Why This Sport Is So Hard to Grow

In this episode, we break down the reality of running shooting matches—and why it’s harder than most people think.

From losing match venues… to dealing with neighbors… to the cost and complexity of building ranges—this is the side of the sport most shooters never see.

We get into:
• Why matches get shut down (even when everything is done right)
• The challenges of finding and building shooting ranges
• The role of land, neighbors, and local regulations
• What it actually takes to run a high-level match
• Why growing the sport is harder than it looks

There’s a lot more that goes into a match than just showing up and shooting.
If you’ve ever wondered why matches disappear—or why new ones are hard to find—this is the truth behind it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Stand by.

unknown 0:02

Sure ready. Stand by.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

All right. Welcome back to the PRS podcast with my good buddy Tucker Schmidt here. How are you, buddy? Good, man. I appreciate you having me. Heck yeah. It's good to have you on the show, man. I guess first let's start out with an introduction. Who you are? Where do you work? Where do you live? What do you do in your free time?

SPEAKER_01 0:27

My name is Tucker Schmidt, and I am Ken Wheeler's neighbor, kind of. Couple hours away, but I'm here in Wisconsin. I do work at Vortex Optics. I've been in the shooting game since, I don't know, 2014 or so. Started as a USPSA and a three-gun guy. I did that for many years and had a couple buddies down in Florida that kind of introduced me to the bolt gun world. Learned the art of reloading, even though I thought I was already a master. And you know, it's been a fun ride.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

So I bet with you know, the pistol sports, I mean, you probably reloaded thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of routes.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

That thing was in uh high demand uh at that time. Yeah, I mean, I was shooting a ton of pistol, right? I mean, between 30 and 50,000 uh a year, typically just in like the competition calibers, 9 mil, 40, whatever it was at the time. But yeah, it was a good run, man. I I did love, I still love it, right? I work and train uh in some of those uh aspects still here at Vortex. And uh but yeah, I kind of got the PRS bug, and that's kind of where I've been living for the past uh four or five years.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Man, well, we're I personally I'm excited that you're living in this area, man. I love it. So in both the PRS realm, man, and Wisconsin. So yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

It's uh, you know, I got tired of the heat uh down there. I still love Florida, right? Got got a lot of family there. Uh people love summer up here, but when summer's nine months long and 100 degrees, it's not quite as fun. So I uh, you know, I like to go visit, preferably in the winter months down there. And then uh yeah, I love it up here, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Heck yeah. Um let's talk about that 1050 in the background. So do you still use it to load a pistol?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

I do. Uh it's been sitting for a while because usually when I break that thing out, so I have about, I don't know, six or seven five-gallon drums uh or five-gallon buckets of just prime nine mil brass. Uh so usually I'll load you know five or ten thousand at a time. Yeah, and then and then I'll I'll pluck through that for the next however long it takes me. I don't shoot near as much of it as I used to, but uh it's funny the reloading game, right? You hear a lot of these these podcasts with guys reloading and you know get the best thing the first time. Well, I did not do that. I had every single press uh that you could possibly get. If it was ten dollars more, that was the next press I was gonna get. Yeah. Yeah. And it probably saved you no time. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, a lot l no time and lots of money uh down the road. But uh you eventually get to where you're going. And yeah, I started with just like a lee press and then the lead AP or auto uh whatever it is. Yeah. Went to the Hornady, the Dillon, the 650 with the Mark 7, and then I finally got the 1050 with the uh with the auto drive on there. It it's a time saver.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Heck yeah. You know, do you do you use that for any like case prep for precision rifle stuff?

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Man, I don't. I I've heard a lot of guys, you know, Morgan on his podcast, and guys on yours, and and there's a lot of people doing it on like a 550, 750. I don't know if they're doing it on these. I'm sure there are. Uh but man, I got the zero and I've got a system, and I I want to do it just because I want to save time, but I I just haven't pulled the trigger quite yet.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

I I I I mean there's there's presses in the background here, and if you look over, I have a zero. I I have I mean I have the SAC Nexus press. Like I have it all. I mean, we do a lot of photo and video and stuff like that, but I recently bought a Dylan 750. Paid full price, whole thing with the with the case feeder and all that. Um I had to I had to tune it up pretty good to be able to do case prep. Uh, you know, with hold down dies and then uh a whole bunch of arm and off components on you know on a 750. But um dude, I can case prep and this is this is using a mandrel and a bushing die and you know all the things, right? So I I bumped my shoulders three thousandths. My uh my neck tension is perfect, you know, using the forcer neck tension gauge. I can probably do two thousand an hour.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

What's that run out on the shoulder bump? That's the one thing I had. I did try it with a 650 a while back, but the and I did the hold down, but I was getting too much variance on the shoulder bump. This was a while back.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

It it's within it's it's plus or minus one and a half.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

That's that's pretty good. So three thousand three thousand total.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

I know, I yeah, I know. On a zero, like you hit it and you measure, and you're like oh, there it is.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Yeah, it's zero.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Yeah, yeah. It's exactly what you want. Um yeah, you're within two or three thousand on the shoulder bump. Hey, thanks for watching the show today. We want to take a moment to talk about one of our PRS partners, Vortex Optics. Vortex Optics is the official rifle scope of the PRS. Their Gen 3 Razor is one of the most popular scopes used in the sport. You can find Gen 3s, you can find Vipers, you can find them all at pretty much every PRS match you go to. They got an excellent warranty. You can find them at vortexoptics.com. Um, I I talked to Josh Edgett about this. Uh he he he basically did it the same time I did, and and he's like, Well, yeah, I see the variants, you know, but they all chamber and my SDs are still sub three, you know, or four. So he's like, does the sh you know, does a thou difference in shoulder bump mean anything?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

That's that's a question for the higher ups. I don't know. I don't think so. If you're seeing three three or less on the SDs, I mean what else do you want?

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Yeah, I mean neck tension is super important, but a shoulder bump? I don't and we're talking a thou or two, right? Yeah, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

I'll tell you what does sound good is 2,000 an hour. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

Dude, I I can't tell you what it felt like when I'm you know, and it's it's uh uh auto drive by me, right? So I'm just up and down and I'm like, wow, uh you know, this beats the hell out of one in, one out, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Just just tapping out every crank. Yeah, I may have to try that. So uh this is an old Autobot, it still has the handle attached, uh, but it runs chain drive, you know. I've had it forever. Um so you can do it by hand, which I think is probably the right answer when you're doing case prep on precision rounds. Um but I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

I don't know. Because the machine's gonna go, it's gonna give the same upstroke and downstroke to the same spot, right? Or should it should be better than a human. Yeah. Yeah, maybe the 10 fit the 1050, how many stations are in that?

SPEAKER_01 6:49

I think there's seven. Yeah, seven holes.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

I don't understand why they do odd numbers. Because like what you want is your you want your bump or sizing die opposite of a hold down die. So like they come down and they, you know, that your shell plate or whatever isn't like being twisted. It's like they're both engaging at the same time and going up. So Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

If I was a betting man, I would guess because they designed that for high volume rounds, and then they're probably gonna have a bullet feeder of some kind. That would be my but who knows? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

Yeah, because it does take a hole to to fill it.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Yeah, it does. It does. It's uh man, I do you do you enjoy reloading? I used to.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

No, I don't I don't not like it, right? It's it it's just it's a lot. And uh, you know, I'm pretty good buddies with John Kyle, and uh somehow I've adopted his reloading as well, uh, which is great. So shout out John Kyle. Uh what are friends for, right? So yeah, I do a lot of it and I'm happy to do it. Um but I used to really like getting in the weeds and you know, measuring every step of the way and like what works. Let's do three thousand jump increments to see what shoots best. Now I just run the same load uh until it doesn't shoot anymore. Um and typically with most modern calibers, that's a that's a pretty easy way to go. Uh you know, Dasher BRs and and even the the 47 cases all seem to do really well. Um not changing anything.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

I I agree. I uh I used to dude, I uh I used to waysort my brass.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

I've heard that on the podcast when you were talking about I was like, holy cow on the primers or something.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Oh no, I never did primers. I thank God. Oh but yeah, I it's just wild to think like what I what I used to do and what I thought was important, and now I'm like, you know, like at least with uh GT that I shoot a lot, like I'm like, yep, 32 and a half grains of Arget, you know, it gets me right at 2800 feet per second. That's what I want. Um, I I have a cartridge overall link that I don't really mess with, and the thing just seems to shoot in a lot of rifles, like that's a good recipe, and it seems to be pretty good temperature sensitivity, and you know, the jump is not really sensitive, so that's just what I'm gonna make. You know, I still enjoy the process. I like making stuff.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Same, I I do too. And honestly, like if you have that load and you have something that's not shooting it, there's probably another issue somewhere. Oh, yeah. Because it that should just work, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Man, I so I'm getting ready for box canyon. This this podcast will go out ways after box canyon, but um I'm getting ready for box candy this weekend, and this last I think it was Monday I was at the range. I'm like, all right, I got a brand new GT barrel, you know, this should be fine. I screwed a suppressor on there and the thing shot like a two-inch group. I'm like, nope. I know this load works, yeah, you know, and I I use like leftover ammo first of the same load, and I'm like, man, this shot lights out in other rifles. Like, what's going on? And uh I actually so I took that suppressor off and tried, I went bare muzzle, and my group went from like two inch to you know less than half inch. You know, like it doesn't like that can. That's too bad.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Those things are just unexplainable. I just don't know why. And that same can will probably work on 10 other rifles with 10 different loads. I just, you know, these are the things I battled with, especially, you know, last year I just couldn't seem to find where my tail was attached. You know, just having little things like that, like what is going on? I can I think I'm better than this, but uh it's not going well. Uh maybe I'm just not. That's a possibility, too. Oh man. And uh, you know, this year, this year for me, at least so far, has been been quite a bit better. Uh had had some trouble last week in uh Mississippi, man. They uh Chris Simmons and those guys, they had some tiny targets out there, and I brought a gun that was just incapable of shooting that small. Um had some stuff coming loose. I had a, you know, uh, you know, what the can was great, but the the brake on the end, for whatever reason, just kept clocking out ever so slightly, and it was enough to push it to like a three-quarter inch group, and I swear 30 per 30 of his targets, which is great. I mean, he doesn't have a lot of wind, so that's a great way to challenge. Uh, but I'd say a 30% of those targets were probably one MOA or smaller. I mean, it was legit. It was legit dense.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Man, holy cow. Yeah, it was legit. You've shot quite a bit already this year. Yeah. A lot of back-to-back weekends.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Stella's trying to find a groove, man. It's it's been missing, so gotta figure this thing out. You can't figure it out unless you do it, right? And luckily, uh it's part of my job here at Vortex, so I'm I'm pretty blessed to have that. It's a lot of weekends, it's a lot of travel, but I mean when you're when you're liking what you're doing, you don't work a whole lot. And uh so yeah, yeah, I don't know, four or five so far this year already.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Uh six, you mean? You shot both, yeah. You shot both the Texas matches. Uh then you went out to Arizona. Um, that was a good match too. Yeah. Yeah. That was sporty. Yep. That was also sporty, yeah. Then you went to Clays. Yeah. Like a week later. Mississippi, yeah. Iowa and Mississippi. You're at six matches, man. And then uh you're signed up for Snake River, which Yeah, Idaho.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

