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Foreign. I'm Remy Warren and I've lived my life in the wild as a professional guide and hunter. I've spent thousands of days perfecting my craft. I want to give that knowledge to you. In this podcast we relive some of my past adventures as I give you practical hunting tips to make you more successful. Whether you're just getting started or a lifelong hunter, this podcast will bring you along on the hunt and teach you how to live. Wild Podcast is brought to you by Mountain Tough and Yeti. Now for those that don't know, Mountain Tough is an online based training app that's designed for hunters to train you both mentally and physically for the mountains so you can go on. And there's programs designed with workouts that are specifically made to get you ready for the things you're going to encounter out there in the wild. And while a lot of you probably know that their programs are designed to get you ready, they also have programs designed to keep you ready during the season. It really is a year round process to help you be the best you can be on the hunt. If you're looking for a great gift this holiday season, Yeti has you covered with their Rambler Drinkware. It's a leak fruit stackable, ton of different colors and everything for drinking water, coffee, wine or beer. They even have shot glasses and flasks. They're great stocking stuffers and an awesome gift to give this holiday season. Well everyone, welcome back to LiveWild podcast. Now last week I shared the art of that offhand shot. This is and getting ready for those real close range setups in less than ideal moments. Now today we're going to switch gears and we're going to talk about all things ballistics. And look at that cold and calculated setup. The one with ample time, knowledge of your equipment and gaining that hair splitting accuracy. We're talking about the art of the precision shot. So I'm going to run you through my process for building out my system. Then I'm going to introduce you to some cool new gadgets that just hit the market and I'm going to walk you through the fundamentals of getting steady on the range range and in the field. But before we do that, I want to share the story of a whitetail hunt with my dad this past season on an open country buck. So this past season was just really fun for me and a lot of the reason that it was just fun was because I got the chance to take my dad out on a deer hunt. I took my wife out deer hunting Took my father in law deer hunting and they were just really fun hunts to be able to just share those with, with family. And one of my favorites of the season of course is always to get out with my dad the week before or actually I think it's just a couple days before. My wife actually took a buck and she just went out. We just. She wanted something to fill the freezer. We love eating white tail. And so she filled her tag and my dad had a tag as well. So I decided to take him out and hunt with him for a little bit. I had a tag too, but I figured just let my dad get the first crack and hopefully we can turn up a buck. So we decided to go to this mountain spot that I hunted before. And we went out the first morning and it was really like kind of bad visibility, but there was snow on the ground. The snow is like foggy, so not, not great visibility. But the snow had hit and it just seemed like perfect conditions. Where I was hunting with my wife the day before, there was no snow. It was actually just kind of that like low lying fog in the mountains. And we ended up finding a buck down in kind of this like up off a creek bottom. So with my dad, I decided to go up into where we started to hit snow and that like first thing in the morning. There was a couple white tails up on like does up on the hillsides, like does and fawns which looked promising. And I was like. It was a spot where I've seen deer before and seen good bucks. So it was one of those spots where I'm thinking that this could work out. And we ended up going up the canyon and not seeing anything else and then coming back down. And it was one of those where I. We were just taught. I was just talking about, you know, even though we walked up how many times I've been coming down this canyon and spotted a buck and darn near in the same place I'd seen a buck the. I guess two years before. We blew out two good bucks. And I tried grunting at him, like tried to stop him. I was, I had my camera to like film or whatever just for fun and. And this was like not that situation. It was just too fast. I'm like trying to get eyes on him. He's trying to get. He puts a round in and just hoping that they stop. I'm grunting at him. And they just went over the skyline. No chance for a shot. So we decided, I mean it wasn't really. It was just one of those situations. Like, bad wind, bad situation, really low visibility. And so we decided to circle around, see if we could pick them up the hill. So we circle around, and the snow just starts coming down. Like, it's just super big flakes. It snowed a little bit before, but now it's just dumping. And so we start, like, working down, and we see a doe or a deer. And I couldn't see what it was. I could just see it was a deer because its head was behind a tree, and it was starting kind of in the open, but there was, like, one tree it was behind. And so we get off to the side and get under this just big tree. And it's perfect because we're staying dry. And the deer's up, she's feeding. We're looking around, thinking maybe those bucks ran into her, but also they were spooked. They definitely could have run up over the top. They could be anywhere. So we sat there for a while and watched her. She just kind of did her thing and then just fed off out of sight. We continued down the canyon, looked around, Nothing. No bucks popped out. So decided to just go up the hillside across the way, and glass across, and there the snow is really coming down. And then it finally let up. We kind of sat there and watched for a while. Finally let up, and there was no. No bucks there. I did spot what ended up being, like, up the mountain ways bedded underneath. This one tree is an amazing spot. But it was the one doe that we'd seen. And so we sat there. We did a little bit of calling, but to no avail, I would say, just, you know, whatever. And so we. We ended up trying to circle around and see if we could. There's a lot of timber in this area. There's just a couple little openings, and it's pretty much those. Those deer were good as gone. It's probably just as good odds to go find another deer. But we ended up working around, glassing, picking up a few does throughout the rest of the day. And then that was it. So we did see two good bucks, but that was it. And they were. They were high, tailing it out there, running pretty hard. So the next morning, kind of just switched gears and decided, let's. Let's check some more open country, you know, maybe an area where we'd seen deer in the past. Pretty good. You know, sometimes there's deer, sometimes