Silvercore Podcast 122 Matt Siemens

[00:00:00] Travis Bader: I'm Travis Bader, and this is the Silvercore podcast. Silvercore has been providing its members with the skills and knowledge necessary to be confident and proficient in the outdoors for over 20 years. And we make it easier for people to deepen their connection to the natural world. If you enjoy the positive and educational content.

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[00:00:52] Travis Bader: I'm joined today by a man who has hunted on nearly every continent in the world. He is with Korth Group, deals closely with Leupold and Hornady, and he is a prolific, avid hunter and a wealth of knowledge. Welcome to the Silvercore podcast, Matt Siemens. Thanks for having me here. So we've been trying to line this one up for a little while now.

[00:01:13] Travis Bader: Um, it's been a good to finally make this one happen. Last time we were chatting. Man, you were blowing my mind with some of your stories about hunting all over the world, African hunts, your knowledge on ballistics. And I thought there's gotta be a way we can distill some of this information, some of your background, some of the adventures that you've had into something where others can learn from your successes and your failures and, and.

[00:01:37] Travis Bader: Where you're at. So, uh, this is, this is going to be a fun one. Yeah, 

[00:01:41] Matt Siemens: I'm looking forward to it. I've been thinking about this for a while. I've always been taught. It's always cheaper to learn someone else's mistakes and make them yourself. Right. So if you can get some information from somebody who's firsthand, it's always a good 

[00:01:52] Travis Bader: start.

[00:01:53] Travis Bader: I wish I could be like that, but for whatever reason, I've always been the kind of guy who will look at somebody else's mistake and I got to make it myself and learn from it. Someone will say, Hey, don't touch that stove, it's hot as a child. Right. And I'd be. Hot? Like how hot? Like, what do you mean by hot?

[00:02:08] Travis Bader: Like, can I touch it really quick and get my hand off? 

[00:02:11] Matt Siemens: Yeah, I think all, I think that's in the man manual though, isn't 

[00:02:13] Travis Bader: it? Maybe that is. It's just obstinate, stubborn ADHD. So you've, uh, you've got a hunt in Africa lined up in a little bit, but I guess what I'd be interested in is. Your very first African hunt, lessons you learn from it, things that went well, things that maybe you would advise other people to do differently.

[00:02:36] Travis Bader: Uh, 

[00:02:36] Matt Siemens: my first hunt wasn't really planned. Uh, you always dreamt about going to Africa. I never thought I'd ever get there myself, to be honest. It was always something somebody else did. We grew up, um, no extra money. A lot of month led.

[00:02:50] Matt Siemens: And, uh, I was living, we were living in Southern Michigan at the time I was working with Cabela. So I was in the gun library system and my boss called me up and said, Hey, do you want to, do you think it's safe to go hunt in Zimbabwe? This is when Mugabe was out of season, the farms and all the advisories.

[00:03:04] Matt Siemens: I said, Hey, Phil, we live in Detroit. It can't be any worse. So three weeks later, we were in Africa and he had a deal, right? Arranged. I paid his airfare. He paid my hunt. And we went over there and, uh, my only regret is not 

[00:03:18] Travis Bader: going sooner. How 

[00:03:19] Matt Siemens: old were you? Uh, I would have been early thirties. 

[00:03:25] Travis Bader: Okay. Yeah. And you know, for me, I look at this and I say, man, you got to have pretty deep pockets if you want to go hunt outside of, even just outside of British Columbia.

[00:03:36] Travis Bader: But I'm starting to learn that might not necessarily be the case. No, 

[00:03:40] Matt Siemens: there's, it's much more affordable than people think it is. The airfare is what's the burden nowadays. That's all changed since our pandemic. But, um, animal for animal, Africa is pretty cheap. And then people will look at the high end countries that have are thousand dollars a day to hunt and think it's all like that.

[00:04:01] Matt Siemens: But no, you can go over there. I had a guy from Aldergrove. I sent him over. He did a 15 animal hunt and it was under 5, 000 Canadian. For a 15 animal, 

[00:04:09] Travis Bader: 10 day hunt. But that wouldn't include airfare. That didn't include 

[00:04:12] Matt Siemens: airfare, but at that time you could fly for 11, 500 bucks. Wow. 

[00:04:16] Travis Bader: So. I mean, 15 different animals, 5, 000.

[00:04:21] Travis Bader: Yeah. In how long? 10 days. 10 days. So what's it like when you get over there? I've heard, so a friend of mine, he was a pH and he's talks about, it's kind of like being in the lap of luxury. He says he came over. And did a hunt with a guide in BC and he shows up and he's like, okay, we're ready to hunt. And they're like, uh, where's your sleeping bags?

[00:04:39] Travis Bader: Where's your kit? Where's your gear? And he's like, what do you mean? Like, don't you guys supply all of this? No. 

[00:04:45] Matt Siemens: Yeah. It's a different world. Like a lot of people, when I start talking about it and they go, I, my friend went and they had servants and they had maids and they had a swimming pool and they had this, they had that.

[00:04:55] Matt Siemens: And I said, that's standard. That that's basic rudimentary there. Everybody has that. Wow. It's, it's a different way of life. It's like spa for 

[00:05:03] Travis Bader: men. Yes. So, so walk me through it. You arrive, what's it look like? I was shocked 

[00:05:10] Matt Siemens: at how big and modern Johannesburg was. I knew it was going to be big, but didn't quite comprehend as big as it was flying in.

[00:05:18] Matt Siemens: Um, the neat thing about there is when you get out of the city, you you're out of the city, there is nothing. Really? And, uh, we flew in, uh. I'm from Johannesburg, and the first ship we flew was the Belawayo, Zimbabwe, and it was all the Mugabe era, and there was nothing. There's all these big We went to the one version of Costco they have there, I think it was called farmers, a big discount chain.

[00:05:43] Matt Siemens: They had Coke and corn chips in the whole store, two racks. That was it. That was it. That was it. Uh, first time I was there, there was lineups for about two, three blocks for, for fuel, uh, fuel stations. The next time it was probably a mile long. And my third trip there, there was simply no fuel. Like you just couldn't get it.

[00:06:03] Matt Siemens: They were out. 

[00:06:04] Travis Bader: You just don't consider that from over 

[00:06:06] Matt Siemens: here. No. Yeah. Like the Africans always have that term. You have to make a plan. And if you can't plan ahead there, you aren't going to go very 

[00:06:13] Travis Bader: far. So what do you do? There's no fuel. The pH will 

[00:06:18] Matt Siemens: have all that sorted. He has all that. But if you like, you couldn't do it, do it yourself hunt there.

[00:06:22] Matt Siemens: Got it. Just because logistics and legality anyways. But, um, yeah, you have to plan for everything. I remember he came across in Botswana with a load of stuff for the trip and they tax the toilet paper as luxury items. 

[00:06:37] Travis Bader: Toilet paper is a luxury item. So it's, it's third world. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. So. Are you using firearms down there?

[00:06:47] Travis Bader: Are you bringing your own over or how does that work? I've done 

[00:06:49] Matt Siemens: it both ways. Yeah. Um, I always like using my own, but the more you travel with them, the more hassles you have. The trip I'm going on in March, I'm renting. Okay. Just, um, it's just so much easier. 

[00:07:04] Travis Bader: What are safety concerns like when you go over there?

[00:07:08] Travis Bader: Is it on the top of your mind? Like I had one. 

[00:07:09] Matt Siemens: No, no, I I've hunted places where it wasn't on the top of my mind. I couldn't sleep for the first couple of days. But, um, we're actually flying in Johannesburg this time, then we're going to drive four and a half, five hours across the country, my boss and myself.

[00:07:23] Matt Siemens: So we'll see how that goes. Um, talk to several people, four people say it's safe and they'll, Fifth person says, absolutely not. Do not even entertain the thought. And it's all major highways and set the last 40 kilometers. So I, I feel confident 

[00:07:36] Travis Bader: in it. Otherwise I wouldn't do it. He had a, uh, a friend. He was over there with his brother and his brother is a U S army.

[00:07:43] Travis Bader: I think it was an A10 pilot. And, um, anyways, they're, they're in Africa. I don't know. Uh, I think they're in South Africa and he was wearing a Casio watch. He's like, you better take that watch off. He's like, what do you mean? He says your life. Is worth less than what that Casio watch that you're wearing is, right?

[00:08:03] Travis Bader: Is that. 

[00:08:04] Matt Siemens: There, there's probably sections of that area like that. And, uh, I plan the route pretty close, like stay in the major highways best we can. We have a doctor friend of ours, his family from South Africa. They actually packed up and moved back, uh, two years 

[00:08:20] Travis Bader: ago. Packed up, moved back to South Africa.

[00:08:22] Travis Bader: Back to South Africa from, 

[00:08:23] Matt Siemens: from Chilliwack. 

[00:08:25] Travis Bader: Because? Well, that's a whole nother 

[00:08:28] Matt Siemens: conversation, but he just, like, we've had some pretty candid talks and stuff and well, their families from there and stuff, but they just felt there was. 

[00:08:37] Travis Bader: Isn't that telling 

[00:08:38] Matt Siemens: though? That's very telling. Right. And if it was up to me.

[00:08:41] Matt Siemens: When I'm, when we're done this, I get back in my truck and keep on driving the sea island, get on a plane and not come back myself. Really? Yeah. I'd be there, not South Africa, wouldn't be my first choice, but I would definitely go to Namibia 

[00:08:54] Travis Bader: and not come back. That'd be your first choice? Yeah. Namibia?

[00:08:56] Travis Bader: Namibia would be my first choice. Really? Yeah. So, uh, property over there is. Attainable? Yeah. 

[00:09:02] Matt Siemens: There's some regulations of buying agricultural lands and, and stuff, but it's attainable. And I've looked at farms. I've been looking at farms for a couple of years now, and I found like 30, 000 acre farms for less than what you can buy a lot in Chilliwack 

[00:09:15] Travis Bader: for.

[00:09:15] Travis Bader: Really? Well, do you have to worry about squatters or not having? Property next time you go down there. 

[00:09:22] Matt Siemens: No, not, not in Namibia per se. Okay. It depends where you buy to, but, uh, the, the cheap land is cheap for a reason and the water it's, it might sustain natural game, but livestock and stuff may struggle on it.

[00:09:35] Matt Siemens: Like here you talk about how many cows you can have on an acre. There it's 40, 50 hectares per, per animal. Like it changes. It reverses quite dramatically. I'm 

[00:09:45] Travis Bader: kidding. How did you get into this line of work? How did he get in? So your, your Cabela's working in the gun, gun counter, gun library? Well, this 

[00:09:54] Matt Siemens: goes way back.

[00:09:55] Matt Siemens: Um, I started working in a local gun shop in Abbotsford in 86. Just when I was in high school. Which one was that? Perfection Tackle and Guns. Okay. They're gone since, well, since I think 89. But anyway, so I started that and then my goal was law enforcement, went to university and stuff, and then I wanted to move to the U S for law enforcement.

[00:10:14] Matt Siemens: So I, um, we're looking to my, we got married, my wife's born in the U S we lived in Prince George. We applied for my immigration. We were told it would take years to come through. Three months, it came through here. You have to move. So I just look for the first job I can. I fired off her resume to Cabela's.

