EP 120: Optimizing Your Shooting Accuracy with Bob Beck of MOA Rifles

You want something that is ridiculously light, but you don't want to give up any of the accuracy. We're shooting angles. We're shooting different temperatures. We're shooting windy days. Your anchor, your breathing, your can't check. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter and Adam Bronson coming at you from Southern Utah with another Epic Outdoors podcast. This one was kind of an interesting podcast. We're excited to do it. We've had it teed up for a little while. It'll be with Bob Beck of MOA Rifles. They're the newest advertiser there in our publication. The Epic Outdoors magazine, which comes out once a month this time of year. All the draws and whatnot are coming out and people are applying and receiving draw results and whatnot. We're monthly, December through June, bimonthly. The remainder part of the year when we're out in the field killing stuff. So, anyway, speaking of killing stuff, he is, like I said, the owner, probably even the president. Who knows? We're going to find out. Of MOA Rifles. Yeah. Let's have it. Hey, you ready for this? I think I am.

Bob, I don't know. We've got you live here on the podcast. We just wanted to kind of give you a minute to tell us a little bit about your background. We introduced you without you knowing it. However, we're going to let you kind of, you know, maybe start off with your background, who you are, where you came from, where you're headed. And then, of course, your affiliation with MOA and the other bunch of hunting businesses that you do. You've got an endless supply of energy for about anything to do with hunting. Big game. Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks, guys. Coming in probably with a mouthful then, my background actually was just construction. In the early 2000s, I had a construction company and a development company. And what we used to do is we used to just develop small residential subdivisions, you know, like 25 lots and less.

And we would develop the subdivisions and we would build the homes on them. And as many may remember, as we started to get into 2006, 2007 and 8, that industry got really tough. And when it was good, I was able to make a decent enough living that I was going on, oh, not a lot, but we'll just say three or four good quality, you know, guided type hunts every year. Yeah. And amongst some of the do-it-yourself hunts I was doing. And what I remember being a constant theme back then was just how many nice, respectable animals you would see just out of reach. And admittedly, I think I was going through a tough time around those years anyway, because, you know, just growing up as a younger guy, you're transitioning, or at least what I feel a lot of the guys do is they transition from opportunity. Opportunity type hunts to wanting to try to find trophy animals.

So you're going from just, hey, it's really important to punch that tag and bring something home for your efforts to measuring inches or just wanting to get a more respectable type animal and kind of getting the idea in your mind that it was okay to eat a tag if that's what it came down to. Yeah. So with that said, it was amazing to how many animals you'd put in the glass on the other side of the canyon that you were standing on, and you just couldn't shoot that far. Or, you know, you just couldn't make it happen. And so then you start paying attention to how many animals you spot, and then you go stalk them. And the time that it takes to stalk over there, maybe they're gone, they fed away. Or maybe they bedded, and you don't have the wind ride, and they jump up and run off.

And anyway, at the end of the day, it's all a failed attempt of some sort versus if you could keep everything on your terms and maybe move into the nearest position on the side of the canyon that you were on and just make a, you know, back then it seemed like a long 500 or 600-yard shot. But now with the equipment we have, you know, that's kind of a chip shot. If we could just get in a position to do something like that, we could harvest a more mature animal. And so that's kind of what drove me to go where I was headed. And anyway, long story short, the 2008 real estate debacle, it didn't necessarily gobble me up, but it really, really put a bad taste in my mouth. I felt like I worked pretty hard for a long period of time, and I felt like I was unwinding everything that I had worked for.

So I was having a rifle builder from Georgia actually build me some guns back then, and they were considering doing a commercial on outdoor television, and they needed a shooter. And they had seen some of my trophy picks and whatnot and heard some of the stories of what I was doing with the rifles. And they actually reached out to me and said, hey, we need a shooter to shoot some targets at a long ways for a cameraman for a commercial spot they were going to do. Would you mind coming out here and being that guy? And I said, sure, no problem. And so I went there and did that. And then when I was there, I kind of got hit up by a producer saying, geez, this is the kind of crazy stuff you're doing. And have you ever thought about maybe what you could do at a more mainstream type level? And I ended up coming home. And, of course, that seat that he planted just kept kind of growing.

And I don't know, fast forward the clock. In short, here you go, right? You tell the wife when you get home, hey, we had a great time. And, by the way, let's go start a TV show. Yeah, she looks at her eyes around the side of her head like, what the heck happened to you when you've been gone? Have you ever heard of the hunting industry, honey? It's one of the most lucrative industries in the world.

Yeah, exactly right. So where were you based? And maybe that's where you've always been. Where did you grow up? Is that where you still are state-wise? Or tell us a little bit about that. And then how you got, you know, before you got to there, and we'll pick up on that in just a minute. How did you get into hunting and shooting to begin with? Was it a family thing or what? No, that's actually kind of the ironic part. My dad much prefers fishing. So when I was a kid, we went fishing. And I would go to school and hear about all my friends going hunting during the fall. And so before I knew it, I was that pesky kid kind of trying to invite myself to go hunting with one of my buddy's families because we didn't really hunt. So I picked up an invite here and there and worked a summer job and whatever I had to do. And I remember I just bought a .30-06. It was what I could afford.

The best long-range gun you could find. Right. I remember I took a lot better than the .308 I was using. 7M08 or something. Yeah. That's right. We were stepping it up. Yeah. I just remember, you know, and I wasn't even an early hunter. I don't believe I even passed my hunter safety until I was either 13 going into 14, or I might have been the summer of my, when I was 14 years old. And, you know, a lot of the kids in Oregon, the hunting age is 12. So a lot of my buddies had already been hunting for a couple of years. And if they weren't hunting, they'd already been going with their dads for a couple of years, you know, pushing brush or riding around or doing whatever. And I didn't really know any of that stuff. So I just got through hunter safety and got me a .30-06. And I remember wearing denim and going hunting.

And how funny is that, right, with all the clothing and stuff we have now to think about wearing denim and a flannel. Levi camo. Flannel and denim's, you know, the majority of the Boone and Crockett bucks were ever killed. That's right. Out of the old picks. Truth be known. Yeah, you just had a few extra rounds rattling in your pocket. And you took off wandering aimlessly without any idea why you were doing it. But we had fun. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. So tie that in a little bit. You started hunting a little bit with family and friends. And that, you know, just, I guess, got deep, deep in who you wanted to be. And then that kind of, it was self-made, self-taught, you know, along with some of them. But how'd you get then to the point, you know, that you were going on some of their guided hunts, you know, business-wise, time-wise, obviously elapsed and things like that? Yeah, kind of.

I mean, I don't, I mean, I think you're making it sound a little better for me than I think it is. But I'll be honest, right? I think, aside from your question, the only thing that I pride myself on at all is just being observant. And I'll come back to what I mean by that. So getting the rest of that foundation out. I grew up in Western Oregon. I grew up in the Willamette Valley. I just lived in Eugene. I currently live in Newburgh, which is, you know, just an hour or so north, still in the Willamette Valley. The rifle company, MOA Rifles and Rugged Ridge Outdoor Gear, and the majority of the businesses, the outfitting business and stuff, they all office out of Redmond, Oregon. And I make the trip on a weekly basis back and forth. Just logistically, I have not moved over to the company yet because I still have, my son is a sophomore in high school.

