EP 45: Long Range Shooting and Accuracy with Mark Thompson

So, 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 UnderArmor.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, 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 You're 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.

I 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. I liked shooting BB guns, dart 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 I could go to see if I could hit those things on the dandelions way out there. Geez. That was probably the start of it right there.

Yeah. That and grasshoppers. Grasshoppers. Well, cool. So, did that graduate to 22s and honeybees? On up to 22 and then the West Desert, shooting rabbits. I 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 a .220 Swift. I've always been a big fan of high velocity. Yeah. My opinion of that is when you can deliver as fast and as flat as possible. And I learned this through a lot of shooting. It just helps you be more accurate. So, I always leaned toward the calibers that were fast and flat. Yeah. Yeah, well that makes total sense. So, you probably were pushing the envelope like the .220 Swift. How fast were you getting it going? We run that one, or I run that one right around 3,800 feet per second with a 55 grain bull.

This is when I was 15, 17, that age there. That would have been before chronographs. You were counting seconds. 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. Well, you know, going back a little bit, you were talking about a lot of your guys were, you know, buddies were 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?

A little bit of the water stuff. 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 away. 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 game a little bit. So, does that bring us to 18 years old? I mean, what did 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.

While I was driving the forklift, I noticed a need for wooden pallets. There was none in the valley in Logan area. Nobody was doing pallets. They were all being shipped out of Salt Lake. Yeah. I had a friend ask me if I had an in on some pallets of a certain size, so I told him I'd throw him some together. He was working for another company, a purchasing department. I put those together, and he called a little while later and needed a couple hundred more, and then they needed 400, and then they needed 1,000. It wasn't long. I was working full-time after my full-time job to keep up with him. Eventually, just split off and started my own company. It's called Pallets of Utah. Today, 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 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 a need, and I was willing to give it a go. So, it turned out good. It's not like you were, you know, it wasn't your love of pallets that drove you to the pallet business. It's 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, it keeps us busy. Yeah, so when I went out and visited you, gosh, I may have even met you 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 really know what it was. 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. Maybe it was a different warehouse. I don't know. Do you remember? Ah, man, that was a lot of years ago. It had to have been 10 years, maybe? Yeah. Or more. 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. Anyway.

Still the same place, same operation, more buildings, but a little bit bigger. 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 handle all the long range stuff myself. Okay. Just because it could kill people, I guess, is pretty important that the main guy is there. I'm pretty fussy about that. So, we got 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 up there. 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.

I know you sold that one. That love of money. Yeah. Oh, so let's see. So, you're cranking on that, and then, and alright, so let's talk about Critterlick. 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 35mm 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, and 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 no red flags in there. 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. They can call the office and place the order. We ship out daily. And that's only if they come to the shooting course, or would you take sales today from anybody? No, no. Sales today from anybody. Okay, okay. 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, 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, alright, 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, almost don't even want to call it long range anymore. It's kind of like, kind of the standard is that people are able to shoot five to seven hundred 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 seven hundred 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%. And we don't bring people here to this course and take them out to 1,000, 1,200 yards so they can go start just trying to kill stuff that far. It's just like you said, it's to build the confidence at 5,600, 700 yards. And that's more the norm. When we get success results coming back from our clients, 90% of them are 700 yards or less. Geez. But, like you say, it's, boy, the norm is gone. That two to three hundred yard long shot that you used to hear about in the coffee shop years ago is, it's a different story now. Well, 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. I'm amazed, and I don't know if we came up to visit you in 04 or 05, maybe 05, 06. But, you know, that was a 400 yard shot on that deer, and I was a total guess. Lucky to end up wrapping my hands around him, long story short.

And, you know, and then coming out, and that was, you know, and I'd kind of heard things about long range and compensating, 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, my initial long-range experience was through you. And, you know, you took us through taking an out-of-the-box gun, a Weatherby. 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. You know, we can talk about that as much as you want to talk about it, 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 basically, I mean, Anybody that hasn't shot long range before, you almost considered a novice, you know, just kind of a beginner. Just, you know, this is how you should shoot. This is proper setup and the proper form, and this is why we do it this way. And there were just a lot of cool things that I learned in about a day and a half from you that totally made sense. I mean, you obviously must get a lot of that from people that are coming out to your course and willing to learn.

Yeah, I think, you know, they come a little bit scared maybe that they personally can't perform or can't, you know, 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 hold a crosshair on 100 yards, there's no reason why you can't hold one on 1,000 yards. Yeah. It's no different, and it's just understanding the trajectory of the bullet, you know, velocity and the drop, 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 been around for a long time. Back in the 1860s, 1870s, those buffalo hunters were...