[00:10:29] Matt Siemens: They flew me down for an interview three days later and, uh, the local law enforcement agencies couldn't compete with what Cabela's paid and benefits. Wow. That was before they went public. Right. I actually had to work over them and they had two stores. Really? Yeah. Dick and Mary and Jim would come in the store.

[00:10:48] Matt Siemens: My wife started work there as well. And she was working the back door once and Dick and Mary tried coming in without ID. She wouldn't let him in. She didn't recognize him when we just started. So it was, it was, uh, they, they looked after employees very well. Nothing like it is today. Yeah, it's a little different now, isn't it?

[00:11:03] Matt Siemens: Yeah, it's, uh, you have shareholders that changes everything. It's the bottom line is, 

[00:11:09] Travis Bader: is what they look at. Well, I guess you still deal with Cabela's now with Korth. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, and then from Cabela's you got on to Korth, is that, was there a transition like that or what? Yeah. 

[00:11:21] Matt Siemens: Cabela's, um. I was in Idaho at the time with them at the Pulse Falls store, been there almost 15 years.

[00:11:28] Matt Siemens: They'd gone public, things were changing drastically and I was looking for something else and I said, if the next real job that comes along, I'm going to entertain. And I was dealing with a deal with one of the guys from Leupold. I worked in the Beaverton plant and I said, Hey, you know, I'm looking for somebody.

[00:11:42] Matt Siemens: Let me know. Two days later, Korth flew me to Alberta for an interview and the rest is history. 

[00:11:48] Travis Bader: Right. And I like, uh, we're going to have people chiming in, I'm sure they said, no, it's not Leupold, it's Leopold. No, that's Leupold. Okay. Yeah. A 

[00:11:55] Matt Siemens: hundred percent. Leupold. A hundred percent Leupold. If you call the plant, they're going to answer it Leupold and 

[00:11:59] Travis Bader: Stevens.

[00:12:00] Travis Bader: Leupold and Stevens. Yeah. My very first rifle was a Stevens. Okay. Little takedown, 22 Stevens favorite. Uh, I could fit it into my backpack. I'd go across the street from my school in a place that I called the desert because they had a bunch of sand there. And, uh, it's Joe Brown park out in Surrey. They actually had a bit of a range there that the police would use.

[00:12:19] Travis Bader: And I'd shoot there same as a Delta watershed and same as the Burns bog out here. I got a sign over there, uh, they all had ranges in there and that's, that's where I'd shoot growing up. Yeah, it's a different Stevens though, completely. Different Stevens. Yeah. Right. Okay. It's loophole to Stevens, but nothing to do with the firearm company.

[00:12:37] Travis Bader: Nothing to do with the Chippewa Falls, Massachusetts, Stevens. Got it. Okay. There we go. Um, I probably should know that. Shouldn't I? You 

[00:12:46] Matt Siemens: know, the firearm industry and stuff, you can never say never, right? So you never know it's, but it's a lot of people make that 

[00:12:53] Travis Bader: assumption. Okay. Well, Hey, I got to talk about my first firearm anyways, so nothing wrong with that one.

[00:13:00] Travis Bader: Yeah, I had a, um, custom made stock on it for my small frame and the shorter barrel on it. And it came off of a, uh, I think it was some old Cooey that was kind of cut down. And I, I remember even at five years old, trying to hold that thing up. It was the heaviest thing in the world and arched back and that, um, yeah, started shooting at four first gun at five.

[00:13:20] Travis Bader: That was that one. And there you go. But you're, uh, you're pretty heavy into the ballistics as well, too. 

[00:13:26] Matt Siemens: Yeah. I've always found it fascinating. Yeah. I couldn't do math to save my life in high school, but all the. You and me both. And even before all the apps came out and ballistic calculators came out, I could sit down and figure stuff out with your basic algebra and cause I had interest in it.

[00:13:44] Matt Siemens: And, uh, it's been great. Um, I still am very keen on terminal ballistics and I should say keen interested in it. Yeah, you always searching for that perfect bullet and stuff and, and, and being the Hornady rep, a lot of conversations of people with quote unquote, bullet failure. And that's, that's 

[00:14:04] Travis Bader: a. Tell me about 

[00:14:05] Matt Siemens: that.

[00:14:07] Matt Siemens: As soon as someone recovers a bullet that doesn't perform the way they want to try claiming the bullet failed. Well, I always, where would you get the bullet from? Well, the animal, well, was it dead? Well, yeah. Well then, okay. How has it failed? Right. But I had an, be careful. I don't want to mention names. I had an account.

[00:14:27] Matt Siemens: Contact me once, they had a bunch of bullet failures with the ELDX in Africa. Okay. Had to shoot a Gemsbuck nine times. It didn't die and all this stuff. And so, well, I said, doesn't sound right. Send me pictures. Well, they were literally, there wasn't a shot in the vitals. It was all got shot, shot in that. It was just by North American standards, they may have been in the vitals, but the African tropical games vitals located differently.

[00:14:51] Matt Siemens: Really? Yeah. And, uh, quite a, quite enough, like, like some animals you tuck behind the front, right behind the front leg. Yeah. That's a gut shot. There's nothing 

[00:14:57] Travis Bader: there. Okay. Yeah. I'll, I'll use you like right behind the front leg or if they're walking, I'll split the 

[00:15:01] Matt Siemens: V, go up. A little dramatic, but the giraffe.

[00:15:04] Matt Siemens: Okay. All the vitals are in front of the front leg. If you, if you tuck it in, tuck it in behind the rear shoulder, you're just going through gut. 

[00:15:12] Travis Bader: Interesting. Yeah. So they're gut shooting. They're shooting these things in tails and hooves and saying the bullet's not working 

[00:15:18] Matt Siemens: right. Blaming the bullet. When the ELDX first came out, I was really keen to try it.

[00:15:22] Matt Siemens: Not a real good bear hunting spot. We could watch this one bank at 700 yards, 707. It ranged across and we were all set up for this. So we loaded a bunch, we couldn't even get the bullets yet. So I had to buy. Factory ammo, pull it out and load it into the cartridges we were shooting. And we shot three bears that trip.

[00:15:40] Matt Siemens: All total, the yardage didn't total a hundred yards. So we were all, we're all equipped to shoot long range and everything was right in front of 

[00:15:47] Travis Bader: us. So, yeah, I did, um, I like that ELDX. I've used it in, uh, uh, 6. 5 Creep War with great success and then, uh, 280 Ackley improved. You know, I took a, uh, a moose at a much further distance than I probably should have with the, uh, ELDX in hindsight, who was, uh, poor arranging and few errors, everything went as it ought to, went down, but that was, uh, almost 800 meters away.

[00:16:15] Travis Bader: And, um, uh, it performed, performed as it ought to, 

[00:16:19] Matt Siemens: it's a, it's a good bullet. It's, you can't have a bullet soft enough to expand at low velocities and then overexpand, not overexpand when you're real close from personal at extreme velocities. It's softer. So it expands at lower velocity. So if it separates up front, if you shoot something at 10 yards, well, it wasn't really designed for that.

[00:16:42] Matt Siemens: You're just, you're just, you're pushing it beyond its limit, its impact velocity. Another trend now is fast twist rifles. Right. I'm seeing that. And, uh, you need the fast twist to spin the bullet to stabilize it, but you can also overstate over spin it. Now your RPM jumps, you start getting RPM over 300, 000 RPM, 320, 350, and the bullets aren't designed for that.

[00:17:08] Travis Bader: Burst apart. 

[00:17:09] Matt Siemens: Centrifugal force will pull them apart. Right. Okay. And is it the bullet that a bullet come apart? Yeah. Well, it just didn't work, but then people, people say it doesn't work, but no, it did because you just be on this limits. Like I always say, you can haul bags of manure in your Corvette, but a pickup truck's better.

[00:17:26] Matt Siemens: Everything has its purpose, right? Right. 

[00:17:28] Travis Bader: There really isn't one be all end all for everything. No, 

[00:17:32] Matt Siemens: there's a lot of great products out there. There's some great competitors out there. And, uh, but everything has its limits. 

[00:17:40] Travis Bader: So the faster twist rate, I've always been of the assumption that if you over twist a bullet as better than under twisting a bullet.

[00:17:49] Travis Bader: Yes. For accuracy. For accuracy. Yeah. Uh, but you start. Twisting a little too fast, pushing them out a little too hot, too fast. You're going to end up having centripetal force and centrifugal force, uh, failure. Well, you 

[00:18:01] Matt Siemens: start thinking if you, if you do the math and there's a formula and it slips in my mind right now, I was remembering on the way in, but now I can't.

[00:18:08] Matt Siemens: Um, like there's some of the stuff, some of the rifle, there's a rifle company out there that's twisted their six, five PRCs, a whole inch faster than Sammy's spec and that's pushing it at 320, 000 RPM. That that's spinning. Yeah. And it's. 

[00:18:27] Travis Bader: So why would they do that outside semi spec just for marketing purposes?

[00:18:30] Matt Siemens: Well, I think the general, general topic is, and I've always had it too, when in Dell, it's spinning faster. Right. But I, I, with my thinking of that was back when I was building dangerous game guns and you want to be able to get to the vitals from any angle. And if it's too slow, it veers off. So when in Dell, it's spinning faster.

[00:18:49] Matt Siemens: But when you're shooting solids, it's a different story than shooting cup and core bullets, expanding bullets, I should say. Cause some non expanding solids will be cup and core as well, just reversed. 

[00:18:59] Travis Bader: Right. So for me, I'm used to primarily hunting within BC. I've done a little bit in the U S, uh, what are some of the biggest differences that I'm going to find for my style of hunting over here for North American game than I would over in Africa?

[00:19:17] Travis Bader: The amount of 

[00:19:17] Matt Siemens: game you're going to see. Yeah. And, uh, this is going to sound terrible, but spotlighting. Okay. Yeah. I've done it in New Zealand, Australia, Pakistan, Africa, and it's an acceptable way to hunt. It's a different way to hunt. 

[00:19:35] Travis Bader: Um, so are you just doing that to see where the glare comes back off of eyes or you try to freeze them or.

[00:19:43] Travis Bader: It's going out to, 

[00:19:44] Matt Siemens: uh, some animals are more nocturnal, so you should look for the nocturnal species. It's just, you should do it one day at one, I bring a group over, we'll do one night at one day and night hunting. Okay. It's just a different experience that you can't do here legally. And it's a hundred percent legal there.

[00:20:00] Matt Siemens: You're not, you're not shooting your impala and your stuff. You're shooting the night species, like honey badger, stuff like that. And jackal and all that fun stuff. 

[00:20:11] Travis Bader: I remember I was in, um, an area here in BC and we're coming back from our hunt for the day, you know, sun's going down. We've got, uh, one hour after sunset for legal shooting.

[00:20:22] Travis Bader: And as we're heading. We see a truck going up and people sitting on the back of it and they got their big spotlight and like, hold on a second, what's going on here. Right. And so I get on the report, oppose your polluter line and get a hold of, just let them know what's going on. And I, and I get a, um, uh, someone come back.

