EP 45: Long Range Shooting and Accuracy with Mark Thompson

We're reducing the wind drift, we're reducing elevation change. It's not necessarily the group at 100, it still may end up being the tightest group at 500. Fast and flat. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter here with the Epic Outdoors Podcast. It's been a while. We've been hunting our guts out, basically the last 60 of 60 days, maybe 90 of 90. I don't know, I'd have to go back and look. But anyway, back in the office today, I got a stack of mail and a stack of stuff to do, and Chris has cornered me to do a podcast. So, here we are. I like doing these anyway, but of course we got a lot of cool guests, and people that have a lot of experience in the industry. And so, anyway, before we get to our next guest, we'd like to thank Under Armour for sponsoring these podcasts. They do a lot to support Epic Outdoors, and we're the first to sign up for the podcast and whatnot, and so we're super appreciative of them and their support. Of course, they've got a lot of great products.

Be coming out with new gear all the time. They've recently released their newest additions of what they've got going, and all the different models of gear and clothing. And so, anyway, you might check them out on Under Armour.com. You can search under sports, hunting. You can go to RidgeReaper.com. There's a lot of different ways you can get on there and check out what they've got going, of course, and order up some stuff. So, anyway, today we're going to visit with Mark Thompson of Thompson Long Range. Of course, Mark Thompson is a wealth of information. He's an entrepreneur of many sorts, done a lot of different businesses, so I can't wait to speak to him, so let's get him on the line. Hello, it's Mark. Hey, what are you doing?

You better have my number in your phone still, buddy. You've changed it since the last time we talked. Bull, you've changed phones.

Anyway, so what are you doing today? Today is work on the new house a little bit. Are you? Yeah. Yeah, well, good. I heard it's kind of small. It is small. It's just got a big porch and a big garage. That's all that's important. If you say it's big, it's monstrous.

I got what I wanted and my wife got half of what she wanted. All right, all right. Well, let's see. I don't even know where to start with you. I've known you for many, many years. I don't know how to get the, you know, I want people that are listening to kind of learn who you are. And I don't really want you to be too modest. You're a modest guy, but you've done a lot of crazy, cool things that are pretty interesting. So maybe just kind of give us a background of who Mark is. All right. I was born in a small town, Providence, Utah, just southeast of Logan. Grew up there with four brothers and a sister. They were all older than I was. I was the last of six, way behind the rest. So obviously a mistake. The baby of the family, spoiled guy. Yeah, I think there's a seven or eight year gap between me and the next one up. Crazy.

Like shooting BB guns, dark guns, pellet guns, whatever I could get my hands on. And my parents would let me shoot. I was always fascinated with guns. And for some reason, once I could hit the targets close, I always wanted to push the distance. I can remember sitting on the front lawn in a lawn chair next to my dad. And I had a Red Ryder BB gun. And I was shooting honeybees on dandelions, you know, right around our feet. And I just keep extending the distance out there to as far as I could go to see if I could hit those things on the dandelions way out there. Jeez. That was probably the start of it right there. Yeah. That and grasshoppers. Grasshoppers. Well, cool. And so would that graduate to 22s and honeybees?

On up to a 22 and then the West Desert shooting rabbits. Grew up, spent a lot of rounds out there in the West Desert around the Great Salt Lake. There was tons of rabbits. While all my friends were interested in the stuff close by with shotguns, I was using a 22 and then advanced to 220 Swift. I've always been a big fan of high velocity. Yeah.

My opinion of that is, is when you can deliver it as fast and as flat as possible. And I learned this through a lot of shooting. It just helps you be more accurate. So, yeah. I always, I always, uh, leaned toward the calibers that were fast and flat. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that makes total sense. Uh, so you probably were pushing the envelope like the 220 Swift. How fast were you getting it going? Uh, we run that one or I run that one right around 3,800 feet per second with a 55 grain bullet. When I was, I mean, this is when I was 15, 17, that age there. That would have been before chronographs. Yeah. Um. You were counting seconds. I was, I was strictly going by the book there. If it says this many grains of powder, that's how fast it was going to go. Then I'd add some more. Yeah. Yeah. Like everybody else. Oh yeah, for sure. Um. Well, you know, going back a little bit, you were talking about a lot of your guys were, you know, buddies were, um, shotgunning and whatnot. And I don't know, you know, a lot of people don't know that Providence Logan area is just super well known for waterfowl and just a lot of wetlands and marsh country.

And so anyway, did you get into that too? Or a little bit of the, the water stuff. I, for some reason I was always scared of water, you know, I like to fish a little bit, but man, wading the rivers, if it got above my knees, it'd just kind of take my breath. You know, I'd probe around with the end of my fishing pole to see how deep it was before I'd walk out across it. Yeah. So the waterfowl didn't wind me up too much unless I was standing on the bank and then, you know, a few pheasants and doves and, you know, upland, upland game a little bit. So does that bring us to 18 years old? I mean, what'd you do when you graduated high school or?

Right out of high school, I went to work for a warehouse company. I was driving a forklift. Obviously that was through high school too. Um, while I was driving the forklift, I, uh, I noticed a need for wooden pallets. There was none in the Valley and Logan area and nobody was doing pallets. They were all being shipped out of Salt Lake. And yeah, I had a friend asked me if, um, I had an in on some pallets of a certain size. And so I told him I'd throw him some together. He was working for another company and purchasing department. I put those together and he called a little while later and needed a couple hundred more. And then they needed 400. Then they needed a thousand. It wasn't long. I was, uh, working full-time after my full-time job to, to keep up with him and eventually just split off and started my own company. It's called pallets of Utah.