there's not. But we just decided to just check a different area. So next day, first thing in the morning, checking a different area, I ended up moving. I was I was away from my dad and my dad actually spotted a buck up on this hillside. And it was like this big bare hillside, but he spotted a buck. And by the time I got to him, the deer kind of just disappeared. So it went over the top and so we just sat there and waited. And didn't it seem like, okay, maybe, maybe it was gone, but it might come back over. And there was actually, I guess there was a. A doe and a smaller buck there too. And the other two deer were there, but the. It was like a. A big fork and hornbuck. He wasn't sure how big it was. He just saw it go over. It wasn't running or anything, maybe just chasing the doe. And then ended up. By the time I got back, the doe and the small buck were there. But. So I decided to. To get in position with him and start going up the hill. So we start going up the hill and sure enough, the buck pops back out and we're able to make a good play on him. So we get to a little ridge, get set up. He's got the rifle. I've got. I've got the range and the wind I've got. There's no wind today, so I didn't have to worry about it. But I've got my wind gauge and I've got the rangefinder. He's got the scope. I spent a bit of time with his rifle. I like to, as a good son, you know, I like to work up his rifles as well as I'm working up mine. And we've got got like a couple different guns of the same caliber, like the same rifle. So I just give him the same scope. I have the same setup. I've got his like ballistics for his rifle as a profile in my relay setup. So then I just range it. The bucks there. It took him a little bit to get on it. So at first the buck was, I don't know, maybe I can't even remember honestly, the exact yards, 200 and something yards. So I'm like, we don't even need to make an adjustment. But then it went behind a hill and ended up moving up and kind of following the path that the smaller buck and doe, because they were off to the right of ways, they kind of now were out of the picture in frame here. And so he, by the time he found it, he got it in the scope. It was now new range, new distance. I think it was like, I can't remember, probably like four something maybe. So I arrange it, reset the scope, and he got Steady and shot, and it was perfect. Hit the buck. The buck. It was a very steep hillside. It was one of those hills, though, where it's completely open. But whitetails can blend in so well. Like, their coat is the exact color of the ground. It was one of those, like, every time we'd move, you could see it. But I think he was having trouble just finding it Just because it was so blended in. I'm like, no, it's just right there. But ended up making a good shot on it. And the buck just, like, went to tomahawk down the mountain for the most part. Ended up getting hung up in some brush halfway down. So got up to it, and thankfully, it slowed its fall. I ended up. We just got to it and then slid it down the rest of the way to take care of it at the bottom because it's too steep to work on it there. And. Yeah, you got it. Got a nice little buck. Buck for the. The freezer. Yeah. Ended up packing it out and processing it, and it was awesome. Like, such good meat, too. I don't know what it is. Like, elk has always been my favorite. Like, someone's like, what's your favorite game meat? And I always say elk because you get a lot of meat. It's really good. It's always good. But lately, man, I swear, like, we've been having such good venison deer. I don't know, Mule deer and whitetails. I almost think, like, maybe I've just, you know, I. I've. It's a great. This is a very. This is a good privilege, right? You've probably. I feel like I've maybe even had too much elk. And now I'm like, just deer seems to be hitting the spot in our family lately. But I end up. We ended up processing it, Just doing a lot of steaks, and then doing some burger grind with it. One of the things that I did with this deer, my wife's deer, is we just. Instead of using pork fat or whatever, we just ground. We just made bacon burgers. Just ground burger into the. Sorry. Ground the bacon with the burger itself. And, man, they've been so good. I don't know. I. Yeah, maybe it's, like, a easy thing to do. Everyone's like, yeah, it tastes like it's bacon, right? It's bacon in the burger. I don't know. A little bit of salty and smoky. It's just really good. So we made a lot of that with it, and, yeah, it was awesome. It was a great hunt and a lot of fun and it's one of those two where, you know, everyone's a little bit different. On my deer hunt that I was talking about last week, that was actually in the actual timeline of things that was after his hunt. But you know, for the most part, when I'm trying to get set up or hunting with people or having them get set up, I really want them. The ideal scenario is getting that dead steady rest. And even with those rests, things go wrong. But when you have that, that dead steady rest, more often than not, you can make that perfectly accurate shot. And that's what we strive for as hunters and that's what we practice for. So today we're going to dive into a little bit of that setup, that precision shooting, whether on the range or in the field. We're going to look at some of the things that you need to get that setup going and some of the different options over, even just like the, the different things that I've done throughout the years. And then we're going to look at how to really perform that precision shot through practice on the range and when it comes time to hunt. So last week we really dove into practicing with your rifle and setting up for those quick shots, those shots where everything wasn't right, where you might have to be standing, where you don't have a great rest, and practicing for those offhand shots and those situations where, hey, nothing's great, but it's fairly close range and I need to be able to execute this shot quickly, efficiently and accurately. This week is the kind of opposite of that. This week is the shot that you really strive for. And honestly, this is the shot that I take more often than not. It's the, the setup and precision shot and when I like to call it precision shot, because we aren't talking about long range shooting, we're talking about making a super accurate, precise shot, no matter the distance. And if given the opportunity, I will choose this setup every time for both myself and my clients when I'm guiding. Honestly, over the years, like guiding different hunters in various different scenarios with different shooting capabilities, I found that the success rate of me guiding depended a lot on me assisting and planning a stock and everything for the perfect setup and helping guys get set up and get steady and essentially executing a shot that is the same at a hundred yards and at whatever that far distance might be, 5, 600 yards, or it targets, 7, 8, 9, 1000 yards. The mechanics and everything about