[00:20:41] Travis Bader: Got back to me afterwards and says, well, uh, certain people are allowed to do that. Like, what do you mean? Right. And indigenous groups, they say, we're, we're not going to touch it. So I researched a little bit further and I guess there was a court case here in British Columbia and there's an indigenous group over on the island and they were successful.

[00:20:59] Travis Bader: And they said back in, um, ancestral hunting time, we'd go with torches and they made their case that way. But it only applies to that one area. And I guess it took a while for conservation officers to kind of get the grounding and know what's allowed and what's permitted and what isn't. Now it's pretty well accepted that, no, you can't do that.

[00:21:19] Travis Bader: And, you know, we work with a lot of different indigenous groups and like, yeah, no, we don't do that. You can't, this is just a rogue group of people. There's always a few 

[00:21:27] Matt Siemens: bad apples. Always going to be that way. And we're, we're dealing with that stuff now in the province with, with, with some of the first nations.

[00:21:35] Matt Siemens: Are trying to do, and they have, they're trying to, they're trying to manage it as a resource. And then you have other groups that, from my point of view, you're trying to eliminate it because there's no sustainability. Yeah, but that's, that's another rabbit hole. 

[00:21:50] Travis Bader: Yeah. You know, it's a friend of mine. He was, uh, on the podcast before conservation officer Ojibwe bear clan is his background and the bear clan is they're the protectors of the environment and the people in the, um, Very interesting talking to him about that subject and talking to, uh, cause he approaches it both from the indigenous side, as well as the conservation officer side, man, I learned a lot, like just the sheer number of different groups that we have here in British Columbia and the number of groups that are going well above and beyond what, uh, non indigenous folks are doing to help conserve and to protect what's going on there.

[00:22:30] Travis Bader: It was. There's a really encouraging conversation, actually. Yeah. 

[00:22:34] Matt Siemens: Like I said, there's some guys out there trying to do the right thing. And there's some guys out there with, with no, not looking for the future, unfortunately. 

[00:22:41] Travis Bader: Yeah. There's always going to be those bad apples. Um, you know, speaking of that, part of the reason I thought this would be kind of interesting is because you bring that background and that wealth of experience and you're, you're, uh, dealing in an area that most people from North America don't have familiarity with.

[00:22:59] Travis Bader: You know, you look at how the news will portray African hunting and how social media can portray it, but there's a whole other side to that as well. And this is something that, uh, my friend who's a PH was getting into is like, you know, the amount of good that comes out of the African hunting, the amount of conservation efforts and money that's put back into the society and species that are only around because of the hunting.

[00:23:21] Travis Bader: And that's something that, uh, hunters will talk about, but I don't think the, uh, the general populace is, is aware of, of all of those ins and 

[00:23:30] Matt Siemens: outs. No. And how much of the animals actually used in Africa would blow people's mind. Really? Yeah. Like I'm, it would be funny if BC conservation would enforce the edible meat law to African standards.

[00:23:44] Matt Siemens: What's their 

[00:23:45] Travis Bader: standards? 

[00:23:47] Matt Siemens: If it's made of protein, it can rot. You can eat it. 

[00:23:49] Travis Bader: Really? Yeah. Yeah. We don't, uh, you know, BC conservation has got to, and we've got a good standard over here, but not to the same degree. In Namibia, 

[00:23:59] Matt Siemens: when you shoot a Gamsbok, they clean the colon out and then they. Barbecue it till it's crispy and they think it tastes great.

[00:24:10] Matt Siemens: Well, have you tried it? Oh, it's like eating crispy rubber bands. Okay. But, uh, it's, I'd rather have a Reese's peanut butter cup. Right. But it's, um, they, they swear by it. I mean, I always try everything just be part of it, but no, they eat like they'll clean the poncho, everything. And if they don't eat it, their dogs eat it.

[00:24:33] Matt Siemens: I've seen them take stomach contents in buckets. Back to the house for fertilizer in the garden. It 

[00:24:39] Travis Bader: totally makes sense. 

[00:24:40] Matt Siemens: Yep. It's nothing goes 

[00:24:42] Travis Bader: to waste. We had a, a butcher on the podcast and he's talking about how he uses every part of the animals through his abattoir. Yeah. And he's watching how making compost out of it and the, the effects that it's having on, uh, the orchards that he's putting it in.

[00:24:59] Matt Siemens: I mean, the North Americans got it. We got it pretty, pretty down pat with pigs. Mm. You know, the only thing they don't use in the pig. Right. 

[00:25:07] Travis Bader: Well, what's that the toenails and the snout? The squeal. The squeal, 

[00:25:10] Matt Siemens: okay. Everything, everything else is used, but Africa, everything is treated that way. Absolutely everything.

[00:25:16] Matt Siemens: I was shocked, like shooting hyenas and jackals, they eat that. Okay. Yeah. Some of the, like I've shot cats there and they eat them like, like nothing goes to waste. So I 

[00:25:26] Travis Bader: had, um, I've had cougar here. Yeah. I've never hunted cougar. Um, last SCI dinner I was at, uh, I think it was Tammy, she was doing the, the cooking out there and cook some up.

[00:25:36] Travis Bader: That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, she did. Uh, and you don't think, I don't know, I don't think most people would normally think eating cougar would actually be a good meat, but yeah, it was amazing. 

[00:25:47] Matt Siemens: You know, and there's been a big push. Like you see some of the guys now trying to push eating coyotes and stuff.

[00:25:53] Matt Siemens: Well, okay. I'll draw a line there, but, um, I'll, I'll try most things, but. 

[00:25:58] Travis Bader: Yeah, I can't see. I'd be too keen on that. And I don't know if that's because we have a, an emotional connection to our own dogs. And you look at that or you look at what these things eat and the amount of bugs that they have in their body.

[00:26:10] Travis Bader: Um, 

[00:26:11] Matt Siemens: yeah, it's something, no harm. Anybody wants to try it, but it's not 

[00:26:16] Travis Bader: my cup of tea. I think Ranella said that he tried, uh, Eaton, Eaton Coyote at one 

[00:26:21] Matt Siemens: point. Yeah. I've seen one of his, uh, shows on it. Okay. And I guess you can put enough spice on anything to make it taste what you want, but it's, it's just the 

[00:26:31] Travis Bader: thought of it.

[00:26:31] Travis Bader: Right. Remember that guy in the States, I think he was a dentist, maybe a doctor and he, uh, shot a lion over and after it. I think he, from what I understand, everything was done above board legally. 

[00:26:42] Matt Siemens: 100 percent legal. 

[00:26:44] Travis Bader: And he posted it on social media and he was getting death threats. Dr. 

[00:26:49] Matt Siemens: Walter Palmer. Okay.

[00:26:50] Matt Siemens: He came, he used to come to the Cabela store I used to work 

[00:26:53] Travis Bader: at. Okay. 

[00:26:54] Matt Siemens: Yeah. And, uh, he had even guilty of what they accused him of, and then they found out he wasn't. Right. It would have been a 300 fine. Like it wasn't even a, it was breaking the law is breaking the law. So it's not right, but they hadn't.

[00:27:10] Matt Siemens: Right. And, uh, it's an area I've hunted real close to where he shot that lion. Okay. And the national park boundary, they come and go all the time. And that's all it was. It came out of the park and they shot the lion. Okay. And the big thing, funny thing there is they called it Cecil the lion. Oh, you name it.

[00:27:26] Matt Siemens: Yeah, you name it. And that's the first thing, but. No self respecting Zimbabwean is going to name a lion after the big oppressor Cecil Rhodes. So it was fabrication right from the start. And they played on heartstrings, people who didn't know. And, and when I talked to people over there about it, cause I hunted there since and like the locals would never name something Cecil.

[00:27:52] Matt Siemens: No kidding. 

[00:27:52] Travis Bader: Yeah. We'll just watch a watch. It keeps, oh, there we go. Not, not in positive 

[00:27:56] Matt Siemens: light anyways. Right, 

[00:27:57] Travis Bader: right. Yes. Um, so is that something that, uh, you've had to deal with is people, uh, I don't, I don't see you posting a whole bunch of, uh, stuff that would be controversial on social media, but if you had to deal with, uh, Uh, individuals who are just adamantly against us who might not have the background or knowledge of, 

[00:28:20] Matt Siemens: of what you're doing.

[00:28:21] Matt Siemens: Yeah. I've had death threats. Uh, the first one we thought was kind of comical, uh, was back when I was in Michigan in the gun library, we put pictures up of stuff we'd shot, credibility to gun library. And I put a picture up of a giraffe I shot. Okay. And, um, one of the guys from work sent me a link. Hey, check out this link.

[00:28:39] Matt Siemens: And here, here was this blog and they were going to find the guy who killed this giraffe and come get him. And my picture was on the blog. I thought it was comical. So I jumped on the blog and asked the guys where they wanted to meet. And of course no one piped up. I don't think it's those. It is a dangerous situation.

[00:28:59] Matt Siemens: Some of these people are quite fanatical and with the family and stuff, it's any death threat I get now, I deal with it accordingly. I have contact authorities and, and, um, try getting it dealt with because it is, what I'm doing is legal. Science, conservation based, and there's a reason I do it. I, I enjoy it for one, but it's money back in the environment, it's things working, it's managing the herd, right?

[00:29:27] Travis Bader: Yeah. If somebody is going to threaten you, whether it's a death threat or just a threat in any way, shape or form, one thing I've learned is you never laugh them off. Nope. You always take it seriously. Worst case scenario, you're wrong. The other way around, worst case scenario. I'd rather be wrong acting accordingly than treating it as if it was 

[00:29:48] Matt Siemens: a joke.

[00:29:49] Matt Siemens: Yeah. The whole hunting thing draws very heavy emotions from both sides. And you get fanaticals on both sides too. And like I said earlier, bad apples, but it seems like the anti hunting movement is based on a whole lot of things on emotion without any scientific, very little science behind it. 

[00:30:06] Travis Bader: And that's one thing we see over and over again.

[00:30:08] Travis Bader: I mean, when we're talking about, uh, uh, wolf culling over here and we're talking about caribou herds and, uh, everyone talks about, oh, this is, there's no science. This is all emotion. Then you're reacting to it. And then people will pull out or cherry pick their science or cherry pick their stats. And I don't know if it was Disraeli that said it, but someone attributed it to him.

[00:30:28] Travis Bader: He says, you know, there's liars, damn liars and statisticians, right? You can make that look any way you want. Um, how do you start separating that emotion to be able to, uh, articulate what it is that you're doing, or do you bother, like, do you just let people have their emotions and you say, look at what I'm doing is legal.

[00:30:50] Travis Bader: It's helping the environment. It's based on conservation. Like, where do you fall in that? 

[00:30:55] Matt Siemens: You have to kind of take it and, um, try to weigh your audience to see, see if you have any chance of making any headway. And it's, I've seen it. I've converted a few people, but there are some people you can't convert.

[00:31:12] Matt Siemens: When I lived in the States, it's a little, little different topic, but very similar. Gun control and the classic word machine gun. One of my good friend I worked with, he had his class three, he had a bunch of neat stuff and he had an old original Tommy gun. Right. And we would take people out who were anti gun, anti machine gun, nobody should own this.