Uh, he's today we do, we do about 20,000 pallets a week and run the company with about 40 employees. That's crazy. I just, I don't know what it was that, that, that drive drove me to do things, but it just seemed like if there was a need, I wanted to fill it. And, you know, that was a situation where there was, there were no pallets in the Valley and it was, uh, it was a need and I was willing to give it a go. So it turned out good. It's not like you were, you know, you, it wasn't your love of pallets that drove you to the pallet business. It's just a matter, just the love of business, entrepreneurial, just cranking. You're a busy guy. You can get right to the bottom there, Jason. It's the love of money.

Come on. Do you idolize money? Tell us the truth. Do you idolize money? Don't kid anybody. You love money way bad. No, we're not supposed to idolize money, Mark. You do anything you can to get it. So 20,000 pallets. I mean, we could do some math, but that's a pretty good business. Yeah. That keeps us busy. Yeah. So when I went out and visited you, gosh, I may have even met you at the first time. We walked into this warehouse that's full of these chandeliers, which are, you know, fake antler chandeliers. And I saw some pallets. I mean, you guys had some gun stuff set up, but I didn't realize. I mean, I had no idea where you were at. Maybe we were after hours and you'd send everybody home. I don't know. Yeah. Maybe it was a different warehouse. I don't know. Do you remember? Oh, man. That was a lot of years ago. It had to have been 10 years, maybe. Or more. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, you had a shop on the way out of town as you head toward Brigham City, you know. It was on the left. And anyway. Still the same place, same operation, more buildings, but a little bit bigger. Wow. We continue to grow. So your pallet business is cranking. Who's running that? Have you got foreman over that? I do. We have a foreman over all of the divisions. We got a different foreman over the pallet shop. We got a different foreman over the antler shop. We've got a shared combination responsibility over the critter lick thing. And then the long range thing, all of those foremans are up to speed on it. And I pretty much, I handle all the long range stuff myself. Okay. Okay. Just because it could kill people, I guess, it's pretty important that the main guy's there. I'm pretty fussy. I'm pretty fussy about that, yeah. So we got, and the antler thing, it's cranking. Still doing it.

It's going well. It is. You know, it's crazy. That whole thing started, I was trying to put an antler chandelier together for my wife for our living room out of drop antlers, natural antlers. Realized it was going to be 4,000 pounds above your head. Yeah. By the time I drilled through trying to keep the wires inside, I just thought there's got to be a better way. That's when I found a way to produce the antlers hollow. And then each one is hand finished. You know, they're pretty good reproductions. It's hard to tell. Yeah, it is. It's hard to tell. Wow. My wife still don't have a chandelier, though. No, you sold that one. The love of money. Yeah. Oh, so let's see. So you're cranking on that, and then, all right, so let's talk about Critter Look. So how does that come about? You just decide that salt wasn't good enough, or, I mean, how'd that come about? That's a long story in itself, too.

We were doing the salt thing, trail cameras, a long time ago. I mean, you should see some of the first cameras I bought. They are like barnacles now. Well, I had 35 millimeters that were 36 exposure. You do the one hour at Walmart, and if you wanted to get the best of Walmart, you know, they only made you pay for the ones that turned out. And so you could say, well, this one didn't turn out. That one didn't turn out. You pay for about three of those pictures. I don't know. That was clear back in the day. That was a long time ago. We were using salt or using the Cattlemen's salt, you know, wherever they had salt out. Yeah. And hanging pretty close to that. But we got hooked up with a guy that helped us with some amazing ingredients that are 100% natural. And, you know, no red flags in there.

We didn't, you know, caution flags were everywhere to make sure we were doing things the way we should do it. Yeah. Boy, the stuff just turned out amazing. It works really well. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. We've got a great state you can try that in, too. Of course, baiting's legal. You can do about what you want to do that wise. And then you guys are up in some crazy good country. And you can test it out on moose and deer and elk and everything. Yeah. And so what's the status? How can people buy that? Or are you selling it direct through your website? Or how are you doing that? Yeah. We have a few distributors out there. Not very many. But anybody that comes to Thompson Long Range can hook up with the Critter Lick stuff on that website. Oh, okay. And they can call the office and place the order. We ship out daily. So, so. And that's only if they come to the shooting course?

Or would you take sales today from anybody? No, no. Sales, sales today from anybody. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We just tied it into the Thompson Long Range thing because it kind of went hand in hand there a little bit. Yeah. It's hunting. People started to associate it with it. So we just kept it under that flag. So are you, you got more products coming out that you've been testing? I mean, it seems like you could do all kinds of cool feed stuff. You know, we're all the time messing with stuff. The gun thing has stayed the way it has been from the beginning. I, you know, I'm still super satisfied with our system. When I put that together in the beginning, and that was back before you even came up. Yeah. Nothing's changed. I mean, I feel like we've done it right and we've done it right the first time. Yeah. Still highly successful. It's a simple system. So nothing's changed on that end.

We are carrying a few more calibers for the Weatherby brand. Okay. We carry the 7MM, the 270, the 300, the new 6.5, 300, 257. Almost all the calibers that Weatherby offers. Yeah. So let's, all right. So I've been holding off to dive into this because this is the guts of what I think the podcast will turn into. Of course, I don't really care which way, which direction it goes. If we end up storytelling and doing all kinds of crazy things, talking about cool, other cool things you're doing. But, you know, of course it's a craze. It's long range stuff. And it's not, I almost don't even want to call it long range anymore. It's kind of like, kind of the standard is that people are, people are able to shoot five to 700 yards. Guys that go to your course are walking away being able to shoot to, you know, a thousand and beyond even. But confident. Easy shot, chip shots, five to 700 yards.