I'm on the fence on that one only because my wife has been begging me to get this fireplace build done. Um, so I'm gonna figure that out this weekend, see how much I can get done and if it if it's feasible to go and still get the the honeydews uh complete, I plan on being there.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Okay, yeah, Idaho isn't super easy to get to from Wisconsin, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Like no, no, nothing over there is. But yeah, you know, I grew up in the southeast and those are the matches I've shot for a long time. And uh and I I still like to do it. Like I'm still gonna do it, obviously. Uh, but I really like going out west and the big wind and uh you know, just just learning learning that the best and you know, learning from some of those guys and then trying to do well in the process. Man, I really just seem to attract to that, which in the early year I'm like, I'm not going out there. Those guys are just gonna crush me, it's not fun. And now I'm like, okay, I really enjoying uh you know the tougher conditions, which Iowa gave you just that. It's nasty.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Man, and if uh a match like that, right, had it been 65 degrees, uh-huh, like then it's a lot of fun, right? That's right. But it when it's when it's kind of and when when you're up against the elements and the targets, it's like yeah, this is this is just brutal.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Yeah, but so like four years down the road, right? When I'm like, oh Ken, you remember that match? It was 75 degrees, nice light breeze. You're like, no. But I'm like, hey, it was 30 degrees, pissing rain, a little bit of hail, snow, and uh, and blowing 30. You're like, yeah, I definitely remember that one.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

100%. 100%. Dude, I remember going to frostbite and freezing my butt off, you know. Like I remember those matches are super clear. I remember the uh the worst match I ever shot was actually here in Wisconsin, a local club series at Columbus where we shoot. Yeah, yeah, it was mid-March. Mar it was actually right around this time, maybe March 20th. Uh, but it was 15 degrees and 15 mile an hour winds. Yeah. It's just awful.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Yeah, once it gets sub-20 is when things really start to hurt, especially if it's windy.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Yep. Yep. There's no way to keep your hands and feet and all that warm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's uh let's talk a little bit about match directing, man. Uh, you got a couple matches under your belt out there uh in Blue Mounts, right? That's correct. Yeah, we can talk about the bittersweet Blue Mound if you if you want.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

It's probably time to put that noise out there. So I have a uh I have uh you know, just a page for the range that that I put together. And there's I don't know, four or five hundred people that follow it. And uh you can't really change the name of the group, so it's like I guess that's gonna live Blue Mounds. Uh, but I haven't really put the information out there because everything hasn't been like 100% completed yet. But yeah, you know, I used to run matches, I've ran three-gun matches, pistol matches, all of those things. And uh Aaron K and myself uh ran a match down in the southeast in Florida uh for a while together. So I I'm not brand new to it, but I'm I'm definitely no Ken Wheeler, you know what I mean? Uh you probably got more experience at this point than I do, man. So, anyways, uh the PRS was nice enough to grant us uh to bring the barrel maker back here to Wisconsin, which I was super excited about because there is no two days uh in Wisconsin. So it's definitely an honor and we do appreciate it. Um the downside is there was a you know a local farmer who's well known in the area. Um he had, if I had to put a number, roughly 500-ish acres, about six neighbors um there. And it's about it's 10 minutes or so from headquarters, and it's only like 20 from my house. So it was a great facility uh to put a place at, not to mention I had like free access to go in and out and sheep and train and and checkloads and and all the things. Um so we ran a couple regionals last year, 25, and everything went well. We were getting good attendance, people were happy, we were making good food, and and uh it seemed to be going really well, but I guess there was a neighbor. Uh there's always a neighbor, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Always a neighbor here in Wisconsin, man. Damn it.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

But uh he's literally got you know half a dozen neighbors there. And and before he jumped into kind of putting the money into building this place, I was like, I was like, Mike, we gotta, you know, check with all the neighbors, like let's talk to him, talk to the cops, the county, uh do all the things which he did, and he's a very nice guy. Like he is you know a grade A class A guy. Um and he did, he talked to the neighbors, and you know, one or two weren't super thrilled, but they weren't like I'm gonna make your life hell kind of thing. Uh, but apparently there was like one he missed, or maybe he was out of town. I don't know what happened, uh, but he came back and he was in the board meetings and he was just throwing a massive fuss. And honestly, like we had the permits, we could have did it anyways. It's you know, 10 days a year, roughly, between the two days and you know, four regionals. Um, Mike's probably a better man than me because I probably would have been like, look, man, like I'll throw you some cash, but it's 10 days, you can have the rest. So, anyways, Mike decided kind of to close that sucker down. So there's you know, all the all the work we put into it, like all the different, I mean, they put retaining walls all the way up and down the hill. It's beautiful, maybe I don't know, 90 to 110 degrees of fire. So it is kind of a square range, but it has a lot of natural terrain as well.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Um, and the dilemma was for the two-day, we were gonna build out the other side, and then there's like a third area we were gonna work on, and uh he just didn't see a long-term plan in which this neighbor was gonna make hell in order to dump the money into the place, which I mean they were they were into it for over a hundred some thousand dollars just doing what they did. Yeah. Um and he didn't get that out of it, obviously. Um so it's a real bummer. Um, luckily there's a guy named uh this isn't a hundred percent, maybe I shouldn't talk about it. I don't know, but there's a guy named Reed Griffin that you know. Uh he live he's up in Sparta. He does have a property up there. That's uh you know a big property. There's a guy that owns it. His name's Steve, he's he's been incredible. Um I've yet to get up there, so everything's gonna be kind of a hustle. But I'm supposed to go.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

You've been there, let's clarify. You've been there a couple times, but haven't been there to to do the scouting in regards to the street.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Everything in me and and probably you looks like this is gonna be actually a little bit nicer of a place because they've got some natural tech terrain. Uh the difference is the workload goes up, you know, fivefold, maybe ten, because there's nothing there except for natural terrain. So we're gonna have to trailer uh all the props up, get them in the ground, scope out everything. He's gonna have some agriculture to deal with that time of year. And uh so we're gonna hustle to try to put on a world-class event for the guys that that plan on coming. So that that is goal. The goal.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Yeah. That and we were up there um that was last fall, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Yeah, I think it was it was it before.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

It was after the finale. It was after the finale. So I think it was like maybe early.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Is it in December or January? I mean, it was could have been I was worried. It was also cold.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Yeah, it was cold, but it wasn't too cold. Right. Right. It started out cold, I think sun helped. But yeah. Um it's exciting to see that property. Uh I think it's used for uh NML hunter match. Uh it'll get used for a new uh PRS pursuit match that we're we're coming out with. Um there'll probably be a bunch of information on that by the time this podcast goes out, otherwise we're gonna get a bunch of comments. But uh so it'll get used probably this this year for that pursuit match as well in 26. Um but what has me excited about it is that it is very natural, right? Like you're shooting off of a a big ridge that kind of weaves through the woods, and then you you get to shoot man, almost uh 270 degrees off of this ridge every which way. Yeah, that's what I remember.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Uh which I'm actually pretty excited about. Uh the downside is the the prep work that goes into getting all that, you know, getting the barricade out there and some other props and and you know, all the things. But that's that's what we do, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yeah, I mean uh you shot the barrel maker several years. Um that day one course of fire we had on a barrel maker where you kind of shot off a ridge, you know, through trees, you know, across the field into some more trees and stuff. Um I can tell you right now, getting the props out there is not gonna be the hardest problem. The problem the problem in a scenario like that. Well, yeah, yeah, we'll get Missy up there on a mower. She'll she's good for it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

For the Barrow American, she probably had a hundred hours of mowing while we're setting up targets and all that. But the big problem is is like right this time of year, it's fine. Like a lot of areas you can see through, and you're like, cool, yeah, this is a great shooting, shooting lane. But then it seems like the two weeks or three weeks or four weeks before the match, uh you go out there and the leaves have pulled these branches down. You know, normally the branches are sitting up like this, and you got a clear lane, and all of a sudden they start coming down, and you're like, How am I gonna get 60 feet in the air? Because I'm on a ridge, the targets are downhill, and these trees are like in between, you know? So that's hopefully, hopefully, Steve the landowner's like, just take the tree down, you know, instead of like you know, like, oh, how are we gonna get up there? You know, I got 10 foot of pole saw and I got a 30 foot extension ladder, so that gets me 40 feet, but I need to get to 45 inevitably.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Yeah, you almost have to move the targets at that point. Uh getting up that highs a little bit sketchy.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Yeah. And and at least the experience that we had at the Barrel Maker was like, okay, yeah, let's move the targets, but you then take like uh you know five hundred and sixty yard stage, like now that target's at four seventy five. It's not the same. It's not the same. Dang it. Yeah. Yeah. We'll figure all that out. It'll be easy. Yeah, there we go.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Famous last words. Yeah. So I I'm excited to get up there and kind of look at what we've got. And I I I think there's a venue uh on the property too. Um we're gonna try to get obviously a place to host everything. Yep. He may have said something about a wedding being there that Saturday or something.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Oh, weddings love gunfire, man.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

That's and I told Steve, or you know, I told Reed that, and obviously he related that to Steve, and he's like, Oh, it'll be fine. These guys, they all love. I'm like, okay. Okay. Well, we'll we'll see. We'll see how that goes.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

You just yeah, you just hope that uh like all the Grimsman show up and they're in blue jeans and a flannel shirt and a vortex. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and you don't have uh hopefully it's not a huge black tie affair, you know. That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