[00:31:33] Matt Siemens: Nobody knows what it takes to own them, the cost of them and all the licensing. You could take the biggest anti gun person and give them that Tommy gun and you couldn't remove their smile with a jackhammer after. They might not be pro gun, right, but they come out with a different point of view, especially when they start talking and asking questions about how much it costs to get a gun, legal gun and the paperwork and the background checks and all your tax stamps and stuff.

[00:32:01] Matt Siemens: And they realize that these things aren't for sale in the street corners. No, they're a heavy investment. 

[00:32:06] Travis Bader: Well, how is, cause of course we've been under a liberal government for the last number of years, looks like things might be changing based on polling and where things are at, people are getting tired of the same old, same old, and where that's been leading them.

[00:32:21] Travis Bader: But one of the big pushes that you've been seeing is obviously on the firearm side and trying to restrict or eliminate classes of firearms. How has that been? Impacting your livelihood and the business that you work with. Have you been seeing that as a, uh, significant threat? 

[00:32:41] Matt Siemens: Substantial downturn with loss of handguns, handgun sales, ammunition sales and handgun calibers are.

[00:32:48] Matt Siemens: I've slowed down as well. You don't sell as much two, two, three as you used to. 

[00:32:53] Travis Bader: No. 

[00:32:54] Matt Siemens: And it's, it's definitely a threat. They're not going to stop with what they have now. 

[00:33:02] Travis Bader: I think we made that pretty darn clear. 

[00:33:04] Matt Siemens: It's if they were based on actual science and crime reports and listening to chief of police and all that kind of stuff, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

[00:33:14] Matt Siemens: It's not you and me causing the problems. 

[00:33:17] Travis Bader: Well, the police don't even. They used to have, Hey, you know, chief of police, you union of police officers, and, uh, they're, they're backing this. They don't even have that. 

[00:33:26] Matt Siemens: No, it won't make any difference because it's not the legal guy. That's the problem. Yes. A handful of guns get stolen every year and it shouldn't happen, but in the courts, the guys get caught stealing a gun in there.

[00:33:42] Matt Siemens: They're out before the paperwork's finished. 

[00:33:44] Travis Bader: They're in, they're out. Yeah. Right. Yeah, it's, uh, it's funny, the tie between the firearm side that we see, the emotions involved there, as well as on the hunting side, the second you name the animal, a second, it's furry and fuzzy. You don't see, you see, um, Uh, seals, they're cute and big eyes and baby seals and all the rest.

[00:34:07] Travis Bader: And so there'll be the poster child on a, on an anti hunting, uh, campaign. You don't see slugs and eels and, uh, the, the ugly critters out there. No, it's only the, only the cute ones. Yeah. Is there a case to be made, uh, for hunting, uh, that can, uh, elicit similar emotions? In what way? Well, I mean, if anti hunters, cause we were talking about this before, and you're saying, you know, if, if the, uh, hunting community could get together and work together as a team in the same way that the anti hunting community will get together.

[00:34:44] Travis Bader: Um, and we'd be an unstoppable force. 

[00:34:47] Matt Siemens: Yeah. If the, if the hunting community would be a cohesive as the antis, we'd be unstoppable. Right. But here you have the bow hunters against these people, Oh, you hunt with a crossbow. You're not a real archer. And it's, it's, this goes down that road. Right. It's never ending.

[00:35:03] Matt Siemens: It's global. Uh, we're this industry or just sport is full of A type personalities and everybody wants, wants to have their, their voice heard. And they're the most important way of hunting. SCI fights for all hunting doesn't make a difference. And I use the term sport and I don't even like using that when I talk about hunting.

[00:35:27] Matt Siemens: Sport hunting term came from my research on it came way back when they actually, actually have market hunting. Okay. So the guy would say, I'm going hunting. Why are you, is that for your job? No, it's my sport. I'm going out for my own enjoyment. It's not a sport like football is, but it was a recreational activity where the guy could fill his freezer and do that kind of, he wasn't going out to sell the meat, he's going out for his 

[00:35:48] Travis Bader: own, own use.

[00:35:49] Travis Bader: I, I heard a Ron Spomer recently come up and he's like, you know why it's called sport hunting? He says, because there are rules and regulations and limits to what you're like any other sport. It's not just go out there and. And kill whatever is out there. There's very strict protocol that needs to be cut followed, which is why they call it sports.

[00:36:09] Travis Bader: So that was, that was his take on it. I thought, you know, that's very well said. I thought so as well. And the, I know in the province here, everyone talks about, you look in our provincial. Uh, websites and legislation and everything that they talk about sport hunting. And everyone says, we got to get rid of that term.

[00:36:27] Travis Bader: It's such a bad term. Well, do we need to get rid of the term or do people need to understand, need to educate, right? We it's a sport, not in the same way. Like, ha ha, this is a fun sport. It's go and kill something. No. There are strict protocol that we have to follow. We need to be able to harvest only within certain times of the day, certain times of the year, certain species, certain, uh, age groups.

[00:36:49] Travis Bader: And we need to use all, all of the animal. And it's all done in conjunction with, uh, biologists who are looking at, uh, reproduction rates and, uh, what's going to be the best 

[00:37:03] Matt Siemens: for the environment. Caring capacity, the land and all that stuff. That's right. Another one that's real bad connotations is trophy hunting.

[00:37:10] Matt Siemens: And if people look at me and I say, I'm a trophy hunter and they just go off irate. So let me give you an example. You have a field of 14 deer out there, seven or bucks, you have seven trophy hunters, you have six bucks left in the field when the hunt's over, you have seven meat hunters. They're all gone.

[00:37:31] Matt Siemens: They're all gone. Right. It's, I haven't shot. I've not shot game before, cause it was raining and I didn't want to deal with a wet animal in the rain. I mean, it's, I enjoy being out there. Yep. It was nice and a whole lot, but it wasn't. I didn't have to take it. I didn't have to feel the freezer, but anything I do take, everything is used.

[00:37:52] Matt Siemens: Not that African standard, but everything, everything's used. 

[00:37:56] Travis Bader: I, you're not deep frying up the, uh, the colon 

[00:37:59] Matt Siemens: and. No, I, I do a lot of, I make a lot of bill tongue and drawer wars. I love bill tongue. The South African dried meat and dried sausage. What was the other one you 

[00:38:08] Travis Bader: said? Drawer wars. Drawer wars, dried sausage.

[00:38:10] Travis Bader: Okay. Okay. Yeah. I didn't know that's what it's called, but I quite like that. I make 

[00:38:13] Matt Siemens: quite a bit of it. And a lot of times I'm running to the store when they have ground beef on sale, I'm making it with that. But otherwise I'm using loose term venison, all this stuff. I, all the stuff I shoot, whether it's antelope or moose or 

[00:38:27] Travis Bader: elk, it's.

[00:38:28] Travis Bader: I find it's got to have a good fat cap on it for the biltong just to be. 

[00:38:32] Matt Siemens: Yeah, it's, I was on a hunt in Africa and it was probably, I posted a picture and it's three, four times, three or four times more fat than there is, than there is meat. But it's, it's the, it absorbs the flavor differently, the texture.

[00:38:49] Matt Siemens: If people look at me and I say, well, try it first and then try it. It's like, Oh, I didn't think it'd be like that. You know, it's, it's 

[00:38:54] Travis Bader: good. Yeah. And it's an excellent energy source. Like if I'm doing a fly in hunt, I'll have Biltong 

[00:39:00] Matt Siemens: with me. Is this basically a little bit of vinegar on it? Um, with some coriander and salt and pepper and dried.

[00:39:07] Matt Siemens: That's all it 

[00:39:07] Travis Bader: is. That's all it is. But over in Africa, don't they just dry it out on rocks? Is that. 

[00:39:11] Matt Siemens: Yeah, they still use vinegar. Okay. Just as an antibacterial. I believe I could be wrong on that. It adds flavor as well. Right. And I've done, we went on a tuna fishing trip. So I made a bunch up and I had all the different types of vinegar and it did make a difference 

[00:39:27] Travis Bader: in flavor.

[00:39:28] Travis Bader: So what's the best vinegar to use? 

[00:39:29] Matt Siemens: Malt, brown malt vinegar is my favorite. But I use like, uh. Red wine, apple cider, white, and brown malt. And brown malt I found was the best. Do you 

[00:39:39] Travis Bader: put it in a dehydrator or what do you do? How do you? 

[00:39:43] Matt Siemens: I built my own, just, just pulling warm air over it. That's it. And then you always that thing, how, how dry.

[00:39:50] Matt Siemens: Some guys like it moist. Some guys like it bone dry, three or four days, and then it's done for me. 

[00:39:55] Travis Bader: Okay. And it lasts pretty long. Never 

[00:39:58] Matt Siemens: goes rotten cause you're eating it, right? That's what I thought. It doesn't last that long. I mean, never tried it that way. Cause it doesn't last long enough. 

[00:40:05] Travis Bader: So. With the difficulties that firearms businesses are facing under the current legislation and our current government, uh, are there, is Korth Group hiring?

[00:40:15] Travis Bader: Are they, uh, are they kind of holding, holding the pattern right now? We're 

[00:40:19] Matt Siemens: holding the pattern. The warehouse is always looking for good people to, to work. Yeah. In Okotoks there. The rep group, we've got a pretty solid group. Everybody. It's not just a bunch of salesmen, and I'm proud to say that I was lucky when I started with Korth, I didn't know what to expect and, um, they had basically everything I was using already, so I didn't have to sell myself short on anything, everything that the, all the lines we had and stuff I had at home already.

[00:40:52] Matt Siemens: Perfect. I've been diehard loophole for a long time. Yeah. When I graduated high school, I bought myself Webby Mark five, and I put a loophole on it, , and then when I got done with university, I went and bought myself a high-end European scope. Okay. Wouldn't hold zero really? When I was guiding my particular one, I'd have to check my rifles with new clients all the time.

[00:41:13] Matt Siemens: Went back to loophole. Never had that happen. Interesting. They're man made, anything can happen. Sure. They have a warranty. We can fix them right in Okotoks. Generally speaking, they'll spend more time with Canada Post than they'll spend with us. Really? And I've never had one lose zero. On one African hunt, I had an adjustment.

[00:41:33] Matt Siemens: I had to make some adjustments on my gun and the O ring. The seal on the adjustment came out. Didn't affect performance. Sure. If, if hunting coastal Alaska might be a different thing, but. It'd be an issue. I was hunting Matezi in Zimbabwe and it was dry. Yeah. It wasn't an issue. Sent it back, 

[00:41:50] Travis Bader: had it back in a week.

[00:41:52] Travis Bader: Well, don't you guys have a range in your basement as well? Yeah, we have a 

[00:41:55] Matt Siemens: 425 yard pistol base and 200 yard rifle base. So we can go down there and check zeros and, uh, We had a guy come in once, uh, send a scope back. Wouldn't hold zero and they had, he's on a 378 Weatherby. So the tech came to me and this is when I was working there.