I mean, they had a reputation that was unbelievable for killing buffalo all day long, 7 through 1200 yards. Yeah. With a 45-110, 45-120, you know. Crazy. Open sights. So, it's nothing It's something new. It's just a re-interest of it. And boy, when it came around this time, lucky for me, I was on the leading edge of it. You were. Maybe one of the instigators of getting it started. You were. You're the people that everybody cuss 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... Somebody had to do it. Somebody was gonna do it. It might as well be Mark, but it definitely opened my eyes when we walk in and we go through everything. We make a load for that gun. We get, you know, I imagine you're still using Acubons. Yeah. And you're getting that round going to match up the scope 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. But what are some of the things, maybe just visit about some of the things. What I really was impressed about is the simplicity of your system. So, like you said, it's not rocket science. Even you've told me before, you know, when I was worried about small groups at 100 yards, and then you came out with this article

I've heard people from shooter times or something that basically explained that, you know, it's like throwing a football and it's not necessarily the group at 100. You may have a little bit of a scatter at 100, but then, you know, you still may end up being 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. I learned that early in the game that, like everyone else, 100 yards is the norm for setting up a target and looking for accuracy for a rifle, but I'm here to tell you that it should not be the norm. It needs to get out there at 300 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 100 and see what it's doing at 100, you can always do that, but don't be surprised. Yeah, don't freak out. Don't be surprised if you're shooting a two-inch group at 100 yards, yet you're holding a six-inch group at 700 yards. Yes, and we found that on a couple of the rifles. And it was shocking, and you're like, you made the classic comment, which I've used it several times, and I don't give you any credit for it, but it was, we're not hunting field mice. You know, and I love that comment because everybody's so freaked out. If you're not, you know, one hole in it at 100 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 500 or 700 and then let's start talking about it.

I've literally seen rifles that will shoot a quarter inch group at 100 yards and will not hit a two-foot steel plate at 1,000 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. Yeah, crazy. So, get those targets out there are little ways to look for accuracy. Don't do it at a hundred yards. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, still, you don't really like people bringing their own rifles to the shooting course or anything like that. You like to just set them up with your system, an easy system, and it's the least expensive system I know of out there, but yet very user-friendly, very simple, and anybody can do it. The simple reason we don't allow any outside guns to come in is because, obviously, we don't know what they're bringing. We don't know the danger side of it, whether their 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 duplicate it if they want to take the time to do it. Yeah, okay. Give us a rundown 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 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.

A maximum of four people per group. Sometimes they know each other, sometimes they don't. In that first afternoon, we take, we spend 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 Leupold four and a half to 14 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 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 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. 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 diagnosed for the night before. We go right directly to the range.

And they start at 500 yards and have gone to 1,000 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 1,000-yard target a couple times. And 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 their self. 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. 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 at 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. 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 Titus group, and you had bragging rights all the way home. I remember that. I know. 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. And, I mean, it was crazy.

But, uh... You three shot a record number of ammunition when you shot. 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. But after he shot 1,200 yards and about 20 miles all the way home, he never said a word. He was grinding on it in his head, and then finally he 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 to 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 gotta 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, 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 a 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. So, on the Weatherby .3378, with an Accubond 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... three thousand... three thousand... three-five hundred rifles right now...

Well, I thought it was 3350... 3370? You're screwing with people... you're not going to give out your perfect... your perfect recipe... Yeah... it's... once you find the... 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 radicals versus turrets, and just give me your quick take. I don't know if you're even 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, 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 has 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 different. 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 I mean, you can easily lose track of where that animal's at, too.

Yeah, yeah. So, tell me, all right, I want 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. Lower power scopes will give you more daylight for a longer period of time.

Okay, that makes sense, and you're using a 30mm tube, it seems like. Yeah, a 30mm tube, but a short tube. 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. The shorter the tube, the better off you are. And so, the scope that I use is that 4.5-14mm has a very short tube, 30mm tube, and we use a 40mm objective. Okay. And then, I want you to explain a couple things, you know, like elevation, you know, 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 what you're trying to compensate for. So, I just want you to talk about your theory on that. On elevation change or elevation?

Yeah, elevation change and 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, 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 are reduced significantly. So, let's take 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 going to go by the seat of my pants here, 15 inches. Yeah. But if we take the very same bullet, not through a .30-06, but say through a .33-78 at a much higher velocity, and we're talking 4 inches. Yeah. So, the faster you move that bullet... That's the width of your reticle at 1,000. Yeah.