it are the same. It involves knowing your drop compensation, adjusting your rifle, and having a steady steadied rest and rifle and then, you know, proper form and pulling the trigger and having that crosshair at the place that it needs to be. But all things considered, with everything right, when you do that, it's a perfect shot. It doesn't matter if it's 100 yards, 300 yards, 400 yards, 500 yards, 600 yards, it's a precision shot. And with that precision shot, setting it up right, understanding the basics, mechanics of it, and having the right tools for it, you can be very effective at various ranges. And now I like to say precision shot because I think that, you know, over the years, look, I've done every style. I jumped on the long range train for a while, right? It was like, that was the cool thing and getting set up and being able to take far shots because I had a setup for it. I practiced a lot and was able to take shots at whatever distances I, I guess, wanted for the most part. And then it kind of switched for me where I was like, you know, for me, it's more about the hunt and the chase and the getting close. Yet I still love that precision setup for even those closer shots. Realistically, for me now, I rarely will take a shot over 300 yards. Why? Because I enjoy getting close, getting to that. Maybe say four, I guess, like under 400. Even though I have the capability of if something happened, let's say, hit an animal, bat poorly or whatever, I guess I have the ability to shoot further because I have my rifle dialed up and set up for that, and I practice it a lot. And I enjoy shooting long distances with my rifle. Like, I talked last week about shooting those further distances. So it makes those close shots, chip shots. It's fun for me. It's something that I really enjoy doing. And I love having those rifles that can shoot, I don't know, I like to have a gun that can shoot out to a thousand yards and then I hunt under 400, right? Like, that's my personal setup. I'm also filming a lot of stuff too. So I like that to be closer. I like that, you know, I like that the stock is the most fun part for me of the hunt. So I like to, if I can get 100 yards, awesome. Like, it's fun. If I'm at 500 and I can get to 100, I'm going to get to 100. That's just the way that I like to do it. So that's that. But I. I will, I do want to talk about even so, like one of the films I did last year, you can see here behind it was elk hunt and is the cold range one. It's one of my first hunts with the 7 mil backcountry. And on that hunt, you know, there was an opportunity to shoot at that bull at further distance. He was bedded and I'm like, okay, I can get to, I can't remember. It was like probably 300 yards, something like that. And yet I still set up like I was taking a thousand yard shot. Laying down, prone, rested. All the same fundamentals, adjusted the scope to the exact thing so I could put that bullet exactly where I wanted it. I, I knew that I wanted to drop that bull in his tracks and wanted to go for that high shoulder shot. That's the shot that I took. That's I hit exactly where I was anticipating on hitting and dropped the bull. Right. And then so that like to me is, is an awesome part about rifle hunting is being able to do that or take that precision shot and then as things move, I can adjust and take that shot. If he stepped out 20, 50, 100 yards even I could still have the ability to make that shot. Or he moved in, wouldn't matter. It was a well executed shot in the right setup. So we're going to go through this setup for precision shooting. We're going to talk about some long range stuff and some of this, the tools, we'll call it tools of the trade because for making a very precise shot, especially out of distance, you have to have the right tools for the job. So that includes a good, a good rifle, right? You need an accurate rifle. If your rifle is inaccurate at close range, it's going to be way more inaccurate it further ranges. Now of course there are some, you know, there's a little bit of stabilization with some bullets and setups where maybe at 100 yards it actually doesn't group as good as it does at 150 or 200. I've had a few rifles like that, not many. You know, it's one of those things like sometimes it, I don't know what it is, but there are certain rifles and bullet combinations that I've had that you know, grew better. But whatever, that's not, that's not what we're talking about here. You need, you need a good quality rifle, one that groups well because as you go out at any distance, the if, if it's not tight up close, it's just going to start to magnify those mistakes further out. So a good quality rifle, you're going to want a rifle that has some form of holdover or Adjustment. And the reason for that is we're talking about precision. We're talking about placing that bullet exactly where you want it at varying ranges. So a holdover might be some kind of line that has, you know, an adjustment of saying, okay, at this magnification, at this distance, this is what this should equal. For this range, I prefer a scope where it has an adjustable turret on it. Now, the reason for that is I can adjust for all factors and variability, meaning I can adjust for barometric pressure, I can adjust for temperature, I can adjust for altitude, I can adjust for range. And so by a, by being able to do that, what we're going to call our dope or a drop compensation, we're able to get that pinpoint accuracy at any range, at any elevation, at any temperature, at any conditions you might encounter in the hunt. So when we're talking about that, we're going to need a few other specific tools, one of them being a good quality laser range finder. If you don't know the distance, you, you're just guessing. When we're talking about this kind of precision sniper type precision, you need to know the range because that's going to affect your drop compensation. Now the other thing you're going to need is some kind of ballistics calculation. You can use a ballistics app, you can use a ballistics calculator. You could do the math yourself if you want. There's. I've done everything over the years. Like so the first way, the first thing that I used to do was like I, before I knew anything about ballistics, I was just sight in. I think I used to always go like 3 inches high at 100 yards. And then I would just shoot at different distances at the center and measure how much my drop was. And then write that down. And I literally had like this cheat sheet of inches over. And then I would just guess the inches and hold over. That was like my holdover method. And then I would know where the post was. So I just had a standard plex reticle. And then I would know where the post was. So like the fat part below the reticle, I would know where that was on at. And then I could kind of use that. I'd have to be on full magnification and I could go like, okay, well halfway between at that magnification is this. And then I would also. It was just like this complicated math of just