[00:42:14] Matt Siemens: He goes, Hey, what's the biggest gun you have at home? He put a scope on. I got a 500 A square. We'll bring it in. We got to test it. Well, I shot literally three, three holes touching with it. The scope held zero. It's just the guy was afraid of his gun. Mm. 

[00:42:28] Travis Bader: How often do you find that? 

[00:42:30] Matt Siemens: Most of the time. Really?

[00:42:31] Matt Siemens: Yeah. The, the, this stat goes back a few years, but I believe it was loophole made more scopes in three months than all the European companies did in a year combined. Holy crow. Out of those, out of those scopes, did I say scopes and guns? Any scopes? Yeah. Out of those scopes, 3% would come back for warranty.

[00:42:51] Matt Siemens: Okay. Outta that 3%, one third of 1% was actually defective. The rest was user error. 

[00:42:58] Travis Bader: And it was kind of like websites or technology versus like, it's not working. And so the person, have you reset your computer? Oh, it works now. Okay. Or are you clicking on the right thing? Right. Oh, okay. So there's gotta be a heavy education piece in there as well.

[00:43:13] Travis Bader: We'd have people 

[00:43:14] Matt Siemens: send them back. I put my scope in the safe and now I take it out, it's reset itself to factory defaults. Oh yeah. 

[00:43:19] Travis Bader: That's. It doesn't do that. Like. Totally, totally 

[00:43:21] Matt Siemens: happens. It's, people's a betting issue. The biggest thing is a lot of people think all these rifles we're shooting are square.

[00:43:28] Matt Siemens: But like you have all these different accesses. So you have the line of the board to the line of the action. And is it threaded straight? Is the barrel threaded straight? The action threaded straight? I used to have some long 648 screws, probably six, eight inches long. Okay. I used to screw them into the action holes and look, look back and show people.

[00:43:47] Matt Siemens: And they, they didn't line up. They were close, but you don't see it when it's short, but when you have them long, you could see how far they were out. 

[00:43:55] Travis Bader: Totally. Oh, that's an interesting, I've never thought about doing that. Yeah, 

[00:43:58] Matt Siemens: it's, we live in a world of tolerance. There's not absolutes and making a base square is easy, but the first thing that gets blamed is the optic and it's the ammunition.

[00:44:11] Matt Siemens: And it's never the nut behind the trigger, which is usually the problem. 

[00:44:14] Travis Bader: Yeah. You know, I, I remember there is, so prior to being, uh, silver core outdoors was silver core training and it was silver core gunworks and would do firearms repair and maintenance for the general public, as well as for, uh, different law enforcement groups who do extended work, um, armor car companies.

[00:44:34] Travis Bader: There's one government group that, um, we're doing all of their, their handguns, all of their pistols. And, um, I would get called on down to where they're training on a training day with a bunch of fresh recruits. And they like the gun's not working and you got to get this fixed. You got to get it right for us.

[00:44:52] Travis Bader: And I said, well. Have you, and this would be the instructors, right? Well, have you shot it? Well, no, but the student, it was all over the place. And they said, and so, okay, well, let me see. And then they got the whole class. They're watching me and the instructors. They're watching me and I take it out and they run the target all the way to the end for me.

[00:45:13] Travis Bader: This is how you got to test your accuracy. I'm like, okay, here we go. Right. I better, better make sure I do my part. Everybody here is watching all the bullets go exactly where they're supposed to go and it comes back. Oh, what'd you do? I'm like, Oh, you know, in front of everyone. Oh, I made a few tweaks on it.

[00:45:26] Travis Bader: It shouldn't be a problem anymore. And then separately aside with the instructor, next time you call up, make sure you get a second person to take some shots on it, and that should be the number one thing I would think that any, any company would say. It wasn't performing for you. Did you give it to somebody else who, you know, to be proficient that it wasn't performing for?

[00:45:45] Matt Siemens: I always tell people, if you keep your eyes open, your accuracy improves too. There was another case when I was out of the office in Okotoks, a tech said, Hey, I got to test some scopes for an agency. So we had two Kimber rifles at that point, the 308, I'm going to use police tactic. I can't remember exactly what your model it was, but there were no one shooters.

[00:46:06] Matt Siemens: So we had them all in rings. We went up to the Rosebud range and we sat a hundred yards and we shot groups and just Cut them out and attach them to the scope and sent them back. Then the agency contacted him wanting to know what rests we were using, because they wanted to buy the same so they could test it themselves.

[00:46:21] Matt Siemens: And he went back, no, no, they were shot off sandbags. They'll burn, I was a burner at the time. It was a burner up in myself. We just shot him off sandbags and they couldn't believe it. And this is ERT stuff. Yeah. There's a lot of qualified ERT people out there, but there's. 

[00:46:38] Travis Bader: Sometimes ego gets in the way too, right?

[00:46:40] Travis Bader: Something's not going 

[00:46:41] Matt Siemens: right. Can't be me. Back to A type personalities, right? Well, 

[00:46:44] Travis Bader: that's it. You know, we are a group of individuals, people who find solace in the outdoors typically don't want to be surrounding themselves with a whole bunch of other people, right? Yeah. Um, people who want to. Uh, hunt or fish, or they're typically people who are self sufficient and they have their way of doing things as work for them in the past.

[00:47:05] Travis Bader: Uh, even just in the firearms community, there are some social aspects to that, but even in there, there's a lot of aid type, uh, individualistic type, uh, personalities, and I think that's probably. The number one thing that the, uh, hunting community and the firearms community has to recognize and square themselves with if they want to all work together.

[00:47:27] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[00:47:27] Matt Siemens: I find a lot of the old wives tales from 40 years ago, aren't dying or even 50 or 60 years ago, like which ones, uh, how a bullet flies through the air and, and. A scope gathering light, nothing gathers light. It transmits light. It doesn't gather light. Tell me 

[00:47:42] Travis Bader: about that. 

[00:47:44] Matt Siemens: Well, people think it's gathers light because we, when you look through the scope, if you're low light situation, like last light, you're out and you look and it looks brighter through your scope.

[00:47:52] Matt Siemens: Well, now it's focused to your eye. Right. And it's coming right back to your pupil. Because, well, I need a bigger lens. We'll gather, gather more light. No, your erector system inside the scopes the same size, the transmission is the same. It will affect your exit pupil, right? But a lot of that times when you get to our age, our eyes, our pupils aren't expanding that much anymore, anymore.

[00:48:15] Matt Siemens: Doesn't help anything. Right. Within reason. There's always, some of the higher power scopes are huge. Like when I was culling in, in New Zealand, I had a three and a half, 10 on my rifle. I was doing quite good, but I went back to next season and I was going to be the bad guy. I was, I was going to rack up numbers.

[00:48:31] Matt Siemens: I put a six and a half, a 20 on my, on my gun. Target dot, and I had it dialed, cranked it up to 20 power and just made a fool of myself. Cause early morning you couldn't, it wasn't a knife, exit people wasn't big enough. Right. Then you feel the view was so small, you're trying to find these goats running.

[00:48:49] Matt Siemens: And then I ended up cranking it back down to 10 and left it there. I've got my numbers back up. 

[00:48:53] Travis Bader: That's usually, it's amazing how that works. 

[00:48:56] Matt Siemens: Yeah. It's would have been cheaper keeping it. Right. But it's one of the things that it's all this stuff, like the, my culling in the South Pacific really taught me a lot old, like testing his old wives, tails with different bullets and stuff.

[00:49:09] Matt Siemens: Cause you go down and you're shooting quantities, animals. You could shoot in a day, what you couldn't shoot in several lifetimes here. Really? And so with different bullets and stuff, it really taught me what worked and what didn't. 

[00:49:24] Travis Bader: So this, the whole culling aspect, they take a look, it's usually with invasive species.

[00:49:29] Travis Bader: And they say they're overrunning, it's going to cause damage to the environment and to the other species in here, carrying capacities diminished. Yeah. Now we had a, um, a cull here over in BC, uh, one of the local little islands here. And they will bring people in. You were going to New Zealand and these guys were New Zealand fellows that were coming over here, coming over here.

[00:49:54] Matt Siemens: I was, I helped him out with that little bit in the beginning as the loophole horny rep, I tried talking to them and they wouldn't listen. And their second purchase was more geared to what I, what I told. But I think the whole thing was wrong. You're paying a company, come in, come in here, kill deer when you and I would have done it for free.

[00:50:14] Matt Siemens: You could have had a draw. Sure. Yeah. It's a national park. Okay. We'll have it a draw basis. When I lived in Detroit, we used to, we always talked about guarding piles of corn in the Metro parks in downtown Detroit. Okay. They would stack corn up and get all the deer coming in. And then in middle of winter, we would guard the pile of corn.

[00:50:35] Matt Siemens: And shoot any deer. I tried to eat it and all, all the, all the meat went right back to It was all processed through Whitetails Unlimited. Yeah. But I mean, that wasn't invasive, but it was just the Metro parks, you couldn't control it any other way. You can't, you couldn't open it up in the cities. Right. I feel if we did a call like that in a metropolitan area in Canada, there'd be such outcry.

[00:50:59] Matt Siemens: Down there, I'm not sure if they're still doing it. This goes back 20 some years now. But it was always, it was always interesting. And then that was muzzleloader only. And we would try different bullets and that's a, my terminal ballistics fascination is always, I'd go to New Zealand, I'd have my, so much of my regular go to bullet.

[00:51:19] Matt Siemens: And I try a few new ones that were on the market and see how they worked. And when you can try. A bullet on 50 different animals in a day. It's not, it's a much broader snapshot than just that focus. Well, you tried it once, it didn't work. It didn't, maybe that was the one off, but came pretty apparent what worked and what 

[00:51:38] Travis Bader: didn't.

[00:51:40] Travis Bader: What do you find works for you? Most of my killing 

[00:51:43] Matt Siemens: bullet was the Hornady interlock, even before I worked for Hornady. Okay. And it was performed very good. Yeah. And they were economical when you're shooting that kind of volumes. Hmm. Yeah. I'm talking hundreds of rounds a day, right? Like it's, and it made a difference if you were shooting some of the stuff that was four or five times the price.

[00:52:02] Matt Siemens: And when we experimented with them and I found the best bang for the buck was that Hornady 

[00:52:06] Travis Bader: Interlock. Interesting. So what I heard back from the, the local culling that was over here, um, They said, well, why are you bringing people in from New Zealand to do this? I said, well, they're the ones with the expertise and they're going to be shooting from helicopters and they're going to blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:52:22] Travis Bader: But he, a mighty flies helicopter. He's like, you know, we train the New Zealanders how to shoot from helicopters. I, uh, Canadians know how to do this. 

[00:52:30] Matt Siemens: I've shot from helicopter in New Zealand. Yeah. I'm a hundred percent success rate in helicopter. Okay. Never missed a shot. Okay. I've only taken one. That 

[00:52:39] Travis Bader: was going to be my next question.

[00:52:42] Travis Bader: That was going to be my next question. Cause that'd be a pretty darn impressive shooting from a moving helicopter. It 

[00:52:46] Matt Siemens: was, um. We were, we were culling tar and, uh, it ran into the bullet. Okay. Like it, it, it's, I act like it was all me, but it's, do you want to try again? Nope. I'm fine. Yeah. 