So I just have chosen not to, you know, uproot him in the middle of school. So I still make the trip. And I don't mind it. There's about an hour, hour and a half going over the Cascade Mountains throughout the past that I don't have phone reception. And that's probably some of my best times to reflect on thoughts when my phone isn't working anyway. We always find that the employees like it when we're out of service too, Bob. Oh, absolutely. Gives them a little break from the type A aggressive personalities, you know. Right. I spend most of the time creating tornadoes. They're ready to just step out of it. That's right. That's right. Well, that's why you're successful. So shops over in central Oregon. That was kind of by design. A lot of people ask me, well, why did you put MOA rifles three hours away from where you live? And it's just simple question answer.

We live in the Willamette Valley and we get an immense amount of rain. You know, Portland, Seattle, all that area gets an immense amount of rain. And it's amazing when you go up and over our Cascade Mountain Range, how much drier it gets. And the shooting schools that we do are such an important part of what we do. Yeah. That when you got guys coming from all around the country, you know, into that early mid spring timeframe when we still get a ton of rain over here. And they're putting, you know, dates on their calendar and taking time off of work. We didn't want to disappoint and have the guys come and get rained on all the time. And so over there in central Oregon is so much drier that we can do the testing that we need with the rifles as well as run our shooting schools, fly students in and out. And it doesn't make for rainy, soggy days. Well, plus that rainy country is super thick.

You know what I mean? And so you're all 308-7M-08-30-06s. Yeah, you need an open sight. You need an open sight rifle in that country. Yeah. You come over to that drier stuff and from there, clear over to our country, over to Colorado, that's where your guns come into play. Right, right. You know, there is some areas that we have where the logging companies will open up some canyons for us and they can work really well. But you bet, man. You go to a local cafe or something midday to get dried off in this country and there's still guys hunting with lever action 30-30s. Yeah. Well, you know, tell us a little bit about, before we want to dive in, a couple of things. You're killing, you've killed, you know, I don't know how many 200 inches, but some big deer. You know, I saw one that came out on YouTube. I've got to watch it yet.

You know, even in Mexico, some of the stuff I've seen you do down there. But before we jump into that, tell us just a little bit about, and we're going right into the rifles, but there's so much more that you do. Just give us a little brief history on when is Bob Beck going to quit? What are your real goals? But, you know, before we jump into the rifles and, of course, the gear that you're selling. So tell us a little bit about some of these other ventures that you're doing real quick. So when I wanted to go into the TV side of it, I think it was mainly just inspired by that conversation I mentioned earlier. And maybe honestly believing that this guy was telling me like, oh, hey, you kind of got a niche that maybe the world wants to see. I had reached out to some people that I would even consider mentors now back then.

And I got an overwhelming amount of the same feedback, which is, you know, hey, buddy, you go into any of this kind of videography or television or, you know, maybe even some digital content. What are your goals and what are you hoping to get out of this? Because if, you know, you think you're going to maybe just convince everybody that watching you is cool and fun, that might be great. But that has a shelf life, right? How entertaining can you be? Right. And how long can you be that? If you keep killing 200 inches, it's just fine. If I was Jason, I could do that. Oh, no, that's not true. That's not true. So anyway. Yeah, you've got to have something with it, something with the package, I guess. Yeah, you can't just go hunt, watch me hunt. You've got to have widget, something to sell, market, whatever. Correct. And back then we would refer to it as, you know, this is 10 years ago.

We'd refer to it as, what is your million dollar idea? What are you going to sell? Yeah. George Foreman Grill. Right. Exactly. Yep. So I very much was on that page. It's like, hey, you know what? Sooner or later, I'm going to get old and fat and gray haired and people aren't going to want to watch me. So I need to figure out what I could add, what real value could I add to the business. Right. So we went down that road and we worked very, very hard to quantify every move we made. You know, we've been really lucky that a couple of the partners that we started with are still with us. And I think the reason that they are is because when we got going, we made very calculated decisions. We said, you know, we're going to take and we're going to put some skin in the game on our own. And we knew that, you know, in the advertising game, you've got to quantify results.

So we needed to start some sort of sales model. And we invested some of our own, you know, our own equity into, you know, our e-based online store. And we've created an environment where we don't compete with any of our partners. We actually try to complement them and help support their sales. So we got that going. And then obviously with the shooting that we were doing, I was helping just kind of collaborate with some designs and some concepts and ideas on how we could become more effective at killing game. Because part of the, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly is the stuff that guys don't talk about. And that's, you know, possibly the wounding, you know, that can happen at a hundred yards or it can happen at a thousand yards. It could be bad wind calls. It could be bad equipment. It could be anything relative to bad. Right.

But all industries are going to have it and you have to find your way through it and you have to set yourself up so that you can be as successful as possible. So that kind of led into the rifle company itself because we were working with a bullet company to figure out how to make projectiles that would be more forgiving in the wind. Right. So we were trying to drive heavy, high BC bullets at speeds that would allow human error because let's be real. When you're on a big animal, you're thinking about a lot of other things, you know, and trying to keep your buck fever and everything at bay. So sometimes you make bad decisions or you just don't think about all the variables. So we wanted bullets that would fly true with the most amount of human error. And then you want to be able to ethically kill them. Right.

So you've got to have terminal performance at the distances that you're now willing to shoot. So where have you arrived? You know, being laying that groundwork there, what was needed, the niche needed. You saw a window, I guess, of what you guys could maybe provide. And so what have you, what have you stepped in and done? So MOA rifles, you know, the, a lot of things are happening in the outdoor industry and there's more qualified, there's more talent. There's more hardworking guys. There's a lot of stuff that even from when I started till now, guys are willing to do anything to be in this industry. And there's a lot of guys that are very good and very talented. So when you look at a company like MOA rifles and say, Oh, okay. It's another rifle company that makes a sub half minute gun. Yes, indeed. But the reality is there's hundreds of guys in the country that can do that now. Yeah.

Um, what we, what we do first and foremost, it's, it's beyond the sale, right? We are still at a point where if it's not me, it's one of my guys that has been trained by me and, or you'll get a call back from me. I think that we answer every email and I think we still answer every single call is ugly as they may be, or as nice as they may be. And we make that effort to make sure we talk and touch every single customer. Yeah. The other thing, as far as the product line, it goes, cause that would be the, you know, the second, the second reason to do business with us. The first one is the customer care, um, and the knowledge that we have. But the second thing is we make a particular action that is purpose design.

It's not a, it's not an action or a clone per se, uh, even though all long range actions are clones off of a Remington 700, but this action has feature cuts in it that are specifically designed for really long, heavy bullets. So we have feature cuts in there that make an action function at a longer length so that we can optimize our chamber specs to run heavy high BC bullets at faster than normal velocities so that we can extend the effective range in which a bullet will actually kill game. So that's kind of a little bit of a technical answer, but if anybody doesn't know why an MOA gun over other guns, when you get into the Magnum cartridges that we make, these guns flat just perform. And I live in a world where every guy puts his pants on the same way, right? It just is. That's the way I believe things happen. And with our shooting schools, we take between 250 and 300 guys a year.

If there was other ways to get other results, I would see it on our 2000 yard range. Sure. And when I do see it, you see everything out there, all kinds of people are coming out there. Oh, and, and I don't, and I don't pigeonhole those guys to bring MOA guns. The best, the best student. They can bring their own or whatever. Yes. And your Walmart gun. I would prefer. Please bring one. Literally. Because you're going to walk away with an MOA rifle. Right. That's what you're saying. Bring, bring your gear up. Bring whatever you think you got. Yeah. And, and here's the thing. Just come into class. Show us what you got. Give us a clean slate. Like, let's all just check our egos at the door. Give me a clean slate for two days. And guess what? If your equipment is awesome, you will see it without me having to tell you. Yeah.

