The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 602: Are Suppressors Good or Bad for Hunters and Hunting?

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Brandon Maddox, Grace Sturdivant, Lukas VanLaeken, Janis Putelis, Ryan Callaghan, Garrett Long, Matt Miller, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: How everything is surpassed everywhere else but in the US; our 2025 F*cked Up Old Shitters calendar is out; scratch and sniff; the black market for big game tags; laws about crossing state lines with skulls; bent or ejected hair cells from within the ear; decibels and pressure on your ear drums; how ear plugs are only going to do so much to protect your ears; and why you should double up; the Hearing Protection Act; legal for ownership in 42 states and legal for hunting with in 41 states; sonic crack and muzzle blast; a game warden opinion poll on suppressors; the now short waiting period for suppressors; the 3DB Rule; the brand new MeatEater-Silencer Central Suppressor https://www.silencercentral.com/products/meateater/; a muzzle break in a suppressor; get your Otopro hearing protection; and more.  Outro song: "Tired and Branded" by Bard Edrington V Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

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.

Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-t-l-i-t-e.com all right everybody uh i just thought of this it's real clever think about this for a minute you're listening to this show with your ears so you don't go with this like i don't mean to hack on you know anyone that can't but i mean if you're listening you're listening with your ears and we're going to talk about your ears um we're going to talk about all

things human hearing and ear ears because we're going to talk about a bunch of things but we're going to get we're going to dig real heavy into suppressors which historically were called silencers where everybody knows the old movies. And you sneak in and whoever, James Bond, shoots someone with a suppressor and it goes, pew, pew, pew. So, not a silencer. The correct term would be a suppressor.

And suppressors are more and more and more and more becoming part of the national conversation. More widely available, easier to get them more information out there people finding out that um you know that a gun doesn't just have to be so loud that it damages your hearing and that makes your kids afraid of shooting and all that and there's a remedy for this which has been like over time historically it's been like a pain in the ass to get a suppressor some countries i always found this interesting i remember being the first time i ever shot a suppressor i was in scotland and everything suppressed in scotland

and i said to a guy i can't believe they let you hunt with those because this is 12 years ago 13 years ago i'm like i can't believe they let you hunt with those he says i can't believe they let you hunt without them they don't shoot them without them and it was weird there like you got to go through hell to buy a gun in scotland but you can buy a suppressor anywhere you go and america took the opposite approach you can buy a gun in the gas station but you like but if you want it to be a little bit more quiet you you have to go through hell to make it quiet. It's always struck me weird, and I used to think of it like this. If they make suppressors illegal or really hard to get,

if guns just happen to be more quiet than they are, would they make a law that says you have to make it loud? Do you know what I mean? The gun's the same. The suppressor doesn't change the performance of the gun it's just they want it they want to make it be that it's loud or not make it be that it's loud they want to preserve the fact that it's so loud it can cause damage right they blame Jason Bourne I mean really that's the perception

of what those things do to a gun is that you can just go around and wax people and nobody hears you to help us understand this we have our resident audiologist Grace Sturdivant who's been on the show a bunch of times from AutoPro

AutoPro, AutoPro. AutoPro, AutoPro. Joining us from Mississippi, Grace. Is she allowed to say hi right now, Phil, or is she not hooked up? Oh, she's hooked up. Say hi. Grace, say hi. Oh, I can say hi.

Hi. Thank you. It's an honor to be your resident audiologist, and I don't care if you say AutoPro or AutoPro or Sturdivant or Sturdivant or however you want to say it. Got it. I'll be your resident audiologist anytime. Calling in all the way from Mississippi. We're also joined by a couple of fellas from Silencer Central. Brandon Maddox and Lucas Van Lacken.

Lacken? Van Lacken. Van Lacken. Shalacken, Steve. Oh, the F'd Up Bull Shitter's Calendar is out. It's our third in the F'd Up Old series. One being Deer Stands. I can't remember what year that was.

2021 was Deer Stands. 2022 was F'd Up Old Taxidermy. 2024 is Old shitters. And this is a beautiful collection of old shitters. Nothing gross, no fecal matter, no toilet paper, just crazy, classic, inventive old shitters out in the woods. Next year, we're going to do fish cleaning stations or fishermen. I haven't decided.

I think it's got to be cleaning stations or fishermen? I haven't decided. I think it's got to be cleaning stations. Well, if it is, there needs to be a scratch and sniff component. You can scratch it and smell the fish cleaning station, which is going to be like a hard technical thing to figure out. It's available now. Why didn't we do that for the old shitters? Because they smell great.

Because it's not gross. People sent us gross photos. We didn't use gross photos. Some photos are so gross, I didn't even get to see them. Seth filtered them out. These are great. There's one. It's a Western red cedar that's been hollowed out like the Ewoks are using it as a shitter.

Beautiful. Like Arctic shitters. I mean like gorgeous. I'm telling you. The best of the best. I can't decide. Last night I was so fired up about this article that's on the meetyou.com

that I was going to read the whole thing. But that would take so long. Yeah. Speaking of governor's tags, these were like backdoor governor's tags. Okay. Is that the one you're talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's the headline. Callahan's quoted heavily

in it. Case against Idaho man exposes black market for big game tax. Callahan's is fair to say. You want to take a stab at this? Or should I tee it up? No, go for it.

In Idaho... No no you go explain what a black explain how they work what they call them and what it is in idaho so i'm gonna say some redundant things here because it's just hard not not to but it's the i'm already starting lap land owner appreciation program lap lap is what it is but i always say like lap program which how many programs do you need when i was in the trades we would get a per diem and all the guys would say that you get 25 per diem per day not knowing that per diem is latin uh-huh for per day and they're like point this out they're like no no, it means money. It means lunch money. Per day and per day. So, yeah, a lot of states have some

form of this, but basically it is an incentive. It's a tool that the state agency has that incentivizes landowners to either allow access or just use best practices like wildlife-friendly fencing, habitat, you know, keeping good habitat,

fringe areas, stuff like that for game species. It's a recognition of the fact that a lot of wild game species that belong to all of us use private land heavily. And landowners with, there's some different levels in here, but let's say 640 acres in Idaho can apply for their own draw system. Only consisting of other landowners with that amount of acreage or more for big game tags in the state of Idaho. Those tags are transferable. The original intent here would be like if you have a big chunk of ground and you have hired hands on that ground, ranch managers, etc., you can transfer that tag. It's a voucher.

Then you take that voucher as the person who got the transfer tag to Idaho Fish and Game. You pay Idaho Fish and Game the normal over-the-counter fee for either a resident or a non-resident for that deer, elk, whatever. And then you have a valid tag. And then they issue it in your name. Yep. And then it's in your name. And in Idaho's case, this tag is not good just for the private property. It's good for the unit.

So they're unit wide tags. Now, this system gets corrupt and it. I don't know this for fact, but I've been aware of these dealings for so long. You've mentioned this to me in the past. Oh yeah. Before this case came out where it's like, I mean, this is, this is like smoke and gun shit right here. This is smoke and gun stuff because it's a very high profile case.

It's extremely well documented. The officer in this case, um, took things very slowly and got everything you could possibly think of to, uh, you know, cross your T's and dot her eyes here. So, but the issue is it's illegal to either market the sale of a landowner tag or sell a landowner tag right there. They're not to be sold. In Idaho. In Idaho. Yeah. Um,

the, these sales have been going on for a long time and the way folks get around them is by saying, oh, I didn't buy the tag. I was given the tag. I paid for trespass across the property or through the property, or I stayed on the property, or there's some sort of an exchange that would be legal or unregulated to cover up the fact that they purchased a landowner tag, which is illegal. This particular case, they have this fella.

Carl Studer. Carl Studer. 43. Who? This guy's out of control. I mean, this guy is out of control. I want nothing more than to let things settle down. Let this guy get out of the high positions that he's in because he's on several boards, high-profile electric boards, and have just a real good on-the-record sit-down with him because he is kind of you know hometown dude went to lineman school

ag family went to lineman school you know not like an ivy league school and the guy's making crazy big bucks sitting on these major uh electric boards uh cfo title or ceo titles and stuff like that um and he got just way in to uh paying his way through everything here so here's something the wardens they they did a bunch of electronic comp you know confiscations on x accounts everything here's a drive here's from here's something from his personal iCloud he has a folder tags bought for 2023 Ryan Smith elk muzzy 54 15k cash Williams elk archery 54 40k cash Ryan Smith 52 a elk rifle and deer muzzy, 10K, check. Camas Creek tags number one, cash. Muzzy deer, 45, 15K.

Rifle deer, 45, 15K. Rifle elk, 45, 10K. Rifle antelope, 1,500. Camas Creek tags number two. Rifle 45 archery elk, 5K. Rifle 48 rifle elk, 5K. Rifle.48 Rifle Elk 5K. Rifle.52 Rifle Antelope 1,500. Rifle.52 Rifle Deer 10K.

Camas Creek Tags, number three. Rifle.45 Deer 15K. Rifle.45 Elk 10K. He got a little bit over his limit that year. Was shooting elk and then having his kids run down and get tags the next day. Yeah, so he's in illegal possession of wildlife. He harvested, like Montana, for instance. You could legally get more deer tags in the state of Montana if you took advantage of all the opportunities that are out there. Then the state actually allows an individual to harvest. So there's a, there's actually a cap

in Montana of maximum allowable deer you can take, even though you can get, uh, legal tags, uh, that you pay for, for, for more, um, in idaho has the same thing this guy shot um i think three elk bull elk legally and then it says the third one exceeded his back okay the third one yeah um so yeah i mean he was just doing some flat out poaching in there too You can kind of read Into this and just This guy got onto Onto a tear Of throwing consequences Out the window or just not caring

Some of the text exchanges I found a 54 Muzzle loader tag Open September 25th Bull elk, I'll take it Can you get it? 15k, yes sir bull elk i'll take it can you get it 15k yes sir done i'll take it for sure perfect will that be for you so that's the other interesting thing here there's like an intent to sell again so he's setting himself up to be the middleman to then sell these tags at, at a, uh, higher price again. Uh, and, uh, there's,

um, some marketing going on here too. So, um, it's, it's something that's been known. It's hard to really for, you know, these game wardens are very widely distributed across the state. It's hard for them to take up all of their time to document a case like this and avoid those traps that are like, oh, well, I didn't buy the tag. I bought the guy's time or the access fee or

whatever to dance around the law. And then if you want to go down the conspiracy route, which is always fun, and I'm not saying that's the case here, but you're dealing with oftentimes very politically connected people that are in the ag industry in Idaho, which is a very, very strong lobby. There's sometimes big money changing hands amongst other big money folks in the state or out of the state. And there's a question mark that lingers like just why exactly? If everybody knows about this, has IDFG not been more on top of it? That we're just hearing about this case right now.

Because it is very well known. Not just in Idaho, but just in the circles in which people buy and sell tags. Jordan Siller's article goes on. About a month after Studer shot his second

elk, he went hunting with his son, who shot an elk but couldn't recover it. Studer's son went home, while Studer continued tracking the animal. At 8.25 p.m. on October 30, 2023, another of Studer's sons texted his dad to ask whether he'd found the wounded elk. Studer said he couldn't find the original elk, but he, quote, shot a monster at 1,005 yards. I'm terrible place to get him out, but got him. His son asked whether he means a monster elk or deer, and Studer responds, monster elk.