[00:53:01] Travis Bader: Yeah. Just rest of 

[00:53:03] Matt Siemens: my laurels here.

[00:53:04] Matt Siemens: No, it was. It was a lucky shot, but I mean, I always tell people I'm a hundred percent from helicopter, which isn't a lie, but that's another one of those stats things. Right. Like statistically, I'm not telling them. I'm just physically, I'm telling the truth, but it's, it's a very, very small cross section.

[00:53:20] Travis Bader: Well, I heard there is no, um, No Canadians, uh, put in for the, uh, for the call. I don't know if that's true or not, or if that was just something that was, uh, said afterwards, but. I'd never, I'd never 

[00:53:32] Matt Siemens: heard it being offered to anybody. 

[00:53:33] Travis Bader: I never did either. Because when 

[00:53:35] Matt Siemens: I, when we were involved with it, it was Parks Canada trying to do it themselves.

[00:53:40] Travis Bader: Gotcha. Yeah. Interesting anyways. I mean, you know, they've got a reason they've got a. They've gone through, they've looked at the science. They've looked at why they need to do this, but the next step seemed a little ridiculous. The amount of money that's spent in the, uh. Didn't it work 

[00:53:55] Matt Siemens: out like 83, 000 a deer?

[00:53:57] Matt Siemens: I 

[00:53:57] Travis Bader: think it was something like that. It's just brutal. Yeah. I don't understand that, but, um, interesting. 

[00:54:04] Matt Siemens: I hunted on the, on the islands there a couple of years back and we weren't welcome there. No, by most of the people, it was clear they didn't want us there. A few, a few guys were fine, but so now they have the problem of the deer.

[00:54:20] Matt Siemens: It's everybody wants their cake and eat it too. Right? 

[00:54:23] Travis Bader: Yeah. Well, I mean, they're, they're cute and they, they're little guys and they're, they're like little pets and they come by all the time, but you can't stick your finger into the bowl of water and not expect to see some ripples. There's going to be a consequence one way or the other.

[00:54:39] Travis Bader: And I guess we come to a point where you either say. Okay. The consequence is, is the environment's changed completely, or you get in there and you try and make some changes to, to correct some of the mistakes that were made. Well, it's a 

[00:54:55] Matt Siemens: textbook example of how managing herds and hunting can help not only the herd, but the, but the landscape and the carrying capacity of the land.

[00:55:04] Matt Siemens: Mm hmm. Keep it healthy. Mm hmm. And people have to realize that people, biggest thing that aunties don't understand are animal rights people. Well, you're killing an animal. Yeah. You're not managing for an individual. You're managing for the herd long term. Mm hmm. And you have to give some stuff up for it to be viable long term.

[00:55:23] Travis Bader: Yeah, because the consequence otherwise is they'll, they starved to death. Yeah. 

[00:55:27] Matt Siemens: Disease comes in, wipes them out and. Right. You take a look, what's happening in the prairies and in the States with CWD now is, and that was from supposedly coming from the deer farming, crowded pens and it disease wipe stuff out.

[00:55:41] Matt Siemens: Is that where it 

[00:55:41] Travis Bader: came from? That's the story I heard. CWD, chronic wasting disease for anyone who's listening, who doesn't quite. Um, and that's, I think it's in Alberta now. Any reported cases in British Columbia? Not that I'm aware of. I don't think there is yet. Do you think it's coming?

[00:56:03] Matt Siemens: I don't know. I sure hope not. 

[00:56:07] Travis Bader: Yeah, that's, um, just, it's decimating populations and I, I never, I never heard about where they were speculating where he came from. So that's 

[00:56:17] Matt Siemens: interesting. I hunted Alberta this fall for antelope and in what was once a prime mule deer area, there wasn't a mule deer left. They wiped them out.

[00:56:27] Matt Siemens: Not that they purposely culled them all out. It's my understanding. Just so the disease wouldn't spread. Now that what comes back should be healthy. But you have to manage that too. I know every deer you shoot in Alberta, when, once I've shot, you submit a head for testing and then if it comes back positive, they give you another tag and they don't recommend eating it.

[00:56:48] Matt Siemens: They say it can't jump to the human, but you don't want to be that. 

[00:56:52] Travis Bader: Case number one. Didn't realize they gave another tag. I thought you just, maybe that. Maybe 

[00:56:55] Matt Siemens: that stopped, but I know at first it was guys I was hunting with when I lived there were getting replacement tags. One year we we got, you got drawn and you go buy your tag and you get two tags.

[00:57:06] Matt Siemens: Next year. Next year it's three. I heard one year being six. They're trying to get rid of them. They're quite aggressive on managing it there. 

[00:57:14] Travis Bader: So I gotta ask right now, shot show's on. How did you manage to get outta that one? Like for me, I have a hard time at shot. It is too many people, too busy, too much stuff.

[00:57:25] Travis Bader: I'd rather be in the ocean, up a mountain, in the woods, shot's a tough place for me. Yeah. Shot 

[00:57:32] Matt Siemens: opens tomorrow. It is to go and work. It is one thing to go and visit it as a consumer, or I guess it's not consumers and industry related, but to go there as a guest is a different thing. It was lots of fun the first couple of years.

[00:57:49] Matt Siemens: If I had to be there, I'd be there, put my best foot forward, but it is. It is four days of grinding it out nonstop. You can barely walk while halls are so full, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people. And I'm just not a crowd person, but no, I, it's half the crews there. I'll be there next year. Okay.

[00:58:09] Matt Siemens: And it's, it's a phenomenal place. Like you realize how small the Canadian market really is 

[00:58:16] Travis Bader: when you walk through Shaw. I got to wonder why they even care, even listen to us, honestly. I mean, it's, we are so small. 

[00:58:23] Matt Siemens: Yeah. We're. If anywhere from three to 7%, depends who you talk 

[00:58:28] Travis Bader: to. And we make their life difficult by having all these weird import export laws and yeah.

[00:58:34] Matt Siemens: Yeah. And magazine restrictions. And now that, yeah, it's just brutal. You, they can't just ship a gun up by changing, throwing a mag out. They got to do so many, a lot of a hundred or whatever, and it just changes 

[00:58:48] Travis Bader: things. And have you been keeping up on the, uh, the newer magazine laws that they're talking about here in Canada?

[00:58:57] Matt Siemens: I know enough to be dangerous. Um, I've been trying to keep up with it. What's actually, once it passes, I will, I will educate myself a hundred percent on it, but there's so much speculation out there and stuff I want it. I don't want to get myself confused. I've lived in enough places and hunted enough places that naturally I'm getting stuff mixed up.

[00:59:15] Matt Siemens: Well, where was this? How do I, just because I've lived in different places and things have changed. 

[00:59:22] Travis Bader: From what I understand, they're looking at, uh, pinned magazines and magazine capacities and. They say they keep bringing in new regulations and legislation as to the number of rounds that you can have in a magazine.

[00:59:34] Travis Bader: And well, if a restricted firearm, you can have 10, but if it's a non restricted center fire, semi auto, you can only have five. But if it's a restricted, that's kind of looks like a non restricted it's five again. But if it takes a pistol mags and it's 10, they said, tell you what, anything that's pinned, uh, it's going to be made prohibited is what I'm hearing.

[00:59:53] Travis Bader: I 

[00:59:53] Matt Siemens: heard the same thing. And then like. We get stuff up from Ruger. Mm-Hmm. . And they won't be pinned to be dimpled. Right. And 'cause pending is not legal in some states. Mm. 'cause it could be removed. Right. So they dimple the mag and they sim simply with a hammer. They probably have a jig, they put it in the hammer and a punch and it deforms the mag.

[01:00:12] Matt Siemens: Mm-Hmm. And then they get people upset with that because the mags deformed. Well, you know, P'S not legal, so this is what it is and we aren't big enough for them to to, to do it. 

[01:00:24] Travis Bader: Yeah, I remember back in the day when, uh, Vancouver police, you know, they transitioned from their Breda's to their Sig's and it was my job to dimple thousands of magazines.

[01:00:34] Travis Bader: And that's exactly what I did. Made a little jig, slide the thing in, get the torch just to heat it and then give it a smack, bring it out. So they all have a little bit of discoloration from the torch and a little bit of a dimple, but they're all in the same place. Made them legal again for them to be able to sell it prior to them, uh, enforcing some, uh, legislation or regulations that were on the books about law enforcement, being able to recoup costs through the 

[01:00:59] Matt Siemens: city of Margaret.

[01:01:00] Matt Siemens: My understanding, they can't anymore. 

[01:01:02] Travis Bader: They can and they can't. I mean, the legislation was on the books, um, but they just weren't enacting it. Some stuff happened. They decided they're going to enact it. And from what I understand, there is a little bit of a, um. It's a bit of a gray area. I think they came down really hard and said, you can't.

[01:01:19] Travis Bader: The same reason why, let's say safety course instructors in Canada, they used to get all of their firearms through seized guns from the police stations. And they'd in BC, they'd either come over to, at the time it was, uh, Murray Charlton, who was doing it or myself. And we would be, um, Deactivating or the, now they call it disabling a firearm so that it'll still click and it'll still do what it's got to do.

[01:01:43] Travis Bader: And, but it'll never go bang again. And we get it all from the. And then they said, you can't do that anymore. And I think that's certain to lax up a bit. I've certain areas. I still hear instructors saying, Oh, I went to my local RCMP and they put some aside for me. So there's a lot 

[01:01:58] Matt Siemens: of officer discretion involved.

[01:02:00] Matt Siemens: Yes. And it depends where you are. I have some friends who are members and, uh, they're night and day how they interpret things. 

[01:02:10] Travis Bader: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's like calling up the firearms program. Yeah. You can call five different times and get eight different answers. Yeah. Interesting world that we try and navigate, create, make sure that like operating a business, I got to imagine it's got to be incredibly difficult for a company as large as the one you work with to, uh, operate under the auspices of certain rules and regulations only to have somebody else interpreted differently the next day.

[01:02:40] Travis Bader: And 

[01:02:41] Matt Siemens: this is why we draw the company makes policies are black and white and people want to see, well, can't you help me? No, we're black and white. We have to be, there's too many variables involved and we've been advised or we, the company feels that this is what it means. So we stick to that and we don't 

[01:03:00] Travis Bader: deviate from it.

[01:03:01] Travis Bader: Do you guys seek permission or do you seek, um, do you say this is what we're doing? Does it meet, do you look for tacit approval? Do you look for it? Because if you want to get everything in writing? You're going to be waiting years. Yeah. That's 

[01:03:13] Matt Siemens: above my pay grade. Okay. It comes down to me and I just follow what I'm told.

[01:03:17] Matt Siemens: Sure. Fair enough. I I've, yeah, I don't need to put that responsibility on myself. If someone else is going to do it, I'll listen and do exactly what I'm told. 

[01:03:26] Travis Bader: Right. Yeah. Fair enough. Where do you see the future of, uh, of firearms in, in Canada and, and hunting?