And if there is somewhere that you can benefit from a, from an advancement or something that we do different, then they will see that for their own eyes. Yeah. No question. You know, I've got a good client, Reed Miller, and he killed a buck with me. I think it, oh, it was like a 200 and I can't remember 14 or 15 incher, but anyway, he shot, he had an MOA rifle and he says, by far, it's, it's the best rifle I've ever had. And that was kind of my first introduction into what's an MOA rifle. You know what I mean? And of course we're sitting there long amounts of time together. And so, you know, everything comes out when you're, when you're there hunting and, and you got hours and hours and hours every single day. And so anyway, that was, it was awesome. And I think Calvin dealt with him a little bit and we of course know Calvin and you know, Calvin's the same way.

He actually set me up with the scope. I mean, you guys, you know, you don't know it, Bob, but you sold me scopes and all kinds of different gear. So anyway, and, and he was always, of course, Calvin's always good and he was a wealth of information and knowledge and dealing with your customers and does a great job. But anyway, that was our kind of initial introduction. We had Reed Miller, a client, and then also with Calvin, of course, on the outfitting side, as well as, you know, he works for you and your company and whatnot. And, you know, just a, just a wealth of information. And so, yeah, from what you're saying, as far as replying knowledge, you're talking about customer care, knowledge, and then design of why people would go with you. And I can attest to that. One thing I wanted to ask you, why, why everybody knows that the Remington 700 is kind of what

everything's based off of at least that design or whatever. Why, why is that? Can you tell me? Just a simple push feed design that can be trued and concentric to bore. Okay. I mean, it's, it's just. Whatever all that means, it sounds like it's really good. You know what it really means? It's really simple and easy to build an accurate platform on it. Okay. Right. It's one of those tried and true designs that nobody probably ever planned on or knew, but you could go back 20, 30 years on that technology and it works still today. Yeah. So the, the longevity of it, they got it right, whether it be by design, whether it be by accident, I'm not picking on Remington, but you know what I'm saying. Yeah. When they nail it, you don't know, you nail something until three years later. It's like, well, that sucked. This is better. Or man, that's awesome. Let's keep going.

And Hey, 40, 50, 60, 80 years later, we're still. Somebody started making tires out of rubber. Now all these, all these other brands are still making them out of rubber. So imagine that. So, but you've, uh, and I think part of like what you're saying is, and you were alluding to is you were saying, well, I live in a world where everybody puts their pants on the same way. I think your point is, is there's a lot of ways to, to, to shoot long range. There's a lot of guys that are capable, but what you've done is taken all the components, put it together, made a solid business that is, you know, functional, customer oriented, the knowledge base is there and you do what you say. And there's just not a lot of companies out there that can do that. They might be, there might be a guy knowledgeable enough to do it, but he doesn't have the business savvy to do it, to get it done.

But it feels like you've got all the variables brought together. Well, we try, right? I mean, we can always do a better job, but, but boiling it down to the original question, right? The million dollar idea, what were we going to do? How are we going to sustain? We knew that the rifles made a foundation for who we are, what we are and what we do. And then we took the rifles into the accessories, you know, our rugged Ridge outdoor gear company that makes the carbon fiber accessories. And then we, and then we went and we got into the hunting. And the reason that we did that was we kind of have evolved over time and seen the feedback, right? So you sell a guy a rifle, he comes to a shooting school, he has a great shooting school. What does he want to do next? He wants to go hunting, right? That's, that's the... Use what he's built to kill something. Use it in the field.

Use it, not just punch paper. Right. Hunting is what brings everybody to the party. So, you know, with our being so rooted in the customer service, we felt, well, geez, if we could offer good quality hunts, that probably ought to be on the roster as well. So kind of built what we call the full circle approach to what we do. Yeah. Gotcha. So without giving your proprietary secrets away, tell us about, you talked a little bit about some of the, uh, the action stuff that you talked about on your longer or your, uh, Magnum calibers a bit ago, but about the parts you use from stock barrel trigger action stuff. And maybe there's some variations, maybe, uh, obviously there probably would be based on the fact that you want this, uh, you know, the ascent rifle that I know that we, uh, uh, we've visited with you about this six pounds, you know, true, you know, half MOA thousand

yard rifle versus others. So I know there's going to be some differences, but tell us about the components and parts stock barrel trigger that, that you, that are, I guess, maybe more universally made on the different models that you make. Sure. Sure. So first part is we're extremely loyal. Um, and so what I mean by that is on an MOA rifle, we really only have three vended parts. So if you figure center mass being the action and all the small parts being an MOA item, you have three vended parts. You have your trigger, which is trigger tech. We have our stocks, which is McMillan stocks. And then we have our barrels, which is benchmark barrels. So no matter what color, shape, design, weight, whatever you want to call it, it's going to have those brands associated with an MOA rifle. Okay. Okay. Um, now going through some of the rifles and the action set.

So we have a couple of unique features again, kind of going, like you said, not diving in too far, but we have an evolution action, which is a short and a long. And then we have an extreme action, which is, uh, we have a ultra long, I would call it. And then we have two variants of it. We have a multiple feed and then we have an actual single shot, um, for, for really big guns. And those are mainly just novelty type guns, not hunting style. So the, the ascent rifle, uh, is really just spawned off of, you know, you go to trade shows every year, which is, uh, an immense amount of feedback. Now, some of it is just feedback that unfortunately we're never going to be able to do anything with maybe because there's not componentry to support the ideas. Um, you mean a guy that wants a semi-automatic, the shoot 1500 yards, half way away, stuff like that. You mean seven pounds? Yeah.

Stuff like that. Yeah. By the way, scoped up seven pounds. Scoped up seven pounds. That's right. It's got a detachable, uh, lunchbox on the floor plate. Something like that. It breaks down into my little day pack. That's right. Fold up. Fold up. That's right. I feel like we're at the same trade show.

Okay. Well, just making sure we kind of know. We do want one of those, by the way. We do want one. And you're, and since you're the most knowledgeable, keep that in R&D. You're the most knowledgeable and you take care of customers. That's what we want. We're the customer speaking up right here, Bob. That's how a guy goes from here to zero. Really? That's right. All right. All right. All right. So anyway, back to the overwhelming feedback, right? It's, it's trying to drive the weight down. Um, everybody wants what they can't have. And so like we were just making jokes about, you want something that is ridiculously light, but you don't want to give up any of the accuracy. Right. Um, and I don't know if it's ignorant. I don't know if it's dumb on my part, but I've always kind of had this idea in my head that you can only be good at what you're good at. Right.

Meaning that if I'm going to put my name on anything, it has to have the qualities that warrant putting my name on it and nothing else. Because as soon as you get too far out of the, out of the realm of what you do, right? You're just going to fail. Yeah. So we've, we've tried a lot of different things to drive the weight down. And what typically happens is two things. First will happen before the second is the shooter's ability to actually shoot the rifle accurately. Yeah. They're right. That's your point of diminishing where you start to lose. It's like, um, for maybe a bad example, but if you had a trout rod and then a salmon rod or a sturgeon rod, and you had a little bit of vibration in your hand, you could see that trout rod tip move really easily. Right. Yeah. Versus if you have this big old heavy fishing rod in the other hand and a little bit of motion, you don't notice it.

Same kind of analogy with shooting, right? If we give you a five pound gun and tell you to shoot a thousand yards, well, shooter form becomes so important that in a hunting scenario where the setup might be completely unorthodox or not very good, you might just might not be able to shoot that far. You know, your accuracy level might just, well, we call it, we call it a cone of dispersion. Yeah. The cone being. The cone of dispersion. That sounds like a, that sounds like, it sounds like something in like a textbook somewhere. That's a technical term. All right. Well, just, just think about it down, dummy it down for us hunters. Okay. All right. All right. So when the projectile leaves the muzzle, right, the cone is at the smallest bullet. When the bullet leaves the muzzle, the bullet comes out of the barrel.