His son texted back, 1,000 plus yards too. What like to call American sniper. And that was the third elk to put him over his... Yeah, put him into illegal possession of game. Then he's in a bunch of trouble, too, for driving around with a half-dead antelope in the back of his truck. Yeah, which is just not condonable,

explainable in any fashion. But he shot an antelope. And the zone that he's in is a real interesting one because a rifle tag in there is extremely hard to get. He's in the Stanley Basin. Extremely hard to get. And the landowners up there, there's several that are just like not, they're like hunting, they're preserves. They're not hunting friendly landowners. So getting a landowner tag up there would be real tough.

He incriminated himself in a text message too. Big guy showed up, 760 yards and wiped him out. But he passed out and woke up in the back of the Tacoma. He's a little bit old for a Tacoma. Usually that's young whippersnappers. No, he's probably sitting on the edge, 45. Yeah, real man of the people. Sitting on the edge.

Yeah. So, yeah, like I said, Matt, I think he would be a phenomenal psychological case study for poaching and stuff once things cool down and he can speak freely if convicted of all 17 misdemeanors and all three felonies faces a potential fine of hundreds of thousands of dollars and over 20 years in prison that will not happen oh absolutely not no i mean he can stroke a check but um i think that's never gonna happen the thing that would make that would sting right

is they do right this is a he could have stopped a long time ago and still gotten slapped with a uh hunting suspension and so he is looking at a lifetime hunting ban um which you know folks in that tax bracket they just go to um new zealand or places where you don't need a hunting license or places that don't have that aren't part of the interstate compact but you would think that i would hope that it would sting if he couldn't hunt in the united states of america anymore real bummer dude i have you always ask the question though you're like yeah oh he's an enthusiast right it's just like but would he just like i don't know how much the hash guy does,

but does he just create, instead of Fish Shack South, he just creates his hunting camp South Africa and just does six months a year over there and is like, whatever. Sure. And that's his right. Yeah, sure, but there's no way. I mean, this stings. Yeah.

I mean, this is, like, embarrassing. Oh, it's definitely embarrassing, yeah. On a recent episode, I was talking about how some names you can just tell people are loaded. Like, when your name's, like, Von Thurston. Like, certain last names attract wealth. And this guy wrote it. Van Lackin.

I wish that was the case if it was Von and in a space Von Lachen I'd be like that's a rich guy yeah that'd go over alright this dude wrote in my name's Mark Rich and I'm broke so I said if your theory worked

why would I not be loaded uh one more quick hit we've been to have i've been having this debate with myself about whether uh like i had heard i don't know what it was long ago i can't remember where i heard i'd heard that that insurance companies car insurance companies advocate to reduce deer populations because they get sick of paying out all the things durkin then i said but then i read somewhere that's not actually true and pat durkin said where you read that it's not true is you read it in my article at the meat eater.com i'm like oh i knew i saw that somewhere

and he said that's like an old wives tale that insurance companies push game agencies to lower deer numbers and then heffelfinger wrote in we just did that we talked about this heffelfinger wrote in to say i've had insurance companies tell me that that's bs because they just pass it along to the consumer and they just factor it all in and they're not going to spend money on things that may or may not be effective. Right. It's just part of buying insurance. Well, this fellow named,

uh, Jacob up to graph. I don't feel like that. He tracks. Well, I don't think that attracts wealth up to graph. It needs to have more words to it. Like you need, if you want to be rich, you got to have a last name that's got individual words strung together not just a bunch of syllables

like if it was grace von sturdivant we'd be like that lady's loaded just gotta add the von and then the money will come uh he says below us this is so funny okay he sends us in below is a link to kentucky farm bureau insurance priorities go so here's the web page i'm on it okay oh you're gonna read it i'm on it it's like no i'm yeah i'm looking at it. Kentucky Farm Bureau. Big on commitment. Did they spell commitment right? Yeah, big on commitment. And then what it says in black and white, or whatever the hell you call it

on your computer screen, it says, reduce the wildlife population. No details. Just reduce the wildlife population. End of sentence. Oh, no, no, no. Oh, it's not?

You're still on the email. This is what it says. Oh. Under wildlife management, on their state priorities page, which is the state priority issues for the Kentucky Farm Bureau for 2024, under wildlife management, it states, seek effective wildlife management that will reduce the wildlife population in an effort to alleviate continued crop and livestock losses automobile accidents human injuries and loss of life so last session less legislative session in kentucky there was a

bill that came through that would uh make it law the board, the Fish and Game Board in Kentucky, would be under the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee. Oh. Yeah. And this line right here was like a huge huge talking point so kentucky bha and the kentucky chapter of safari club international actually like got together formed a basically like a lobbying group and just hammered the legislature over this the whole time to using that statement as evidence of objective. Yes, to say, hey, if the Ag Committee is going to run Fish and Game, we're going to probably have some conflict in the future. Yeah, and the build-in pass.

It was a big, big win. Hmm. Yeah. Thanks for coming down today, Cal-An. 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.

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talking about on x here on the meat eater podcast now you um you guys in the great white north can can be part of it be part of the excitement you can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service that's a sweet function as part of your membership you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services hand-picked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special

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Here's an interesting one out of New York. New York's meat transportation laws. I live in western New York near the Pennsylvania border. Myself and many others hunt both New York and PA. New York recently changed their laws to which now you are only allowed to transport deboned meat into the state. But a cleaned, listen to this detail, a cleaned skull cap is allowed. It used to be you couldn't transport the spinal column in brain matter he says i understand sort of because because of chronic wasting disease i get that new york is being

proactive in the spread into the state but is there any quote science and he quoted science um his quote but is there any quote science that quarter deer with femur, shoulders, et cetera, are spreading CWD? He's open to, the person that wrote in is open to the fact that he might be wrong. He says, maybe there is, and I'm just a dumbass. I'll tell you that, no, there's no, you can't link the out. It's so hard to pin the outbreaks to specific occurrences. There's no documented case where they're like, oh,

this CWD outbreak was linked to Bob who had a deer femur. It doesn't work that way. You can't trace it like that. They kind of go on theory and guesswork. He says, but you can bring a cleaned skullcap. And he goes on to say, like the thing the brain is touching, is a hacksaw and a creek going to kill those prion proteins? No.

And what a pain in the ass to debone a deer in the field and bring it home. I mean, it's not a huge pain in the ass, but I also prefer to keep the bone in on the front legs for roasts, and I use the rear leg bones for stock. And the more I think about it, it is a pain in the ass to totally debone on my tailgate in the dark. He goes on. I also recently got into the dermisted beetles for skull cleaning.

Just yesterday, I called DEC officer to ask some legalities of me cleaning skulls that were shot in PA. He said the only way to legally do it is to bring the beetles to Pennsylvania. Then he has a taxidermy product, which is legal to transport across state lines. He goes on to say, but what if my PA buck has CWD? I do all the ridiculous steps of bringing my beetle enclosure to PA, clean the skull, et cetera, et cetera. Did I totally eliminate the prions? No, you didn't.

I feel like a cleaned skull cap sitting on someone's workbench has a much more significant risk of spread than a dog scratching it and burying it somewhere. That might extremely... He sums himself up. New York sucks sometimes. He has some things he likes. He does appreciate that they allowed legal shooting 30 minutes before or after sunrise, sunset,

which used to be, wow, I didn't know this. New York used to be sunset, sunrise. Holy cow. Did you feel like you broke that law, not knowing? I don't think I knew that. And I'll tell you what, if that was the case in Michigan, you wouldn't even go out on opening day because 30 minutes into the season you get a sinking feeling you're like ain't gonna happen this year boys

wow i had no idea that's funny you had to wait till actual sunrise that'd be rough that's the best 30 minutes of the the best well when you take the morning and the night that's the best 60 minutes that's how you feel hunting ducks yeah same feeling yeah go hunting on the reservation that's their their uh laws too he uh he appreciates they did that he appreciates they lowered the age to start big game hunting because he has three kids and likes to spend time with them out hunting um he he likes the mandatory hunter orange now in fire season he find firearm season he's shocked that it wasn't um he he's he's shocked that that wasn't written in law. And he likes the process of doing electronic licensing

and not needing to wear a back tag. What he's doing is he's painting himself as a person that recognizes the good, but he thinks that this CWD thing is a little over the top. Dealing with CWD here's my official on this dealing with CWD is a little bit like it's a little bit like the early days of the pandemic

where by and large you have a lot of people who are alarmed and they're they don't know all the answers and they're trying to do a best job they can do of adapting to incoming material. Right? And then down the road, you're going to look and be like, man, did I really need to leave my boxes out in my yard for 10 days before I carried them in and a bunch of other junk?

And then we're going to look back and be like, we'll talk about how stupid so much of the stuff we did during the pandemic was. But at the time, by and large, there's some well-intentioned people just, just trying to figure it out. And yeah, mistakes get made.

I lose a little patience with the hunters saying like, well, it's too much of a pain in the ass. You want 99% of people on this planet think is too much of a pain in the ass you want 99 of people on this planet think is too much of a pain in the ass getting up at 3 34 in the morning uh getting a bunch of crap together going out in the woods sitting there till till light finally pops up freezing your butt off god forbid you get something then the real pain in the ass starts you know i mean come on oh like when you factor all that out and then there's this other little additive thing yeah you could like now you can just hop online and have your groceries

delivered to your to your front door yeah right comparatively with my little analogy about the pandemic i'll also point out there were people that obviously got high on power they got high on power but there were a lot of people that were just trying to find a way to be helpful and solve the problem and they didn't get everything right and you know down the road we'll look back and be like yeah that probably didn't really have any real impact on cwd spread but that sure did. Right. It'll be like that. Yep. Um, I mean, when we do like that Frank church trip, like we boil skulls because the law, like traveling across state lines, we'll bring in another little burner and a pot and boil skulls.

They're on the airstrip. You know, I mean, I do that, but then I literally take the lymph nodes, you know, a little baggy and fly those out. Oh, to submit them? Drive them to the place, drop them in the thing, you know? Yeah. It's like, there's a lot of things that you, when we had that panel and we were talking to all the CWD folks, I asked that question and they kind of laughed at me and we're like,

well, of course that's not going to spread them. You know, I was like, okay, well, all the stuff I read makes it seem like we're just spraying prions all over the place. Yeah. Right. And they're like, well, how could you get that? And it's like, well, probably cause i'm not an infectious disease expert right and yeah kind of came to the conclusion that they need to simplify uh their messaging in a lot of places

okay ready to dig in you ready grace oh i'm ready okay give it give us your spiel on how when you shoot guns, I don't know where to start. You can start with why when someone touches one off next to your head in the duck blind, why do you hear for a couple of days? Okay. I can start there. When you told me just to jump in, I'm going, where? Because there is so much to talk about. Yeah. But that's a good starting point. So what is happening when you blast yourself or when you find yourself in the wrong place

at the split second of the wrong time and then your ears are screaming? Well, when the sound, in a nutshell, as the sound's traveling through your ear canal, hits your eardrum, in this case really hard, vibrates the ossicles that then move the fluid in the cochlea, which has those really fine outer hair cell structures that are stimulated and generate an action potential to be sent to your brain where it is then processed and recognized as sound. So we actually hear with our brains. What we're trying to protect

from noise primarily are those really fine outer hair cells, which transduce the sound to the brain. Otherwise, once those outer hair cells are damaged, then you've got regions of the brain that are not being stimulated and you start to have that phantom ringing sound, the tinnitus or tinnitus that never goes away. That's because typically, it's for a number of reasons, but as it relates to noise exposure, it's typically caused by those damaged hair cells that are no longer sending the signal to that representative area of the brain. So immediately when that blast happens, those hair cells are physically bent. Sometimes they can even be

ejected from the membrane in which they sit. So depending on how loud that blast is, and when those hair cells are bent over, there's a metabolic process where they're trying to recover. Same way when you fatigue your muscles and you recover, you know, you're not going to run a marathon two days in a row. I mean, when you're blasting these things over and over, you're weakening them every time. So that damage is cumulative over a lifetime. And so when those are lying down and the brain is missing that signal because during that time that they're trying to recover, they're not transducing sound, that's when your brain makes you hear instead of the sounds around you. So is that coherent? Yeah, I have tinnitus.