[01:03:36] Travis Bader: That's 

[01:03:36] Matt Siemens: a tough one. If something doesn't change now, it's not going to be a good future. And that, that can be interpreted in many ways. And that's just how I feel though. It's brutal what we're going through as history repeats itself. You can draw all these parallels from other regimes and stuff. And some of the stuff's word for word.

[01:04:01] Travis Bader: You talk to some people and they say, you know, the writing's on the wall. I mean, it's just a matter of time. Um, I got to wonder what would have to happen in order for that not to go down that course. 

[01:04:15] Matt Siemens: There has to be a change in government. I mean, that that's, that's the first, but can the Canadian with a Canadian public allow the next government, give them enough leeway and time to fix.

[01:04:29] Matt Siemens: What it is, where most Canadians can't buy green bananas to plan ahead. And then they aren't, they aren't going to be able to sit here and wait for the cons, if say the conservative party is going to be our saviour, they aren't going to give them two terms to fix what the last guys did. Right. They're going to, Oh, this is soon as soon as they start tightening the belt and stuff, they're going to, Oh, it was better the other way.

[01:04:52] Matt Siemens: And it's just, they can't see the future. 

[01:04:56] Travis Bader: Well, I look at COVID all of a sudden, there's a resurgence in people wanting to be able to be self reliant to get outside. Obviously, uh, self protection was another one. They kind of brought it to the forefront. And I guess if I'm to be pessimistic, I'd say that's probably the only thing that will course correct, even different governments coming in might slow or bait these different, uh, the course that we're on.

[01:05:25] Travis Bader: But it's going to take either natural disaster, war, something catastrophic in order for people to reevaluate, um, what they find important. I, 

[01:05:36] Matt Siemens: I've been saying that for a while. It's going to take an act of God or a catastrophic event to get the country back on, on, on the right course. Especially if we get another liberal government in.

[01:05:49] Matt Siemens: And I say, I'm not picking on the liberals here because Mulroney's conservatives and Kim Campbell brought a bunch of this crap in. Sure. Yeah. So it's the best way to look at it. They're, they're, they're all in the same party. It's just different money wings. 

[01:06:04] Travis Bader: Right. Well, I, I look at it and I know, you know, the macro politics are going to be different from the micro politics, but I remember, And there were years ago, here we are in the incorporation of Delta, which is now the city of Delta and at the time of the corporation of Delta says, we don't want any more firearms related businesses in Delta.

[01:06:22] Travis Bader: Similar to what Syria has done. If you're in there, you're grandfathered, but, uh, that's it no more. Right. And so I went in there and I had myself all prepared and got my suit on and I've got all my notes and I'm in there and I'm talking, given all my different points and you know, that there was one. Um, firearm business that thought this was the greatest thing in the world because they were close to retirement and this was just making, um, it was a short sighted approach.

[01:06:49] Travis Bader: And, um, I didn't see eye to eye with that individual on that one point. Great person, but just that one point, I didn't see eye to eye on. Anyways, I'm given my spiel and one of the guys stands up. One of the politicians says, Travis. Like, how, how much longer are you going to go here? And it's cause he sees all my notes.

[01:07:10] Travis Bader: And I says, well, I don't know. I got this much more to go through. And he's like, let me just stop you short. I agree with everything you're saying. This has got nothing to do with what makes sense and it's got everything to do with what we think that people want. Oh, I didn't know how to respond to that.

[01:07:25] Travis Bader: He says, yeah, no, you're right. Nothing here really makes sense, but this is what we think the constituents who elected us in want. And I. Look at that more on the macro side. Is this what people actually want? I think people want safety. They want security, but I think the story that's being told over and over again, either through either inadvertently through let's say media, which glorifies firearms and in a certain way, or through, um.

[01:08:02] Travis Bader: Like legacy media and social media and all the rest that may be objective driven to, to paint a picture in a certain way. They'll say, you know, firearms are bad or hunting is bad. And majority of people say, well, yeah, you know, I want to be safe. I don't want to walk out and see everybody carrying around a gun.

[01:08:17] Travis Bader: Cause that doesn't make me feel safe. I don't want to see people out there hurting these poor animals because, you know, I'd rather just get it from the abattoir and don't, don't you just get meat from Safeway. And I think there's an education piece in here that can bridge the gap of. What people actually want, because they want safety and security and they want their environment to thrive and the animals to do well.

[01:08:40] Travis Bader: And how we get there. And I think there's, there's a, a divide in there that we aren't adequately bridging at the moment. No, 

[01:08:49] Matt Siemens: and it's uphill battle because like you say, the media is giving people what they want. Right. And, and it's the politician, all the politician wants is another term and it's keeps on going that way.

[01:09:04] Matt Siemens: If it was all based on science and common sense and all that kind of stuff, it wouldn't be an 

[01:09:10] Travis Bader: issue. It's based on money. Follow the money. Right. Media doesn't sell stories. They sell advertising, right? They want eyes on so they can convert that. And there's going to be money involved, or there's going to be money back through the government, if certain governments are in power that are favorable to the media.

[01:09:29] Travis Bader: And I think people are starting to wake up to that, you know, just all the. Um, fake news, all the, like what Trump, Trump would go on about. I think people are waking up to the amount of bias that's out there, but it also creates a very dangerous category where people just can't believe anything. They don't know what to believe.

[01:09:48] Travis Bader: And 

[01:09:48] Matt Siemens: it's something comes across as plausible. Well, if you look at how many of these tinfoil hat conspiracy theories. Mm. Have the, have been proven correct and actually exist in the last three years. Like 

[01:10:00] Travis Bader: it's, it's just brutal. I actually got my tinfoil hat back there. You can just see it up behind me. I haven't had a chance to wear it yet.

[01:10:06] Travis Bader: I'm just waiting for some guests to come on with some real tinfoil stuff. And I put my hat on. 

[01:10:11] Matt Siemens: I was in Africa when COVID hit and I flew back through four or five major airports around the world after the lockdown. Yeah. And all I can say is my firsthand experience for what that's worth, this and two bucks will get you a coffee at Timmy's.

[01:10:27] Matt Siemens: It's how they were talking about the lockdown being handled in all these countries and all these wasn't the case. I, I, I seen it myself completely different. Did it change right after I left or was it like that before I came? I don't know, but I went through these places and it wasn't, wasn't with anything, anything the news was reporting.

[01:10:48] Matt Siemens: It was definitely agenda driven and a lot of fear 

[01:10:51] Travis Bader: mongering going on. I likened it to fog that whole thing, because I'd talk to people and no fellow in Spain, he was doing some work on one of our websites and he's in Valencia there and COVID first hit. He's like, Oh, it's bad. Okay. Tell me about this.

[01:11:06] Travis Bader: Right? Like we don't, I'm, I'm learning here. Oh, you know, the lockdowns are going to happen and people are going to start dying and this and that. Are you seeing that in your area there in Valencia? Well, no, no, but it's, it's over in these other areas and just like fog, right? Are you, is it really foggy right where you are?

[01:11:23] Travis Bader: Well, no, I can see all around me, but it's really foggy over there. You walk over there and you look around, it's the same thing, right? There's a 

[01:11:29] Matt Siemens: European vendor we were dealing with and the conversation was, how's it going? And they go, this is great. There's no tourists. And I'll leave it at that, right?

[01:11:39] Matt Siemens: Right. Like 

[01:11:39] Travis Bader: it was. Well, it also had an effect of, on firearms businesses, which was positive in the short term, it's not a sustainable sort of model, but I mean, it got everybody wanting to learn to hunt, wanting to learn to garden, wanting to purchase firearms and you couldn't keep them on the shelves for quite some time.

[01:11:58] Travis Bader: Yeah. There was 

[01:11:59] Matt Siemens: that time where you had this happening and political stuff happening around the world. It was a perfect storm for the industry, but not, not sustainable. And we're going through the correction now. It's still, there's still strong sales, but it's, well, even if we went back to quote unquote, normal, people would think is the bottoms dropped out because it was 

[01:12:20] Travis Bader: just so, so busy for those few years.

[01:12:24] Travis Bader: Yeah. Yeah. That was, uh, it was interesting. Uh, you're not seeing people wanting to go outside in the same way anymore. It's funny how quickly people can just go back to, well, this is normal. This is, this is easy. The easy path, I guess that's why we have game trails because we are animals, just like anything else.

[01:12:43] Travis Bader: This is an easy way. And I can, I was go back and forth kind of on autopilot. Yeah. Path least resistance. Yeah. Interesting. Um, any other, any inside scoops from the industry that we should be, uh, chatting about any up and coming things? That you're allowed to talk about? Well, it's not the real 

[01:13:03] Matt Siemens: secret now.

[01:13:03] Matt Siemens: Everything will be released at SHOT Show, that type of thing. Right. Um, on the, on the loophole side of things, they brought the Mark IV back. Okay. And it seemed that Mark IV HD. Yeah. And it looks like they've done a great job on it. Nice. Hit it out of the park. Nice. We'll, we'll see how the sales translate to that.

[01:13:19] Matt Siemens: And Hornet is always coming out with these new cartridges and what a lot of them are designed for. Military application and then released to the public as a secondary thing. But a lot of that stuff is AR driven and we've lost that market here. It'll still work in a bolt gun, but. For the, for the Americans and their ARs.

[01:13:39] Matt Siemens: It's some 

[01:13:40] Travis Bader: neat stuff out there. Do you think, do you think ARs are coming back? I sure hope so. Yeah. I, um, cause they're talking about a complete rewrite of the firearms act. It's so patchwork together as it is right now, and it's so open to interpretation. It's, um, it's a little ridiculous, you know, people will call up and they'll say, you know, I got this issue.

[01:14:06] Travis Bader: Do you know a good firearms lawyer? And I always tell them the same thing. You don't need a firearms lawyer. You just need a good lawyer. Somebody knows who's got a sharp head, who knows procedural law and everything else. Because that, that's not where these things are going to be won or lost for you.

[01:14:23] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[01:14:23] Matt Siemens: But it comes back to our talk there about educating, educating people, like so many people, all the semi auto, the auto, uh, automatic is everything that's, they have no place in the sporting field. Well, actually they were made for the sportsmen long before the military, when Chester came out with that.

[01:14:39] Matt Siemens: Self, self loading rifle, Remington model eight. And that's where Kalashnikov, Kalashnikov got his safety for the AK off the Remington model eight. They were built for the Hunter that at early in the early part of the century, last century. And the military didn't start using them successfully until the grand World War II.

[01:14:59] Matt Siemens: But, but the semi auto rifle was made. 

[01:15:03] Travis Bader: And most people don't think about it like that. No, no. Interesting. So, you know, SHOT Show, the one thing I did like about it, they'd send us media passes, so I don't have to pay to get in. I get to go down to the range days ahead of time, and that was always a fun thing.

[01:15:19] Travis Bader: You get to go in, shoot all the new things for free, meet all the people that are out there. Um, is that something that you guys would Uh, 

[01:15:29] Matt Siemens: the LE guys would be down there with our various vendors on the line and stuff. Yeah. As we'd separated, uh, I used to do LEN commercial. Now I just do the commercial side of things.