shooting, figuring it out, understanding my drop going from there. That's how I started. And then it changed to having scopes with like the drop compensation reticle, where I would sight it in at whatever. And then it would kind of be close enough out to 500 yards of being like 100, 200, 300, 475, whatever. And you'd shoot it and test it, and it worked. And then they started coming out with, like, programs that would start to tell you what those lines meant. And then I switched over to adjustable turret rifle scopes where I could adjust. And then I would use, like, an app on my phone for a ballistics calculator. A lot of times I would use an app on the compute for. I guess it was first a computer app where I would type it in, I'd make a little chart. The chart would be on the stock of my rifle. Like, if you look back at a lot of old solo hunter videos and things, there's always something taped on my gun that was just my drop compensations for different distances. And then I would also do, like, different elevations and different. You just all a bunch of cut sheets, which are still actually really useful tool. And I still do charts. I just kind of do them a little bit more digital now and have different options for them, but still definitely a technology that's used. And then things kind of transitioned into optics that have, like, connect with a ballistics calculator or have ballistics calculations in them where you can range, get the range and the compensation for atmospherics, temperature, direction, wind. You know, you can. You could link up with a, you know, a wind gauge and see, okay, wind speed, everything. You could kind of start to link those things together. And by having that. That helps you build out your. Your drop compensation, what you should adjust your scope for, and. And how to get that precision shot. So one of the fun things that I got to do this year, Vortex Optics, who I work with, I got to test out this, I guess their. Their newest ballistic system, which, it was awesome. It's. It's called the Vortex relay. So this was kind of one of the fun things that I got. You know, if you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that one of my favorite parts about this job, kind of the dream part about this job for me, is getting to be able to test different gear, whether it's clothing, boots, arrows, broadheads, optics. It's all I like. I just really like that process of being able to try things, give input, get to see some of the cool, cool gadgets before other people. It's just fun. Like, it's. That to me, is what excites me. I'M just kind of like a gearhead at heart. You know, it's like I think the kid version of me thinking about if I could do anything, what would it be? Is probably that, right? Because it's just like getting to go out, test different stuff. I always liked that, the idea of that and just really enjoy it as an adult. So it's a cool part about what I get to do. And so getting to test that was fun because I've always, you know, I like, I enjoy shooting long range, I enjoy being able to shoot precision. I really like that kind of stuff. And I also like the tools of the trade for that. So they've got a new system where you can link up different, I guess, devices and it kind of like they reliably connect with each other, they talk really fast. And then once it's set up you can, you can say like, okay, I'm, I'm pulling weather or atmospherics from this particular device or so like for example, like your range finder and your weather meter communicate. So I could have like wind speed and I can have the weather thing on my backpack or if I'm going to get wind speed, I can have that. So I can range in my range finder or binocular rangefinder and I can get all my drop compensations like holdover windage, all that stuff within the, the range of the optic. And so that was, that was really fun to get to try that out. And I got to use it this whole season. So on my dad's hunt, I had that with me on my one horned elk hunt, the one horn bull that I killed, I had it on my deer hunt. I didn't even range that deer so didn't really come into play there. But it was, it was cool to be able to use. And then I also got to test out their new Talon HD1 10K. So they're 10,000 range. I'm like dude, 10,000, 10,000 yard rangefinder. I don't, it's not necessarily to be able to range 10,000 yards, but it's to be able to get those consistent ranges at that thousand or two thousand. I mean I definitely hit like way far over a mile of just like planning out a stock going how far is that? Oh geez, that's like a mile and a half. Okay. And then it was like doing calculations like that's excessive. No, that, it's fun though because just like seeing how far that thing could range was awesome. But the thing that was nice about it as far as something new is like top tier glass. So I preach it a lot. You want good glass. And for me, I'm not willing to compromise on the glass to have the rangefinder in the unit. So I always use them separate. But now that I got to test out this higher version glass with a really good ballistics calculator and rangefinder in it, I was like, okay, I've been running it for all my rifle hunts and when I'm hunting with other people that are rifle hunting. But then it also communicates with my. They, they just came out with a new ballistics weather meter, which is their ace. So I guess all this I'm. I get to talk about this today because it actually came out today. So. But so it communicates with all that. So those kind of systems are out there, right? Like it's a, a one button push. And there's still a lot you need to. So there's still a lot you need to know, but the guesswork has been taken out of it. It just makes you more precise, more accurate. And I still, even with that system, have my sheets or my charts. They actually have. You can actually send this to like a digital. Think of it like a digital paper chart. I don't know what you call it, where it locks it in. So it's just there so you can pull it out of your pocket and get the range or whatever. You have your chart or your sheet. If you aren't, you know, maybe it's. You have it on your gun or, you know, you don't have time to rearrange or get the whatever. So that's cool too. Like, there's just so many different, so many different cool tools out there for this type of precision shooting. Growing up, we didn't have any of this stuff, and so it's fun to geek out on it. And you can spend, like, we could deep dive into every aspect of long range shooting talking about, you know, one thing or the other. But I think really now with like the technology and the apps and the other stuff that we have, really, once you figure out your, your system, you know, you got to spend a little bit of time figuring out, okay, how do I link these things together? What's this telling me? What do I want to pull from. That stuff's all easy. You don't have to do that. That's like something you do out, out of the field. And then once you're in the field, you know that you're getting those environmental