So we're gonna we're gonna wing it. We're gonna do the best I can to provide a a very, you know, a good time for everybody that comes. And uh, you know, we want to make a long-term place where people want to come back and obviously we continue to run the match and you know, ha have this thing grow in Wisconsin. That's that's the end goal, you know.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Yeah. Yeah. I'm man, I'm excited about it. I'm proud that I'm proud that you're you know leading the charge in this and Rick Kutcher on the regional side and all that. Yeah. I I man It's just tough to get a place in Wisconsin, you know. Like I know like like Shannon, I always everything to me is relative to Shannon and what he was able to do at KM in Tennessee, right? And he he bought 80 acres, I think, to start with. It's unrestricted land, which in Wisconsin is very hard to find, right? The only there's a few spots of unrestricted land. Either you gotta go like six hours north, you know, almost up to Lake Superior, or there's some stuff in like the central part of the state, but it's like swampland. You know, it's unrestricted because you can't do anything with it anyway, you know.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

That's right. It's all wet.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

But right, but Shannon, Shannon is able to get Tennessee is is very uh very good for this, right? Having having unrestricted land, but he bought 80 acres. Um he built that main firing line, which was like basically now stages one through two.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

One through five sand, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Yeah, what yeah, something like that, right? You know, up uh and it had the it went all the way from stage one all the way up to the um uh clubhouse or that pavilion or whatever. And then uh he talked to the landowner and was able to buy the next hundred and twenty. So they're like KM's only on two hundred acres, but that's crazy because it it is, isn't it? Because that place feels like it's a million dollars.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

I would have figured it was three times that at least.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Right. Right. And then the the best part of this in Tennessee is now this established gun range, like man, they could have a retirement community move in next door and and a state will actually first. Yeah, they say like too bad. You know what I mean? Um Wisconsin, I mean you had 500 acres, you know. Yeah, yeah, where the where the barrel maker was, you know, that was almost 600 contiguous acres, you know, the that when we hosted it. And we had nothing but problems with neighbors, you know. Um I mean, I get it.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Uh I I understand the frustration, right? But it's it's only so many days a a year, right? Like when you look at 365 days and you're using, you know, five of those or or 14 of those, whatever, for prep, and then like literally two to three days of of annoying gunfire, then it's over. You have you have the whole rest of the year to to do your thing. Exactly. And the way Mike was running the the farm I was working at at Blue Mounds there was uh it was never gonna be like a gun range like open to the public, right? I mean, yeah, there'd be some random gunfire throughout the year, but you're gonna be on a ball. You're gonna be up there three times a week. Mostly with a suppressor and uh trying to be mindful, and then yeah, there'd be some noise, you know, a couple weekends a year. Um yeah, it's tough. And you know, the price of land, I mean, give me five million dollars, I still might not be able to make it happen, honestly, here in Wisconsin because the land is so expensive and everywhere you can buy it, there's neighbors, you know, it's a whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

So Man, you know, this is five years ago when I was hosting matches. I I was really looking. I had no money to be able to afford land. I still don't have money to be able to afford land because it's crazy expensive. Yeah. Yeah. But there was one uh there was for 1.5 million, and it was probably four hours north, kind of central northern part of the state, 1,500 acres. And I I literally did I mapped this out. I'm like, we could host matches in the middle of this. And the nearest neighbor is still two and a half miles away. That's crazy. That's crazy. This is perfect. Unrestricted or not, like you could go to a town board meeting and be like, um, I'm gonna carve out a little section in the center part of my land, you know, and that's where I'm gonna shoot. There was also a lodge on there that had like 10 bedrooms. And it's like 1.5 million. Like, how do we get that? There's no way.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

That's a that's a big note to pay.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Yeah, it is for for a few matches a year. And then then unfortunately, like you're so far north in the state, like it's not easy to get to. You know, you're gonna fly into Green Bay, you know, uh, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

And then uh and then you really start fighting those nasty winners, which is fine. I mean, obviously everybody would be happy to have that thing, uh, you know, even for six to seven months a year, like that would be awesome. Uh yeah, but yeah, hopefully one day this problem gets solved. You know, I know the guys at Columbus run a heck of a match and obviously fairly limited. And then I know Winniqua did it there for a while. I know they still run a league there, but I don't think they're running any more regionals, to my knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. But yeah, that's that's what we got. And and Winniqua's a great range, right? It's uh 120 or 1300 yards. They do a lot of F-class stuff there. They have, I think last year and this year they have F-class nationals there. So I mean like they can host a ton of people and do really good things, you know. I just that's not a it's not a PRS club. So they I they you know, maybe somebody's listening and they're gonna slap my hand for this, but like they they they don't get it, you know, and and I think when you're still hosting national level matches and stuff, like yeah, you're probably pretty healthy, but man, F-class isn't gonna be around forever. And I'm not saying PRS is gonna be around forever either, but uh we're definitely on the growth path. And correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

So yeah, and uh, you know, I'm actually so there's a guy there, Doug, I've been working with. I don't know what his position is there. Well, he's actually kind of invited me out to run a little class there for some folks uh in Perfect Brule. Um and he says they're doing some work on it and stuff, so I don't know what that looks like. I'm excited to see it. You know, obviously it's very local to me. It's 45 minutes down the road, so I'm excited to go and uh kind of see what they're doing. And who knows what the future holds, man. It'd be a it'd be a great spot because clearly if they can have nationals in an F-Class there, they they can host some folks there.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Yep, yep. Doug's an excellent dude. He uh he shot the barrel maker a bunch of years in a row. Oh nice, I think almost every year. Wow. Um he's uh a professor at University of Wisconsin Madison there in uh engineering. Man, so I mean he's he's a good dude to work with, you know, and and he's and he helps out a lot there. But hopefully we can get some matches there. Heck yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be sweet.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

I think there's a thing there now or I and I may be wrong, but where you if you want to shoot the full range, you have to like close a road or half of it down or something, something along those lines to where it's a little bit funky. Uh I think I shot one one day regional there a couple years ago, and it was only to the 600 yard or so, and there was only really three distances. Uh so it was like, you know, this berm, that berm, and that berm. So you mark your turret, you just leave it there, uh, and then you know. Which is kind of nice. I mean it makes it really middle berm, middle line, send it, you know. Uh so yeah, the struggles are real here in Wisconsin, and uh, we can only hope that that things get a little better. And you know, I think with guys like yourself and and me in the future working on it, you know, hopefully something will hopefully something will come to fruition. I know those uh Rich and and all those guys, Chet. I mean, those guys work hard on that that club series they got, and it's awesome following.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Um we I uh so so Rick, Rick or Rich Toucher, uh Brian Caesar and um and Chet helps too and Columbus there, but um and and Ben Schumacher, but they're so they set up at the Highlands, which Highlands is back open now. Uh it's a it's not the same course of fire as what we ran for the Barrel Maker. It's uses about 30, 35 percent of like that first day um width. But um man, they have 110 signed up for this weekend, which makes it the biggest regional match uh of the year so far. I think the next biggest was Tommy Goodson at um at Clinton House in 98. Yep, uh 98 this month or last month or whatever. Um but yeah, I mean we have an incredible club series, and you know, and I I it's and it's kind of crazy. Like we only have a few really good shooters that are part of our club series. Like you're one of them, I would say. Uh you don't shoot enough club stuff, unfortunately, because you're traveling all the time.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

But time is tough, but edge, you wickie, edged and you wicky.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Chet Weakler.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Chet's been killing it.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Um Michelle Cutcher, they can both shoot well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's we just don't, you know, maybe that's part of the part of the situation too, is that we have a really strong and fun club series that you know a lot of folks are like, well, I don't need to go shoot pro series. Like, this is awesome, you know? Um yeah, but I man, with a couple of the Highlands matches this year, I wouldn't be surprised they have 120, 130 shooters at that. We we ran 130 one time at a regional match, and that like I think we're out there for like 12 hours. It was just too much.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

That is a big that is a big one day. I mean, that that's awesome. I mean, I know everybody's probably excited to get back out there and shoot, uh, and that's probably why some of the but even the attendant like our first match was like I don't know 60 or so people. I was like, wow, there's they found out about it, they talked, and you know, they actually came, and obviously that was that was the very first one. The second one went up by you know 20%. Um I was really hoping uh that was gonna be a long term thing.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

But dude, no barrel maker, if it would have been there, like yeah, I mean the last couple matches you would have had there probably would have been over a hundred, you know.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Like everybody wanted to get that's right. Yeah, yeah. Study for the test. Yep, exactly. Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Yeah. Well, let's talk about your role at at Vortex here. So you you've been up here six years now? Uh about five. Yeah, about five. About five. Okay. Yep. And have you been in the same role at Vortex as uh most of this time?