And it's almost like just commonplace. If you can't do that, you know, people almost feel like they're not prepared to go rifle hunting anymore. It's really gotten to that level. I agree 100%. It's, and we don't bring people here to this course, you know, and take them out to a thousand, 1200 yards so they can go start, you know, just trying to kill stuff that far. It's just like you said, it's to build the confidence at five, six, 700 yards. And that's more the norm. When we get, when we get success results coming back from our clients, 90% of them are 700 yards or less. Jeez. Jeez. But like you say, it's, boy, the norm is gone. That, that two to 300 yard long shot that you used to hear about in the coffee shop years ago is, it's, it's a different story now. Well, in, in 2003. So in 2003, I shot my first, what I call giant deer. And I remember telling you the story and I was just amazed.

And I don't know if we came up to visit you in 04 or 05, maybe 05, 06. But, um, you know, that was a 400 yard shot on that deer. And I was a total guess. Lucky, lucky to end up wrapping my hands around him. Long story short. Um, and, you know, and then coming out and that was, you know, and I'd kind of heard things about long range and compensating and, but I didn't really understand it. I come up to visit you and you just introduced us to a whole new style and everything, you know, I just want to kind of maybe a little plug for you, but everything you said jived. Like, like my initial long range experience was through you. And, you know, you talk, you, you took, took us through taking a out of the box gun, whether it be nice rifle, but it's still an out of the box gun, setting it up and the proper setup, the lapping of the scope rings, the putting in the scope, the,

matching the ballistics, um, you know, and we can talk about that as much as you want to talk about it, but, but just overall everything from start to finish, you know, the high rings. So you're not, you know, you don't have your head kinked down on the stock, looking through the scope. There was just a couple of little basics that made total sense when you were explaining them on, you know, how, uh, basically, I mean, anybody that hasn't shot long range before, you almost considered a novice, you know, just kind of, beginner is just, you know, this is how you should shoot. This is proper setup and, and, uh, the proper form. And, and this is why we do it this way. And there was just a lot of cool things that I learned in about a day and a half from you that total made, totally made sense.

I mean, you obviously must get a lot of that from, from people that are coming out to your course and willing to learn. Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, you know, they come a little bit scared, maybe that they personally can't perform or can't, you know, get, get the bullet on the target, but we simplify things so much that, I mean, anybody can do it. And it is realistically long range is simple. If you can, if you can hold a crosshair on a hundred yards, there's no reason why you can't hold one on a thousand yards. Yeah. It's no different. And, and it's just understanding the trajectory of the bullet, you know, velocity and the drop, that kind of, that kind of stuff. And once you understand that and you put the package together, right. From the beginning, know what the load is that the rifle likes and the rifle is accurate with that load. The rest is way simple. Long range is nothing new.

I've said this before. It's, uh, it's been around for a long time back in the 18 sixties, 18 seventies, those Buffalo hunters were, I mean, they had a reputation that was unbelievable for killing Buffalo all day long. And seven through 1200 yards with a 40, with a 45, one 10, 45, one 20, you know, crazy open sites. So it's nothing new. It's just, um, just, uh, a reinterest of it. You know, it's, uh, and boy, when it come around this time, lucky for me, I was on the leading edge of it. Maybe one of the, maybe one of the instigators of getting it started. You were, you're the, you're the, you're the, uh, people that everybody cuss when, when people don't like long range, they automatically think of Mark Thompson and he's the one that ruined our industry.

I'm just giving you a hard time. It's not the truth, but, but you had to do it. Somebody was going to do it. It might as well be Mark, but it definitely, um, it definitely opened my eyes when, when we walk in and we go through everything, we make a load for that gun. We get, uh, you know, I imagine you're still, you can use an Acubons. Yeah. And you're getting that round going to match up the scope and, and everything. And so, you know, everything matches and jives and you spend that night doing it. And then the next day you go to the range. Um, but what are, you know, what are some of the things, maybe just visit about some of the things. What I, what I really was impressed about is the simplicity of your system. So like you said, it's not rocket science. Even, even you've, you've told me before, you know, when I was worried about small groups at a, at a hundred yards.

And then you, you came out with this, this article from shooter times or something that basically explained that, um, you know, it's like throwing a football and it's not necessarily the group at a hundred. It's, you may have a little bit of a scatter at a hundred, but then it, you know, you still may end up be the tightest group at 500, you know, so you need to shoot that same round, you know, at distance to really know what that round's doing over the course of distance. Right. And, um, yeah, I learned that early in the game that, um, you know, we like everyone else, a hundred yards is the, is the norm for setting up a target and looking for accuracy for a rifle. But I'm here to tell you that is not, it should not be the norm. It needs to get out there at three to 400 yards, then find the accuracy by that time.

The bullet has stabilized and you know what it's going to do from there on out. If you want to come back to a hundred and see what it's doing at a hundred, you know, you can always do that, but don't be surprised. Yeah. Don't freak out. You know, don't be surprised if you're shooting a two inch group at a hundred yards yet you're holding a six inch group at 700 yards. Yes. And that's, and we found that on a couple of the rifles. Um, and it was shocking. And you're like, you made the classic comment, which I've used it several times. I don't give you any credit for it, but, uh, it was, uh, we're not hunting field mice, you know? And I love that comment because, because everybody's so freaked out. If you're not, you know, one hole in it at a hundred yards, you've got a crap gun and you're this and that and the other, and it has nothing to do with it.