reads, you're getting that range, you're getting that instant dope adjustment for that precise environmental. And when you do that, it's just even more accurate. So once you've got your setup, whatever it is, you know there's a lot of different options out there, right? You can have as simple as a standard rangefinder. You could even use a rangefinder with no angle compensation and have a ballistics app on your phone that's downloaded that you put in the angle and all the stuff, and it spits you out some data. You can have a cut sheet that you do on your computer and just bring into the field and like, hey, I. I know the relative temperature that it's going to be. I know the relative range of elevation that it's going to be for this hunt. I put that stuff in there, it spits it out, and then you just get your range and go off that sheet. Still a really viable option for being precise. It's not going to be as precise as having exact environmentals in that situation, but sometimes it's negligible, right? Like, it depends on the distance. For most hunting distances, it may not matter as much like you're talking about an inch or two in either direction. But as you start to go out further and further, it starts to compound and. And then it can make a difference. But whatever your system is going to be, you've got your system, you've got your scope, you've got your setup, you've got your. Your drop compensation from a calculation. Now's the fun part. Now is when you get to go dent some primers, get out and prove it. And so what I like to do, you know, I. You can start with, I would say probably the most important thing in getting an accurate dope and getting accurate adjustment is velocity. You can start with the numbers on the box. But I really, like think that chronographing your, Your setup, it just builds. Starts with a way more accurate foundation for whatever you're shooting, because barrel length makes a difference. You know, a lot of things make a difference. So if you can actually shoot. And I, I like to shoot in kind of the. I like zero my rifle at pretty much the elevation that majority of my hunts are at. At kind of an average temperature, not an extreme, not really cold, not really hot. Um, and then I'll use a chronograph. I've got one of those. Just another, like, if you're gonna get something, you're like, I am gonna get into this. A really cool tool is that Garmin chronograph. I picked one up, I guess, a couple years ago. I think they've got. I've got Gen one of it. I think they have one now where it might even tell you the speed of your bullet out at different distances, which I. Don't quote me on that. I actually haven't really looked into them that much. Like, I got mine and kind of, like, stop paying attention to them. But I used to have one of those chronographs with. I'm sure a lot of people have. What were they called? Like, accurate or something like that. It's just like the green box. You fold it open, you put the wires, you line up. The white things that try to catch it can have, like, shadows. You put it X amount of distance away from where you're shooting, and then you line your scope up and you look down the barrel, make sure you're shooting through the thing and not shooting the thing, and then hoping that the battery works. Like, dude, I use that thing for years. I mean, they were accurate enough, but, like, the biggest pain in the ass put it on a tripod. I never had, like, a great setup for it. It was always more of a pain than anything. So I really hated chronographing my stuff. I would often just, like, shoot at different distances and do a speed adjust to see where it would hit. So I would like, have the app open, shoot and be like, oh, I'm a little high at this range. So I'd change my speed in the app. Lower or higher, faster. Sorry, if it was high, and then see if it, like, okay, now it's on. So, okay, that's probably the speed. Then I shoot a little further out and be like, yeah, it's on, but maybe I just change the speed a little bit to kind of mess with it. That's another way to do it. But having the chronograph is, like, ideal. It. I've got so much better data out of my. So much better data out of my, like, calculations with the correct speed at the barrel. And if you could get speed down range, you can. You can make adjustments, too, of, like, a. The velocity is this here, but it's not that there. You know, it's. It's a. It really helps get you good, good adjustments. So once you've got that, you've got the speed, it's time to start to ring steel. And you just. You start walking the rifle out. If you can get. Find a range that has some distance that's ideal, and then you just range it, see where your calculation is, shoot it, get a group going, see if it's consistent. And as you start to do that, then you start to build confidence in that setup, confidence in that dope chart, confidence in that adjustment. And then I continue to test it in varying weather and atmospherics. Go. Okay. Just like anything, you want to be familiar with your equipment. We talked about last week practicing. So I'm doing that same thing. Like, I do it in the summer when it's hot, I do it in the winter when it's cold. And every once in a while, you know, it's like, okay, I'm going to make some adjustments. Okay, I'm resetting, I'm resetting my calculations for this hot temperature. I'm re zeroing the rifle at this hot temperature at this altitude, this elevation. Now I'm testing this. Okay. Yep. And the calculations are right. And I'll go through. And for the most part I don't, you know, once I've got it stored and I use the Geo ballistics app that works with all my vortex stuff. Once I have all those profiles, I've got a ton of profiles in there. Every rifle, different bullet combination. Sometimes I got, you know, this bullet that I really like, but I'm going on this hunt, so I'm going to maybe use a, a different bullet or whatever, a different rifle. I just go in there or same caliber, different gun, I just go in there and change it up and run it. The other thing that you can do now, which is if you, if you hunt with a suppressor. I try to always hunt suppress, but there's some hunts you can't. It's not legal to use. Going out the country, like in a lot of place, you can't take it with you. So having that same setup but knowing, okay, here's what it is with a break, here's what it is with my suppressor, here's what it is just nothing. And, and the thing that I'll do too is chronograph each one because that's generally the only thing it changes, changes the point of impact. But it's mostly based off of the varying of speed and also a little bit of the barrel harmonics. So we're going to ring some steel, we're going to prove it. And the way that you're going to ring the steel, okay, the, the proving these drop compensations is all about making a perfect shot. Because if you're all over the place, it's not going to tell you anything. Your, your, your dope is probably more accurate. Like the number that spit out of your, your Talon binoculars