And I have this problem where when someone explains a health problem to me that they're having, I start feeling their health problem. Like if Yanni would say, yeah, I know like a lump on my testicle i'd be like oh my god i have a serious groin ache all of a sudden as you're talking i'm getting more tinnitus no it's true like oh my god i can hear it too and it's tinnitus is an area that is fascinating because we it's hard to pinpoint there There's no cure, but there are management strategies. And at first, when you first hear these strategies, it's going to sound a little bit like mumbo jumbo, yeah, yeah, whatever. But honestly, because our cortisol levels, our stress levels,

salt, caffeine can all affect the chemical gating system that's working hard to suppress that ringing. And when your frontal lobe is focused on something else, that's why I tell people, as simple as it is, try not to focus on the ringing or else it will sound louder. When you can distract your frontal lobe and focus on something else with your brain, then you can put it into the background. I might have accidentally hit on a thing that you might recommend, and I'll explain. In starting my kids shooting, my young kids shooting,

I have a 9-year-old, 11-year-old, and a 14-year-old. In starting them shooting big game rifles, I started them out shooting like they have sig crosses in a 6.5 Creedmoor and I start them out shooting a suppressor and hearing protection because they

conflate the kick with the sound. It's all, they're not distinct things. This is true of kids and it's probably true of a lot of other sound. It's all, they're not distinct things. This is true of kids, and it's probably true of a lot of other people. It's like there's an experience of shooting, and it has something to do with recoil. It has something to do with noise.

And it gets bundled into your head just as like a sudden, very uncomfortable experience. Right? Reducing the sound level will reduce the felt recoil. Yes. So I put a suppressor on. I put hearing protection on them. They

lay down and shoot and when they shoot they laugh. The same way like you'd laugh getting off road, they'd laugh because they were so like, and then they shoot and they're like, I don't know, it was like that, right? Yeah.

Well, you've actually hit on what, I mean, spoiler alert, do you remember when I first came to see you guys and I talked about how my job as an audiologist and someone who values the hunting tradition is to equip you with the most realistic tools possible to make this a safer activity for you. But that I cannot guarantee that by wearing hearing protection, you're never going to get some level of hearing loss from shooting guns because we can only reduce the sound so much with earplugs. Do you guys remember me going through that whole spiel? Exactly. Yeah. So I would, I would apply that same conversation to suppressors as we get

into sound levels there, but the two in combination can take you to a safe level. So whereas when we're talking about hearing protection that's on your head and in your ear, you know, ideally I talk about how, when you can to double up, to put something, a muff on top of a plug to increase the level of attenuation, and that to get more than that, we've got to put you into a full helmet because the bones of your body, even your teeth, are transducing sound to those inner ear delicate structures that I was talking about. But when you pair a suppressor with well-fit hearing protection, we can get you into a safe level without having to double up. Got it.

I'm interested to hear what the Silencer Central guys have to say about that theory. It goes against some of the stuff I'm reading on their website and all other websites for suppressors. But looking at the data and all of the variables, which I'm happy, I would love to get into the nitty gritty of, that's what I'm seeing. That you're recommending both. Yes. Well, that's what I'm saying I accidentally hit on. Yeah, that is what you hit on. I do it on both, just to deaden my kids to the experience, right? Which is very which is very well and remember let me umbrella this whole conversation with the fact that we cannot rely on our perception of how

loud something is to objectively determine whether it's too loud just because your ears don't ring just because it doesn't bother you does not mean that that sound pressure was not objectively damaging the physical structures of your ear and your hearing ability got it um brandon you want to jump in here yeah boy she put us on the spot right no i think we're all on the same page yeah brandon first of all you want to get your you want to quiet stuff down yeah no absolutely yeah no absolutely. Yeah, no. Yes, I am pro-suppressor. I am pro-silencer central. I was impressed by some of the studies that you yourself have done to try to test the different levels and to be able to put out good information. I have some questions about

some of those measurements, but not in a way that's trying to be critical, just in a way that's digging in to get to the bottom of it. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, the threshold that we look at is like 140 decibels. And what we're told is we want our products to test below 140, right at 140 or less than. But, of course, it's hard to tell what the environment is. You know, if you're indoors, obviously it's louder. You know, we could show what our measurements are, but someone could have different atmospheric pressures you could have shorter barrels you could have hotter loads so do we disagree with the concept of wearing um ear protection with silencers no not at all

when you talk about the when you talk about the situation being different i mean i'm just like inviting listeners to picture this if you're shooting in a 10 mile an hour crosswind it's less loud right if you're shooting you know not that i would have any experience with this if you're shooting out of your truck if you're over in the driver's seat shooting out the passenger window it's loud oh yeah totally totally or if just that wind is blowing from your muzzle to you yep man i think like a big moment for us steve and I, I shot a mountain goat with Steve and that gun was a muzzle break. It wasn't suppressed. This is a couple of years ago.

And we were under a tree right next to a tree. My ears are still ringing. And I have never felt like just because the environment, that tree right over top of us and that's right next to the bark, it smoked us, man. It styled my hair it like it changed everything about the way that i've hunted since right in suppressors and when you think of it hearing pro like that was a bad environment for sound yeah and in south dakota could be misleading because prairie there uh when you shoot it's not as loud whereas if you're an environment where it can echo like you're saying it's always gonna be louder can you explain the um can you explain the hearing protection act uh sure like where it sits and where it came from and yeah sure so hearing

protection act um basically the premise there is that it would deregulate suppressor silencers completely and make them a regular firearm so you would go and buy a silencer and at a regular you know gun store and they would treat it just like a regular long gun or um hand gun you would just do a background check and you'd leave with it so there would be no $200 tax stamp no process it's kind of you know background check and you would leave so that that was that was the premise of it was to deregulate suppressors because currently they're regulated like i guess within this explanation you explain what is the difference between who regulates guns like who regulates long rifles and who regulates the suppressors that go on long rifles sure yep so

um both underneath atf so they have sort of the domain over that some states will have different uh state laws but there's not many states that have a law specific to silencers. Most states, honestly, don't even define them as a firearm. But at the National Firearms Branch, NFA branch is what regulates the actual suppressors. It's the same process you go through when you buy a machine gun. So it was created in 1934 and it came out with a $200 tax then because it was equivalent to a hundred percent tax on a machine gun. So the goal was to regulate machine guns, put a hundred percent tax on a machine gun. So machine gun back in 34 was 200 bucks. So it's basically 200 bucks to, uh, to get the machine gun. What's interesting is, uh, the government, our government wanted to put,

uh, handguns into the NFA process with the machine guns. And instead they traded out silencers. And I think the reason why they did it. Yeah. And it was right after prohibition. So I think people are like, all right, you just gave us our alcohol back and now you want to take our handguns? We're not into this.

Huh. And there was really no one at the table to say, hey, suppressors aren't evil. They're not going to be used inappropriately. It was just sort of a change of, okay, let's switch out handguns and let's put suppressors in there. But they were around back then. Yes. Yes. You could buy them before without the regular, you know, the regulatory process. I mean, you know, you see the maximum advertisements in the magazines where you could buy it and get it in the mail and you still see them floating around occasionally. But yeah, before 1934,

they were somewhat unregulated.. They're the same as a firearm So you have to follow all the same rules you do with a firearm But then you also have to go through the NFA process, which is a federal process Got it. And the Hearing Protection Act is not never got passed, correct? I think a lot of people thought that it had a potential possibility when Trump first got elected So it sort of staled the market a little bit. We have two lobbyists, federal lobbyists in D.C., and their feedback to me is that it would take six years of a Republican president, Republican Senate,

and a Republican House to approve the Hairy Protection Act because they would have to educate that many people to get on board with it. There's just such a negative connotation from the word suppressor for non-farms people. When they hear it, they just think, you know, public safety issue, nefarious activity. It just yes exactly totally hollywood hollywood is not held yeah for sure has there been have you seen any are you aware of any um has anyone looked at like crime

do you know i mean is there evidence of that that there's a disproportionate number of suppressors turning up in criminal activity? administration once he was elected to deregulate them. And that's what kind of fueled the whole hearing protection act. But ATF admitted at that point, you know, 2017 ish that they're not a public safety issue. If you ever see a silencer used in a crime, if you read the footnote or you read all the details, it's typically unlawfully obtained. They made it themselves. I can only think of one or two examples in the 20 years I've been doing this, where there was actually a criminal activity that was happened with a criminal activity that was happened with a suppressor that, you know, the person got prosecuted. And so there's three and a half, 4 million suppressors in America that are lawfully registered. And are there really now? Yeah. And how many States are you allowed to hunt with them? So suppressors themselves are

legal for ownership in 42 States. You can hunt with them in 41 States. So I would say not many people talk about hunting in Connecticut. So that's probably not a big miss so that's one of them that's the only state you can't hunt on them with them oh you mean where you can have it but not hunt with it correct there's only one state you can have it but not hunt with it correct but 41 states you can hunt with it yeah oh i didn't know is that widespread oh yeah that number's really growing yes left that you can't connecticut no but did you can't own right oh you can't? Connecticut. No, but that you can't own. Probably Hawaii. Oh, you can't own. Oh, eight states. Yeah, you're right.

So California, Illinois, Delaware, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts. All those conservative bastions. Yeah. And then he said Hawaii. God, you'd think Delaware, Rhode Island, and Mass would be big proponents of suppressors. Yeah, since that's the background of the American firearms industry. Well, there's that,

but just like the urban deer situation, the awareness of Lyme's disease, like they're doing pretty heavy whitetail suppression in those States. And, and just that density of humans. Yeah, no, that's a good point.

It's, it's like a good neighbor thing. Yeah. Yeah. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, 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.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. You know, there's so many things that are piled up here that we need to talk about. Let's explain one thing. I'm going to throw this one to our resident gun nut gearhead, Garrett. Sonic crack muzzle blast. You want to run with that one? That's a good one to cover for sure.

Because it's the whole pew. Yeah, well, I mean, and I actually brandon would be the best one to run with it but my best example of the two of the difference of the two is shooting a 300 blackout right um so they make like sub and supersonic rounds okay um that that gun that cartridge was like created around being able to shoot subsonic ammunition so 220 grains is just coming right out under, right underneath that, that speed of sound.

And so you don't get that sonic crack. So in theory, you have the same gun, same powder charge. Um, if, if you have a, like a, right now I run a,

um, SIG 300 blackout for coyote hunting. I think we've actually hunted coyotes with that gun. Running supers suppressed. You still, it still sounds like a suppressor it's still quiet but you still get that kind of like crack at the end it almost sounds like when you unplug like an air hose from like a pressure like a tank like air tank right get that i'm happy to jump in on that crack oh what i'm trying to talk about is there's two,

okay, Grace, you're going to get to go, but I'm just trying to, here's what I'm trying to set up. I wasn't too clear. There's two noises happening. Let's stay out of subsonic.