You know, shoot that thing at five or 700 and see what, and then let's start talking about it. I've literally seen rifles that will shoot a quarter inch group at a hundred yards and will not hit a two foot steel plate at a thousand yards. That's unbelievable. And yet I can have one that will shoot a two inch group at a hundred yards and it'll hold a nine inch group at a thousand yards. So get that, get those targets out there a little ways to look for accuracy. Don't do it at a hundred yards. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, yeah, I mean, it's still, you don't really like people bringing their own rifles to the shooting course or anything like that. You'd like to just set them up with an easy, that your system, an easy system. And it's the, it's the least expensive system I know of out there, but yet very user friendly, very simple. And anybody can do it.

That's the simple, the simple reason we don't allow any outside guns to come in is because obviously we don't know what they're bringing. Um, we don't know the danger side of it, whether they're hand loads that are way overloaded. We don't know. I mean, we just don't know what they're bringing, but everything they learn in this course is something that can be applied to their own rifle on their own time. And they can, they can duplicate it if they want to take the time to do it. Yeah. Okay. What, uh, give us a run, run down, um, of what you're offering. Tell me about Thompson long range and what you're offering when they come in, when they leave all that stuff. A couple of different packages. We do a two day course, which is actually when it adds up, it's basically a one day course. So it's an evening and a morning.

And the reason we do that two day course is because most guys are flying in from out of state. They got to have time to get to the airport in Salt Lake in a car, come to Logan. By the time they do all that, we start at three o'clock in the afternoon that first day with those type of groups. Um, uh, a maximum of four people per group. Sometimes they know each other. Sometimes they don't. Um, in that first afternoon, we take, we spent about 20 minutes of classroom going over some of the things that we just talked about. And then they all open a brand new weatherby rifle right out of the box, a brand new loophole four and a half to 14 scope. With our own custom reticle in the scope. We go through a mounting process where they lap the scope in and square the scope on a rifle using a plump string and some bubble levels, making sure that it's on there. Correct.

We then move to the reloading bench and, and fire rounds through that rifle. And what I'm looking for is a particular speed going down the barrel or a harmonic vibration that I know that that barrel likes. So once we, we find that speed and we do that by starting with a low powder charge and then slowly adding powder until we hit that speed. Sometimes we'll have rifles that are a little bit out of the norm. In other words, they'll take a little less powder or a little more powder than the average. And that's simply because the pressure going down the barrel might be a little tighter or a little bit looser. And we have to adjust the powder to hit the right vibration down the barrel. So once we hit that, they're all accurate. Those guys will then take the rifles while we take them to dinner that night. I usually buy their dinner and we put them up in a motel.

And then the next morning we start at 6 a.m. with the rifles they put together and the ammo or the loads that we diagnose for the night before. We go right directly, directly to the range. And they start at 500 yards and have gone to a thousand yards in less than 30 minutes per shooter. So about three hours at the range we've gone through the whole thing. Everybody's put a group on the thousand yard target a couple times. So it's always sub-minute. Everybody is sub-minute by the time they leave there. Wow. All I know is when I went there, my dad was with us and he just was like, I don't care, I'm taking this gun with me. Is that the way most of your clients feel? Like when they shoot, they feel like there's not another gun on that pallet that they could shoot what they just did with it. And I don't know what it is. It's just, man, I took that rifle and I shot a thousand yards.

And it's just like, it blows them away. You're not going to pry that gun out of their hands. I think that's the mentality. They, you know, I don't know how many come to actually purchase a rifle or how many just come to take the class. And we don't try and push a rifle onto them. I mean, if they're interested in it, they're welcome to buy it. If not, that's fine too. But you're right. They seem to get a little bit attached to it once they put it all together themselves. And we go obviously over ballistics and show them, you know, what kind of velocities we're pushing, what kind of energies we're pushing and how far we're extending that velocity and that energy. And I think maybe in their mind, they're comparing to what they're shooting saying, wow, this thing's got a lot more than what mine does. Yeah. And I don't know if you recall, but the recoil on the 3378 is very mild.

Yeah, it's so mild. Heavy, heavy. You can actually watch your bullet hit the target from 500 yards on out. Through your own scope. Yeah, through your scope. Yeah. No need for a spotter. Yeah, it was pretty impressive. Are you... Let me remind you a little bit of when you and your dad and Adam were here. There's some of this I think you forgot. I thought you couldn't remember when I showed up or where I showed up at. So here's what happened. You guys showed up. I run you through the course and there were like three doubting Thomases. So then we end up out of the range and all of a sudden I've lost control. It's like major competition between the three of you. I couldn't even keep up with you. You were running ammo through there so fast. Pretty soon, Jason, you're all over the map. You can't even hit the thousand. Do you remember this? My barrel was too hot. My barrel was too hot.

Wait a minute. Do you remember this? No, I don't remember that part of it at all. So I said you're too... It's because everybody was shooting better than you and you were all jacked up. Oh, I was pissed off. Go take a walk. So you went and took a walk and then you come back. You had cooled off a little bit. Not your gun cooled off. You had cooled off. Yeah. Then you sat down and shot the tightest group and you had bragging rights all the way home. I remember that. Oh, no. I know. No, I remember it all. I remember it all and you were just laughing and we were wondering how much more we could reload. I mean, it was crazy. You three shot a record number of ammunition when you... Couldn't stop you. I know. Well, I mean, you know my dad. He's a very eccentric guy and he's just... I mean, geez. And then pretty soon we were 1,200 yards.