SPEAKER_01 32:40

So I was uh it's funny because looking back, you know, Vortex, you know, when you're a young up-and-coming shooter, right? You're looking for somebody to help with with some expenses and and that sort of thing. And uh Vortex was actually the very first one I reached out to. I think it was in, I don't know, 2016 or 2015. It was a long time ago. Uh so they were my you know, my very first sponsor just as a shooter, and uh I stayed with them for a long time. You know, I think you know, the first deal, you're looking up, man, I'm gonna get paid. It was like, well, we'll give you 50% off of what you buy. I was like, okay, awesome. You know, and I was and I was gonna have it. That's right. And uh happy to have it. And I I I stayed that way for you know a couple years and eventually kind of jumping onto their their pro staff. And I moved up here in 2020, uh, right in the midst of all the chaos. Uh yeah, it was an awesome time to come up here because housing prices doubled uh and and there wasn't a lot to do. But I was I was excited. So came up here 2020, 2021, and uh started on the dealer training team. So what's funny is the first guy I messaged about a potential sponsorship was now like my my direct supervisor, uh Ruben Alex, and a lot of guys on that listen to this will know who he is. Um, and that's a dealer training team, is what that is. So it's a group of like five or six guys, typically that kind of specialize in some sort of field. Typically, you know, like one guy was an ABCA, another guy was a cop, and then a couple of us are competitive shooters in different realms. Um and we bring dealers either to us or we'll go to them. Typically, we like them to come to us because we have all the facilities uh to kind of host them. But what Vortex does a little different on those trainings is you know, a lot of guys will just you know bring a hundred people to a to a classroom and you know, here's what we have, here's our product line. Everybody's kind of snoozing. Um, here's three rounds, check the gun out, let me know how you like it. Uh and that's pretty standard, right? So what we'll do is bring him in for two or three days, and and we will have some classroom time to go over things like geo ballistics or you know, first second focal plane, all the basics. Uh, but we'll spend most of that time on the range, you know, feeding them dinner, hanging out with them, just kind of giving them a full experience, right? Cool. Uh so for a while I was just kind of a professional schmoozer, um, which was actually a pretty fun job. Like you get to be the fun guy, which is kind of my personality anyway. So it was it was a good thing. Um, and I still do that uh to some extent. So there was another guy, many of you guys uh listening will know uh Loffenberg was here for for many years, 10, 10 or so years. He ran uh the PRS side of the house and eventually came over uh to the training team. So he was like our sixth guy. Um and we split responsibilities at that point. So if you emailed me or emailed Vortex for a match sponsorship, that would be me uh that you got a hold of and I'd you know work on donations and all that stuff while he still managed the you know the personnel side of things. Eventually we parted ways, Vortex and Nick Laufenberg. Uh and I ended up consuming uh the other half of that. So that's why uh a lot of you guys have have probably seen me uh quite a bit more. Uh just trying to get back to where we were. We feel like we were falling a little bit short uh on support. Um, you know, a good role model in my opinion is like the Truitt family, right? Like they're all in on the PRS, they're everywhere uh all the time, and and that's kind of the vibe we want to have. And I feel like we used to have that. Um, so I'm really trying to put you know the best foot forward. Um, and that's kind of taken the bulk of my role uh now of Vortex. It's you know, PRS long-range relations. We don't just sponsor PRS, obviously. You got the NRL, NRL 22, uh F-Class, bench rest, silhouette, all of those things. Uh we're trying to streamline the sponsorship process a little bit because I swear I get 20 to 25 uh new sponsorship percent, 20 to 25 percent higher. And we're up to almost like 450, 500 matches a year just in sponsorship. Oh my gosh. So you end up getting emails, and this is kind of funny. I'm sure guys out here can relate, like, hey man, me and 10 of my buddies are gonna shoot a match in my backyard. Uh, do you think we could do$5,000? I'm like, no. No, man. I'll send you some hats though. Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure guys get this a lot. We're more than happy to support the community the best we can. Uh but you know, the the pro side of that is like it's really growing. Guys are putting on matches in their backyard trying to learn the game. And I think that that's very cool. Um, but yeah, so we've kind of streamlined to like regional, regional series, uh, as far as PRS goes, and then obviously the pro match of any type. Uh and the same for like F-class nationals, all that stuff. We're obviously a big supporter of all that stuff. So so I do long the long range related sponsorships, right? Of of all of those things, and then somebody else handles like the US PSA and three gun and and stuff like that. So consists of quite a bit of traveling. I'm happy to do it. Luckily, my wife gets to tag along once in a while. She also works at Vortex, uh, by the way. Um, so that that's kind of what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Yeah, man. That's a lot, dude. I it's a lot. If you figure out a way to streamline uh the partnership or sponsorship, match sponsorship process, I mean let me know. Like that is it's a problem.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

It's a load to bear, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Yeah, and every yeah, like you said, everybody with a backyard match wants a you know, can you can you put a gen three on our prize table? And you're like, really? Like, yeah, we yeah, this is a 22 match out to 100 yards, and you got 11 guys there. Um I don't think it's happening. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

No, it's not. And you know, more power to them, right? To try. You know, I ran a regional match for a long time in in Florida with you know Aaron Kincaid. And yeah, we just never thought to bother sponsors for something like that. I just feel personally, right? This is my luckily Vortex is like, yep, let's do more than everybody else. Like, whatever you think, do your thing. Uh, and that's a really cool freedom to have. But I just think the prize personally, right? I know prize tables is a thing. Everybody's chatting about it online.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Oh man. And it's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

You know, luckily we're a bigger company, but some of these guys, they just can't bear that. Like, I used, you know, CRB, for example, Fantastic Barrels, one of the, you know, the nation's greatest shooters, if not the greatest. It's like, man, he gets hit up all the it's like, man, he's a brand new company. Like, he can't be throwing out a couple thousand dollars every weekend. Like, that just it doesn't nobody can do that. Um, so I would love to see uh the prize tables reserved for national level matches, obviously, and then like regional finales in our in our world. Uh I I a hundred percent agree.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

So we'll see what happens. In in the end, Ken, if you can just go get Ford trucks and Chevy and all those guys to sponsor the PRS and we'll take some of the burden off the two-way, the two-way community. So if you can make that happen.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

I I we are I honestly we're working on it. We uh you guys are killing it, dude. I had some inside contacts at Polaris this year, and we got a long ways down the path with them and had like all of their oh, what are the uh partnership uh folks. I mean, there are there are people that have this title, you know, similar to what you have there, Vortex. And you know, we had conversations with them, and it's like not at this time, but you know, we appreciate you guys. And I'm like, I'll be coming back, you know?

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Yeah, I mean, that's an honor. I mean, dude, something like that. And you know, I know uh Tom did it a while back with like Zoom Bates, right? Just somebody that's outside the industry that's looking to advertise, and and I know you guys have been hearing this from me and others, but like you and and your team now has really put a lot more effort into the marketing side of things. You're growing growing a following, and all of those things lend to people looking to advertise. And I think you know, the steps, the steps are long, uh, but you're definitely climbing up in them. And and myself and Vortex as a as a supporter definitely appreciate it, man.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

You guys are too I appreciate that, man. Um yeah, I I really do. You know, we we see the the long-term possibility here, man. And if we can get, you know, if we can get the like the fantasy PRS set up, and yeah, you know, we have live streaming going, which I mean we're we're going down a lot of different paths. Built in cups from Impact is awesome to work there with there, but you know, like how do we get camera systems set up and what camera systems do we want to use? And how do we, you know, how do we do uh broadcast commentary, right? Yeah, and I can't travel to every pro series match, but you know what? Like on a Sunday I could probably carve out three hours to do the you know the final five stages or something. But you know, we're we're we're trying to figure all that out. If and if we can get people tuned in to the sport when they're not shooting it, like now we got something. That's what it is. Right. That's and that's what Ford or GM or you know, Dodge Trucks or honestly, it probably end up being Toyota. Like they seem Toyota seems to be like outdoorsy. I think out yeah, really outdoorsy and kind of agnostic, I think is the word I'm looking for for like towards you know, guns and you know, things like they're like, Yeah, whatever. That's our crowd. You know, I you know, yeah. So like they support major league fishing quite a bit, you know, give away vehicles and stuff, and it's like, man, I think there's actually a girl at work.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

Uh she's a pretty legit angler. Name's Maggie Corsello. She's a marketing chick up uh upstairs, and she actually is sponsored by Toyota for fishing.

SPEAKER_00 41:51

Well, that's uh that's our contact.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Let's yep, yep. So when you when when you're back in the office, love it, get talk to her and say, hey, you know, we're looking at some you know, lifestyle brands for PRS. You know, how do we get involved?

SPEAKER_01 42:07

Got an email address? What do we do?

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Exactly. Yep, yeah. I'm happy to make that contact, man.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Yeah, she rolls up in her uh, what are they called? The Pro uh what is their top-of-the-line truck? Uh Pro or something. TRD Pro. Yeah. And she rolls up in that big old tundra TRD Pro with like bass mass her all over the side. I'm like, damn, girl, you're flexing. No joke. No joke.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

Dude, that's awesome to hear somebody in Wisconsin is a profile. I mean, we have like the professional walleye tour trail. I think it's here. You know, we and I'm sure there's some uh well, actually, it's probably all walleye, you know, competitions and stuff. We had probably maybe a little bit of bass, but I mean we just don't.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

I mean, I don't know. Uh I know her a little bit. I know she's hooked me up with some like cost of discount codes over the years, and we've joked around. I've actually trained their team. We do a lot of internal trains too with the training team. So, like, if there's a new product, we'll take the marketing guys, the MPD guy, and we'll you know go through the products. And she's been a part of a couple of those, and she's a fantastic person uh to hang around with that. So is he? Heck yeah. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

Hey, thanks for watching the show today. We wanted to take a moment to talk about one of our PRS partners, Vortex Optics. Vortex Optics is the official rifle scope of the PRS. Their Gen 3 Razor is one of the most popular scopes used in the sport. You can find Gen 3s, you can find Vipers, you can find them all at pretty much every PRS match you go to. They got an excellent warranty. You can find them at Vortex Optics.com. Man, so let's talk about training. Like if uh I had a pistol nine millimeter and like, you know, you could train me not to shoot myself with it.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

Like maybe I could come over and That's an important skill to have for you rifle folks, you know.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

I'm waiting to uh bring the pistols back in the PRS, you know.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

I man, you know, I so I'm too risky. Too way too risky, yeah. I we uh we're benchmarking off of the um tactical tactical games website. Um they do a great job. Like you go to their website and it and it's very much like, hey, you're new here. Uh here's here's how to get involved, here's you know what our competitions look like, you know, all the things. And it's like, yep, that's what we need you know, for the front end of the PRS site. But one of the opening videos they have shows somebody like holstering a hot pistol, and I'm like, uh mmm, mmm, mmm, you know, like uh somebody's gonna mess that up, you know.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Well, being in the pistol world, uh as a shooter, right? USPSA is typically what I mean, I've done IDPA and all the other things, but uh USPSA was kind of the bread and butter. I have seen three people shoot themselves in the leg. Uh it's just it's always gonna happen, right? And they're making ready under off the time. Uh so they make ready, clack clack, and then holster, or they go to draw and and uh you know, I've seen it a few times personally. Uh so yes, that is nothing the PRS wants to mess with. It's too risky. And and it's happened in the tactical games, uh, I've heard a few times. So I mean it's just the nature of the beast. Luckily, everybody was okay in the instances I'm I'm speaking of, but yeah, it's it's a it's a liability you don't want to have for sure.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

No. No. Yeah, I mean, it was it's tough enough in some parts of the country to just say, hey, I expect you to use a chamber flag, so we know your rifle's safe. You know, I know you know it's safe, but everybody else should know it's safe too, you know.

SPEAKER_01 45:33

It's a good fail-safe, man. There's no no need, no reason not to have that uh in the rifle at all times. I mean, I was at a PRS match, I won't name the name, but uh guy rips one through his backseat in his trunk first thing in the morning, 6 30 a.m. It's like, what was that?

SPEAKER_00 45:49

In the parking lot.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

Yeah. Did you hear about that?