You guys are killing me. Hey, we're just, we're just making this. You know, boiling it down. There might be some, you know, six, eight year old kids listen to this thing. We're talking about cones of dispersal. And I'm like, whoa, what are we talking about? Adam, I think I'm going to be seeing you in June. And so this will all be making sense. Right. Speaking of which, we do have a course June 6 and 7 with the guys here at the Epic office. And Bob, will you be there, Bob, yourself? Oh, believe you me, buddy. I'm going to make it a priority. All right. Yeah. Well, don't pay me back for anything. I'm just, just, but Adam's going to bring his own homegrown 308. I'm going to bring it. Oh, here we go. All right. Okay. Fixed four Leopold on that thing. See if we can ring, ring still. Simmons fixed eight. Straight eight. All right. All right. Keep going.

I'm going to be working with the best here. I can tell. So all right. Anyway, back to the cone. Cone of dispersion. Okay. Yeah. Bullet leaves the muzzle. Okay. At the nearest to the muzzle, we'll have the least amount of air. Right. We can all agree on that. Oh, right. Yeah. The split second it leaves, it's still on path. Right. So as that bullet heads down range, it's going to be on whatever path of flawed shooter scenario that the shooter sent it on. Right. Right. So as it travels, it's going to get further and further out. And you're going to see that. Yep. Right. It could be up, down, left, and right. So because that. It's more magnified the further out you get. It's more magnified. All right. Yep. Yep. Okay. So when you have a really light rifle, you possibly are going to have a cone of dispersion, right? That bullet's headed down and it's opening up and opening up.

Well, once that cone opens up past the vital zone of whatever animal it is you're hunting, like we could pick on a coos deer, right? That's pretty small. Yeah. So at what range does your cone of dispersion get too large for you to ethically kill the You can't even be shooting at that thing anymore. Yeah. Past. Right. Whatever. 300. We go to elk, maybe it gets bigger, right? Right. Okay. So with a really light rifle, you've got to really figure out how to put it in a platform that is shooter of, you know. Normal capabilities. Yeah. Just average capabilities or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, even if a guy is super talented, but he works 80 hours a week and then he just jets out to go hunting for a week, he just might not have had a lot of time to practice. So are you saying that if I, even though I buy an MOA rifle, doesn't guarantee me killing

game like Bob does it in the Wyoming high country? That's another way. I think he's saying that in another way. Yes. That's what I'm hearing. Are we picking up what you're putting down, Bob? Absolutely. Because why do you think we do so many shooting schools? It's not to convince guys that they're bad shots. It's to give them the information and the relevant. To make them better. I thought it was to generate revenue. Well, that's nice. I do appreciate that. Tell us a little bit about your shooting school. I've heard awesome things about it. Angles, you're in real life situation scenarios, the range finding capabilities, maybe a little bit of that gear as well. What are you teaching people? I mean, I get, you know, pulling the trigger. That's one component and maybe even more complicated than people think. But tell us, tell us what you're doing there. So we have two schools.

We have a level one and an advanced. You guys will be coming out to the advanced school. Whoa. Whoa. Who signed us up for that? You really were just. What? What? Who? Bronson, we know you can shoot. You're not going. I need to. But what are the differences? Let's say. Here we go. Let's find out. All right. All right. So. The advanced, they lay in cactus without any, you know, things like that. Prone in cactus patches. Ask Bronson about sitting in cactus and he had to come home and how did you get it out, Bronson? Carter. Now, this is the cone of dispersion is really wide right now. All right. So wide. We're off track. So we can get the. Back to the shooting. Technique for you. You'll have to. You'll have to. Another day. I can't do it with waxing. But anyway. All right. King. Carter. All right. Okay. Shooting schools. Shooting schools. Here we go. Okay.

So basically day one, we give a half day instruction and we, my approach, because I still do the classroom portion. You know, I try to give that as a value add for whatever it's worth to our customers. Right. Right. So I try to share that experience first. I try to, I don't necessarily want to say dumb down, but for lack of no one else to say, we try to dumb it down to the root. Right. Um, we could engineer and talk over people's heads for hours, but the bottom line is people just want to know why, why if I do this, does this happen? So I dumb everything down to the simple root and I build a foundation throughout my class of consistency because consistency is everything. Yep. So you're breathing, you're, you're anchor, you're breathing, you're can't check, you're squeeze, all that type of stuff. You're talking kind of like basketball guys shooting a free throw.

I mean the same, you're the same principles, right? Yep. We break them down. We get them to understand the importance of consistency. And then we build a protocol of shooting. Yeah. We call it the protocol. That is the steps in which you take every time you pull the trigger. It's kind of like that. I remember way back when, remember Dwight Shue on his bow? Oh, limb. Yeah. He had that little sticker that he glued on his limb when he drew back and it said, it said, stay calm, pick a spot. Just whatever. Just, just the consistency factor. Just don't, don't go from draw to release without filling in the gaps properly. The same every time and same shooting. That's what you're talking about. The consistency. Yep. We build a protocol of steps so that every single thing is accounted for. And I like to think that by doing that, or at least if we make the effort to do that,

it also can calm the nerves, especially when shooting at the game. And that way, when you send a bullet out of the muzzle, you know, it has the highest success of actually reaching and killing the target effect. Yeah. How many, I mean, roughly what, how many main protocols do you feel there is? I mean, there's, you could talk about 20 of them. You could talk about 20 of them. I mean, start to finish. Is it a 10 step process? Yeah. Getting the bullet down. Yeah. Depending on how I explain it, it, it, it very much is approximately 10 steps. Because sometimes, I mean, I want to kill stuff fast. Like at times I want to be, you know what I mean? I want to, I want to get out, lay down, level the rifle and squeeze the trigger or whatever, whatever that step is. But I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to think.

If you could shorten it to five, which five could you shorten and have the, the least amount of risk. Like I've watched you that you're going to go big old deer you killed in Wyoming. You're not, you're not thinking about that for 14 minutes, Bob. You're, you know what I mean? You're going to make that happen before he goes over the ridge or whatever. Yeah. You know, it's like anything guys, you know, when you first learn it, it's kind of a drawn out process where you're always going back and reminding yourself of steps that you missed and then you, and then you fix them and do it. But it's no different than you walking out in the parking lot, opening your door, getting in your truck, starting and putting the seatbelt in and pulling up to drive and driving. So after a while of the 10 main ones, you're doing five or six of them a hundred percent

naturally that that's just become how you, how you shoulder the rifle, you know, look through the scope, bed your elbow, blah, blah, blah. And then it's the trigger and breathing the last two things that you really got to think about or something like that. Correct. It's that muscle memory to the whole thing is going to knock out half that roster really fast. Gotcha. They'll come naturally. So what are you doing? I mean, what do you, what's the, what's the tried and true gear? Is it a six hour range finder? Is it a night force? What, what is the gear you like to promote, use, sell, have your customers use? What makes you look good? I don't know that anything like makes me look good, but what I do is we're not getting any younger, bud. I know, I know. So, uh, obviously we're trying to drive MOA rifles down to lighter weights, right? Hence the ascent rifles.