And, you know, had you put, you know, a couple little gold dots on the... You know, anyway, I'm not going to waste all your secrets, but a few other things to help us shoot further. And it was just... It's an addiction. It's just an addiction. Long range is an addiction. For those out there that know your dad, he talks a lot. He don't ever shut up. After he shot 1,200 yards and about 20 miles all the way home, he never said a word. And he was just... He was grinding on it in his head and then finally says, I want that rifle. That was the first thing that came out of his mouth after about 20 minutes. Okay, I want that rifle and make me 400 rounds. You know, I mean, that's just the way he does it. It's all full bore. So, it was impressive, I got to tell you. And so, I want to talk about a couple things that you mentioned real quick.

I just want you to dive in just a little more like, tell me about harmonic vibration. Just tell me, what are you talking about? Okay, let's make this real simple. So, two guys, two brothers go buy identical rifles. Let's just say they go buy a couple of 7mm Remington rifles. They buy a box of ammunition off the shelf. They head for the range and they're going to shoot these two rifles. They got their targets set up down there. One of them is just drilling knot holes and the other one's all over the place. The only difference between the one that's shooting a tight group and the one that's not shooting a tight group is the velocity of the bullet coming out of the end of that barrel. Okay. Or the harmonic vibration.

So, the one that's inaccurate, if we were to chronograph those and we got a speed off the one that was accurate and we could change the load on the other one down to or up to that same velocity, more than likely that accuracy will come in. So, your point is, let's just say, for example, it's 100 grains of Rotombo, same bullet in rifle A might equal and gives a 3,000 feet per second. The next rifle might take 102 grains of Rotombo to get to that 3,000 feet per second. Exactly. And because they're both basically twin rifles from the same company, out of the box, everything's equal, generally speaking, when they both equal 3,000 feet a second, they're generally speaking, they both have the same accuracy or the potential for accuracy. Exactly. Exactly.

So, on the Weatherby 3378, with an Acubond 180 grain bullet, when I hit 3370 muzzle velocity, I know for a fact that that rifle is going to be submitted at the range. Every one of them on that pellet. I mean, I don't know how many thousand rifles I've done. I think out of all of those, I've had two that there was a serious problem that I didn't know what was, sent them back to Weatherby. But two out of, let's say, two out of 3,500 rifles right now. Wow. Well, I thought it was 3,350. It's 3,370?

You're screwing with people. You're not going to give out your perfect recipe. Yeah. It's, once you find the happy velocity down a barrel, accuracy is velocity related, period. Okay. Once you find the velocity that that barrel likes, and if you want to mess with different loads, different bullets, and can hover around that velocity, more than likely you'll even find a little better accuracy, or maybe a little worse. But it's velocity related. So, I want to dive into another big subject, is reticles versus turrets. And just give me your quick take. I don't know if you're even doing it, if you're doing a turret option, or not, but you were heavy into the radicals. So, just tell me about that. Always been heavy into a fixed radical, simply because, and this is the best way to explain it. So, I have been to the range, I don't know how many times, with a rifle. It's hitting high left.

I make a scope adjustment to the right and down. I shoot the second shot, and it hits right next to that first bullet. I shoot the second shot, and the movement made it go where I had adjusted it to. So, and I know there's been a lot of people that have experienced that. So, it was the jar or the shock of the second shot that let it move. Mm-hmm.

So, with that said, I just don't like the idea of adjusting and turning things, mechanical things. I mean, even the finest machinist will take the slack out of his lathe or his mill when he makes a fine-tuned adjustment. He'll crank it a little too far and then crank it back in just a little bit to get the slack out of there. Mm-hmm. There's no difference. I mean, just moving parts, there's a little bit of risk there. Mm-hmm. I 100% agree with you. And then at times, and I've shot them both, but at times, I feel like your system's quicker. Like, you've got an animal, let's say he's at 770. Then he moves to 840 and nothing flat. I mean, there's just times where then you've got to stop. You're looking at your dial. You're getting back on him. You're looking at your dial. You're getting back. Versus in your system, if somebody calls you a range, you don't have to look anything.

You don't have to leave the scope. You can just keep staring through the scope. Keep the animal in the scope. And when you have to take your eye off that scope and say, look up at the turret to make an adjustment, I mean, you can easily lose track of where that animal's at, too. Yeah. Yeah. So tell me, all right, another question I have. Everybody's a big fan of, like, 20 power scopes and 25 power scopes, and you're at a 4.5 to 14. Just tell me a little bit about that. Like a large field of view, as I have all these clients come through this course, the number one problem is target acquisition. In other words, they have a hard time finding the target in the scope. Sure. And the more the magnification, the tougher that becomes. Sure. Makes sense. That's why you'll see guys, they'll have the habit of reaching up and turning the power down so they can find the target,

and then they turn it back up to full power or higher power. Okay. One more reason higher power is less light. I mean, everybody's looking for that. Every bit of daylight they can get, early morning, late evening. Sure. Lower power scopes will give you more daylight for a longer period of time. Okay. That makes sense, and you're using a 30-millimeter tube, it seems like. Yeah, 30-millimeter tube, but a short tube. Yeah.