I mean, you can't even... Yeah, the faster... Most people can't even hold four inches. Right, right. So, 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. 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 .3378 off you, and then we also set up the .257 Weatherby Mag with the .110. Yeah. But tell me what you found, what you're going to, and kind of the change there. Okay, with the Weatherby Calibers, 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've done the .257 and the .3378 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, we agreed to take on the other calibers. So, we have the .270, the 7mm, the new .65-300. That's a heck of a caliber. Jeez, but I've heard it burns barrels, no? We heard that with the .3378 when it first came out, too. It didn't. Okay. Haven't seen one yet. Geez, I'll bet that's an amazing caliber. So, if we compare that to, say, a 6.5 Creedmoor that's very popular now, I mean, people are lined up to buy 6.5 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 its time of flight is slower. Where the 6.5-300 comes in so low, so flat, so fast, 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, 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. 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 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. I'm going to say the guys that are 65 and older come from that era when the .257 was the go-to gun, besides the .300 Weatherby. So, we sell a lot of .257s to those guys. There's a new group, a younger group that's buying the .257s. 7mm, there's always interest in that. It's just a matter of preference. But when it comes to calibers, you know, we recommend that you have a minimum of 1,200 foot-pounds of energy and 1,800 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?

Yeah, with the 257, I think there was a 710 kill, yeah. Yeah, I remember it. 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 1000, I think, I may be misquoting you, but 1000 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, 1,200, if we keep 1,200 at the minimum, that's true comfort there. You start getting down close to 1,000, then you got to pay attention to what you're doing. Okay. And so, what's your flattest? I mean, is this 6'5", 300, just smoking? Is it your flattest? It's, if we compare them out to 1,000 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 him, too. So, what grain of bullet are you talking on that .65? There's a couple bullets that we use in the .65, actually three. The Barnes bullet that they offer, the .127 bullet, 127 grain bullet, that's factory ammo. And then they got a Swift Chiraco bullet that they offer. Huh. Well, I'm just thinking if it's only six inches, why wouldn't I have a 180-grainer smacking that target? When you see it on paper, you see the energy and the velocity, you see what I'm talking about. That 33-78 is a sledgehammer of sledgehammers. That thing's nasty. I 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.

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 a matter-of-fact story. I just had a client come through with his wife, and he's been to Tajikistan. He's been everywhere, hunted every species you can imagine. And we get to the range here, and 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. I talked his wife into coming over and shooting, and she sits down and shoots three bullets that are touching each other at a thousand years. It happens all the time. And I think what it is, and this sounds stupid as can be, but I think what it is, when we're guys growing up, we always done the fake recoil thing. We literally done the fake recoil, and we were running around playing, pulling the trigger

like on a wooden stick or something. We were all faking that recoil. And there is no doubt in my mind that 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 you had an empty hunt, and you jerked that There's no question, but I had to talk myself through every shot, like literally. Like, I talked myself through like you talking me through. 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 think something that helps our shooters too is where we have a very mild recoil on our calibers, 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'm, you know, when I talk myself through it, yeah, you've got that, but just letting it surprise you. So, you know, concentrate, let it surprise you, let it kick you. Yeah. 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. So, I sent a guy to you to get a rifle this year, and it was a relatively new shooter. He had a couple of tags in Oregon. But, you know, what I like about what you've got going, 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 affordable, it's simple. Guys can walk away and make ethical shots at five, six, seven

hundred yards. Ethical shots. Without a doubt. And 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 a 6'5", 300, I can tell you what I want. You will send it to me. Can I order rounds as well? Give me 200 rounds. Send Send me this gun, and you'll do that for me? Typically, it 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 $7,000 to $9,000. Yeah. Well, you mean not you, but other companies. Right. And so, tell me what that would be. 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 $3,200.

Okay. So, 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 $3,200. If I have a client call me that has never been here before, his price is $3,900. All done. It's 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's 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've 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 ordered this gun, it's $3,200, 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 a box of 20, except for the 3378, and it's $130 a box of 20. Okay. And you know, you hear people say, ouch, that's a lot of money. But, you know, it's cheap when you say it takes one shot versus 15 shots. Well, the bottom line is ammo's expensive anymore. It does feel like a lot. Go down and buy a box. Then go buy five different boxes, because you're going to need different brands. You're going to need to figure out what shoots the best. It's a no-brainer. Like, you're going to use those 20 rounds instead of using three or five of those rounds

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. I had to test out the five-day thing. Just order something like right now. Try it. Just try it. Order five. Five days? Five working days, or is it over a weekend? I mean, what do we do? Order five rifles, we'll have them there in five days. Geez, that's awesome. Tell me about 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

But you're a hunter, you've killed amazing animals, you've excelled in about everything you do. Just tell us a little bit about some of the different hunting experiences you've had, or something cool with long range. 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 just been a hell of a run. I mean, I've enjoyed everything I've done. Snowmobiles, the businesses, I mean, I like a challenge. And when I can accomplish 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, you know, hunting is probably watching my boys now.