SPEAKER_00 45:52

I I think I know the situation you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

Yeah, he just went to get his rifle out in the morning, and I guess he put his bolt in uh and you know, pulled the trigger or whatever. I don't know what happened as far as setting it off. Probably reaching into a soft case and yeah, went through the car first thing in the morning, and uh he had a short match. But yeah, so chamber flags bolt out in the cases, you know, just firearm safety is a good thing for all of us, man. Let's keep this thing moving forward and keep everybody safe. I hope so. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

I mean we we we both are in this boat together. I mean, there's a lot for us to lose. Like if if we had an accident like that, you know, and this is you know uh just kind of guessing maybe, but like let's say we had an accident this weekend at Fox Canyon, like man, we might have I mean they man, the the schedule might turn into an outlaw schedule real quick, and it's like there's no affiliation, like we gotta shut this thing down or you know, until we figure stuff out, which nobody wants, right? Nobody wants, yeah. No. We want to give away uh Toyota Tundra at the finale. We don't want to shut the seats and down early, you know.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

No, we don't want to do that. Nah, to answer your question, yes, you can come anytime and I'll get you in the range and uh teach you how to how to run run the pistol a little quicker.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

Yep, that would be awesome, man. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

For sure. Just let me know. We're happy to have you.

SPEAKER_00 47:05

So I was I was out at the range or at your facility last year uh in January. Uh pretty awesome, pretty awesome place, man. Like what what do you have for ranges and stuff uh at the at the actual facility there?

SPEAKER_01 47:20

Yeah, we're we are definitely lucky. I remember when I first moved up here, I'm you know, elbows deep in in pistol shooting. I mean, I don't know how many nationals I've shot in a row at that point, but uh even in there, Vortex is really good at supporting uh employees and you know they support customers, they do the same in-house with the employees. Um so being on the sales side of things in a training role, like that range is full access, right? So as far as ranges go, uh they have four indoor ranges. They have a hundred-yard, which is great for load development. If you didn't know.

SPEAKER_02 47:49

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:51

They have they have a 50, which has like full action target, like moving targets. The LE guys use that a ton.

unknown 47:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:58

Um, a 25, which is just an empty square, dynamic range, and then a 15 yard that's kind of reserved for the new product development team uh when they're testing products. I mean, we have that next gen squad weapon fire control, uh, NG 157. Um, it's a you know, big army contract, the first one we've ever got. I think it was the first one a family-owned company ever got. Um for big army, right? Yeah, yeah. Now we're actually employee owned. But so what they would have in there is the engineers built this huge like A-frame rack with scar heavies hanging up the rack, and they built like a robot to just shoot these things, and it would be like, and I don't know. So you would just hear the ruckus uh in there. I never actually peeked my head and to see what was going on, but I mean they have several SCAR-17s, 308 Filado, yeah. Just you know, death testing these optics. So those guys uh have done a pretty good job up there. And then for a while, have you ever seen those Virtua uh virtual reality simulators? It's called Virtual. So we had that in there for a few years. It's like a 300-degree uh real life scenario based, right? So uh Vortex offers you know free training to the LE communities, uh local and otherwise, right? If you can get here, we'll we'll have a couple guys come out and train you. Uh they use that thing a ton. Uh and there's a ton of different scenarios for concealed carry holders, you know, your you know, military or just you know, basic police activities. Sure. Um, and that was a pretty cool thing to have. Uh the downside was I guess they did some big update or something uh to their system, and the old system was no longer compatible. And at like$500,000, they wanted to give us a very a very small credit to take our old one and then to replace it. And we were like, look, we're we're an optics company. Uh we bought one, we don't want to buy two. Uh so we ended up selling it off. Uh so that's no longer there. Uh, but we still do have uh a full indoor uh non-lethal shoot house, right? So it's not for bullets. Uh we use simmunitions, uh STMs, I think they're called STMs, uh or UTMs. Yeah, yep. So they do shoot and they yes, they hurt. Uh but it's it's funny because a couple of times, you know, we have you know friends of uh the company come in for a tour or something like that. And one guy in particular, he's the uh Texas Predator Hunter uh YouTube channel. Okay. So he comes in there, he's doing the tour. We're gonna go in and shoot some indoor stuff. And he gets in there, he's like, I want to do this. Uh like, oh my gosh, here we go. So we ended up rounding up uh one of the guys uh from accounting, like for my wife works, uh dealer account. And we're like, all right, dude, you're with me. This guy's gonna work with Nick, who Nick is a you know, he's a Navy SEAL for I think 10 or 12 years. Yeah. Uh and then he was a sniper instructor for a long time. And uh so the visitor got him, and I got the desk jockey uh who doesn't shoot at all. Uh and so we went in there with our airsoft uh, you know, KR style deals and uh man, they wore us out. Oh no, they hurt, they hurt like crazy. Yeah, the funny story. So it was, you know, me and uh we'll call him Travis. Travis was the guy I was working with. He's like, all right, me and Travis get 30 seconds, go in, get a hiding place, and they're gonna come ambush us, right? Like, keep in mind this is what this dude did for a living at the very highest level. He's sniffing you out. He's yeah, it was not good. Um I thought I was because I'm probably a better shooter than him, just well-rounded, but yeah, the tactics make a big difference. Uh take my word for it. So, anyways, you know, we're in there hiding, and these little uh jerks they ended up going around the outside, which was not part of the plan. And dude, I got lit up. And then uh, you can't go outside. So we reset and they started over. And uh Travis, you know, he doesn't shoot a lot, he's the nicest kid. Uh, he goes in and hides behind this plant and with this little M15. And Nick gets a hold of him. He's like, stop, stop. So he goes, he goes, that was the only one he wanted. He had had enough. So I ended up fighting him off a couple more times. Uh but Travis went back up with like 16 holes in his shirt and blood dripping down his neck. I mean, those those airsoft BBs will cut you, man. They were painful. But anyways, uh the guy that was visiting had the best of times, and uh it's cool that Vortex give us some space to kind of do that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02 52:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

Um, but as far as a training facility, it's it's a world-class indoor facility. Yeah. The one thing we're missing is like outdoor berms and and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 52:24

Long range. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:25

Well, we do have a thousand yard facility about and you've been there, yeah. Kubrack, right? The you know, a thousand yards, it's kind of a bench setting. There's a couple little props there, but uh it's it's a it's a nice to have for sure. And we definitely do a lot of SHIELS trainings and uh trains with local beavers there as well.

SPEAKER_00 52:41

Yep. Yeah. Man, that's awesome. It sounds like it sounds like a riot place to work, man. I mean, it can be.

SPEAKER_01 52:46

Yeah, next time you come, we'll go check out the shoot house with the airsoft guns. I got Nick.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

Yeah, I don't think so. You could have a team of guys against him, and he's probably still gonna wipe you out.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

Yeah, he wore he wore us out. You know, that Tex Texas Predator Hunter guy, I forget his actual name, but he was doing a podcast on it, and he's like, I'm not sure if if this guy wants his name out there, we'll just call him Panther. And uh that was so funny. He's like, We started walking around the outside of the house trying to soften the targets, which was me. Uh and he's walking in front of him, and the guys behind him, he's like, Hey, close your mouth. I can hear your footsteps echoing from your mouth. I'm like, holy cow. Like that is a no joke. It is another level of uh execution, right? Like those guys are the best in the world. I'm glad they're on our side. And uh you don't think about that kind of stuff. Um so we do have two guys, um, Dave and I think the other guy's name is Billy. They're off-site, they contract in, they're you know, special forces of some magnitude, and uh they come in and they actually train the local LE teams on like breaching, entering, uh, just tactics in general. And that's something we provide at no cost uh for the LE guys. They don't have a ton of budget. I would imagine in some of these you know liberal-ish cities, they don't put a ton of value in really training law enforcement or dollars behind it. Uh so it's it's a prideful thing. It's cool that Vortex does that. You know, we can still gotta get here, so it costs some money uh on their end to get them here, but we'll run them through you know a couple days of training to kind of keep those guys safe.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

So Yep, yep. Yeah, and and I guess one more thing on the on the facility, like you you guys just moved. Well, it seems like just moved, right? But it's within the last uh eight years ago. Yeah, so eight years ago, yep. And and built a fantastic facility that really is set up to host people, right? Yeah, and and that was one of the reasons you guys you guys pulled out a SHOT show, which man, it seems like uh you guys are the first smart ones to do that, you know. Um exactly, but then yeah, I mean it makes sense, like instead of investing a million or two million dollars to get to SHOT Show and have all the people or more than that, right? Like you you can host a lot of people for that kind of money, right? And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

So that SHOP Show money goes, I think, to the NSSF or some organization. So we still do write a check to them to donate.

SPEAKER_00 55:10

Which is National Shooting Sports Foundation. Correct, yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 55:17

Yeah, so I I think a lot of that money goes towards that. Uh I'm pretty naive on the subject, but it's same.

SPEAKER_00 55:23

I want to know what it goes to, you know, like you know, and I'm I'm trying to create a relationship with them because I think as if they're you know shooting sports foundation, like we should have a close relationship. We are a professional sport shooting sport, right? So um I've reached out to NSSF in a in a couple different means and I'm trying to create a relationship there that you know maybe we shooting sports can be a part of SHOT Show. Um it doesn't we'll see, you know. I uh I'm not holding holding my breath on that, but um Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:57

Well I do have a contact over there through a buddy at work. He's like he goes hunting with him every year, so I can at least kind of poke some info out and see what 'cause I don't know much about it either. Um to your point, right? Like it was it was a big investment for us to go to Shotshouse and you know 50, 100 people, I don't know, to stay in the Venetian for a week and travel and and the booth that we had. And uh honestly, we didn't pull out for any other reason except for 2020 was just a nightmare for companies as a for anybody to travel. It doesn't matter if they're a company or not. And we're like, you know, we'll kind of hold off uh this year, we'll talk next year. And then the next year we did talk about going back, but I I think we had lost our booth space or something. There was some politics that I that we felt a little bit odd about. So we're like, we'll just promote on our social media and we'll still donate uh the money uh you know to the NSSF because that sounds like a good thing. I don't know exactly what it is either. I know they're in the politics of it quite a bit, right? Like they have guys fighting for gun rights and stuff like that. So I'm guessing that's part of it. But but yeah, I'm not I don't have it all locked in for sure.

SPEAKER_00 57:02

Yeah, I wish I I I just wish we had a closer relationship with them because it it does seem like there would be good synergy there. But we'll also shooting sport. I thought so. Yeah, yeah. We actually we actually did a uh a media range day with them last year. I say we, but it was uh I was I actually was in Italy for the European Pro Series Championship there, but Megan and Josh Edged went over to Camp Perry in Ohio and and hosted a thing for the NSSF, and it was like, okay, here we go. Like, you know, we're gonna expose them to PRS center fire and rim fire. We had like the you know barricades set up and targets at 100 yards and 400 yards, you know. So we had rimfire and center fire and all that, and a whole bunch of demo rifles. And I'm like, here we go, you know, we're gonna get him involved. And then it just kind of I think it's I think the NSS, yeah, the NSSF is a little bit segregated too. So the folks we're dealing with aren't the ones that also run the show. And got it. But yeah, if they're listening, man, we want to work together, you know.