You see a lot of scopes that are extremely long. It's more the length of the tube that will eliminate light than actually the objective out on the end. So the shorter the tube, the better off you are. And so the scope that I use is that 4.5 to 14 has a very short tube, 30-millimeter tube. And we use a 40-millimeter objective. Okay. Okay. and then um i want you to explain a couple things that you know like elevation you know and and how it makes a slight difference but like you were saying it is so slight sometimes it's slight enough that people get wound up over it but you can't hold on a target tighter than than what you're trying to compensate for so i just want you to talk about your theory on that on elevation change or elevation elevation change and how it's going to adjust how it's going to change the

yardage that those lines your reticles come in at just you know what your theory give me your theory on it okay um fast and flat when you can deliver a bullet fast and flat you reduce the effects of temperature elevation angle all those things become they aren't eliminated but they but they are reduced significantly so let's take a a 30-06 and we go from 5 000 feet where we got it zeroed at 200 yards and we've got all of a sudden a 500 yard shot the difference going from 5 000 feet to 9 000 feet is significant i mean probably i'm gonna go by the seat of my pants here 15 inches yeah but if we take a the very same bullet not through a 30-06 but say through a 33-78 at a much higher velocity and we're talking four inches yeah so the faster you move that's the width of your reticle at a thousand yeah i mean you can't the faster you most people can't even hold four inches right right

so the faster in the flat the faster you can move that bullet the less issue you have which is why you're keeping a bullets you're shooting as fast as you can keep them then you're just not too worried about it yeah i mean that was roy weatherby's philosophy from the beginning i want to deliver energy and velocity as much as i can at whatever distance i'm shooting and the whole time he was doing that he was creating some of the best long range rifles yeah so tell me about the calibers when i went clear back in the day you know i bought a 33-78 off you and then we also set up the 257 weatherby mag with the 110 but uh tell me what you what you found what you what you're going to and and uh kind of the change there okay um with the weatherby calibers um most people i don't know maybe they don't but the weatherby calibers that are compared to other calibers are typically 200 plus feet per

second faster at the muzzle so this is one of the reasons we carry the weatherby line because that extra 150 250 feet per second is a huge bonus to any shooter just flattening the trajectory so we we done the 257 and the 33-78 just to keep it so we only had two rifles that we really had to carry but in working with weatherby and talking to weatherby um we agreed to take on the other calibers so we have the 270 the 7mm the new 65300 um that's a heck of a caliber but i've heard i've heard it burns barrels no um we heard that with the 33-78 when it first came out too it didn't okay haven't seen one yet jeez i'll bet that's an amazing caliber so if we if we compare that to say a 65 creedmoor that's very popular now i mean people are lined up to buy 65 creedmoors we got a big old rainbow arc going into

700 yards and if we've got that rainbow arc and a five mile an hour wind working on that bullet it's going to move it a little ways because it's time of flight is slower um where the 65300 comes in so low so flat so fast uh the wind didn't have as much time to work on it so we're reducing the wind drift we're reducing elevation change situations we're reducing temperature change situations angle situations fast and flat that's uh okay it helps every shooter so tell me about the 7mm i mean that was kind of the go-to of course there's variations of the 7mm the i mean so just tell me like i mean is that as popular as it's been or what's your most popular you know it's interesting we have um we have all walks of life come through this course and call we have a lot of people who just call and order a package from us and we ship it to them ready to walk out the door and use we like

to spend a half hour over the phone with them um i'm going to say the guys that are 65 and older come from that era when the 257 was was the go-to gun besides the 300 weatherby so we sell a lot of 257s of those guys there's a new group a younger group that's buying the 257s um 7mm there's always always interest in that it's just a matter of preference um but when it comes to calibers you know we recommend that you have a minimum of 1200 foot pounds of energy and 1800 feet per second on the bullet at point of impact so depending on the caliber you use and the bullet you're using that creeps back as we slip down in caliber like the 257 we don't recommend anything over about 675 yards with that even though you've killed elk at 700 plus um yeah with the 257 i think there was a 710 kill yeah yeah i remember that's that's a little bit out of the ethical or the recommended 1200

foot pounds 1800 feet per second probably still had the velocity 1900 feet per second but we were like 1150 1175 on foot pounds yeah and you were saying a thousand i think i may be misquoting you but a thousand foot pounds was your very very bottom threshold it is don't even like to go there if we don't have to but i mean 1200 if we keep 1200 at the minimum that's true comfort there you start getting down close to a thousand then you know you got to pay attention to what you're doing okay and so what's your flattest i mean is this 65300 just smoking is it is it your flattest or it's um if we compare them out to a thousand yards it's six inches flatter than the 3378 eight inches flatter than the 257 and that's about it the 270 is right there with them too so what grain of bullet are you talking on that 65 um there's a couple bullets that we use in the 65 actually three um the

the barnes bullet that they offer the 127 bullet 127 grain bullet that's factory ammo yeah and then they got a swift chiracal bullet that they offer huh well i'm just thinking if it's only six inches why wouldn't i have 180 grainer smacking that when you see it on paper you see the energy and the velocity you see what i'm talking about that 3378 is a sledgehammer of sledgehammers that thing's nasty love it give me some advice like just what you could tell a guy to be a more accurate shooter like what do you see you're seeing everything come through the course um yeah and i'm seeing the best of the best i mean i see hunters that hunt all over the world i mean this isn't a sad story it's it's a matter of fact story um i just had a client come through with his wife and he's been to tajikistan he's been he's been everywhere hunted every species you can imagine and we get to the range

here and um his wife's bored with the whole thing but she comes along he shoots shoots a you know a seven inch group at a thousand yards and i talk his wife into coming over and shooting and she sits down and shoots three bullets that are touching each other at a thousand years come on it happens all the time and i think what it is and this this sounds stupid as can be but i think what it is when we're guys growing up we we always done the fake recoil thing we literally done the fake recoil when we're running around playing pulling the trigger like on a wooden stick or something we're all faking that recoil yeah and there is no doubt in my mind that we're we carried that all the way into our hunting because you tell me carter if this hasn't happened to you you in the heat of the moment pulled the