Those boys are taking this on, they're understanding it. 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's 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 take some great trophies. It's just all been good. I can't think back of anything. We got our nine-day Colorado hunt, nine-day eight-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. 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 with muzzleloaders. Yeah, muzzleloaders have been a lot of fun.

Have you got sellable packages of that stuff going on, or? We do a few custom muzzleloader packages for guys, but we don't do too many of them anymore. We're so busy with the rifles And, you know, muzzleloaders will... Muzzleloaders are pretty intense. It's pretty...it 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 rifle stuff. Yeah. You know, you reminded me when you were saying you were talking to your kids, and you watched your kid take a 670 yard shot, and it was a one shot kill. And it's the same thing with my kids. Colton shot his first deer at nine years old, but I had him on a 7mm08. And if you look at the ballistics of a 7mm08, ethically, you wouldn't want to take much more in a 300 yard shot.

There's nothing there. There's nothing there. So, I've got them rifles, and kids can shoot 600 yards, and they can do it well. It's impressive. Yeah, just like the women that come with these guys. Yeah, it's awesome. And so, your course, I mean, do you do anything, 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 several families, and another big thing is like date night. 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. I mean, they just literally enjoy it. It's been kind of a new thing. I just watch it trend a little bit. Date night, flying in and having a date. I mean, that's a little deeper in my pockets, but...

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 had 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. He says, I'm coming up with my family, and I says, you know what, let's just do the whole family. He says, really? Can you do that? I says, yeah, we'll just take care of the whole family, and they'll all have a good time. At the time, he had three kids. I'm going to guess the ages. One was 19, one was 16, and the other one was 14. Geez. And the wife, and they all sat down, shot three separate rifles, and you should have seen that 1,000-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 is? I can't even remember. Some kind of special paint. Nothing you do is normal. I go down and get paint. I don't care what it is. You have to get the certain kind of paint that chips off just right. The cheaper the paint, the better it comes off. All right. All right. Well, so how can people get ahold of you? Just give us the hard plug here. The best way is just visit the website, Thompson Long Range. There's Ask the Expert there, I think, that comes directly to me. I answer a lot of questions on that. They can call the office. Scott's there, Ben is there, Stephanie. All those can answer most of the questions. If it gets real detailed, then they'll send them my way. 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. 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. You know, if you want an exclusive date, you want to call early enough that you can lock that date up. But we don't require a deposit, and 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. Corporate groups have been a big thing lately, too. We've taken a lot of corporate groups through. Twelve 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, 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 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 that's you, then give Mark a call. I've known Mark for many, many years, and I appreciate you, Mark. Of course, I'll be forever indebted for my initial long-range experience with you. It taught me a ton of stuff that I've, you know, like I've spewed off a few things. I probably surprised you that I even remembered that stuff, but it's helped me.

You only remember what you want to remember. So, anybody that's out there listening and wants real detail on Jason, call me. Yeah, you're such a liar, too. There's some things you just conjure up, but anyway. All right, well, I appreciate you spending the time. 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, We appreciate your support of Epic, and of course, it's easy for us to represent quality people and companies like your own. I appreciate you guys, too. All right. Well, good luck on the rest of your hunts, and we'll go from there. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Mark. Bye. Bye. Bye. Here at Epic Outdoors, we produce a hunting magazine nine issues a year.

The first six issues are state-by-state research-driven 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. $100 a year gets you that magazine, as well as the ability to call and consult with us consultants, develop a strategy, bounce ideas off us, things like that. Yeah, so with this magazine, you know, it just 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 a year, 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 $500, we'll handle all of your Western State applications. We'll incorporate the information you give us. You can be as interactive with us in 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 going on in your life, whether it be business or travel or whatever, you miss deadlines, So, consider calling us for your license application service needs, and be glad to help you out.

With our license application service, of course, one of the big things besides just applying and submitting 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 experience 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 some of the most knowledgeable consultants 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, like Adam said, for a maximum of 500, we can do anything and everything that pertains to applying for Western Big Game.