Okay. All right, back up. Slow down. General honey, like your grandpa's deer rifle. There's two noises. There's the powder

exploding. And then there's it being faster than the speed of sound and breaking the sound barrier. Grace, do you have something to say on this? Absolutely. And so that's important. What you're actually seeing, and

I hate that this isn't totally video, but there's the spectrograph of it. You have, when ammunition breaks the sound barrier, which is heavily dependent upon temperature, so when it's faster than 1,100 feet per second at 68 degrees Fahrenheit, you're going to get an N-shaped sound wave on a spectrograph just a few milliseconds before the blast from the gun happens and that what we call an n-wave or that sonic crack can reach up to 150 to 170 decibels and it cannot be suppressed by a suppressor that's what i'm trying to tee up is the whole myth of the Jason Bourne is part of the thing with like people looking at

like, oh, suppressors would just mean you could walk around a house and like shoot everybody in the house and there's no noise for neighbors, cops, other people in the house or whatever this sort of myth is. You're ruling out that there's additional noise occurring when a firearm is shot. Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at by saying subs and supers,

because then when you shoot a subsonic, that is truly where you actually do get the Hollywood Jason Bourne. It's so quiet. We'll shoot. I'll take my wife and kids, and we'll shoot a 22 um one of those taxol like semi-auto 22s with a suppressor and subsonics the only noise you hear at the gun is you hear the slide and and i'm not joking you hear the beer can crinkle yep when you shoot the main noise is the the aluminum crinkling. Yep. That's quiet. Yep.

But normally, like if I'm shooting my 300 wind mag suppressed and someone's off 100 yards away, they're very aware. It's a much quieter experience for me. They're very aware that a gun went off because there's that traveling noise, you know. You're not getting rid of the sonic boom. Yeah. My brother described it in wisconsin uh when my daughter shot at a deer last year he said that he felt like he was just hunting nearby you know sitting on a stand and he felt like he could actually hear the bullet traveling more than he

ever had like he was he heard this that as it moved through the forest or whatever where normally it's probably muffled by the blast but he's like out it's just he was just like it was crazy because i'd never had heard that sound it's obviously always been there no but because there was that loud blast was muffled he could actually hear this like different sound i'm just stumbling across a um sentence in in this piece about the hearing Protection Act. No one should have to sacrifice their hearing because they choose to exercise their Second Amendment rights, and it's about the Hearing Protection Act. Corinne, did we do our thing?

Because here's the story. I think I told this story before we started recording today. Yanni and I were talking about this. Maybe how many years ago? We were in kentucky i don't know eight eight nine ten whatever the hell it was eight years ago yanni and i were in kentucky we're hunting with our buddy kevin murphy and we went on a swamp rabbit hunt with some game wardens and suppressors were just just becoming part of the conversation around hunting i didn't

own one yet i don't think i own i didn't own one yet and it was just becoming part of the conversation around hunting. I didn't own one yet. I don't think I own one. I didn't own one yet. It was just becoming a thing people talked about. This game warden had two things that Yanni and I have mentioned many times. He said of his job, one of these game wardens, there's multiple game wardens there, one of these game wardens said,

I don't need to go out in the field anymore. I have Facebook. True story. warden said i don't need to go out in the field anymore i have facebook and the other and the other true story and the other game warden said on the conversation of suppressors he said like he expressed being uneasy with suppressors because he said that's a big part of my toolkit and he went on to explain that's why i never get any bow hunting done as i'll be in my stand and it'll be right around dark and off on the next place i'll hear and i'll think to myself something's not right and then i'm down out of my tree heading that way that's the only observation i ever heard from a warden and it was um it was speculative and i was asking kren this conversation and i'm

staunchly like i'm staunchly pro suppressor um but i asked kren like we should ask some game wardens what what their take on it is yeah so everyone i asked directly had to get approval to participate in the anonymous poll okay so we just stole the whole thing out no no and so everyone most everyone came back to me with a no so then i asked colleagues and brent reeve has a friend joe alexander thank you so much um he uh reached out on my behalf to dozens of his game warden buddies and i think uh it was kind of a collective effort of wardens from across different states, and he put together this bar graph. Can I read it? So that's what you have,

and then you have, you know, he did like a kind of opinion poll as well. But they know and they agreed that what they said would be part of this. Yeah, for sure. So here's the game warden poll that Corinne assembled for us. Here's how it was expressed to them. I think I wrote this sentence, and now that I'm looking at it,

I made it maybe a little bit difficult. Oh, good. I'm glad you see that, too, because I've read it like 10 times. I'm like, man, I don't know what he means by this. I feel like this feels like a text message. This is sort of the essence of me and Corinne's text messages. I think it was like i said on a scale from one to ten it's it's very hyperbolic i say on a scale from one to ten with one being the worst thing for wildlife ever and ten being no difference to your ability to do your job.

What would your number be? That's a terrible sentence. We're asking them to say in terms of from a game warden's perspective, suppressors being doesn't matter. Suppressors being it makes it very difficult to do my job. No, it's like I put it the wrong way to one is it's bad. 10 is it doesn't matter. From the perspective of how a game warden is able to conduct his business. We go on.

Thanks to Brent Reeves' friend, Lieutenant Joe Alexander, who helped Corrine get this together. All wardens Corrine personally reached out to said they weren't allowed to answer this anonymous poll. They wound up getting 29 responses from game wardens. 16 of those 29 were from Oklahoma. 6 were from Texas.

3 were from New Mexico. 2 from Colorado. 2 from Kansas. 1 from Colorado to from Kansas one suppressors are the worst thing ever for wildlife zero respondents gave a one to meaning next to one. One being the worst thing ever for wildlife. Of the 29, two did a two. No. One did a two.

No warden says it's the worst thing ever for wildlife. Zero warden says it's the worst thing ever. God, this is horrible. Man, I should not get into the polling business. No, I'll get through it. Zero says it's the worst thing ever for wildlife. One guy gave it a two. Two guys gave it a three.

Zero guys gave it a four. Now we start to see it climb. But here's the thing. 10 out of 29 10 out of 29 wardens said it has no impact on their suppressors have no impact on their ability to do the job a couple anonymous comments they're the ones using facebook readily because they because they don't need because because they got Facebook. They just look for something and they're like, that's not right.

Why has this guy got a big buck in July? It looks like... Why has this guy posted six different bucks in the middle of the night in his t-shirt with a beard next to him? It looks like 26 out of the 29 gave it a five or higher. There you go. That's a good way of putting it. You should go in the polling.

Yeah. Some anonymous comments. Game word number one. I would have to say nine. Hardly affects the way I do my job. Just like a knife, suppressors are a tool. In the hands of a chef, a knife helps a chef create a fine meal. In the hands of an unsavory criminal, a knife could be a dangerous weapon used for illegal things.

The same goes for suppressors. In the hands of a hunter, a suppressor could be used to help fill the freezer or used by a poacher to quietly conceal their crime. Criminals who wish to break the law are going to do so and use whatever tool will help them achieve their goal legal or not on a personal note i think suppressors are a great way to introduce youngsters and new hunters to rifle hunting who are afraid of the percussion of rifles or who wish to keep their hearing or it's it's a or um so does that. Thank you, Corinne, for putting that together. No, thanks, Joe.

Who's Joe? He's the guy that did the work. Oh. I thought Brent did the work. No, Brent's friend Joe helped me out. Oh, I'm sorry. Thanks, Joe. Thanks for doing that, Corinne.

That put to ease my... That put that to ease. Anyone have any comments on that? You know, we all know Eric Crawford, former LEO, wildlife LEO over there in Idaho. I was just hanging out with him earlier in the week and I had, um, I'd either told him that I finally have a suppressor showing up at the house or his comment, but he was like, oh, you guys and your suppressors i was like well go on tell me tell me more and he didn't really just didn't have a a good uh good

comment good good answer but i i kind of read between the lines and it's just like, I feel like from his point of view is like, I want all the little tiny advantages I can get as a law enforcement officer out there. Because the job's just so hard to pin. You know, you hear a shot ring out over this giant forest and you're like, okay, I can go look for vehicles on the side of the road, but maybe that person got dropped off. I could go charging into the woods by myself with somebody who's obviously armed a game warden said there are certain situations that it would

make it more difficult to hear a shot but you would need to be out of your vehicle listening for a shot another game warden I'm a firm believer in using suppressors for hearing protection but there's no denying that they make our job harder at times another game warden

in my opinion the use of suppressors has not changed anything about how I do my job the sound of a gunshot was never a reason I used to investigate somebody anyways a truck parked at a gate with hunting paraphernalia in it is a far better indicator that somebody is actually hunting than a gunshot.

Goes on. I have a question because some of the game wardens responded saying or looking at suppressors in their relationship to fair chase. And if hunters are, if we hunters are getting critters used to, you know, the sound versus not and kind of if that impacts fair chase or not. And there's also a lot of pointing to thermal vision as being worse than. One guy goes on to say thermal with a suppressor makes it very difficult to catch bad guys another guy he doesn't says i don't

catch him in the act anyways my investigations are usually after the fact um gunshots aren't the primary sign i'm looking for or listening when i'm patrolling um lots of comments do you feel like it infringes on fair chase again like like to do that i'd have to i'd have to take this approach if guns just happen to not be loud let's just say we'll go back in history and somehow through like like the earth was designed differently and physics were different and guns weren't loud would there ever be a conversation in which someone was trying to mandate or regulate that we make them louder it's just they happen to be loud. Do you know what I'm saying?

There's no one ever pointed out a need to make guns be more loud. Be like, you can use a.22, but only if you put a sound accentuator on it to make it be super loud. To make it fair chase. It's just never been part of the conversation. The argument is that the critters That we've been now hunting for Whatever, a hundred years Modern firearms Are accustomed to hearing a gunshot

And being scared And fleeing Okay, let's ban bow hunting Or, you know what, when you shoot your bow You gotta then hit a button that makes a loud noise Okay Because it's not fair chase. That's not oranges to oranges.

Yes, it is. No, it is not. To be honest, the suppressor. You gotta be 30 yards away with a bow. Unless you're using subsonic ammunition and, you know, doing that thing. I think the animal's range of hearing is so acute that, you know, that noise is gonna get picked up no matter what. And you've already shot.

That's the thing. It's like, it's a hard fair chase argument when you've already shot. Like, it didn't help you. Thermal is a good argument for it, right? Like, that helped me find the animal and then shoot it. Helped me find it at night. Right. Off a road.

Or during the day. Yeah. But he hasn't even, normally, you'd also have to do this. When a deer gets hit, the noise hasn't gotten there anyways. I just think the bullet's way ahead of the noise. All the times I've seen a miss

and had that deer or elk haul ass right at me. Yeah. Right? Because they heard the impact of the bullet behind them and then turned and ran right at me. I'm just playing devil's advocate. No, I agree. I'm just adding to this because I'm certainly, you know,

I'm big pro shooting with suppressors. Well, you're wrong, Giannis. I don't think that it's going to make a difference. Every critter I've shot, like you're saying, they still hear something and the herd's still scattering, even when I've used a suppressed rifle. I would say,

if you were going to take that argument, what you would want to actually limit is long distance. Because that's where I've seen critters just be like... No idea. Yeah, like a rock literally explodes at their feet at the first shot and they're like, huh, that's where I've seen critters just be like, no idea. Yeah. Like a rock literally explodes at their feet at the first shot. And they're like, Oh, that's weird. Never seen it before. Yeah. And they start feeding again. So if you're going to take that argument, I would say, instead of taking

away suppressors, take away the ability to shoot past 400 yards. Because at that point, I think, yeah, well, cause I was like a three 40 weatherby, I had a guy shooting at an elk one time at roughly six, six and a half. And the conditions altogether were enough that there was a herd of bulls. And this herd of bulls were not afraid of the sound that they were hearing and the bullets coming in until one got hit. And then when he started running, then they kind of scattered. But, I mean, that right there, I think that that's a stronger argument for what people that are trying to use that, use suppressors to say it's going to do, it's not doing.

