It's super cool. It's the next step.

I tell everybody Daniel's line, which is, it's like going from black powder to smokeless powder. Yeah. Like it's that big of a deal. Yeah. It's, it's, it's turning your 308 into a 300 Win Mag. Yeah. When are we going to get to shoot that?

Very soon. Oh really? It's not just military stuff? Oh no, no, no. We're making it, we're producing it already in the 277 for commercial and we're making a cross in it. We're making the, uh, spear, which is the army's rifle in it.

So yeah, we're making it commercially. It's SAMI approved. It's, it's like a real deal now. And it's, it's a 308 base case that we're doing. So, um, 277 obviously being the first one, but we have the, the world is our oyster with that technology now. We can do whatever we want.

Imagine scaling it down and having a 300 blackout with 308 ballistics. Got it. Yeah. It's a big deal. All right, Yanni. When are you doing your shooting training? Next week. Good luck, buddy.

Thanks. You guys got to come back soon. Yeah, absolutely. We can talk about more gun stuff. I might make me a big old list of gun questions. Let's do it. Perfect. Shooting questions. Yeah. yeah like why am i so good the looks help even as a lefty uh it's for us shooting guns i mean i love it but man it's hard it's like

he's got to practice practice practice practice practice which we just did not do people do with bows no do with bows oh yeah with rifles people don't think twice about shooting the bow all the time people don't i always joke like this is the last thing i say corinne when i was a little kid when it was time to deer hunt you turn deer hunting age you take a milk jug a gallon milk jug fill it full water set it on a fence post you get about 75 75 yards away, hit the jug. All right. We were, we were, you were done shooting.

We were the paper plate. You hang the paper plate on the tree. And if you hit two out of whatever you were shooting out of it, you were good to go. Congratulations. You're an American deer hunter. All right, man,

we'll talk to you guys soon. I'm gonna work up my list of questions. You guys come back on. Let's do it. All right, man. We'll talk to you guys soon. I'm going to work up my list of questions you guys come back on. Let's do it. All right, thanks. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. On-axe hunt is now in Canada.

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