SPEAKER_01 58:03

Yeah, and if there's anything we can do to help you, uh, you know, in any way, let us know. Well, we're happy to lend a hand, obviously. Because I I I agree with everything you said. It should be it should be synergy, right? Yeah, I would hope so. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:17

Yeah, yeah. Man, uh let's uh speaking of you know product releases and you know, and and the social medias and all that, let's uh a couple new products you guys released just in the last six months, right? Three months, really. Yeah, yeah. The the the talon uh range finding binos, right? And then the ace uh wind weather meter ballistic solver, we call it. Let's let's talk about those and and how they work together.

SPEAKER_01 58:45

Yeah, so uh, you know, we've obviously worked with you on this and Bill as well, doing some geo ballistic stuff. So everything we're gonna have going forward, ballistically rated, is gonna be geo ballistics. Obviously, the uh the Fury 5000s were applied ballistics on the on the backside. That was great. We sold a ton of units with them, and obviously we've all been applied ballistics users for a very long time. Uh, I think the waters just got a little muddy with software hardware and kind of mending that in a timely manner for the customers. We ended up getting some calls, and I think somebody brought up like, man, wouldn't it be nice to kind of have our own our own solver? Uh so Geo Ballistics ended up doing that. There's a team of you know, five or six guys that are constantly working on that side of things between the the communications with the devices, um, and then just making the app a lot better, right? Even when we when we first got the app, they're like, hey man, like try this out. And I was like, Yeah, okay. And you know, I opened it but never really played with it. Um, because I was the A B guy, and and I still obviously am, I still have capsules, I know how to use them and and we train on them a little bit. But um, after you know, slowly getting introduced to it and using it, like they've made it really good. There's a lot of cool things in there, even adding like the reticles, and and there's a there's a couple new changes coming. So that kind of birthed the device side of things, right? Like what can we integrate this into? Um, and the Ace Weather Meter has been one that I've been lucky enough to be a part of, as along with the talons, right? The cool thing about you know the Impact 4000, the talons and the uh and the ace is it's a seamless bidirectional system, right? So I can put yardage on any of the devices, phone included, and then it will talk you know forwards and backwards uh to other devices.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:25

I I mean there's lots of aspects of those devices that are like, wow, this is impressive. But when you know you have the ace out and then you just bring up the talents or vice versa, you know, and it turns on, like the first thing it asks you is like, Do you want to sync? You know, like do you want to do you want to grab data? I mean, it's not even like there's no delay. Like it says like this is on, this is on, we gotta start talking, you know, which is which is crazy. Because I mean, it seems like in the world we live in, it's like, oh, I gotta pair this, oh, I gotta open a phone app, oh I gotta do this and that. And like it's just as cumbersome, but the system is not that way.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:01

Yeah, and what that's one thing they really wanted to focus on. So what you're talking about is like the prompt where it'll pull data from one or the other onto the device you're using. Um so you won't if you ever don't see that, it's only because they already have all the same data points, right? So if your ace and your talons are already synced and they have all the same data in them, so if you haven't made any changes, it'll just assume normal as usual, uh, and then it'll just fire away. Using the same profile. Yeah. That was like so. They have like a goal board, right, in that new product development room. And and one of the things like top of the list was like Apple Simple was like the quote they used. Uh, and as soon as you turn the thing on, they just want it to connect, which has not really been done so far in this space that I've seen at least. It's always like, oh, let me go connect, and it's a little bit clunky. Uh, but man, when you turn the thing on, it it connects right away. You'll see a little icon. Uh, there's a little token in each of the screens of the devices, and of course, your phone will put up a little prompt on top. And then you can decide. So, say if you have an impact, and obviously PRS isn't typically gonna have an impact, but just for you know, everyday use or hunting or whatever, if you have an impact in a device, uh handheld ace or towns otherwise, you can actually pull ballistics from one of the other. So you open your Bluetooth screen to say, okay, I want to pull you know wind and you know my environmentals from the ace, but I want to use range and and yardage from the towns, and it'll pull uh instantly. So it does it all in the background. Uh they did a really good job with uh with that with the ace. And uh I was I've been running the ace for about a year and a half. There were uh some some clunks in the beginning, right? As there should be uh with software bugs and stuff. That's why I had one and that's why I was using it. And I did relay a lot a lot of that info back, and that team is really good about listening and and kind of addressing some things. Um now that they're out in the field, there's a couple things we want to make a little bit better. Uh like on the range card screen, right? That's one thing as PRS users we're gonna use a lot, at least I do. Um, we need to have like two or three wind columns on there. So they're gonna work on that. And they we want to be able to adjust the wind from that screen rather than going back and forth to the wind to get your wind column sorted out. Um so there's a few small things, but man, as of now, like it is a very easy-to-use uh device, and it's been just dead on. I don't understand the science of how they get the data, but it is a little different than like A B or or you know, Fordoff uses. And man, I just haven't really had data problems since I've started using a working version of this. Yep. Um, the Talons was another one. Oh man. Uh love those the Furies weren't our first stab at it, right? Yeah. So if people don't know, our lineup is is typically crossfire, diamondback, viper, razor, and then razor kind of UHD. Uh that's kind of our tiered system. There's a few other outliers like strike eagle, venom, stuff like that, but they typically fall in the diamondback area. Um those Fury Bionos were Viper glass, right? So middle tier, typically really good uh for hunters or somebody looking for a good product that's not quite ready to spend four or five digits on something. Uh we don't have five digits either. You know what I mean? Four digits or or more, right? Yep. Um so but the problem is whenever you add a display in an optic, right, you have to put a tinting that will then reflect that display back to your eyeballs. Uh so it's a viper glass, but by the time you put that tinting in there, it just came, you know, it was good. It was our first go at it. It worked great for ballistics. We still have people requesting them and using them. Uh, but the glass just wasn't where you know PRS shooters uh want to be. Um and as I understand it, the new towns are actually UHD level glass, but you know, it kind of degradates it down to like a Razor HD or somewhere in between, is is kind of where it ends up. It's a it is a huge difference uh from a lot of the competitors, I think, and then definitely from our our predecessor, the the Fury. And uh the speed is very, very fast.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:46

Oh, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:46

Um yeah, some of the cool features of that obviously it's a 10k laser, and there's a good video out on uh Greg from Primal Rights put out, and he's typically a a pretty skeptical Vortex user, right? Which is why I wanted to send him a pair. I'm like, hey man, let me send you these. And he actually he had a couple little nitpicky things like not having ARCA built into the housing and a couple little things, eye cups kind of collapsing, which to me I use them all the way in. But um, so it's cool to get that feedback. But the feedback he had for the laser was like, man, this is the best one I've which I was glad to hear him say that because he's typically like a little hard on us, which is yeah, which is good. You need those people. Um so some of the cool things are you can actually zero the laser. So if if you're noticing you're having to hold bottom or left or right, you can actually zero the reticle uh up, down, left, or right. Um it actually has a reticle in there, uh a half mil. I hope uh are you hearing that dinging? I don't know how to turn it off. Are you hearing that on my computer, my emails? Okay, good. Nope, all good. I just yeah, yeah, I just wasn't sure if that was coming through.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:48

You're getting you're getting sponsorship requests one after another.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:52

Like, hey man, I'm thinking about shooting PRS. Can I get three gen threes here? I just got one of those. This morning. So if you're if you don't know how to zero a laser in your rangefinder, right? Think of things like a telephone pole, right? At three, four hundred yards, something like that, a very defined, clear line. And you just kind of scan until you pass over it. And if you're hitting that range, right, when you pass over that pole, that's your left to right. And typically things like a log fence or a cattle fence or something like that with like the wooden, you can do the same thing up and down. Up and down. Um, but if you notice you're hitting your targets exactly where you want, there's probably no need to mess with that because that's typically going to be the case. Uh one of the cool things they did I thought was a little it was pretty creative is they did an illuminated reticle. So the downside of that is you can't quite do the two tenths, and we tried it. It just got a little bit muddy, but with the half mil, it actually is pretty good. And I've been able to use that pretty well for guessing target size and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:47

Yep. Man, uh a couple things. Uh in you you sent me a pair early. Well, it was a it was a couple weeks before launch or whatever. I took it out to South Dakota coyote hunting, and man, the glass is something else. Like I I'm using it for for PRS matches. Like it is gonna be my primary spotter. I love that the reticles in there. Um man, I I I was surprised at like 2300 yards or something like that, I was able to see a coyote. You know, we're up on this huge bluff and and you know, just glassing, glassing, glassing. I'm like, there it is. You know, we turn the call on, thing gets up and starts walking. I was like, holy cow. Like this is incredible. And that was, you know, twilight at night, you know. Um but then at Gravestone, I don't know if you remember this, but like um I think the firing line looked south. Um depends on where you were, I think, because it kind of went around that head. Yeah, primarily I think I think where it was straight, I think looked south. So it would be like to the west and a little bit north. Um, you know, it was after the match. Uh I was showing the talons off. I don't know if you wanted me to do that or not. I was appreciated. They got released.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:56

I thought it was great.

unknown 1:07:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:58

Well, well, I'm like, you guys gotta check this out. And I I I think it was Keith Rudisell I handed it to, and he he pinged it was the uh uh like a uh gravel pit or cement plant or something like that that was to the west, and he's like, Yeah, it's 5,600 yards away. And he's doing his standing, and I'm like, Yeah, dude, that's unreal.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:17

Yeah, those that laser in that thing is really good. I'm lucky enough I live on a little bit of property here, and I can see some trees at about 5400, 5200, and and I can typically treat those trees, which is shocking to me. Uh yeah, it's been really cool. Um, another thing is we had the 12 power, right? So there's always typically been 10 power laser range finding ballistic pinos. Uh, I'm glad they went up to the 12s. Um, another thing, too, and I'm sure you've played with this, is that that that quick wind access, right? That thumb button on the right barrel. So you can quickly get to your wind, you can set your relative wind, and then your speed, and then every time you range, and there you go. Go grab a whole lot. Go grab a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:55

This is where I should have read the uh instruction manual, but you're talking about that button there.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:01

That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:02

Never I've never seen that button before.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:05