It's the, it could be shooting long range. I appreciate the devil's advocacy. He needs to be advocated for. No, it's an argument worth having. Yeah. And I was just watching a documentary. Corinne's going to ask me later if we can cut this out, and I'm going to say no.

I was just watching a documentary of the guy in the military that had to defend Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9-11 terror attacks, and the military commission, and how he got into the mental state to approach that job so devil's advocate thank you yanni um no i mean in a way our conversation together in a way our conversation is antiquated it's antiquated because we're having a conversation from 10 years ago as evidenced by the fact that 41 states have said okay we give 41 states have said okay we've heard from all the interested parties and

in the end we decided this is okay but it remains a thing of like um you know there's i just got this thing the other day from the university of texas they found that better looking people live longer and it has to do with jobs right the way people are treated by health care professionals you can't even begin to untangle it but it's just like people with symmetrical faces live long longer than people with asymmetrical faces we also know that people with money live longer and are healthier than people without money and we've kind of made suppressors with the current the way we've handled suppressors in the past years we're like yeah i understand if you got enough money and you got your whole situation put together you're allowed to have a quieter firearm but if you're a little bit broke it's just going to keep being loud for you because the way we've decided to regulate how these work people with a

couple hundred bucks sure people without a couple hundred bucks tough right it's kind of how they've approached it i mean they haven't put it that way but that's effectively what they've done right yeah yeah it's just evolved that way since the thirties. And where does the situation sit now? Like, can you lay out a little bit like what it used to be? The first time I got one, it sat at the gun shop. The first time I got one, it sat at Bob awards for 14 months before I was able to come get it. Right. Where are we? Why was that? And where are we at now? Yeah. Good question. So, um, yeah, when I first started, you know, I've been doing it 20 years. So when I first started, it was really quick cause no one was buying them. Um, just, is that right? Yeah. It was like two weeks. I mean, it's people like, I always say when I first started with two weeks, you're like, how's that possible? 20 years ago, it was two weeks. Yeah. Just because no one was buying them. There was just, there was no volume. It was easy for them to approve them because there was really no volume. So really the reason why they got behind was just sheer volume. And really the NFA branch is like other government agencies where they don't get the funding that they need to be able to process them. They weren't getting the head count. They weren't getting the technology.

They just, they probably weren't getting the best employees. Huh. There's no deliberate delay. No, no, it's a hundred percent volume. It was a 14 month wait for someone to pull that file. Well, I should, so they did studies and they were touching it like a hundred times. I mean, just like a hundred percent inefficient, just, you know, send it to Bob, send it to Jane, then Frank, it would just kind of went around this sort of, you know, path, but you know, I've seen it go as high as I saw it get up was about,

you know, that year and a half, two years after Obama changed some rules, he tried to take it where it was harder to get it through a trust. And then, um, now fortunately, uh, we're seeing what they call and what we're seeing is real time approvals. So we're actually submitting people's paperwork, uh, digitally through the e-forms process at sign with their central. And right now it's about a three to four day waiting period. Some of them, some of them are getting approved within hours. No. Yeah. I'm serious. I, yeah. Cause I say that, um, you know, if God himself had come down and said, Brandon, what would you like approval times to be? I'd be like, Oh, I would be happy with 30 days, sir. But to have like real time, who would have ever thought of that? Right. Yeah. Cause you can go get the damn gun real time.

Yes. Yes. So it's, uh, it's really changed thought of that, right? Yeah, because you can go get the damn gun real time. Yes, yes. So it's really changed everything. I mean, it's doubled our demand. I mean, people are like, there was like this sort of psychological, I got to pay for it, I'm not going to see it for a year. And then it got to be 10 months, and then it was nine months, and it sort of, you know, oscillated. But now that, in some cases, it's literally real time.

So 71% of every one of them we submit is instant approval. What? Yeah. Because what they do is they just do your background check and if you pass it, you're automatically approved. I haven't done one in probably 10, 11 months or something like that. Yeah. Haven't picked one up in probably a year.

Yeah. So, I mean, it's pretty amazing. So the 29% that aren't getting approved real time, they've been arrested before, so they have to look and figure out what you were arrested for. So it, I mean, it's pretty amazing. So the 29% that aren't getting approved real time, they've been arrested before. So they have to look and figure out what you were arrested for. Got it. And there's a felon in your state that's got the same name. So they have to make sure you're not them. So that's where it creates a little bit longer wait and the FBI has to manually review it. And that can take, you know, a couple months.

So Joe Smith has a little harder time than Giannis Mattel. You're exactly right. That's a hundred percent correct. I used to tell people by their their name probably how long they would have to wait if they would tell me whether they've ever been arrested before. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like that dude that wrote in about how he's not rich, Mark Rich. Yeah. There's probably some dude that did something bad named Mark Rich because it's a common name. Yes, very much so. What is the process?

There's like a fingerprinting component. How's all that work? Yeah. Good question. So remember it all started in 34, so it's a little antiquated, but, um, the best way I could think to explain a silencer purchase is it's a title transfer. So it's almost like buying a truck. So the title to that silencer is in our name at silencer central. And in simplest terms, we're asking the ATF to transfer it from us to you. So for them to approve that, they want fingerprints, which we do know the insight is they don't use the fingerprint cards, but we have to submit it to them anyway. So we get those from you. We submit them digitally. They need a picture of you, which most people take with their phone and send it to us.

We upload that to them. And then we give the same sort of demographics you would give when you purchase a firearm. They just want to make sure you're not a felon through a background check. And then once they approve it, they'll put a stamp on there. So they do charge that $200 tax that we talked about earlier. And once that's approved, we can transfer it to you. And the good thing about Silencer Central is we could do everything remotely and we can mail the silencer to your front door. Oh, it doesn't have to go through a... So fortunately, Silencer Central has locations in all 42 states where silencers are legal.

So we manage all the paperwork on the front end in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where our home base is. And then we manage it on the back end for whichever state you live in. So if you live in Montana, once it's approved, it's shipped from Montana directly to your front door. Yeah. That's good. Where does the little interview that I do every time? Oh, sure. How does that come into play?

Why is that necessary? Yeah, good question. So essentially we're filling out the paperwork for you, sign what their central is based on the information you give us. ATF wants you to verify that the information we filled out for you is accurate. That's it. Yep. So it's a good check step for us.

I mean, we do find that people love that. I mean, we usually send you a review right after that, because we get, you know, a hundred percent, five stars, like, boy, that was a great, that was a great process. Because essentially we're just saying, Hey, did we get your last name right? Did we get your first name right? Are we correct? And you said, you're not a felon, you know, here's the address, here's the state you live in. It's just a quick check. It gives ATF. So we had to work with ATF because, you know, we're more remote. We have stores in all states and we're doing this from South Dakota, from our headquarters. So we kind of had to work with them to say, hey, you know, they're not going to walk into our store to acquire this. What do you want us to do to fulfill the requirements so you feel like this is following federal statutes?

And that's what they came back with. So it's worked out really well. I mean, it's a bottleneck for us, but consumers really like it. And it keeps us from having any errors. So the good thing about our process is we have almost zero errors. Because if you get an error on the forms and you get denied, you've got to start back over. Not that the wait is as long as it used to be, but that's kind of our claim to fame. It's all digitized through that process. Yeah, and it's quick. I mean, if you as the consumer have your shit together, which means I think I can't remember remember now what they call it, some kind of a identification number you need to have on hand. And then one other.

Yeah. So basically the ATF, you're signing those documents digitally saying that what we entered with you was correct. So the ATF has you sign up for that on their website and how they determine you are who you say you are is through like, you know, data that's your financial data, you know, which address did you live at? What was your car payment for the first vehicle you bought? You know, that kind of stuff. That's your digital signature. So essentially they'll give you a pin and a username, which you can't tell us. So you'll enter it in on the computer system. That's your digital signature. That's what sends it to ATF. They immediately then send it to the FBI. FBI does a background check. And if it's approved, then we get an approval right back.

I mean, we've seen people get approved in 30 minutes. It's kind of crazy. Yeah, if I come prepared, it takes like five minutes. And if I'm not quite prepared, then they kind of talk me through it like, well, go to here. Go to here. Find this. And then it takes maybe 10 or 15. But it's pretty easy. Yeah, it's super turnkey.

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 sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join our northern brothers get irritated well if you're sick of you know sucking high and titty there on x is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app

is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast.

Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more.

As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com. onxmaps.com. Welcome to onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the onx club, y'all. I want to talk about some of the other rules. You need to have, at least you used to, do you still need to have paperwork with you when you have your suppressor with you? Or can you have it on your phone?

Yeah, phone's fine. So if you read the statute, it just says that you present in a reasonable period of time. So what's interesting is that's actually a tax return. That $200 tax goes to the treasury. So the only people that can actually request it and actually get it would be a person with, like, say, the IRS or someone on the criminal side with ATF. So there's really only two people who can ask for it. So even a game warden can't ask for it technically

because it's a tax document and it's protected by privacy. But you would recommend that you have a photo of that tax form. Yes. It's weird it's a tax form. Yeah, yeah. It's got a little stamp on it. You're right, exactly. Yep.

So, yep, they say able to present in a reasonable period of time. So, yeah, if you have it digitally on your phone, you're 100% fine. Or you could call us and we can email it to you. Now. Okay. I'm out with my kids. Yes. And they're with me, with me. Yep. Okay. And it's, it's firearms that like I own, you know, but it's the guns I use for my kids. I have my suppressors on the guns. I'm standing next to them. I'm cool. Yeah. A hundred percent. So ATF told me as long as you can still see the person you're with they can be in possession of the silencer even if their name isn't on the paperwork because you haven't truly lost possession if you can still see them okay yeah all right so we go

out and i lend my buddy or my buddy comes over my house in the morning wants to borrow my rifle and i'm like oh yeah take the suppressor that ain't a good idea. Right. So, you know, we give away a free gun trust to anyone that buys a silencer from Silencer Central. So if you have a trust, a stroke of a pen, you can add them to your trust. And then as long as they're 18 or older and also not a prohibited person, they could take the suppressor right there. But it's not their, it's not, it's not like becoming their property. It's still. So think of it as when we do it to a trust, that title transfer goes from us, Silencer Central to that trust and the trust technically owns it. So when you add them to that trust, it'll most be like adding someone to your LLC. They're now kind of a co-owner of that

trust so that they can use it. What's interesting about adding someone to a trust after you buy it, you don't have to submit anything to ATF. There's no background check. There's no, hey, we got to send this to ATF. It's very turnkey. So typically at SignWriter Central, we usually recommend, hey, put one person on the trust yourself. We'll do all the paperwork for you.

Once it's approved, we can add anyone you want, as long as they're 18 and they're not prohibited, just with a stroke of the pen. But you can also get it where you can also, I know I have a trust, but there's kind of no reason to not do a trust, right? That's what I think, because the benefit of the trust is you can share it with that scenario you just said, but also you get to pick who gets it when you pass away. So hopefully your kids say, Hey, I'd like to keep that dad. So you put them down as a beneficiary. And then once you pass away, they keep it. I remember the first one

I got years ago, I remember needing to tell my wife, I'm like, this will probably not, you're probably never going to remember this conversation, but I gather if I was to all of a sudden croak, you're supposed to like call the ATF or something to come get the suppressor, some garbage like that. Well, so if you own it, which is not going to happen,

right? Totally. It'd be low on the priority list, right? Totally. So if you own it as an individual, they do have a form that your spouse can fill out and it's free. I always say you get one tax free transfer, but it's when you die.