trigger on an animal and you didn't have a round in there or oh you had an empty and you jerked that trigger there's no question but i had to talk myself through every shot like literally like i talked myself through like you talking that's exactly where i was headed slow down think about what you're doing and just relax on that trigger a little bit i i think something that helps our shooters too is where we have a very mild recoil on our calibers um they're able to watch their bullet hit the target that's a whole new step in becoming more accurate because now they're concentrating on touching that thing off and then watching the bullet hit the target that's huge that makes them a lot more accurate yeah and i and i'm you know when i talk myself through it yeah you've got that but then and but just

letting it surprise you so you you know concentrate like let it surprise you let it kick you yeah and uh and it'll hit the bullet will hit there and you won't be 14 shots into it trying to get an animal down and disgusted with yourself one and done yeah yeah so um what i i sent a guy to you to to get a rifle this year and and uh it was a relatively new shooter he had a couple of tags in oregon um but you know what i like about what you've got going it's it's affordable i mean in the realm of things none of this stuff is truly inexpensive but what you're doing is affordable it's simple guys can walk away and make ethical shots at five six seven hundred yards ethical shots without a doubt and uh that's one of my favorite things about what you've got going it's definitely going to work tell me about i mean obviously there's a lot of guys with experience

out there you do if i want to if i want a six five three hundred i can tell you what i want you will send it to me can i order rounds as well give me 200 rounds send me this gun and and you'll do that for me typically takes us a week at the most geez that's retarded i mean a lot of these guys are a year year and a half out on custom rifles yeah and i don't want to talk numbers but i'm going to guess somewhere between seven to nine thousand dollars yeah well well you mean not you but other companies right and so tell me what that would be i want to i want a 3378 or i want a 65300 probably the same price so clients that have taken the course and paid for the course their price on a rifle is 3200 okay that's the since you took the course 15 years ago you called me and ordered a 65300 and you

wanted it in five days i could have that to you in five days your price is 3200 if i have a client call me that has never been here before his price is 3900 all done and we can ship that to him spend an hour with him on the phone at the range and cover most of the high points that we cover in the class but not all and that's what that extra money is for is basically you're just a little bit more customer service just dealing with the guy a bit there has to be a little more when they just buy a rifle you got to spend a few minutes on the phone with them to help them understand the reticle and what all comes from the package okay so i order this gun's 3200 bucks now i want a couple hundred rounds of ammo are you just giving me the recipe or can you have it built for me we'll have it built and delivered to you

same time the gun shows up and what do you charge for the rounds all of the calibers are 85 dollars a box of 20 except for the 33 78 and it's 130 dollars a box of 20 okay and you know you hear people say ouch that's a lot of money but you know it's it's cheap when you say it takes one shot versus 15 shots well the bottom line is ammo's expensive anymore you it does feel like a lot go down and buy a box then go buy five different boxes because because you're going to need different brands you're going to need to figure out what shoots the best it's it's a no-brainer like you're gonna you're going to use those 20 rounds instead of using three or five of those rounds and realize you you didn't get a you know your gun don't like that box i mean that's just the way it is and so to me it's just the price of doing business anymore it's just the price of hunting it's crazy when we send a package

out of here you can be assured that it works and it's accurate and it's on target you just a couple shots at the range and you'll know how to test out the five day thing just order something like right now try it just try it order five five days five working five working days or is it over a weekend i mean order five order five rifles we'll have them there in five days geez that's awesome um tell me about some some of your favorite hunting memories i mean not only have you done pallets you've done cast antlers you're doing all this crazy stuff you're racing snowmobiles you're who knows what you're up to right now but and then but you're a hunter you've killed amazing animals you've you've excelled in about everything you do just tell us a little bit about some of the some of the different hunting experiences you've had or something cool with long range or

i mean there's been some animals you've basically developed rifles to kill because you couldn't get close i mean i know some of these inside stories you know my whole life i've just been spun up i'm starting to spin down now it's uh it it's just been a hell of a run i mean i i've enjoyed everything i've done snowmobiles the businesses i mean i like a challenge and um when i can accomplish and and do what i've set my goals out to do i mean i'm satisfied and i can't say i'm not satisfied with everything i've done some of the best memories um you know hunting is probably watching my boys now those boys um are taking this on they're understanding it and i mean i just watched mike lay down and take a wyoming antelope at 670 yards here i mean it was a one-shot kill i mean it just so gratifying to see these kids pick up behind me and pick up the pieces and just keep

moving with it scott i've watched him make some great shots and uh take some great trophies um it's it's just all been good i can't i can't think back of anything we got our nine-day colorado colorado hunt nine-day day colorado hunt that we do every year that's coming up here in a couple weeks looking forward to that it's just us three and that's awesome man doesn't get better than that well i know you've messed around with me even long-range muzzleloaders and you were doing that clear back in the day when i first met you screwing around muzzleloaders muzzleloaders have been a lot of fun um have you got sellable packages of that stuff going on or we we do a few custom muzzleloader packages for guys but we don't do too many of them anymore um so busy with the rifles and you know muzzleloaders are pretty intense it's

pretty it's takes a client that really wants to work on that one a bit yeah we got clients that are just bound to determine they want us to do one for them we'll do one but most everything we do are the rifles stuff yeah um you know you were you reminded me when you're saying you were talking to your kids and you watched your kid take a 670 yard shot it was one shot kill and and it's the same thing with my kids like you know colton shot his first deer at nine years old but i had him on a 7mm and if you look at the ballistics of a 7mm 08 you're not i mean ethically you wouldn't want to take much more in a 300 yard shot there's nothing there there's nothing there so you know i've got them rifles and and you know kids can shoot 600 yards and they can do it well it's impressive yeah just like