So right now you haven't? This is the first time I've seen a man. You're like, man, getting to the wind is kind of a pain in the ass. You gotta go through the menu. No, that's just one push button. Uh, and it'll take you that so if it's not taking you to the wind direction immediately, it's because you need to calibrate them. But yeah, if you're ranging, so you just tap that thumb button, you point the arrow into the wind, yeah relative to the way you're pointing. Uh uh, and the cool thing is once you clock that in, you set your wind speed, and then every time you range, it's gonna lock in that azimuth, so it automatically changes. So you only have to do it once as long as the wind's not changing. Ken, I'm a little disappointed that I'm I'm teaching this right this second, but hey, I'm glad I'm glad I talked about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:50

Well, it and if yes, if I if I didn't notice that, there's gonna be other folks that don't notice that. That's for sure. Yeah, that is sweet, because I that menu that it brings up, like I when we're all cyoded hunting, you know, and and one of the things that we do when we get to a stand is I would uh either hold the ace, you know, into the wind, and then watch I would I would watch in the binos like, yep, it captured the wind and it knows direction, and the two are um the both compasses are calibrated to the same, you know. Um but yeah. That and I and I was showing people this at Gravestone, I'm like, check this out. So you know, like lays that at you know a few hundred yards or whatever, and then I'd say, Okay, tell me what the data is, and and we're watching every time you're clicking that on the ace, it's just like it's it's showing you the the range, your your dope, all of that, right? But then like I would take the ace and hold it into the wind, and it'd be like, Yep, it updated. Like what you could see in in in the tail ends, like the direction values everything update.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:55

Like, so that's that bi-directional code. You know, when we were on a meeting with Tin Cup, you myself and a couple of the NTV guys, I remember Bill, and I don't know this world, maybe you do, but he was like, Man, the code on this thing looks fantastic. Uh-huh. I don't know if he can see that or he just knows how it works.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:09

I don't know, but he was saying it was something that the software special they were talking to each other. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:16

Yeah. Yeah, so I'm super excited about those, man. And I think they're$23 and$2,500 street price. I know there's been some competitors that released theirs right at the same time. I was shocked to see the price tag on some of those. So I'm glad that we are the cheapest in the elite Bino ballistic rangefinder category, as well as I think it competes with all of them, if not better than than most. That would be my personal opinion, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:42

They're fantastic, man. And um, you know, for a range and engage type type match, I can't wait to use them. So I'm taking these out to Arbuckle, California to shoot at Stan Burdochini's uh match. Yep, MDT Hunter Challenge. Uh I'm gonna shoot that. Uh I can't I can't wait to just be like, yep, hold the ace in the air, put that thing away, you know, go up on a stage and just click, click, click, click, click. Hopefully, hopefully I I'm gonna have a terrible time finding targets, but these will make it easier on me.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:14

You'll have to let me know what you think. And if you don't know, those do capture all of your environmentals as well. You know that, right? Except for wind speed.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:22

Wind speed. Yeah, okay. Yep. Wind direction, it yep, you do, but it but it had you're right. It has temperature, humidity, yeah. Yep, density, altitude, all that built into it. Yep. Yeah. You got it.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:33

And then uh, I guess while we're on products, I might it's been a cool time for me because I was really involved in the talons and the ace, obviously. But just before that, in November, uh, we released that Gen 3 4 to 24, which I think you've got one of those. I got I do right over here. Yeah. So that thing, I mean, I've I've received a lot. Obviously, it's not specifically tailored to PRS. You absolutely could use it in PRS. Sportsman, um, sportsman division. Sportsman for sure, which Keith Ruby still has one on his rifle. He's made weight. I think it comes in at like 31 and a half, 32 ounces, which is really light for a Gen 3. I've given a few of them away at PRS matches just so people can, you know, get their hands on them, get them. I feel like that's my favorite scope we've ever made for practical use. Uh my wife and I are pretty fortunate in which we got invited to go to Africa uh on a hunt. Awesome. So it's like a 14 or 15-day trip, and like seven or eight of that is hunting. Uh, and we both have you know rifles built on JK stocks, that Ezekiel with the Ford-24. So I'm excited to show those. It's a it's an outfitter we work with out there. I'm probably gonna leave him a couple pairs of talons and maybe a couple scopes. Um, but I'm excited to put those to use in the field. But man, I really love that 4 to 24. It is a fantastic uh scope, very high-end glass, easy features. They took away a couple from the big gen three, so like they do have a cat turret option on that, but underneath the cap, it's a full turret, just like the elevation. Uh, they had to take out the rev indicator, and obviously it's a it's a 44 mil objective. Yep. Yeah, and everybody's like, why didn't you go 50? You know, a lot of people don't understand about optics, right? Here, I'm gonna give you a couple of misconceptions uh that may help everybody, right? Yeah, tube diameter does not matter for brightness, right? I need that 34 mil tube, it's much brighter. I'm like, nope, it's not. That's not why. So that's directly related to the travel and then the field of view, depending on the focal length and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:21

Okay. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:22

So 34 millimeter tube, you're typically gonna have a lot more travel left, right, up and down. Um and then the objective size is not how bright the optic is. If that was the case, have you ever looked through our like one to one to six by twenty-four Razor Gen 2? Yeah. The little LPVO. That's probably the best optic, period.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:39

Uh, that's a straight tube.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:42

24 mil tube, right? And that is the biggest, brightest optic uh you'll you'll ever look through. I think it's probably one of the best in the world at that. The IBOX just disappears. And uh it's a 24 millimeter objective, right? That doesn't always mean, yes, it lets light in, it'll let more light in, but you can only use what you can use. So uh you're not gonna add another 10 ounces of weight putting a 56 mil piece of glass in there versus a 44. Uh so we put the objective size that that optical system needs to power it, right? And nothing and nothing more. Um do some scopes get that ratio wrong and it looks a little dim, a little dark, yeah. And like in the cheaper scope lines, it's not ever gonna look like that 4 to 24 or that one to six. Um so just a couple myths to to expose out there. Um those those are big ones we get a lot. So that that four to twenty four by forty-four is extremely bright and very good in low light. Um and so, yeah, if you want to see one, check me out. I'll I'll let you see one uh to the folks. I know you have one.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:39

Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna be taking it to uh Arbuckle as well. I mean, that's gonna be on that sportsman division rifle that I'm shooting out there. Love it. Yeah, it'll be sunny California, so you know, I won't necessarily need the brightness, but man, I uh it that sportsman rifle or a PRC is gonna be what I hunt with this year. And and uh a hundred percent I'm gonna have that on there because yeah, especially here in Wisconsin, it seems like you know, most most shots you're gonna have are either first thing in the morning or last thing at night, you know? Yeah, it's always sort of low light. So um everything you're saying is like well tuned for a man, uh honestly, like an elite hunting system, man. Oh yeah. Yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:17

You know, it's a little heavier than some of the competitors in that class, but we think like the features for the long-range hunter, uh and obviously the the glass performance kind of lend itself to to uh you know, some some growth in that.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:29

Yep in those areas. You get all the durability and you know, ruggedness of a gen three and all that, which is you know, I yeah, I appreciate I don't I would rather have a couple extra ounces, you know, than and have that sort of feel about it than to you know like, oh I better be careful.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:47

There's something associated when something feels really light, it just to me, right? Um that's just my opinion. It just doesn't feel like it's as tough. And maybe that's probably not always the case, but it's it's a perception thing, right? Like lava's feels and we've traditionally had really good uh you know, really good I'm trying to think of a word, I can't believe it. Yeah, yeah, durability and all that.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:08

I mean the gen Yeah, the gen 2 razor, I think, was like really known for that, right? Like, man, this thing, this thing is a tank, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:16

The durability in the razor line has kind of been our reputation for for quite some time. And I'm I'm proud of that. And you know, do things break? Absolutely. Anything in our world, we're gonna when you're dialing something, you know, a hundred times a day or fifty times a day and non-stop through the life of your like you're gonna have problems. I don't care who makes it. Uh, the one thing I'm really happy about is like we're always gonna stand behind anything you buy that has that little vortex logo on it. Uh, even if it's a pair of socks, we'll we'll replace it if you get a hole in it. So that's a cool thing to be a part of. I gotta pull out a relic right here. I can still hear you, but I'm gonna grab it.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:48

Yeah, right on, right on.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:49

So we got the old, we got the old gen 2, and I'm sure you've seen that. That's still still used widely. Uh, but older than that one was the old 35 mil tube, 5 to 20, first gen razor. I mean, it's it's I like having all these things. Like I have the uh I have the AMG that we built, like the very first scope that we built. And uh I like hanging on to things that are no longer out, right? Heck yeah. So I have a little treasure trove in there of of some optics. The AMG was like our first dab at manufacturing an optic and uh to come from and that was a great scope. It did have some issues with the turret system and stuff like that. Maybe one out of ten had a major tracking problem. Um, but going from that to that next gen squad weapon fire control, if you guys I can't talk a whole lot about it, and there's a lot of secrecy in it, but if you guys are listening, go ahead and Google that thing. And to go from that to that in only a short amount of years, uh it is a cool thing to be a part of. And and that's something you'll notice with with a lot of guys from Vortex, they really walk around uh with a smile and some pride and excitement. Yeah, you know, we don't make everything in America, but we make a lot of things. That ace is made uh locally. Um it's cool, man. It's it's cool to be a part of it. And you know, people walk around during tours, right? You've probably witnessed it yourself. It's like, man, you guys like how do you get all these people to be happy? It's like just a secret. We we hire happy people. Exactly. Exactly. There's no made secret, right? It's you know, the uh the application process at Vortex is strenuous, right? Like I had a long-standing relationship with them. Uh when I when I applied, it still took three months and three interviews uh to get a job. Yeah, to my understanding, like it was a done deal. Just come in. I'm like, no, it was not a done deal. I had to go through a winky process and uh, you know, it was worth it. I love it here and the people are great and uh yeah, couldn't be happier.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:42

Man, yeah, and you can you can really feel like you said when you're walking around there and and people really enjoy you know being part of that. And you can even see it on the social media, like uh following your guys' uh you know, Facebook and Instagram, you know, like anytime there's like company events and stuff like that, like they they post, and it's man, it's cool. It's cool. Oh we appreciate that. Yeah, dude, we're we're proud to be partnered with you guys. Uh very proud that you're the official rifle optic of the PRS, man. Filing. It's awesome, man. And and the the partnership's awesome, our relationship's awesome. Uh, it's awesome to see. Uh I feel like Shannon right now is saying phenomenal, but it is awesome that uh you guys are a big part of this. And if you look at the statistics on the uh homepage of the PRS, like Gen 3 Razor, most of you scope in the PRS, you know, and that's across all center fire and and rim fire stuff too.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:38