So you're going to see that in my hand here pretty quick. So touching on your question here for the ascent rifle, putting a bow on that, we have two configurations that that rifle is going to be built in. In the 6.5s, we are able to run the contour down and the stock down to get that thing around five pounds and 12 ounces. In the 28 NOS and the 30 cal guns, they're going to be just right at six to six and a quarter because we've got to, we've got to beefing up the barrel a little bit and we've got to put a little bit more stock platform to it. So a guy can effectively shoot that gun because at the end of the day, you see a lot of these ultra light guns, they get promoted as six or 800 yard guns. And maybe it's just me being stubborn. Four digits excites me. And it doesn't mean that I got to kill game at four digits.

It just means that I like to carry a gun that I know will do it if I want it. Or even just knowing that if I can shoot four digits, that 600 yard shot is really, really easy in comparison. Well, and that's what we find when we're, it's not that we want to shoot game at a thousand yards, but if you can, these, these five and 600 yard shots, they're child's play. Yeah. It's, it's not right. That's what, yeah. The confidence factors through the roof. So on top of a rifle like that, um, we're working with night force. We always have, they, they are known to have obviously a very high quality, uh, scope. They've made a huge presence in the long range market because of how repeatable and reliable they are. Yeah. Um, but literally, uh, here in just the next little short while, I mean, like a month or two, we're going to have a new scope line coming from them.

That's going to reduce the weight of their scopes. Approximately 10 to 12 ounces. Come on. Across some offerings. No, I'm not, I'm not joking. How's that going to compare to what I've got? Wow. That's going to be unbelievable. Yeah. I mean, you're talking 30 ounce, 31 ounce down to 22 ounce. So you're, you're, you're, they're, they're competitive with like that Swarovski. I've got one topped with a Swarovski and I mean, they're competing with the lightest, one of the lightest scopes. You know what I mean? That's going to be unbelievable. 22 ounces. The thing about night force and I'll plug them because you know, they, they've supported me well is they never pride themselves on being the first to market. They pride themselves on being the right one to market, meaning they don't, they're not going to have recalls and warranty issues and everything else.

So they're, they're never the first to market, but they watch and they see what everybody wants and then they find a way to put the night force on it so that it is stronger and better than everything else. So yeah, you're talking 22 ounce night force with eight times magnification factors. So, I mean, yeah, that's, that's going to be pretty big. So we're looking to go into that product line. Range finders these days we've, we've used a handful over the years but we have kind of a two part process that we do with the one mainstay for sure has been the Kester units for us. They make an elite 5,700. It's a Bluetooth model if you into that kind of thing. But what it does that a lot of guys don't realize it does, it does a compass calibrate and a target engagement mode. So literally you can hold the unit at your target, hit a lock button and it'll give your,

you the exact degrees to your target. You know, so if you have 360 degrees and you pointed at target and it says that deer is that, you know, 189 degrees from North or whatever, then you can go in and read the wind. And then let's say the wind is coming from, you know, two degrees and then it has a wind value. It'll tell you the MOA regarding based off your ballistic interface. So, hey, I shoot a 28 knowledge or it's going this fast, whatever. We're at this much, very much pressure. My target is at 189. My wind's coming from two and it's seven miles an hour. So it tells you exactly how many MOA to hold in the wind. So that's a mainstay in my pack. And then, um, again, kind of like the world asking for super light rifles. We've now got, uh, the fully ballistic integrated binoculars, which is what everybody's been asking for.

You know, the percent, gosh, when are you going to get all that ballistic software in a bino? So I have one unit while we're working with the guys at Zeiss. They have the RF, uh, victory that has a ballistic interface in it now. So we can drop our favorite MOA rifles onto their user app and you put it all the, you know, details related to that ballistic profile. And then you, it's a Bluetooth bino. So you just click it on and sync it up and then send your info over there. And when you got it all in there, you can put your hold over an MOA, uh, you can put your hold over in yardage, whatever you like, and then bang on hit send. Then turn your app off and put your bino to work. That's very similar to this, like the six hour 2400. I put all my stuff in there, Bluetooth off my phone. I hit it and it just tells me what to dial and shoot.

You know, it calculates angle, calculates pressure, temperature, all that. It's the same thing, but now we're integrated into a binocular. Yeah. It's right in my view. I'm looking at it. When I click the button to get the range, I just watch for an extra couple of tenths of a second. And that gives me that right. To dial. You just dial it. Yeah. And it'll be as accurate. This, uh, I'm not telling, this isn't a six hour podcast, but I did range through my front windshield in my truck, which was, it was like one of the most impressive things I've seen, uh, for a while. But anyway, I'm sure this Zeiss is going to be state of the art. Have you, have you looked through them? Are you starting to get any of their products? Yeah. So what I did was I had the first ones, as you probably already know, if you're teasing me a little bit, I killed a 207 buck in January. Down there in Mexico.

And that was one of the first hunts that I had put that bino set up to work. What I did was I was using the G7, um, BR 2500 range finder. That would have been using for the last year. Well, I took them both down there with me and I ran them side by side. And I went to a area that I could see a, you know, big boulder fields and cliffs, or I could get multiple ranges. So I opened up the app, dropped all my information in for the bino. And then I ran them side by side off of a bunch of targets. And I just moved my numbers around until they were a match. And once I had them going, I have literally shot, I don't know, we probably shot six animals or so with it since I've never touched my other range finder. Once I did that validation between them, I have never looked back. What I, what I really like about what you're saying is with these shooting schools, okay,

there's one thing to learn how to shoot. A guy needs to learn the fundamentals of actual, the physical aspects of taking the shot. But then you're going to be able to teach guys how to use the gear, what gear to use. There is so many unknowns. People aren't going to go buy all this gear. As you know, it's not, not the cheapest thing in the world to buy some of this gear, but they can come to you, Bob, tell me what you're finding in this range finder or that range finder and what's working when it, you know, when I'm going into the heat of battle and trying to get a deer on the ground within 25 seconds or 15 seconds, what's the best to use? So I think with this shooting school, A, we're out in the field, we're shooting angles, we're shooting different temperatures, we're shooting windy days, we're shooting in weird, weird positions and whatnot.

And then Bob's going to also teach me how to use gear and what gear I might want to, and they get to be able to test that before they actually buy it. Not just the rifle, but I mean, the range finder is as important as the rifle. The optics are as important as the rifle. That's what I'm, I guess I'm getting at is this full, bringing everything together in the shooting school in two days. I get to learn everything. I get to learn the fundamentals. I get to learn about the gear. I get to learn about the rifle. I get to see it perform. And then I get to watch this bullet hit this target. And I think that's going to be a life changing experience for most guys. It can be for sure. I mean, you hit it right on the head, right? I mean, the best way to believe in something is to touch it, feel it, smell it and taste it. So, and you don't even need me to load you up with opinions.

Just come be part of it. Yeah. And you'll see what works with your own eyes. And then you'll have a couple of different options to go through at what might suit your style the best. Right. The shooting schools are good too, because there's a level one and level two, like we talked. So the level one is set up as a complete instructional approach, right? We have, we have a huge dynamic Canyon that's North and South and East and West. So it's a true actual angular setup. But to the, to the West, we got 400 through 700 to the East. We got 800 through 1200. And then to the North, we've got 14, 16, 18, and 2000. So that is a, and we shoot from one location. We have three different decks, but we shoot all in that same direction. So it's pretty instructional. Whereas the level two or the advanced school, we do that at the sheet mountain ranch up in Northeast corner of Oregon.