Okay. And then you can transfer it to someone else. So it's this kind of the same paperwork we do to transfer it to you. Your spouse could do that paperwork to someone else. And as long as they're in the same state and they don't have to pay the 200 bucks. Oh, okay. Yeah. But that's if it's as an individual.

So the government doesn't need to come and like seize it when you die. No, no, no, no. That's good. Yeah. Well, can you explain when you say with a stroke of a pen, you can add somebody to your trust. Yeah.

So I go to Steve's house and he's like, here's a gun with a suppressor on it. I'm like, oh, I'm not on your trust. What is like the actual process to get added to Steve's trust? Yeah. So if you called Silencer Central, we would just send you a form and it's pretty much plug and play. It would just say, what's the name of your trust, which we would tell you. It'd want to know what date it was created, which is on the trust. And then he would have to sign it since he's the head of the trust. So it'd make you a co-trustee. So

essentially then you could use it. Probably three times in the last four months, I've had the conversation with somebody be like, hey, if you need a suppressor, get one right now. Because they're getting approved super fast. But they're all individual trusts. Yeah, yeah. Right. Or sorry, individual versus trust. Yeah. So typically individual is a little bit quicker because then ATF doesn't have to read the trust, but we're seeing the trust every day getting quicker.

So the goal is eventually it'll be closer. I think ATF's doing pretty much real time on individuals and their hopes to get it out to less than a month if you bought it through a trust. Okay. And that individual though, that one is like- Just you. It's just you. It's in your possession. Yep. Just in your name. But you can change that. So if someone calls and says, hey, I bought it as an individual, I want to put it in a

trust, we could do it for you. It's the same paperwork, but you don't lose possession of the item. So, but you do have to pay that tax stamp again. Oh, interesting. Because you're changing the title of ownership from yourself to the trust. But some guys are doing that because they want to get it quick. So I got a hunting trip coming up. I want to get it as quick as possible.

And then while I'm on the hunting trip, we could transfer it into a trust and, you know, I have to pay 200 bucks, but, you know, some people don't care. Oddly enough, I wish Chester was here right now because he could tell you this is all, I would say roughly a thousand times easier than registering a boat trailer in Montana.

It seems to me that, um, without, I guess like the, the trends going in the right direction without them just saying, listen, it's just, it's just like a gun.

You can go buy it and walk out the door with it. Totally. They're, they're alleviating a lot of the pain points, but what's up with the, what's up with the tax and why isn't there an equivalent when you buy a pistol or a long rifle or a shotgun? Yeah. So, you know, that tax again was created for the machine guns and then silencers kind of got thrown into the process after the fact. Um, you know,

there is that Pittman Robertson tax on handguns and ammo, but we don't really see it because it's paid by the manufacturer. Yeah. It's baked in. So it's, it's what, 13%. Yeah. It's, I think it's paid by the manufacturer. It's baked in. Yeah, it's baked in. And it's, what, 13%? Yeah, I think some of them are 10, some of them are 11, but yeah. You know, what's interesting about that $200 tax is we've got a bill currently in Congress, and we're trying to get it into the Senate, but it would take that $200 tax and put it into Pitt and Robertson, so it would go to conservation. Oh, that'd be cool.

Yeah. And so sort of the other behind the scenes is we feel like as more states, so we talked about states like potentially making them illegal in the future. We feel like if, because so simple math, right? There'll be a million silencers approved this year, $200 each, that's 200 million. That's a lot of money to go to conservation. And a lot of that trickles down to the state level. So we feel like if states like Oregon, Washington state are starting to get some of that money, maybe they would be less likely to make them illegal in the future. But the reverse is true too, like Illinois, or we talked about, you know, some of these other states that, you know, Massachusetts, Delaware, Rhode Island, some of these states where they're

not currently illegal, if they thought they could get more funding through Pittman-Robertson, if they became legal and started transferring through their state, then maybe they would be more open to getting them. So it's kind of a win-win. We do find Democrats and Republicans are interested in conservation so it's it's it's an interesting bill that we hope eventually will get through you know it's a kind of a odd little irony is uh that some of these states that they haven't made it legal are some of the states we would regard as the biggest sort of like what you call a nanny state yeah totally meaning when you buy like some fishing sinkers in california right it comes with like the death message about you know all the bad things that come from fishing sinkers totally and they take so many steps you know like states where you can't pump your own gas yeah or whatever

you know when you fill out a lease to rent an apartment it's just pages and pages and pages of all the hazards and risks inherent in life it would seem that you would have some sympathy from those states that are so protective of saving people from themselves yeah true meaning like can't use fireworks or whatever yeah totally you're like saving people from themselves and constantly warning people of the dangers of everyday activities it surprises me that they wouldn't say, okay, whatever guns we do allow people to have, we should allow them to tone the noise down. Totally. I like that argument.

It's perfect. I 100% agree with that. Say it again, Grace. It's a much bigger public health concern for noise exposure than for safety when you look at the crime statistics, just like you guys were talking about earlier. I mean, what we need to save people from is the long-term health impact of the hearing loss that comes as a result from guns without suppressors. Yeah, or blowing your own kids' eardrums out, which I've done a couple of times. Yeah. Well, you know, and I mean, I don't want to derail the conversation here, but I also

want to just point out a number of people that I talked to in preparation for this told me that they love suppressors, especially for their kids because their kids aren't as afraid of the recoil. But these people are seeing some of the vernacular on the websites and in the marketing that says that with a suppressor, they're hearing safe and you don't need hearing protection when that's just these people are seeing some of the vernacular on the websites and in the marketing that says that with a suppressor, they're hearing safe and you don't need hearing protection when that's just not true. In fact, it's 140 dB peak SBL that's considered the limit for safe impulse sound for an adult, but it's 120 for a kid. And that's a very different measure. And if you guys want to get into the logarithmic scale and how every 3 dB increase is a doubling of sound pressure at your eardrum, we can get into that.

But it's a huge safety issue when you're talking about sounds that are that loud. So it's not either or. In my opinion, it's both and. No, I got you. I got you i got you and um and i feel like try to think of what how i do it myself i feel like i've not put any hearing protection in shooting my rifle do you when you're shooting your suppressor garrett do you do any hearing protection at the range i do you do yeah because like if you're jamming 50 60 rounds it's still

gonna get to you like or if i'm competing with a suppressor i'll throw throw hearing pro in it's usually it's not over ears right it'll just be like which is a lot more convenient it'll either be just foamies or like an in-ear you know hunting hunting well when you i'm gonna challenge you a little bit because when you say it doesn't get to you what are you basing that on? I said it does get to me Oh, I thought you said If I shoot like 50 or 60 rounds

it still does get to me But you understand that Grace is saying a lot's happening before it gets to you Oh yeah, I'm tracking but I think where it's been a huge game changer and grace and i talked about this like i think the first time you came to me to hear she's like the reality with hearing protection is people don't wear it right

hunting hunting right so you're like you're going up the mountain oh there's an elk hold on a second i'm gonna throw in my pro. You've done it like twice in your life. I don't know. I think that the reason why people don't wear it is what OtoPro has been on a crusade to evangelize, which is that these don't have to be foamies that are uncomfortable and fall out and block everything. We can preserve your localization ability and your ability to carry on conversation and even to be able to hear game at an advantage at a farther distance with some of our electronic options that are on the market. So, you know, that's not a valid excuse anymore. But when I'm looking at the stats and the data from the very

best studies, some that are done by medical personnel for the military, other studies that have been done by silencer companies, and you're looking at all of these numbers with the goal of getting things to an average peak SPL of 140 so that it can be labeled as hearing safe, what's not taken into account is all of the variables. The fact that the temperature is going to change the speed of sound, the fact that the length of your barrel, what kind of an action system, whether you've got direct impingement or piston gas, you know, it's all affecting how loud it is at your eardrum. Also, the first round pop is noticeably louder.

Brandon, do you want to talk about that a little bit, about how the first time when you shoot a gun suppressed, it's going to be significantly louder. You know, and just to clarify, our testing experts here, but, you know, I think it's based on design. So years ago, a lot of people would make like a monolithic silencer where it was basically one baffle inside and those did have a louder pop because the air was colder and you had to actually heat it up. And I used to always kind of be against that because I'm like, why would you want in a hunting scenario, your first shot to be the loudest?

So that's why we, we actually switched to stack baffles, but I have found in stack baffles, typically that's no longer the case. You don't always see the first round pop. You don't see the first shot as loud. Cause again, it used to be a big thing years ago. We would sort of promote it as, Hey, we don't have any first round pop. Everybody else does. But now when you start testing, if they have a lot of baffles and they're stacked baffles, you don't see that as much.

I don't know, Lucas, do you see many things that have first round pop like that as much? Yeah. I mean, I think all suppressors have some first round pop, but it just really depends on the design to see how much do they have. You know, when that suppressor is cold, there's oxygen in there. And then you fire that first round, that unburnt gunpowder is what's exploding and creating that louder noise than when it's really heated up but you're firing multiple times. But explain it just a little bit more because I still think like we everybody's understanding there's there's oxygen in the in the suppressor at the end of the gun but now you've introduced unburnt gunpowder so really explain exactly what's going on

that's making it louder than the next shot. Yeah, so that unburned gunpowder, as it exits the end of the barrel there, enters that first chamber of the firearm where there's the most volume of air and oxygen. And so that's where it ignites, and you'll get that loud sound from. Why does that go away on the second shot?

Because once that's expelled, it almost creates a vacuum within the suppressor as that bullet exits and the air flows through and it expels all of that additional oxygen and air and it's also heated up at that point in time. So if you do multiple shots in a row, you won't necessarily see that. It'll get pretty consistent. But if you then let the suppressor cool down or you leave your action open and let air flow through it you might see that again as you shoot again got it i wanna um i wanna do a thing here and i wanna i wanna a little bit clarify what we're uh hearing from grace and and and be, Grace, it's fair to say that from your perspective as a, as a audiologist and a hearing protection evangelist and someone that like, like you like prescribe hearing aids and check people's hearing and all that kind of stuff.

Right. that you're saying you're all for suppressors, but don't make the mistake of shooting without hearing, in addition, use hearing protection. That's right. And I think a good way to illustrate that is to talk about what we call the 3 dB rule. When you're talking about sound pressure, you're talking about decibels, and it's not a linear scale.

It's not one-to-one.'s logarithmic and the curve has an exponential growth pattern for sound pressure so that means that when you're going from let's just look at decibels that relate to suppress sound levels so when you look at sound at suppress sound level data from testing you'll see suppress levels that range anywhere from 100 and I'm looking at some right in front of me where the average is 140. But the first round pop was 145. And then you get a 140, a 137, a 139, another 137. Basically, you've got like a five decibel range of what you're getting on the individual pops. Okay. But for every three decibel increase, every three decibel increase roughly

doubles the sound pressure level at your eardrum and causes an exponential increased risk for hearing loss, which is why when you're looking at the OSHA standards for workplace environments, for example, the allowable time exposure for a sound level is going to be correlated such that, you know, 90 decibels over an eight-hour workday is permitted. But when you take that up to 93 decibels, you're only going to be allowed four hours. Got it.