the women that come with these guys you know yeah it's awesome and so your course i mean do you do you do anything uh you know for family wise like if a guy wanted to bring his kid or a couple of kids you know it's ironic you ask that i've done i've done several families and um another big thing is like date night i i've had guys fly in with their wives i mean we do a nice motel a nice meal with them and bring them through the entire course their wives are involved in the whole thing all the way through put a rifle together and then go to the range and i mean they just literally enjoy it it's uh it's been kind of a new thing i've just watched it trend a little bit date night flying in and having a date it's i mean that's a little deeper than my pockets but uh yeah i'm sure but guys like you i guess but i just that's crazy but it's way cool even local you know we'll have

a local family i just have a local family well they're down in salt lake so 100 miles out but he called and wanted to do a long range thing and he says i'm coming up with my family and i says you know what let's just do the whole family says really can you do that i says yeah we'll just we'll just take care of the whole family and they'll all have a good time i had three kids um i'm gonna guess at the ages one was 19 one was 16 and the other one was 14 jeez and um the wife and they all sat down shot three separate rifles and you should have seen that thousand yard target hammered yeah they had to pay extra for paint paint yeah i need 14 cans of white paint please do you still use that lacquer based or what what is i can't even remember some kind of special nothing you do is normal like i go down and get paint like i'm i don't care what it is you

have to give the certain kind of paint that chips off just right cheaper the paint the cheaper the paint the better it comes out all right all right well uh well so how uh how can people get a hold of you just give us the hard plug here best way is just visit the website thompson long range um there's uh ask the expert there i think that comes directly to me and i answer a lot of questions on that um they can call the office scott's there ben is there stephanie all those can answer most of the questions um if it gets real detailed then they'll send them my way but are you running one or two courses a week or how are you doing it we start april 15th and go until august 15th and literally almost daily um you know we have groups coming through so somebody gets worried about booking the course six months or a year in advance probably not necessary you want

to be about 45 days to 60 days in advance yeah um you know if you want an exclusive day you want to call early enough that you can lock that data but we don't require a deposit and um you know if somebody has to cancel or something comes up they got to change no big deal for us yeah you're going to be at the range no matter what yep so four at a time um corporate groups have been a big thing lately too we've taken a lot of corporate groups through 12 is probably the biggest group that we took awesome it's all been good a lot of fun for everybody it's awesome well everybody that's listening out there there's just uh you know in my opinion with this day and age and the price of tags and the you know the availability of tags and trying to get drawn and as much time as it takes there's just nothing there's just no reason guys shouldn't be able to ethically take 500 plus yard

shots and and some guys are into the you know to the intense expensive custom rifles and some guys want to do it as cost effective as they can and if if that's you then give mark a call i've known mark for many many years and i appreciate you mark of course uh i'll be forever indebted for my initial my initial long range experience with you it taught me a ton stuff that i've uh you know like i've spewed off a few things probably surprised you that i even remember remembered that stuff but uh it's helped you only remember what you want to remember so anybody that's out there listening want real detail on jason call me yeah you're such a liar too there's something to just conjure up but anyway all right well i appreciate you spending the time uh you and your family have been an integral part of

the hunting industry you know especially the last 10 15 plus years you guys are going crazy we wish you the best of luck and we appreciate your support of epic and and uh of course it's easy for us to to uh represent quality people and companies like your own so i appreciate you guys too all right well good luck on the rest of your hunts and then we'll go from there all right thank you thanks mark here at epic outdoors we produce a hunting magazine nine issues a year the first six issues are state-by-state research driven uh issues breaking down the states the drawing odds kill percentages best places to go whatever your goals are for that state whether you should even apply for that state or not coming from january through june we break those down the rest of the year we go every other month very informative magazine a hundred dollars a year get you that magazine as well as the

boaty to call and consult with us consultants develop a strategy bounce ideas off us things like that yeah so so with this magazine you know it just is covers western big game hunting that's what we specialize in that's what we stick to so the western states canada alaska mexico from a big game hunting perspective so 100 bucks a year and uh and it should be everything to do with western big game hunting we also offer a full service license application service if you're too busy you find yourself missing deadlines or you travel a lot with your work missing deadlines in some cases will put you years behind drawing a certain tag that you're after we offer for a maximum of five hundred dollars we'll handle all of your western state applications we'll incorporate the information you give us you

can be as interactive with us and picking your units as you want or you give us a criteria we can pick your units match the weapon type species states all those types of things that you're looking for we do that for a lot of guys we help them draw a lot of tags if you find yourself like i said too much uh going on in your life whether it be business or travel or whatever you miss deadlines consider calling us for your license application service uh needs and be glad to help you out with our license application service of course one of the big things besides just uh applying and and submitting your your license applications is the people doing it so adam and i we touch all the applications and we actually choose the units for you depending on what you're looking for and that's a big deal we've

done this for many many years as well as for ourselves and we've hunted all the western states we have quite a bit of experiences with everybody here in the office and this is what we've done for a living for a lot of years and so anyway we feel like we offer um some of the most knowledgeable consultants and uh and the ability to really choose accurately what you're looking for so you don't you know waste your points or waste your money and especially waste your time in places that don't really suit you and so anyway for like adam said for maximum 500 we we can do anything and everything that pertains to applying for western big game