is going to probably be more accurate. Than your shooting ability in. In many cases. So you need to make sure that you're absolutely steady shooting it. Any form of precision is all about making that perfect shot. And getting steady, in my opinion, is the key to that. So last week, we were talking. It's like kind of the opposite. We were talking about practicing unsteady, practicing standing, practicing not at the bench. Now we're. We're talking about practicing at the bench because what we're trying to do is we're trying to shoot precise. So what you first want to do, what I do with every rifle is I get. I shoot close, and I get a very good group. I want to make sure that my grouping is sub MOA and generally, like I'm talking about, I want almost all of them in the same hole if I can get it. That's like my goal. Right? Not every rifle can do that. I mean, and. And yeah, it's like you aren't gonna shoot, you know, multiple bullets in the same hole of, like, real large calibers and other things, but you just really want those bullets touching a real tight group. So you're focusing on that. And what that's doing at that close range is. Is it's telling you your form. And honestly, like, I know that. I don't know. I don't think it gets talked about enough as far as, like, the precision aspect of a rifle and how to get better. But there's a lot of guys that I've seen that I've guided and this, that and the other thing, and they've got guns, they shoot them. And their groups are pretty bad at 100 yards. And I've even. I've made bad groups at every yard. And sometimes what I'll do is like, okay, I know this rifle shooting. It's just me, whatever. I'm going to move that target into 25 yards and just really start stacking those bullets in there where you can see it, where you can see where your crosshair is better. You can really line it up. You can put it in the same hole and then start there and then move it out. Honestly, you're just building form and repetition. You're building same anchor point just as you would with a bow. I think that not enough emphasis goes on that repeatability factor. I put my hand in the same place every time, my thumb in the same place every time I try to hold the rifle the same place on my shoulder, on my cheek, my eye lined up through it, so my head's not moving, so I'm not getting parallax. From the shadowing of the rifle scope. I'm making sure the parallax is set right. And I'm trying to shoot a precise group. Start that close. Then I'm like, okay, I've got that precise group. Now I'm going to start to do that at varying ranges as we walk it out. And the key is to get steady. You want. It's all about seeing what the rifle can do, not how. Like, yes, you're controlling it, but you want to give it every ability to make a good shot. So when we're doing that, when we're setting up at the range, I like to use sandbags. And I. You need. Or, you know, if I. If I don't have like a solid bench. You need a bench that doesn't move, not one where the seat's shaking the table. You want like a solid bench. If you don't have that, then go on the ground prone and lay down. You can either use bipods or sandbags. I actually really like the way a rifle sits on sandbags. Like you can almost set it and forget it kind of thing. Or bipod. And then I always try to steady the butt end of the rifle with what's called like a squeeze bag or another smaller sandbag. So another piece of the gear that you're going to use for this is sandbags and. Or a bipod. You know, there's those like lead sled things. And I've used those before often because I don't really have anything else. It might be where I'm shooting or the range that I'm at. Like there's not a good setup or I didn't have a setup. You know, those are good. If you've got like a big caliber rifle and you're trying to reduce recoil and not flinch inside a rifle and you're shooting a lot. But it also doesn't line the rifle up right on you. So I think it's better to just have it how you're going to shoot in a hunting scenario. Once it's sighted in and you've shot it enough to kind of know, you know, get. Get it like you're going to shoot it in the field and then get it steady. And by steady it means the rifle should almost support itself on the target for the most part, like you're holding it, but you don't. If you kind of got off and got back on the steadier the rifle is, the more accurate the results going to be downrange. And this is what we're looking for. In this precision type shooting, really steadying the rifle and understanding how to steady the rifle is going to help at the range, is going to help you in the field. So yeah, you can practice on a bench, you can practice laying down at the range, whatever. But what you're really going to start to learn is how to get a rifle to essentially point at the target without having to hold it. And so that involves moving your sandbags forward and backward to raise your lower and then moving the, the part of the, the butt stock support up or down. And so by doing those things, you start to learn, okay, this is how I can support the rifle. One thing that I see, like we would always do this, and I've probably talked about this a few times, but with clients when they come into hunt, we're like, okay, we're gonna shoot. And we had a janky setup. Like it was not a solid bench or whatever. That's probably what I've shot on more than anything. Even though I'm like, get a solid rest, I'm like, I've probably shot off of unsolid rest more than solid arrest, but they're solid enough. And so the first thing I'd see is like, okay, we're gonna shoot at this gong that's four or five hundred yards away. And I see the guys and they're with it and they're kind of like hand holding. And I'm like, you've got the ability with you got all the tools needed right here to damn near set that rifle up, put it on the thing, look away, reach over, squeeze the trigger and shoot the bull out of this thing. But they aren't used to steadying the rifle and having it nearly self supported. And so if you can't do it at a bench, you can't do it in the field. And so then I would just go through the process of teaching people, here's how we do it. This is what I do. This is my system. I'm sure there's, you know, military snipers and other things that would teach you a different way. This is just the way that I found worked for me to teach people in a short amount of time. You know, like fairly self taught, but it's worked very well for X amount for many years. But you know, I, I essentially just try to instruct people, try to figure out how to steady this rifle with it nearly supporting itself. So it's like, okay, use the bipod. Well, if the bipod's not, maybe that's not the right height, so maybe it's a pack. So the packs on the, on the stock part, I will make a mention for those that are new or maybe don't know, don't support the rifle on the barrel. I see so many times like back in the day, guys shooting sticks, like shooting sticks on the barrel. You want it to be on the stock. So