So there's a tradeoff there. But that means that when you go from 138 decibels to 141 decibels on a reading, which can be, again, influenced by temperature, atmosphere, where you are. Those variables make a huge difference in the risk to your hearing. So when we're teetering right there on that line of, does this suppressed gunshot actually fall within allowable category? Does it? What's the standard deviation there? I'm going to recommend adding earplugs every time. Especially for kids. If you want to have a

fun party, or at an event, have someone come out and stick that custom earwax. Grace came to our office one day and everybody got to get the she comes with this big needle. Not a needle. Not a big needle not a needle and she injects this hot wax into your ear it's not hot she mold

everyone's ears. So if you're having like a whatever, you're having an event, a corporate event, I don't know. She'll come out and mold everyone's ears and then get you custom plugs. Because I would complain to Grace, I'll carry my earplugs around for 10 days. And then when someone at the end of the hunt, when someone finally gets to make the shot, I don't put the son's bitches in. And so having good ear... You're getting better about that, though, right? Oh, a thousand times better. I want to tell you a story.

I was with my kid, and we were pig hunting on my buddy's ranch, and we snuck up on some pigs. His mom pounded hearing protection into him so much. We snuck up on some pigs. He informs me he does not have his hearing protection. We snuck out, back to the truck, got the hearing protection, snuck back in, and then shot the pig. Wow. I approve this message.

Yeah, I was trying to fight against him on this. And he's like, Mom said. Yeah, so the next generation is gonna have better hearing i'm headed toward hearing aids like the damage is done i mean well but hopefully we're gonna stabilize it and and slow down that progression as much as we can yeah if i yell to someone i had this recently when i was at our fish shack i'd yell to our neighbor and the neighbor would say something and i would turn to my kid and they go he said like what the hell is he talking about oh he said uh whatever i'm like how can you hear that yeah grace if i if i uh if it happens to take me uh say five shots to kill my pronghorn on my

upcoming hunt and every single shot registers right at 140. You're way over. Am I getting hearing damage? 140 is the recommendation for the limit for a peak exposure over an eight-hour period of time. It's assuming you're going to shoot that gun one time. That's going to be a long chase. So the answer is yes. It's five days. We're going to finish them off tomorrow, boys.

You start asking yourself the question of, did you have that crack from supersonic ammunition on top of that that was not suppressed that's another 150 to 170 just before the actual blast of the gun? So your ears having to take on that assault as well so why not just join forces let's otopro and silencer central put out some psa where you get a pack of earplugs with every suppressor because the two are better together it that's what i in reading a lot of good song better together i think jack jack johnson has a great song with Better Together. It's always better together. Oh, you would.

Oh, you would, Jack Johnson. Please. Please. I just Jack Johnson'd you. But honestly, it's like that's the PSA right there. It's that when you combine some great hearing protection that still allows you to maintain localization, conversation, game awareness, and just the sounds you enjoy in nature, and you pair that with a suppressor that's going to get you down close to 140,

then now we're talking. Now we're talking. Well, actually speaking of great combinations, Grace, and great pairings, we have a meat eater silencer central suppressor on the table. It's going to revolutionize the table. Do you? It's going to revolutionize the industry. Well, you know what? MeatEater.com also carries the OdoPro Impulse product,

which should just be tethered on to it. Which is perfect for the Jack Johnson concert. You just crank it all the way down. We'll make it a thing, Grace, that we'll offer a combo package at some point when we start slinging these things. Grace, dude, I hear you. All available on MeatEater.com. I hear you.

I'm using my words carefully. I hear you. And when you came and sat in our studio, it changed my – it was the pep talk I needed to start getting serious about my ears. Awesome. A little late. Mission accomplished. A little late, but for the next generation. But not too late, because to your point from the beginning of the episode,

if you're listening to this right now, you're using your ears. Yes. 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. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there. OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land,

hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function.

As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com

slash meet. Welcome to the onx club, y'all. Let's talk about the suppressors in front of us. Yeah. Alright, so we have like kind of a timeline of suppressors here that we worked Silencer Central on. To back up up Brandon and the team came to us a couple of years ago and they're like, man, we should build like a suppressor together.

Let me see one of those suppressors. Um, this is the final product there, Steve. Um, so they came to us and they're like, let's build something together for, for hunters. And frankly, I think we all had like an internal dialogue and we didn't really want to do it because a lot of times that means that we just put our logo on something and we're not really involved with the process. But Brandon-

Am I allowed to do this? Yeah, do whatever you want. Brandon and the team linked us. I knew that was going to happen. That's why I was like, yeah. Brandon and the team introduced us to Lucas. That piece is gone. Oh, there it is.

Oh, man. Go on. And they were like, no, really, let's build this thing how you want to build a suppressor. So Giannis, Cal, and I had kind of the first introduction call with Lucas and the engineers at Silencer Central and provided a bunch of feedback on length, weight then Matt over here started working with Lucas and the team to kind of build what we feel like is not currently on the market. Um, so what we wanted to do, and I'm going to turn it over to Lucas to really like talk through the engineering of this, but from a goal perspective, we wanted something that was light, uh, for hunting, um, that was long enough to get the suppression that we wanted but

not so long that the overall length of your rifle wasn't like carrying a crane up the mountain right um so and the other thing that we wanted knowing that a lot of us are hunting with bigger calibers is a decent level of recoil reduction that isn't seen on the market right now in suppressors. But not only that, being able to tune the brake that you see on the end of the suppressor to make the gases disperse the way that we want them. So like you've shot a lot of muzzle brakes, right? We've kind of gotten away from like radial brakes in general, because it just kind of pushes air in all directions,

which can push it down into the dirt. You get dust kicking up. up can also cause a little bit of muzzle flip up right um that's why most muzzle brakes you see are directional they have ports out the side and large and some on the top yeah i want to explain that thing about about being able to tune them yeah or go ahead and explain because you know if you let's say you're aiming at a target a couple hundred yards away at the range and you shoot and every time when your gun settles it'll usually be and this is a function of posture and other things it'll usually be the know what lands you'll find that it's always to the right right so you like you're a lefty shooter yeah um yeah we were talking about that the other day yep uh it's gonna bounce in some some predictable fashion in a perfect world it

bounces and lands back and when you when everything settles you're right back on the target yep and you don't have to go look for what happened that's how people miss yeah they don't they're not tracking what's going on at the end of it they shoot they never see what happened all of a sudden the animal's just gone they don't know if it fell over if it ran off because their scope settled elsewhere and it's possible i don't i don't i didn it fell over, if it ran off because their scope settled elsewhere. And it's possible. I didn't, I didn't really, I didn't even really know this till a couple of years ago that with a muzzle brake and with, with, with a suppressor,

it's possible to try to tune that out. Right. Yeah. So like if you screw a muzzle brake on, cause that's like the most drastic, if, if you look at your brake and like, if it's directional, it just has the side ports on it, that brake is like at a 45 degree angle. It's going to be a pretty drastic like shift in that rifle when it recoils.

It's going to jump. It's going to jump one way or the other, depending on how you have that. Right. So when you talk about tuning a brake, like a lot of them have like a locking caliper on there where you can make it like perfectly flat. So the gas is coming out at a 90 degree angle to the barrels, right. And that's going to keep that gun kind of just like directly coming back. If, depending on if you're right or left-handed, then you can, and depending on how you shoot, you have some guys that they'll, they'll put the, the rifle, like the stock way out on their shoulder, right. People

like me come right below the right eye. And so it's going to jump differently depending on that. And then that's where you'll just kind of tune that break angle a little bit to where when it jumps, it just kind of jumps straight up and comes right back down. Which is pretty satisfying. It's amazing. Yeah. with this break to where you could make it to where not all these ports are open. And then you can adjust how that recoil is going to disperse or how those gases are going to disperse out the end of the barrel and how you feel that recoil. Now that that gut jumps,

which has never been done, right? You see a lot of suppressors out there that have a radial style break, just like this one where it's, it's ported all the way around, but they have no way of turning off part of those um some of those brakes or those ports or not and that's lucas i think the best thing to do is have you explain kind of how you solve for that is everybody clear

that we combined a brake with a suppressor is that clear does everybody feel like that's clear honestly that's what i was like hanging on i'm'm going, is that what they're saying? It's both? Yeah. So the brake is on the end of the suppressor. So it's acting as part of the suppressor, but also the ability to adjust it as you're shooting. You know, every time you put this silencer on a different firearm, it's going to be rotated differently once you thread that all the way on the barrel. And so that's why we're looking at how do you tune that and time that so that you don't have that muzzle blast shooting down into the dirt if you're laying prone, but instead have it shooting directly out to the sides and directly vertical. Both for to obviously keep your gun from jumping, but just reduce that muzzle rise as you're shooting and be able to stay on target longer. Yeah, and if you hand him the suppressor there, Steve, I think you should talk through how you solve for that. Yeah, so like a normal radial brake on a suppressor, we've got holes all the way throughout this end cap here, but there's a sleeve inside of it that gives the shooter the option to adjust it to their firearm.

So it's specifically tuned to their gun no matter how they're shooting it. So this sleeve inside can be adjusted to only open the ports on the side and the ports on the top. Oh, I got you. And it'll close the ports on the bottom depending how that's installed onto the gun. So that gives you basically the best recoil reduction possible with the silencer. You know, just out testing, you know, see almost a 10% increase with opening those ports up compared to just a silencer alone. Got it. Yeah.

But that same piece there, if you want, you can flip it, right? And then take the brake out completely. Yep. So going back to how do we get this thing as quiet as possible to reduce as much uh noise and hearing damage as possible um if you're not as concerned with with the recoil you can flip this piece around and put it in here and it will shut off all of these uh ports so that's going to make it as quiet quite as possible because when those ports are open they're letting additional gas out that would have been trapped in that silencer for longer so it did less noise more recoil correct yep gotcha yeah you know a thing i think that should

be pointed out on suppressors too is you can just because you're shooting a suppressor doesn't mean you can't turn around and shoot unsuppressed like whatever difference you find in your rifle between your suppressor and not is fixed. Like, you're going to be, when you put your suppressor on, you're going to be a little lower than your normal point of impact, but it's going to be predictable. You could take that thing off, shoot, put it on, shoot, take it off, shoot, put it on, shoot, take it off, shoot, and you're going to wind up with two distinct groups. It's always the same. You just have it in your head about what the difference is. If you like,

if whatever, if you always shoot suppressed, but you're going somewhere, you don't want to bring your suppressor because of whatever reason you would know that like, okay, I'm going to be a fixed MOA off and it's not random. Yep. Yep.

Yeah. Cause you're just dealing basically with like gravity. That's just right. And if you give like really nerd out um where that changes is angles because gravity has a different pull on it it's a good point so if you have a suppressor on the end of your barrel and then you point up that's going to pull different than if you're you know parallel with the the ground um and vice versa it could be lighter right if you don't have a suppressor on there. That's a little different nerd out, but. No, I like it.

Garrett gave me the best nerd out I'd ever heard the other day. Yeah. Gun nut nerd out. Check this out. Yeah. Listen, your bullet comes out. It's spinning clockwise from your perspective. Okay.

If there's a crosswind, your bullet's spinning. So you're the shooter. Think of this as yourself shooting. You're shooting. Your bullet's flying towards target. It's spinning clockwise. If there's a wind coming from your right, that bullet is going to, I'm going to say climb. It's going to not drop as quickly because of it rotating

clockwise into a wind and it's basically climbing the wind. Its rate of drop would be different if it had a wind from the left. Which is driving it down. Down faster.