And that one is a hundred percent hunting scenario based. So those targets are back in trees and the shade there's plates and deer beds in the cliffs, you know, it's uphill, downhill, crazy Canyon shots. Yeah. Yeah. It's hunting scenario based. So it's that next level of advancement. Once a guy goes through the other class and figures out, okay, this is really what I'm Here's the basis. Yeah. Yeah. Here's shooting paper at a square target and perfectly flat and all that. Yeah. Yep. What about, I mean, you got to get it all the time, but from a calibers of preference, you've got to have a few and it may be very slightly based on your model. And then when it comes to that, do you, do you use, um, develop all the rounds, sell them the ammo for each specific gun that you make for that client? If they decide to buy it, how does that all work? Good questions. Okay.

So a lot of the guns will shoot factory ammo and they'll meet that half minute or less expectation. But if a guy wants kind of a true custom tailored setup, here's how we go about it. So every single gun we build after a QCs is going to meet requirement at 100 and 800 yards. Um, I've been asked several times, well, why doesn't it meet requirement in a thousand? And from a production standpoint, if we had to qualify every gun at a thousand, that would put us out of shooting every single windy day. Right. So that's, that's a bit tough to hold timelines on customer delivery. So we quantify every gun at a hundred and 800 yards. And how we do it is basically the sales order, you know, it reflects all of the items that the customer has ordered. It'll have set gun, model cartridge, all that kind of stuff, all the way down to color finishes.

And then you'll have your optics choice, ammo, that kind of stuff. So once that rifle is at a hundred yards, getting the optic on paper, we'll do some single shot cleans, get that barrel broken. And then if it's proving that it's going to do the accuracy expectation, then we'll shoot a group of 800 and it's going to produce four inch or better 800. From that point, if a guy's going full out, what we'll do is we'll do the load dev, whether that's a house load or, you know, some sort of full development, like the California guys, for example, right? They're going away from lead down there. So we're always making loads for those guys. What we'll do is any load dev work that we have associated with a rifle, we have a digital filing process. So every serial numbered gun we make, you could be the second or third owner of that gun,

or you could do ammo on your own and call us five years later and say, you know what? I'm a hand loader, but I just don't have any time. I got a hunt coming up, but I've got MOA serial number, dah, dah, dah. We can go back on that digital file and tell you exactly, either tell you what you need to do, or we can manufacture that ammo and just put it right on your doorstep. Gotcha. That's so either way. Yeah. Either way. It sounds like is, you know, everybody's a little bit different. Some people like the flexibility of just, you know, ordering it online and having their ammo and, and, uh, you know, because even though they've got a gun capable of doing more than maybe either they can do or the factory ammo can totally do for them with, within the constraints of either the specific hunt they're going on or whatever they're hunting that time, you know, that's fine. It's good enough for me.

It's going to work. Um, and then the other guys we all know are a little bit more precise. Maybe we're Bob Beck oriented to where, you know, if there's ground to be made up somehow by dang, I'm going to do it. I'm going to get it better. I think it comes back to just like we were just discussing with some of these products, right? We all know this stuff's expensive. Let's be real. Yeah. I'm in the industry. You're in the industry. We even think it's expensive. Right. But the point of the matter is there's a, there's a niche of guys out there that want and expect this kind of quality and level of expertise, so to speak. Right. So we're, we live in a business every single day, Monday through Friday and beyond that we expect that our customers know that they want that. So just call us, just call us, talk to us, tell us what you need, tell us what's going to make you happy.

And we're going to do that. And if we miss it or mess up, guess what? We're going to do it again until we get it exactly right. Cause that's just the world we live in right now. Well, what I think, what I think is great too, is guys, you're, you're inviting people to come out to your school, no matter what, with a gun, without a gun, not sure what, but they're going to walk away. If they don't, if they don't buy a gun from you, they're going to walk away that school being worth the money, no matter if they buy a gun or not. And then, and, but they also get to see your guns. They get to see everything in action. They're going to learn a ton. And, and, and so I guess I'm just throwing it out there. Guys can show up and you're going to bring guns for me to shoot, right? Yep. That's right. And, and I'm going to use some gear that's not mine and I'm going to learn a ton just from

that aspect, regardless of anything else that's going on. Plus I get to do it with six or eight dudes that are all like-minded and, and, uh, just sounds like it sounds like it's going to be awesome, quite frankly. So. It should be.

Come on. Tell me a little bit about the bipods. That's a huge, uh, you know, there's a lot of them out there to, to, to, to sift through. I, I, once in a while I'm still using, Adam laughs at me, but the old Harris that's all, uh, you know, got springs on it and whatnot, but I mean, you know, it kills stuff, kill, kill, kill, kills, kills a lot of game for me. But anyway, tell me a little bit about the bipods. I know you've got a lot newer age equipment that you're selling and whatnot. Sure. So, you know, I think you kind of hit it on the head, right? So the, when we first got rugged Ridge up and going, it's the company name is called rugged Ridge outdoor again. We've branded the pod as the extreme pod just because everybody kind of knows extreme out limits. But anyway, long story short, what we were looking for is we were looking for a pod that

had as close to an infinite range of motion as we could make. Now, admittedly, when you get into releasing the new company and you figure out how competitive the market is and all these other things, you, a guy can get caught up in trying to sell his product on some merits that might be technically related. Like, let me give you an example, just cause you mentioned it. So your Harris has spring loaded deploy front and back legs. Well, we all know Harris is the most tried and true bipod ever to be on planet earth. So it's hard to bash it, but with that comes what they call leg loading, right? So as the recoil from the rifle pushes the rifle back, those legs will want to go to the folded up position and you can see some high bullet trends. If you don't lean your shoulder and put appropriate body pressure into the bipod, right? Okay. Well, I believe you. I believe you.

I don't know what you just said, but I believe you. There was a term in there and it was early in that. I think it has something about, we started off with deploying the legs and I'm like, Oh, shiz. I thought, I thought, what, where's Trump sending troops now? I think what it really had to do with someone ice or something like this. I don't know. Anyway. So we, we, we found ourselves trying to find the technical benefits of the body club, but here's dumbing it down. Cause that's what I owe you guys. Here's what we enjoy with a rugged range bipod because I'm a hunter, right? I'm just a hunter that I don't claim to be a target shooter. I don't compete. I don't guys. I'm just a hundred. I only do this stuff to try to be as effective as I can possibly be. But you're no, you're putting out TV shows and whatnot. You're paid to kill stuff and you've got to be effective at it.

And I've been in that, I've been in those shoes. And so I think it's important to have gear that works and the dummy down version is that you've got to use stuff that works. So the rugged Ridge bipod does this, you know how like bipods have clicks and, or rings in their legs height. And you might find one clicks too high, one clicks too low, or you have a head that won't can't quite far enough or it won't rotate. Yeah. Maybe that's something like that. Right. And you're wedged into some rock, like take your desert sheep hunt. I don't know. It looks like you guys were climbing all over crazy stuff. And who knows where and how you made a shot because you were probably way unorthodox laying. Well, that's why I, that's why I shot him when I did it. We were actually going to hold off, but I mean, this, this ram was, I mean, covering ground fast.

And I'm like, there's all this cactus, Adam's favorite thing. We had all this cactus around us and I'm like, well, I'm going to have to reset up in and around cactus and, or I can just kill him right now and make it easy. And so anyway, luckily Chris had the film run. Cause it happened fast. It surprised Adam. I blew his ears out accidentally. I mean, anyway, just because I'm like, well, that's the target animal and I'm gonna have to get up and reposition, reconfigure going back to our shots, count, doing the whole checklist. You know what I mean? And so anyway, keep going with the pod, with the pod that we make it has, it's all friction control. So the legs don't have rings or clicks. They're carb, real carbon. Nothing's wrapped. It's all billet or carbon. Okay. Okay. So the carbon fiber leg just slides in a ferrule. And so you can put it anywhere you want.