So we follow we follow that little stats down at the bottom. We pay attention. You know, it's yeah, it's the only scoreboard we got uh for now. Uh it was funny. So myself, Orgain, uh Coulter, Marriott, and Nate Tunge, they're all kind of newer shooters on the team. Uh we had a house in in Mississippi and we had a little dinner night where we made steak for a couple other guys, Josh O'Walter, uh Robert Badgett, and a couple others, uh Logan, Logan McGuinness were all over there. And uh they're like, man, it seems like there's like a surge now. Everybody's running the radar. I was like, Yeah, that's the way it was always supposed to be. I know there were some rumors and stuff going around that there was like this massive widespread problem. And I'm not saying any one or two people, you know, there's problems. We had you know, small things. I know when the Gen 3 came out, there was a real problem with a turret. So uh how we do it is we develop it, we test it, and then we get what's called a white box sample. That's what we call it. Uh it's basically a test production run, right? We might get 100 units, maybe 200, and then we we test those. The NPD guys run it through the paces, and then a couple of us will get, you know, whatever the product is and we'll put it in field use. It was fantastic. Uh, and then when they did switch to a production run, there was a problem with the turret. When you lift it up, it would like suck it back down, or it wouldn't detent up. So the whole first you know, shipment did have absolutely have that problem. But there was there was a lot of talks with uh parallax issues, right? I'm sure you've heard it. I know I get still questioned about it. Um, and this is another little tidbit for optics, right? The further out you go, the less the parallax matters.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:10

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:11

So for the 22 guys, parallax is a huge deal. 50 to 100 yards, that's where your parallax is going to be most simple. But I was having people tell me, I'm getting, you know, five, seven tenths shift to 800 yards. I'm like, man, it's not the physics don't align with that. Like, and I and I brought it to NPD, and they're the ones that towed me because I I didn't know. Um that that just not mathing. The math isn't mathing, right? And I don't know. There could have been a problem with the optic very well, but it definitely wasn't a parallaxel that was that was having issues. Um, so it seems like we've got over all of those hurdles with the Gen 3. There's guys winning with them uh all the time. Some of the best in the world are happy to run them. And uh so it's exciting, man. And you know, you invited us to be the the official sponsor of the optics, which we are we're excited to take, and we're just happy to be a you know, we're happy to be in tight with you guys. You're from Wisconsin. I was always a little shocked how we weren't more involved to to start with. So I'm glad I'm glad I was able to mend some of those fences and and get things uh no head heading in the right direction.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:07

So yeah, which was crazy. I mean, uh after living in Wisconsin now for five or six years and and your wife's from Wisconsin too, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:13

She is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:14

Yeah. I mean like there's uh people treat people really well here, right? I mean, like it's in and it's very much a friendly, very brotherly, like all of the all of the things. You have respect for each other and you know, you help each other. Oh, you know, living. It is, yeah, yeah. And it's it's it's just very pronounced here in Wisconsin. I'm I'm originally from Michigan, so like coming over, like, yeah, I kinda like it it it opened my eyes to things, I'm like, man, I I love living here now. Like the you know, all of our neighbors help each other. I mean, like a couple weeks ago we had some really shitty weather, right? And uh we had a bunch of down trees in our neighborhood, and like maybe you just go out and help your neighbor, you know? Like I went over I had uh this is last week Saturday, I think it was. Um I I told my neighbor, like, yeah, I'll be out there with a chainsaw. I'm gonna I'm gonna clean that up. If you don't mind if I I'm gonna take some wood from it, you know? And and I'm halfway, I had to cross the neighbor's yard to get there. And the neighbor's yard I crossed is like, Whoa, I can't help right now. Like, I gotta take care of something else. I'm like, buddy, I never asked for help, and we're helping him, you know. And he's like, I'll I'll be out here in about 45 minutes. I'm like, no, no obligations.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:24

Don't worry about it, man. Yeah. Yeah. And he's that was honestly like the first thing I noticed moving here. I was like, and I'm from Florida where there's you know, massive diverse background, which that's not a thing, but it's rights down there.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:36

Yeah, yeah. And everybody just kind of keeps to themselves, like, I didn't know my neighbors, and I'm from a small town in Palaka, Florida, which is a town of 1500 or so. We all, same thing, right? Like we'd skateboard as kids together, we'd fix, you know, Dave's grill down the road or whatever. And it was very different uh where I was living. I came up here, I'm like, people will hold the door for you just walking in the quick trip. They won't like shoulder check in, like, wonder what the problem is. Uh so it was honestly like the first thing I noticed and told Reuben, I was like, man, people are like really nice here. He's like, Yeah, it's a Midwest nice thing, is what he what he called it. And uh, and I've seen it ever since. Like, are there still problems? Yeah, but I would say everybody like where we live and I live, it's like small town, rural area, like it's exactly what you're saying. And and it's really cool that that still exists uh in some parts of the U.S.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:21

Yeah, 100%, man. But yeah, it's awesome that we get to work together. Uh I'm very proud of the relationship and friendship we have. And man, I can't wait to shoot with you this year. I I you know I'm just starting my season, your six six matches. Oh man. Well, let's see, let's see here. You you currently have 271 points, so you've made the finale. Speaking of that, that's which one is right? Oh, impact scoring or PR.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:49

Clear that up for the people because I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:52

Well, hopefully by the time this podcast goes live, like it's super clear. But uh pay attention to the standings on impact scoring, like that's the hybrid scores and everything. Um Bill Tinkup, the developer behind impact scoring, um, is currently migrating data from the old PRS into Impact, but we're not putting all that investment into the old PRS site. Now in about two weeks, probably uh that whole PRS site's gonna get a refresh and and now all the data on the PRS site's gonna be what's shown in impact. So it's gonna be synced up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean the nerds are doing the nerdy thing and it's a big job. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. I'm glad that um I'm glad I'm not pulling my hair out on this because like if if I was like actively involved, like I would be so stressed out. But I have a lot of confidence in Bill and his team. But yeah, so you're at 271. I know you want more points than that for sure. Yeah, you know, I need one of those black bullets at least, dude. I've been doing this a long time.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:58

I've been close a few times. It's been it's been a few years. So I would I've won a couple two-day matches and I've I don't know how many one-day matches, and I was, you know, it was pretty good shooter, at least I felt like I was. And then uh I had a year, I think it was maybe 23, where I just couldn't shoot worth a darn, had nonstop problems. I I think what it comes down to now looking back is like I just wasn't cleaning properly. Uh I have a much more detailed, you know, you hear those people like, you know, I think Jake Fibbert, you know, don't quote me, but he was one of them like, I don't clean the rifle, I just shoot at 1200 rounds and I throw it away. I'm like, I like that. That's easy. Uh it was on a podcast, I think it was on him and Pinch's podcast a while back. Uh I adopted that and it did work for a while. Uh, and then I just didn't know what the problem was. Uh, and I struggled forever. Ended up having like a muzzle break that was way too dirty. Uh then I think I had a bad lot of bullets, and then you know, life stuff happened. I took kind of a year and a half off. Well, in that year and a half, the level of competition has come up a lot.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:56

Like you need a gun shooting a point three inch group. Like it Like a 10-round, three-tenth group is what you need, I think, to really like win a two-day match. You know, to win a two-day match. Can you do well with a three-quarter or a half? Absolutely. But I think to to be the best at any given two-day match, you need a gun that is shooting lights out for two days. Um and I just didn't have that. And I experienced that a little bit uh at in in Mississippi. Uh first, you know, I had a little bit of a hard time at Gravestone, but like the next two or three matches, I was really in it. Um You were? Yeah. You had some top fives too, didn't you?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:32

Yeah, I had one.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:33

Um man, I dropped four points on like the second to last stage. It just killed me. I think I would have been third or something. I don't remember. But um and then I, you know, everybody's got an excuse, right? I'm sure the guys ahead of me had something stupid too. But uh in Iowa, my suppressor cap came loose, and I was probably was top five there, should have been. Um, and now I got the suppressor coming loose again at this last. So I gotta figure a couple things out. Uh I heard Teflon tape and maybe some red lock type or rock set, who knows? I don't know what to do. But my one gun that I was shooting, the barrel went out, right? So it's I mean it didn't go out, it still shoots, but it's got 2,000 rounds. That's not trustworthy uh at a two-day match. Uh maybe it is, but I don't want to risk it. Um then I switched to the other gun.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:15

Now when you only have so many two days you can do, you know. It's like you don't want to throw away a match because you it you know the barrel's done literal day one.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:23

Yeah, that's exactly right. So I switched to the other gun, same exact setup. Uh, and for whatever reason, that muzzle break just keeps coming loose on the suppressor. Um, so I got some things to figure out. Uh, but I'm looking forward, and trust me, I'm not done. I'm gonna shoot a lot of matches. For one, I like to you know, going to matches I haven't been to, as Vortex, right? Obviously, I'm a shooter first, like I've been a shooter for a long time. I want to go shoot, and it's cool I get to kind of get paid to do that. Uh, but I'm trying to get a present at some of these matches uh we've never been to. I'm gonna try to go up to Chris's match. Chris opt for a THS uh this year. And uh Snake River, I did shoot an NRL match, and I just want to show support to the guys that I haven't seen uh as far as you know, shooter match, whatever. Um so I'm gonna get around a little more this year. Uh and plus you meet your other shooters, right? We have shooters all over the country for Textas. And some of them you never see them. Uh so I try to go to their region and shoot their matches and you know, shake hands, say what's up, and and really get a feel for you know what it's like over there. Heck yeah, man. So it'll be a busy year.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:25

Uh I'm excited for you. And then and I hope we get to shoot together too this year, you know. But make it happen. We'll make it happen. Yeah, I love it. Cool. Man, Tucker, thanks for coming on this morning. It's great to see you. Um, hopefully, hopefully you can get the fireplace done so you can you can get out and go shoot the following weekend.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:43

I'm gonna work on it. I'm gonna work on it. Yep. I've got a plane ticket, so uh all stars are aligning to shooting that. And uh dude, I I appreciate you having me on, man. Obviously, I've been watching this. Uh thank you. You know, always happy to do a podcast. I appreciate your investment into Vortex, and obviously we have your back as well in that uh in that sense. So uh anytime you guys need something, man, feel free to reach out. Happy to oblige.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:06

I appreciate you, Tucker. Thank you, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:07

Yep. See you, buddy.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:09

That's it.