support on the stock and then, okay, so slide the pack towards you. That's going to lift the, the barrel up. Slide it away. That's going to lift the barrel down. Put something underneath it to raise it up. Puts pull something away to raise it down. Same with the stock. Put something higher at the back of the stock to raise it, to lower it. Lower it in the back to raise it. Okay. And so once you understand the mechanics of that, you really understand how to start steadying that rifle and support it. So like I said, the squeeze bag, A squeeze bag is just like a, it can be anything. I've got a bunch of different ones, but I've got some off Amazon. I got a really good one that I like this year from how is it Marsupial gear. I think I actually might even carry those on my website. I like those so much. We might have some on there. But. So this squeeze bag is like just a miniature sandbag. But it's lightweight. Like I like the, the one that I got, the marsupial one's lightweight. It's got like pelletized, I don't know, pelletized, like almost Styrofoam, kind of like hard Styrofoam in it. And do I carry one to two rear squeeze bags on a rifle hunt with me? Especially if someone else is like, if I'm with someone else and I'm, you know, assisting or whatever, I always have them in my pack or handy. I've even, I'm not even kidding you, I, I've taken one on like a mean like 10, 12 day backpack hunt. And you're like, why? Right? And I was like, I will take a bipod and I will take a rear squeeze bag because it, it comes in handy. And I like being, I'm like, I'll take a little bit extra weight. I've got a super light rifle so I can throw a bunch of extra in, right? Like it's kind of the funny thing. You're like, okay, I got a really light rifle and then I can throw a heavy scope, a bipod, a squeeze bag, and it's the same weight as a heavy rifle. It's great. So I carry one on a lot of hunts now there's stuff that we'll talk about in the field. Like, you can definitely make do. Oh, you can use your fist underneath to, like, on the ground or on your binos or something like that and squeeze or flatten your. Your fist to raise or lower the rifle and to just help you get another point of contact to get steady and steady that rifle. A lot of times I'm taking my binos off, and I'm using my binos underneath instead of a squeeze bag. And then the front's supported on a pack or on a bipod. And so by doing those kind of things in the field and practicing it at the range, you're really setting yourself up for success for a precision shot. And that can be 1002-003004-00500, 600, 700. Whatever yardage you feel comfortable at, you can really set yourself up for success and hit exactly where you want to hit. So, like the last. This. This last season, hunting with my brother, and it was like the big buck that he got, we crawled in, we got set up. We weren't far. We were 300 yards maybe, you know, laying on the buck set up, and it's like the bucks bedded, but he's quartered hard away, like I'm dead on him. But, you know, let. Let's just get set up. I mean, he was set up. Like, you know, it's like, okay, we. We had time. We had all the time in the world. That's the ideal setup with a rifle on is like, have all the time in the world. We got the pack down. It's like, yeah, that's good, but I could probably use a little higher. Okay, let's throw. Let me go get another pack. Let's put that pack there, and let's put this underneath the thing. And it's like that gun on that deer was damn near could have shot itself, right? But when the opportunity happens, the buck stands up, and you get a split second. You know that that is going to be an absolute precision shot. You're going to hit exactly where you want, and that's the goal of it. A quick, clean kill, a precise shot. And to be able to do that in a hunting setup, it takes some. Some different equipment and understanding how to steady the rifle, which you can do by practicing at the range. This time of year, we're talking about getting ready for the hunt and the things you can do outside of the season. I think a lot of people think about shooting their gun honestly, like, a week before the hunt. I mean, I've guided Like some pretty high end hunts as well as just, you know, average over the counter type hunts as well. And the thing that always struck me is like, here's guys coming that are spending, you know, they're like, this is my once in a lifetime hunt. And I'm like, it absolutely is. You should have started shooting before yesterday. Right. Because it's all coming down to that one specific moment. And these are things that I think are really important to think about, to practice, to get used to, is that kind of steadying the rifle and making those kind of shots. Now when it comes to practice, you can do the same thing like we talked about with the offhand shot as far as dry fire practice, making sure that like that precise moment that you want that hammer to drop. Click. Yes. It was right where I wanted. Or oh, it drifted a little bit as I pulled. Okay, now we can work on our trigger control. We can work on the pressure, we can work on the way that we grip the rifle. I mean we kind of, you know, like after I had the wrist surgery, you know, I was shooting my bow with a mouth tab for a long time and then start shooting my bow again. And to be honest, I think it was harder for me like to shoot a rifle more accurately because I noticed that I was putting like a weird torque because I couldn't get my hand right on it. So I was like, can't like putting weird pressure on it. So I'd pull the trigger and every time it's like it would go off left, go off left when I was. And I found that out by doing a lot of dry fire practice. And I go, okay, I got to adjust my grip. You know, I gotta kind of like change the way that I grip the rifle and where I put my thumb and the way that I hold it to get those consistent breaks and to get it to go off in the right spot. I think like the thing about it is, right, you can get by with a lot in a very the night. I guess like the nice thing about rifles is like you could go get a rifle that shoots mediocre or whatever and not know your job compensations and cited in and not shoot much and still kill an animal, right? Absolutely possible. I am not saying that doesn't happen all the time, but I'm also saying that you could get whatever you have and take it out and understand how to steady your rifle, how to. So in the field it happens quickly. How to quickly adjust it by just having it almost self supporting by moving a pack or adding something to the back or squeezing your fist to do all those things and to shoot and to be proficient at it and understand that the way that you pull the trigger in practice and when the moment of truth comes and you're hyped up and you've got the bull of a lifetime moving and he stops for a split second and you know that everything's set, you squeeze the trigger and you know without a shadow of a doubt what you want to happen happens. The bull drops and the hunt's over. And it was a you, you did right by it. And you can be consistent and proficient and do that time and time and time again. Those are your guys that go out and make the most out of those once in a lifetime opportunities. Make those most out of those every year. Over the counter tags, they make the most out of the time that they have in the field by doing a few simple things out of the field. And if you learn or take away anything from this podcast, it's go the best way, not the easy way. The best way is to be proficient with what you're hunting with. Yes, you can get by. Absolutely. But if you want to get by consistently in different scenarios and in different encounters, then practicing with what you're hunting with, being proficient and paying attention to all the little details is absolutely going to change the game for you. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that podcast. You know, it's fun for me to go through some of this stuff that we're going to talk about when it comes to prepping for the hunting season, being prepared, a few of the things that you can do. We've got the most amount of time preseason right now, it's like majority of the seasons are over. We're starting to think and plan and prep for applications, hunts that are coming up, maybe even doing some scouting, knee scouting. But there's the most time that you're going to have is starting right now. So that's why this time of year I like to talk about fitness and talk about practice and I also like to talk about preparation and scouting because this is the time when you have the most time to make it happen. Schedule a weekend here and a weekend there. You don't have to do it all at once. You don't have to cram for the test right before the hunt. You can go out like, I mean, I'm probably going out this weekend maybe, you know, I've got a few different times, I'm like, I'm gonna go out and shoot my rifle. And I've also got a late season hunt Coming up. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna mess with it a little bit and make sure everything's working for, for what I want to do. But it's just a good time to start thinking about those things. Another thing that we're going to start focusing on is tag stuff and a little bit of that scouting and. Or a lot of that scouting and E Scouting because there's so many little things that you can pick up on and you just have to really understand the animals and then what. How to read that on a map. The majority of my hunts, like right now, I'm going to be going on a late season coos deer hunt in a place I've never been and just pouring over. I've already got like my hunt plan planned out because I understand, like, okay, this is, this is going to be a good glassing spot in the morning. This is going to be a good class. This is a spot where I want to check and drop a trail camera. We're going to Mexico, so trail cameras are legal there. So. Okay, I want to, I want to maybe put a trail camera here. So I've got this hunt plan in my head. You know, obviously you get into the field and whatever, but I'm going in with this plan and it's just those kind of planning and preparation and understanding what I'm looking at. I can hit the ground running. And honestly, with the technology we have now with like Onyx, you have an advantage over a lot of time actually spent in the field if you know what you're looking at. So we're going to go into some of that stuff coming up and I will mention, you know, if you don't have an Onyx subscription, get one now so you have time to mess with it. If you do have one, you can always upgrade it there to get like the, the different states. So if you're applying in different states, I really like it for application season specifically, like, I'm constantly. Dude, I was on the phone to three different friends today. We're talking about different hunt plans. They mention a unit that they're thinking of and I'm like, I don't even know where that unit is. I pull out my Onyx. I've got all the I can use acts, I've got the premier membership, so I can use all the states. Flip on that state. I'm like, oh, yeah, dude, actually, I forgot. I, I knew someone else that hunted there. That seems like a cool unit. You should definitely apply for it. I don't know anything about it. But at least I know where it's at. No, I actually hunted, you know, fairly close to there X amount of years ago. So, you know, just having that ability when you're, you're thinking about hunt planning or, or even applying for other states is nice to be able to pull that out, look at the boundaries, where's this at? Or just even do some research on some units. So that's an option. They're, they're an awesome supporter of this podcast and because of that, you guys can get a discount if you use Code livewild. So you, whether you upgrade your membership, whether you get a new membership, I think it's like, actually I think it's like 20 off using code LIVEWILD, but it's only on their site so you can't do it like through the app store or anything like that. Discount codes don't work there. So a way to save you guys a little bit of money in, in getting ready for the season. So if you're interested in that, you can always use that code if you already have it. Good, because we're going to probably bust it out here in some podcasts in the near future and especially after some of the tag draws start to come out and really dive into that E scouting and those kind of things. Another thing that I want to mention, vortex optics. I mentioned some of their stuff they got to try out earlier. They just launched that stuff, so you can go check it out. You can read more about it on their website. I might, I'll probably try to get a few of those new optics in my store. So you can always check Remy warren.com find that. And also I mentioned it last week. But look, if you're in the market for arrows, broadheads or you're getting a new bow, you need a new setup, whatever, and you're like, okay, I don't know what arrows to get or here's what I have before. If I'm going to switch to day six arrows, what should I do? You know, I want, maybe I want some more weight. Maybe I don't want as heavy of an option. What do you guys got? Feel free to shoot us an email. Go to our website, day6gear.com email us, we'll get back to you. Give us a call, someone will answer or leave a message, someone will call you back and we'll, we'll help you get set up. Someone that's like, will probably be, someone will probably be building arrows and talking to you or you know, whatever, being like, okay, yeah, somebody that, that knows what you need, and if you need help with it, reach out to us. We're going to be kind of manning the phones this time of year and just, you know, helping you guys build out your setup to get ready for the season before the rush hits. So feel free to give us a call, check out our website. We're looking forward to talking to you guys and helping you get the right setup for your particular hunt. So until next week, I'm just going to say stay precise. Catch you guys later.