If you literally reached up, loosen the ferrule, and you only wanted a 32nd of an inch to make your leg just right. You could do that. You could get a 32nd of an inch and you just tighten the friction knob back down. Yeah. With the head, it's just on a control lever. So you just reduce pressure. And then the ball, it's kind of almost, for a way to explain it, it's like a pistol grip for your tripod head, for your spotting scope. Just a twist. Twist. Yeah. So wherever you want it, if you want to spin it or you want to cant it, just take friction off, spin it, cant it, do whatever you need to do to get your level. Pack it down. Yeah. And then you just apply resistance to it and it will hold for a hunting shot. Um, so between infinite, you know, leg position and the ability to rotate that whole head, that bipod head, we've just found that how many times are you in the most screwy setups

that you just want to kill that animal right now? Well, and then they're a lot lighter. I mean, that's the one, the biggest downside with the Harris. They're, they're heavy. I mean, we, we all, you know, want a lighter pack. And you, like you said earlier, the older you get, I like my pack lighter because, uh, it's harder to hike and I want a lighter pack. So let's go on the weight thing for a second. So the complimentary product to our pod is what we call our ERSS. It's an extreme rear shooting support. Yeah. That particular piece is only four ounces. Wow. And it replaces, I mean, I probably less and less now, but I remember a lot of days where guys were carrying a sandbag. Oh geez. Yeah. Yeah. Um, this is a little deal that six inches tall, approximately it goes right on your belt, or you can put it on one of your compression straps or your pack, you know, just slide

it on there, forget about it. And it has four, four positions. It's push button, just kind of like the legs on our bipod. So it kind of holds that genre and it's got a array of positions. And what you do is you just hit the button, spread the rear rest apart to what you think is going to get you close to the height that you need in the back. And then, you know, the bottom of your rifle stock is at an angle towards the butt. You just slide that thing back and forth. And then your muzzle goes up or down according. Once you get to the right spot, you just support it with your left hand, like you would a bag and shoot. But the cool thing is it's four ounces. Wow. You can actually afford to carry it. Yep. Yeah. The pod in the rear rest is about one pound between both of them. Yeah. Well, what, uh, now that we're all geared up, we're ready to go. What's your favorite species to hunt?

What do you, I mean, what do you have on the list? The sounds of it. You don't want on the list. Yeah. You'd still do this bucket list, checkoff list. So guys, so let's be honest. This is the part where people are either love me or hate me, but. So Jason, you can relate to this, Adam. You probably can too. The being in the TV game, you have to produce enough episodes to keep the TV chalked up full year. And the reality and the truth that nobody wants to say is you probably do a few hunts that you don't necessarily have interest in doing. Right. So with that said, I've, I've been fortunate enough that guys have supported our business in the industry. And so I like to give back where I can. So I've been trying to, um, you know, afford a few more premium hunts in the game and keep me more local, close to home and pursuing the game that I like.

So to answer your question at the moment, only because I absolutely hate defeat elk is still on my roster as number one. Now, if we would have wound the clock back five or six years ago, absolutely hands down, it was mule deer. Yeah. Then I got fortunate enough to, yeah. What happened? Well, I drew a defeat. So you alluded to that. So you got redemption. Here it is. Yeah. So, you know, a decade ago to up to five or six years ago, I've been fortunate enough to kill a couple mule deer over 200. I have never killed a super giant. I've just gotten lucky to break the 200 number a few times. It's a pretty big deer. Admittedly. Yes. I mean, holy cow. 200 deer is giant, right? So I have killed six or seven of them between the 200 and 210 mark. And because of that, so park that thought for a second, go back to 2015 in Oregon, my

home state, which always gives a guy a little extra excitement, right? When you got some cool tag in Oregon or your home state and you want to go, right? If you kill a big deer in Oregon, you've done something. Right. Well, okay. So in 2015, I drew a elk tag for one of the units in the big three. We call it the big three, right? It's that Mount Emily walla walla went off. And, um, I feel like I underperformed. I feel like a misjudged. I just underperformed and I didn't really, to be honest with you, I under gauged what Oregon could possibly produce for an elk. Sure. I say that lightly because I've done the hunt a few times now and don't get me wrong. It's really hard to kill a big boy here, but we have a good amount of bulls in there. I think I underperformed. So I've went ahead and tried to get a tag and it would allow me to go hunt that area a couple of times.

And I just have a number in my head, not to sound ignorant or spoiled or anything like that, but I have a number of size of bull I've been hunting for in there and I haven't achieved it yet. That's the defeat thing I'm talking about. Yeah. I've killed some really nice bulls in there. I've had some great hunts with great people and all of the fundamental things that make hunts great, but just that burning inside of you, that goal that you set for yourself, I just haven't quite got there. Gotcha. So that's so pretty, that's on the front burner. You're going to have to give up 14 other hunts to do that. You know that? Yeah. It takes so much time. That's what Adam and I are finding. And the older we get, we, we keep, we pile on more hunts and more hunts and more hunts. And then we look at each other and we're like, we're that guy. We're that guy. We didn't want to be.

And it's costing us quality. Yeah. Sometimes you get too much and you may be this way because like you alluded, you have a TV show, you've got to produce episodes, you got to have content. You're filling schedules with stuff that could distract from 200 inch mule deer or 380 plus bulls. Let's face it. You are. I mean, and it's the reality of it. And we all have things in life, whether it be now, Jason, I, it's not even a, it's not a struggle, but the reality of where we're at in our life is as our kids are hunting and it's awesome. We love going on hunts with them, but, but it, but it takes time just probably like maybe you with some of your family members or extended friends, or you want to be a part of something. We're consciously giving up big animals. You, uh, but it's, we wouldn't trade it for anything, but it's, um, it, it just all,

all these talking points go back to how hard it is when you, some things can happen by accident or sometimes fall in your lap, you know, you hunt big mule deer enough and really do it with persistence and do it in the right areas and get, you know, get good tags. You're going to get lucky. Soon or later it's probably going to happen, but it seems like when you want to, you want to try to make something, go walk out the door right now and go try to kill a 380 bull. Okay. It's harder when it has, when you're trying to make it happen that year, you know what I mean? As opposed to letting it happen. Letting it happen. Yeah. It is. Yeah. All good points. I, I, I think I've, I've been spoiled or just, just flat, you know, I don't know the right time, right place. We concur. We concur with that.

So the last, the last three years. So last year I killed a 200 every, what have I killed? Four 200 inch deer in the last three years. Too many. Um, and I'd like to say that I think I'm figuring out the recipe, but you and I, we don't know that's not true. Right. I mean, a big deer is so hard to kill, but, uh, this elk thing has drove me crazy, but I have been fortunate enough this year that I stacked myself up with hopefully an opportunity to kill a record book antelope, uh, a big deer and a big elk. And I'm hoping to do it here in my home state. Geez. Geez. Wow. Well, sounds like you need another podcast about November 1st. I don't know. When are you going to be done with that?