It's also dependent on the twist rate of your barrel. If you have a 1.8 twist, it's going to climb or drop faster than if you had a 1.10 or 1.12 this is all stuff i'm going to factor in when i'm shooting bucks at 100 yards yeah yeah yeah yeah no it's you can nerd out on that stuff i think what where we had a lot of fun with this one, man, and we got to test it with Giannis yesterday. We did a little experiment. Man, it doesn't seem like this little break on the end of this suppressor is a huge factor. But like Lucas said, when you have that break engaged, it's a 10% more reduction in recoil, which when you're shooting a 300 win mag, like you'll take everything you can get.

Oh, yeah. Right? But you lose like, what was it it like five or six decibels right of of suppression right so if you're out with rosie and you know you guys are shooting the cross um you shut off these ports all of a sudden you get all the suppression that you, you want out of it. Right. And you're shooting a lighter caliber and you don't have to worry about the recoils much.

Yeah. Yeah. Open or closed. I was impressed. We shot 300 wind mag yesterday, 180 grain bullet. And, uh,

the main other suppressor that I use is a nine inch, uh, banish 30. Is that the model name? Yeah. And, uh, so considerably bigger than this one. And I would say that this one, like, I don't, I didn't shoot it right next to each other, but it seemed as though it, it, it was almost apples to apples and like, it really quieted down. And, and the recoil was like, that gun was fun and easy to shoot jeff your hearing protection i was doubled up with hearing protection

yeah when i was trying to communicate with uh lucas we had to make eye contact cal cal brought that up duck hunt with my kids where i put all the hearing protection on my kids, you know, and there's nothing you can yell at them. Come back here. What are you doing? They just are going, you know. Yeah. They're like on a spacewalk, essentially. Yeah.

I think a lot of, do we have an MSRP yet for the one that we're making? Yeah. What is, what is, yeah, tell people, what does the suppressor cost? Yeah. So this one's going to be a 1299. Okay. Okay. Seems like a lot of you are going to say, seems like a lot of money for like a metal

tube. Why does the suppressor cost a thousand dollars? It's a hundred percent titanium. Titanium is hard to source a machine. You saw him take it apart. People want to take them apart and clean them. There's not many of them out there is hard to source and machine. You saw him take it apart. People want to take them apart and clean them. There's not many of them out there you can take apart and clean. One thing we didn't talk about is we let people pay while they wait.

I know we get quicker turnarounds, but some guy's going to take a few months to get it if he's the guy that's been arrested or whatever. We let you pay while you wait so you don't do it all at once. But to answer the question then it would be because of the design that goes into it. Yeah, absolutely. And the materials. Yeah. There's a lot of small parts there. Yeah. And everything that we do is precision machined. So just a lot of time and quality that goes into it to make the product like it is, which adds to that. Where do you guys do all that work? We got two facilities that we do in the Midwest

that we work really closely with that do the machining for us. When they're making that, what do they start with? It's all started from either a solid bar or a tube, and then they make each of the components. Got it. All right, man. So tell people how to find you guys. No, first, I want to know about cleaning them.

I think we've got to touch on cleaning them. Yeah, is anybody actually going to clean one of those? You have to. Oh, yeah. You have to. Yeah. Because mine right now, I have one, the Banish 30, which you can change it from nine to seven inches.

You probably own one of those, too. Yeah, I do. And I'm guessing since you haven't cleaned it, yours also is locked up and you can't take it apart right now. Like mine. I wouldn't know because I don't have gone and cleaned it. Yeah. So I should be cleaning it? Yeah.

Let's talk through that because I think that's really important because right now I'm kind of- How many shots? Between cleanings. So they usually base it on the fact that it may not need cleaning, but if you wait too long, it's harder to get it apart. Got it. So they say every couple hundred rounds. Okay. The thing that seems to work the best for cleaning these is taking all the baffles out

and putting it like a CLR, that calcium lime rust remover. It's basically acid. It'll eat the carbon right off of it. Some people do a 50-50 mix, but you probably don't want to use it on, soak the whole tube in there because it can mess up the cerakoting. So just the baffles. Yeah. And you can run a brush through it to get it out. But yeah, you can let the baffles, I mean, they're 100% titanium. So that's cerakoted titanium. Yeah. Yep.

Absolutely. You can see this little logo sticks out. It's two layers of cerakote. So you have a different color. So when it gets engraved, you can see the bottom layer as well. Well, that's cool. Yeah. But so it's that easy.

Unscrew the back. You know, we have a baffle removal tool. If they do get carbon up or you can actually push them out. It's a little device that you turn and it pushes the baffles out. Then you just basically put it in cleaner overnight and it's going to eat it up. Dude, now I feel like a jackass. And then just rinse them. I never thought I'd do that.

And then just rinse them. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Your zero will shift too when you do that. Oh, because it's all just like if you just wait like if your gun's filthy yeah that's why he hasn't done it yet yeah yeah and also you get i just did it because i maybe was aware of that but just being dumb i don't know

it starts messing with your volume too so if you're decreasing the volume and your silencer it can potentially get louder so to be able to open up the volume again right yeah here's another i got another question too are you good on cleaning what's the um at what point will there be a more of a discussion about suppressed shotguns and like will you ever have it be that you can still have a slight a flat plane on top i know it's on our r&d list like how do you aim it do you you know what I mean? Like, think of what it would do to, like, traditional shotgun shooting to have a raised. Yeah, so you got to keep it under that sight picture that you have on just your normal rifles today. But you also don't want too much weight out there to impact your swing as you're pulling on the bird either. So it's kind of a delicate, delicate situation to design around on how do you, how do you keep it as small and light as possible, but still cut down that the sound on, you know,

your 12 gauge with a three inch Magnum shell in there and shooting geese out there. So, um, he's, he's been pestering me quite a while to, to come up with one. So we're working on one here. Well, that dude in No Country for Old Men, he had a sweet one. Oh yeah. Did you hear the sound out of that? Yeah. Chug.

The way it chugs so that that could be a thing in the future yeah yeah absolutely there's a there's a couple out on the market today but really trying to to find one that works for all hunting all hunters and all aspects of you know whether that's turkey to goose to duck or anything yeah well i know one guy that shoots a suppressor on the shotgun for turkeys but then he runs he runs a red dot on an elevated platform to get up and over the thing. But that has no, for like wing shooting, it's just not a thing. Oh, it's about to be. You think so?

Are you just talking to sites? They're talking a lot about, yeah. Yeah. It becoming a thing. People in the industry that are like trying and going, oh my God, that works good. Oh, okay. I still think of that as a very loud activity. Wing shooting.

Shooting ducks. Oh, I'm talking about the elevated sights on shotguns. Oh yeah. Okay. I thought you meant like a way that you'd ever solve, you'd ever be able to wing shoot with traditional form, wing shoot a suppressed shotgun because think about it like the can on the end would change everything it'd be above your rib it'd be above your rib and your bead although technically you're not looking at that anyways

right okay i don't know if you're Will Primo apparently not I am aware of my bead when I shoot even though I should apparently should not be yeah alright well Grace tell people how to find you so they can get some they can talk through their options on hearing protection

and I'm gonna if my wife gets her way I'm to be coming to you for my hearing aids pretty soon. There you go. So the best way to find us is online. We'll take care of you, Steve. otoprotechnologies.com That's O-T-O-P-R-O technologies.com

And then our telephone number is 769-230-0834. My buddy Pat Durkin, who I mentioned, he said he's got a setting on his hearing aids where he can make his grandkids basically vanish. Yeah, that wouldn't be too hard to do, actually. You find the pitch of their voices and just turn it down. He said he can mess with his. He can make it that he can't hear his wife. He can make it that he only hears the TV. He can make it that he can't hear his wife. He can make it that he only hears the TV. He can make it that he doesn't hear his grandkids in the background.

Hearing aids have become pretty cool little techie devices. They're not what your grandma wore. Let's talk about how to find silencer central and how to begin the process of getting a suppressor if you're

in one of the four-fifths of states that allow you to do so. Yeah, you just go to silencercentral.com or do a Google search for Silencer Central. Like you said, we can mail the mediator a suppressor after they do the paperwork. It gets approved right to their front door. So make it super convenient.

No 14 months. We haven't seen any that long in a long time, which is great. No, it's sitting in some weird back room at the sporting goods store for 14 months. Nope. Nope. It's super quick. I mean, like I said, we're seeing three to five days on transfers. Yeah.

It's, it's changed everything really. I mean, we were talking about the hearing protection act earlier. I think that there's less of an argument for the hearing protection act. Like you said, now that you're getting up so quickly, because that was the big play, you know, the big pain point was I got to wait how long. And now that that's gone away, I think that,

you know, it's going to probably be harder to pass a hearing protection act because people aren't as passionate about it now. But I do like that little hook you were talking about of being like, okay, let's throw this into Pittman Roberts. Holy a hundred percent. So that's,

throw that 200 bucks into that pile. Yeah, it's growing at 40% per year, and that'd be 200 million this year. So that's a lot of money to go into conservation. Yeah, I mean, what's Pittman Robertson normally coming in at, a billion? Yeah. Somewhere around a billion. The last couple of years, yeah. That's a huge.

Yeah, it's a big. I mean, I'm no mathematician, but. Big individual. Well, he just threw out four fifths, so I was trying to do that math, but. Yeah, I came up with that like that too. I mean, a good time to point out though too, like Brandon and Silencer Central have been huge supporters of conservation. They're donating a ton of suppressors for a

bunch of different groups that are kicking ass out there and providing a lot of goods, a lot of goods and services. So it's appreciated. Yeah, we're up to $7.6 million since we started it. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

And the push is anyone out there that has local conservation type activities where they need a fundraiser, we give away free silencers and we let them keep a hundred percent of the proceeds. So. And then you guys run the process for whoever wins it. Yep. Exactly. Exactly.

And our hope is they buy more or people at the event hear about us. And it's just kind of a, you know, it came up as a word of mouth where it's creates a win-win where you benefit conservation. And also it benefits us to get the word out that you can hunt with suppressors. Cause think we first started doing this. Most people thought they were illegal and most people thought you couldn't hunt with them. So yeah, we really just started really strong in like 2021. So to be able to give 7.6 million is a lot. Heck yeah. That's awesome. And the day this drops, that suppressor will be available. Oh, it will? Yep. We're taking bets internally on how long it lasts before it sells out.

I mean, this is a big deal. This is impressive. I appreciate you guys coming to the table and helping us create this. It's awesome. Yeah, it's a great one. Well, thanks for coming on, man. Everybody protect your ears. I don don't know if you got, if you got little kids, protect your little kids ears, man. Hmm. I think that all the time when I'm laying in bed at night,

listening to my ears go. Yeah. All right. Thank you guys. Yeah. Thanks Steve. Thanks guys. Yeah.

Appreciate it. Absolutely. This cold mountainside in the frost It sparkles like diamonds And I remember at his age I'd never walked the sage Or seen the open country in the west Never drank in the beauty Of a clear mountain spring While staring out over the winter wind Will I leave empty-handed?

Sometimes memory is all you need Will I leave town and pray, ain't nothing in this world that's guaranteed. And it's better to and the prey it should remove Or should we stay, it's all a part of its DNA Steep angle of the sun, the crazy days I've done To disappear off into the dark timber And he crawls across the snow Eyes up, he's staying low Nothing memory to take time to remember

Their eyes gone around And I feel that we've been found And the grave that lives another day When I leave Empty handed Sometimes memory Is all you need When I leave Time granted

Ain't nothing in this world That's guaranteed When I leave empty handed Sometimes memory is all you need When I leave time granted

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