Right. That's awesome. That's good. That's exciting. At least it gives you a reason to get up in the morning. You know, that's the thing about, you know, Adam and I stacking up, uh, hunts and applying for tags is, I mean, sometimes we're, you know, you're grinding away and you're doing the same thing. You're grinding with, you know, several businesses and whatnot, but there's got to be a reason why. I mean, yeah, we eat, but it's kind of, you know, and the reason we're doing it is just keeps us, we keep looking at what's going to happen this fall and the excitement of that. And that just keeps us coming in to the office. That's not so fun. Well, everybody's out shed hunting, turkey hunting and doing everything else, you know? No, you're right. I've had a lot of conversations with other business guys or even good customers of mine

and they've looked at it and they have a couple of different ways, but you know, you got to say, man, you know, the very thing that I'm doing is the reason why I'm still hungry and the reason that I'm hungry or excuse me, the fact that I'm hungry is the reason that you like me. Yeah. And you must, you must have a good wife to put up with that. You've got quite a schedule, you know, and work-wise, hunting-wise, you're not doing anything light. You know what I mean? Everything's full bore. Full bore. So. Yeah. Forwards or backwards, right, boys? That's right. Well, tell us as we wrap up a little bit, tell us, I mean, we'll maybe get a website stuff for folks that might be interested in seeing some of your accessories, you know, from the by-paws to everything else there, but then also give individuals an idea of how long it takes if they were to order a gun to get a gun.

What they're looking at timeline-wise, it's obviously spring this time of year. People might have in their minds if they're looking for a gun, can they get one by fall? So talk through that and then maybe how to contact you either through that process is probably just a phone call and then, or the website on some of your other accessories and gear. Yeah. Yeah. We got that. And then also just, just a real quick, you know, I don't, I think your shooting courses are filling up. So we got the June 6th and 7th course coming up where we're going to be at anyway. And then how do they sign up for that as well? Okay. We'll see if I can figure out how to get through all this. So the shooting schools, uh, at this point, we are 100% full with the exception of solely wanting to get an Epic Outdoors group. So as we go through all this and your viewers and readers and whatnot start to realize that

we're, we're making a good buddy relationship here. I have set aside, uh, one of the level two at the Sheep Mountain Ranch. That's a slot of six. So we're hoping to encourage some of your customers, your viewers, guys that can come out and be with with, you know, Adam or whoever's going to come out and see me. And, and it is an all inclusive deal. So once you get there, all your lodging and food and rifle and ammo and the whole thing isn't, you know, it's part of that deal. And, uh, so if we can get a good group together through you guys, I'm really excited to do that. So we've got that, I believe is June 6th and 7th, I believe off the top of my head. Yep. Okay. So, so anybody that is a part of your association that wants to come join on, let's get them on the roster and make a great time this summer. Um, and then as far as rifle lead times go, uh, steel barrel guns, we run around three

to four months. Carbon barrel guns seem to be about one month longer. Um, it's just literally the lead time in the barrel itself. Um, we're not a huge company, but we are very capable of maintaining a good quality inventory. So, you know, we have about, uh, enough components for a hundred rifles on the shelf at all times, but it just depends on which configuration the guy is ordering. I mean, so tends to a lot go on the barrels, but benchmark, uh, absolutely prioritizes our business to take care of us. So we can get those barrels fairly quick, get those rifles into production and get them. So as long as a guy has thinking ahead, you know, with a three to five month lead somewhere in there. And sometimes it can be even less time than that, but we can absolutely, you know, take care of them. And even if a guy's a little short on time, understanding that we're going to shoot that

rifle in, um, it'll cut down a lot of their needed range time and other things when they get the rifle, right? It'll be pretty much turnkey out of the box, but we always encourage somebody to take a few shots, make sure it's sighted in for their eyes and they get used to breaking that trigger and things like that. But it's pretty much a turkey setup. So a guy can also get the light guns. I obviously, we talked about the ascent and that was kind of the crux of it, you know, but, but you've got normal weighted guns as well for guys that aren't necessarily sheep hunting or back country hunting that like the feel of a little bit heavier gun. You've got, you've got an assortment there of models. Yeah. Yeah. We've got a really good stable of your more traditional six and a half to eight pound type stuff. Right. Okay. Um, and pretty much any popular cartridge or caliber.

Um, if it's got the potential that we'll put our name on, just know to call us and we're going to build it for you. Okay. Gotcha. Right on. So, uh, give us a website. Okay. So, uh, for the rifles, you can go to moarifles.com, uh, for the accessories, uh, the rugged ridge outdoor gear.com. Um, just our store site for any of that kind of range finders and the kestrels and stuff like that we talked about would be extremestore.us. Okay. And then if they want to sign up for the, for this course, is it, where, who are they calling on that? Yeah. It'd be best to call the shop directly, which is a 541-526-1820. Okay. Reiterate one more time where that's going to be, Bob, so that people know if they're thinking about traveling, flying out, you know, flying out to it, driving out to it, where would they fly into? You know, it's not far from Boise.

I don't know, is Boise the closest, I guess, major airport? Yeah. So you got a couple options. So the, the, the city that is, is the one that we want to pay attention to is Baker City, Oregon. Um, from there we go North out of there towards a little town called Richland, but for just primary logistics, let's say Baker City, Oregon, if they fly private, which, you know, a lot of some guys actually, I mean, more guys than I even know have planes these days, you can fly right into Baker. Um, if you're going to go commercial, you're, you nailed it. You're going to Boise and just, uh, you know, maybe rent a car or something and come right across and up and around. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. Sounds good. So if you want some good Mexican food and steaks, right? He said, we take care of it, man. We've got to, I mean, it's all inclusive in there, right?

I mean, the cook, all joking aside, the cook that we have in there is really, really good with the whole Dutch oven thing. We stay in at the lodge, then we stay at the sheet mount outfitters lodge and everything. Looking forward to that. Awesome. Yeah. No, the whole deal. You guys will come in. So it's kind of an interesting, uh, it's, it's a cool place. So what, what they actually do, the students, you guys included, we'll actually meet at the ranch headquarters, which is close to the, one of the highways. And we'll actually have, uh, everybody parked there, put the gun cases and bags and everything and some players Rangers. And then it's actually about 10 miles, give or take to go all the way up and over the Canyon through Timber Canyon and all the way up and over. And, uh, we drop into the lodge, which is an off-grid lodge. It's all generated around stuff like that.

And so you're actually brought in by Polaris's. We use the Polaris's to go around the ranch and, you know, acquire and engage all the hunting scenario based targetry and everything like that. All the meals are cooked. And I mean, it's just a, you know what it is? It's a mini hunting trip without getting your hands bloody. And, uh, when, when we're done, then we, we, uh, after breakfast on that third day, we take everybody back up and over the mountain and, and take them to their cars. And in the mornings and evenings, guys will have spawning scopes spread out all over the deck of the lodge. And there'll be bucks and bulls and everything up in the draws and the velvet. And it's, it's cool. It's a good deal. That's awesome. What price range are we running for the course? If you don't mind me asking. Yeah. Retail amount is 25, but we gave all the Epic guys a 10% off.

So I think that makes it about 2250. Yeah. Perfect. Okay. Again, like you said, they don't have, you know, if a guy wants to bring his setup to get going with it, bring it all, I'll go. But if you want to just totally show and go, don't want to travel with guns, we provide guns and ammo. Perfect. Sounds great. Well, we sure appreciate you, Bob, spending a little bit of time with us, uh, here. And so, uh, anyway, anybody that's interested, obviously, uh, you know, you can go to, you can call 541-526-1820. You can go to MOARifles.com, check out some of their gear. We appreciate you, Bob. Uh, I don't know. It sounds like you've got a full schedule this year. We're looking forward to checking it out. I'm going to go on YouTube and watch you smoke a big old deer and then try to figure out how to get a tag for myself.

So not to add any pressure, but we'll have you back this fall on the big three in Oregon. See how they went. Okay. Well, that sounds great, guys. Well, I appreciate all the opportunities and talking with you guys. Okay. Appreciate you, buddy. All right. Bye-bye. You bet. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.