[01:15:41] Matt Siemens: So I'm not dealing with that nearly as much. I'll pick up some slack once in a while, but I never went down there and shot that. I've done it before in previous life and played with all that kind of stuff. It's fun. And I'll let someone else go. I've not had a chance yet. 

[01:15:56] Travis Bader: Yeah, makes sense. I just like free food, free, free shuttle 

[01:15:59] Matt Siemens: down.

[01:16:00] Matt Siemens: Anytime you can shoot a full auto on someone else's animal bill, that's the way to do it. 

[01:16:04] Travis Bader: Yes. Um, what else? Um, so looking at these African hunts, um, you're saying before, you know, caviar tastes on a, on a peanut butter budget. Um, what advice would you have to somebody else who's looking to, to do the same thing, go on an African hunt?

[01:16:26] Travis Bader: It's achievable. 

[01:16:27] Matt Siemens: That's, that's the bottom line. If you go to vacation, if you go on vacation to Hawaii, Mexico, if you do a cruise, you can do an African hunt if you want to.

[01:16:42] Matt Siemens: It's, um, I'm very lucky that the, my key thing that gets me to Africa is my wife. She's a hundred percent supportive. Okay. And that changes it that I know people who wives aren't quite as encouraging as when it comes to hunting. My wife's a hundred percent behind it. And actually on the hunt I'm going on now, I was going to go shoot a female lion 

[01:17:02] Travis Bader: on a management hunt.

[01:17:03] Travis Bader: That's going to raise some eyebrows 

[01:17:04] Matt Siemens: and get some people upset. And, uh, I, because the price was, uh, In my budget and my wife, no, they're going to close this. It's not going to be something you can do again. Go, go, go shoot a male, go shoot the big main lions. Well, go hunt for me. Whether you get one or not, it's a different story.

[01:17:23] Matt Siemens: Right. And so he twisted my arm and that's what I signed up for now. Like I'm not. I don't have the money. I'm just financially irresponsible. Right. So. 

[01:17:38] Travis Bader: You got the perseverance. Yeah. 

[01:17:39] Matt Siemens: It's, it's one of the things it's, I wanted something I never thought I'd ever do. 

[01:17:43] Travis Bader: Well, there's also the aspect of, uh, the hunter can be hunted with these things too.

[01:17:48] Matt Siemens: Yeah. It's called dangerous game for a reason. And then it's part of the big five. And I, if you had told me 15 years ago, I'd be talking about hunting the big five. I would've thought you were nuts. Like there's no way someone in my income.

[01:18:05] Matt Siemens: And if I'm successful in the lion hunt, it'll be my number four of the big five. Wow. So, and it's something I've, and it's just chasing things down. The buddy came to me a couple of years ago, asked me if I want to shoot a leopard. And of course I want to shoot a leopard, but that's not my income bracket.

[01:18:21] Matt Siemens: That's. A quarter of my annual salary or more, I can't do that kind of stuff. And he, he, well, yeah, you give me this, I'll give you a lion as a leopard. And so, well, what am I missing here? The numbers don't add up. He's no, I'll just, you help me. I'll help you out. So the right place at the right time. And when I hunted Pakistan back when, uh, I had my friend from Georgia up here, we're hunting the, the bison in Alberta when they were concealed, considered pests, when they didn't need a license or anything, that's just a few years ago.

[01:18:51] Matt Siemens: Right. And we were way back up hunting bison and his cell phone rings. There's no cell phone service, but the phone rang. It must've been, I don't know what they call it, skip or whatever. And sure. And it was one of his pro staff. Was canceling the Pakistan hunt for that January. Okay. This is in the September.

[01:19:14] Matt Siemens: And so he ended up the phone and he goes, Siemens, do you want to go to Pakistan? What's it going to cost me? He goes, the hunt's free. So you got to get there. I said, well, sign me up. And that's how I got the 

[01:19:23] Travis Bader: Pakistan hunt. And he works all on board with this. Yeah. We're going to lose you for. 

[01:19:28] Matt Siemens: Yeah. Well, I, I flew, uh, I flew over Pakistan.

[01:19:31] Matt Siemens: I landed the 13th of January and shot show started the 15th. So I did a quick turnaround and going back to us customs after visiting Pakistan was interesting. Yeah. I should imagine, but it was one of the things that's, that's, that's I run everything down. Someone offers me a hunt, I'll run it down and see if it's legit or if the guy's just blowing smoke and if I can do it and then more off the beaten path is more enjoyable.

[01:19:57] Matt Siemens: Right. 

[01:19:58] Travis Bader: Are there many scams out there? Many people, uh, run, run and scam hunts. 

[01:20:03] Matt Siemens: Yeah, but not as bad as other industries, I'd say. I mean, there's people not reading the fine print. Like, like a lot of people, these hunting and conservation groups, we have fundraisers. Like SCI, we have a fundraiser on April 13th.

[01:20:17] Matt Siemens: And we have some African auction hunts there. And you can save some money by buying a hunt there. Now. Is the hunt going to be pennies in the dollar? Not if you do it right. Like you're going to save a little bit of money. It's still going to cost you. Instead of spending 10, 000, you're going to spend eight.

[01:20:37] Matt Siemens: Right. But it's, and you can do it for less than that too, but you just have to, you just have to run them down. Like my first trip to New Zealand was guy made me an offer and I kind of lost contact with him. I didn't think he was legit. Then I found them and send him an email and, Oh no, the offer stands.

[01:20:56] Matt Siemens: Let's do this. And that was my first of nine trips down there. Right. And it was just, but I pursue everything. And a lot of times it's. You're spinning your wheels for nothing, but when it does come true, it's, it's, it's brilliant. 

[01:21:13] Travis Bader: I did a hunt over in Molokai. And yeah, you know, trying to figure this thing out, hunting in the States and access deer, I can bring all the meat back home.

[01:21:23] Travis Bader: This is fantastic. And, um, met some great people over there. I don't know if I'd do that hunt again. Um, Just from my perspective, cause I met with the, um, uh, some other locals and they said, if you want to hunt, you just let, let me know next time we'll, we'll go out together. That was the hunt that I want to do is with the locals is, uh, I, I did a recce of the area beforehand.

[01:21:48] Travis Bader: I'm looking around and getting things kind of sorted and, uh, met with the, uh, the fellow there. And, uh, he said, okay, well, let's get in this, uh, great big, it wasn't an Argo, but it was a multi seater side by side and we'll drive around and so, okay, well, how would I get out here? I'm going to hike over the next hillside and I, the wrecking I've been doing, he said, no, no, no, just sit here.

[01:22:10] Travis Bader: We'll drive you around. And it was, it was a different style of hunt that I've ever hunted before. It was interesting for the experience. Got to keep all the meat. It was, uh, uh, used. Everything on it, got the hides, all the rest, um, made me feel good about myself, but I wanted to put some more legwork in and I wanted to make it a, um, uh, a different type of a hunt.

[01:22:32] Travis Bader: So definitely a hundred percent, I'd do access to area again, uh, just in a different way. Do you have that sort of, uh, freedom, uh, if you're doing an African hunt or do you? Well, 

[01:22:43] Matt Siemens: absolutely. Like I know, like in place I hunt in Namibia, If you want to walk from the lodge, you can walk from the lodge. If you want to drive out, you can drive out and get out in stock.

[01:22:54] Matt Siemens: Um, I know I avoided hunting in South Africa for quite a few years. Cause I heard horror stories about South Africa. So have I. And then I went last year in March with an outfit there and I was very impressed. I took my son and a friend and the outfitter really, the outfitter really. Spent time with my son and it was brilliant.

[01:23:17] Matt Siemens: And it was, there was, there was a fence around the place. It was a huge, huge 

[01:23:21] Travis Bader: farm. Like how big? Uh, 

[01:23:24] Matt Siemens: 15, 000 acres. That's pretty big. And you know, the animals didn't know the fence was there, but they knew where every rock was, every tree, every bush. And I've had many free range, true free range BC hunts here, much easier than that South Africa hunt.

[01:23:42] Matt Siemens: It's that high fence. It isn't my first choice. I'm never going to say it is. Right. But the hunt is still a spirit of fair chase and it can be challenging. Right. But then you hear stories of guys go up and they're hunting a very small pool table type thing, like, like this, this go out and shoot and stuff.

[01:24:02] Matt Siemens: And that's not for 

[01:24:02] Travis Bader: me. No, me neither. Yeah. Um, anytime it became dangerous when you're out there, anytime you've been concerned about, uh, either the environment or the game. 

[01:24:15] Matt Siemens: In Africa. Yeah. My elephant hunt. I have never been more scared in my life. Yeah. But never felt more alive at the same time. 

[01:24:22] Travis Bader: Well, you never feel quite as alive when you're almost dead, right?

[01:24:25] Matt Siemens: It's, uh, and it was truly the most addictive thing I've ever done. Yeah. It's, I'd never be able to do it again, just because the costs and stuff. And I just happened to be at the right place again and had a thing. And I first seen a wild elephant on my first trip to Zimbabwe and I thought, wow. And you see him in, in the zoo and stuff.

[01:24:45] Matt Siemens: I had no interest. Didn't interest me at all. Yeah, 

[01:24:48] Travis Bader: I 

[01:24:48] Matt Siemens: agree. But, but in the wild, it's a different thing. Yeah. And it's a whole lot more level playing field than people think. If you screw up. Someone's getting hurt, getting stomped. Yeah. And it's, it's not for everybody. Like my pH told me when you shoot an elephant, you're going to have a very emotional response one way or the other.

[01:25:10] Matt Siemens: And everything is going to be, you're going to not regret doing it, but, but you will never do it again. Interesting. Or everything else you do after this is rats and mice. He said his term. And I had the expensive reaction, of course. And it was most. Amazing thing. We looked over my first hunt. I did a hunt was unsuccessful.

[01:25:31] Matt Siemens: My first time they let me come back in a second. And we looked at, we're probably 400 elephant. We probably walked 10, 15 miles a day. And it was incredibly challenging. I couldn't believe the fact that there could be elephants standing in trees, 20 yards in front of you and you couldn't see them. Really?

[01:25:47] Matt Siemens: Yeah. Like it was just like. 20 yards. 20 yards. We were driving on the road and there's some elephant tracks across, I can't even tell which way they're headed because it's just this round disc in the sand. The tracker looks at it and says, 20 minutes. They're 20 minutes in front of us. And I'm like, yeah, this guy's.

[01:26:03] Travis Bader: Like crocodile Dundee 

[01:26:04] Matt Siemens: type? Drinking all that rotten corn maize, corn drink that they drink. And so we jumped out and 20 minutes later, we were in the herd. Wow. And I say in the herd, like you're 10 yards from him sometimes, you're right there. It's up close and personal. You're, you're, when I first booked the hunt, I asked him, well, what do you want?

[01:26:25] Matt Siemens: How do you want me to sight my rifle in? He goes, well, zero at 25 yards. I said, 25 yards. Yeah, don't worry. We won't shoot that far. We won't shoot that far. And, and it was, no, year right up, personal, if something goes wrong, it goes wrong in a hurry. No kidding. And, um, what people don't understand, there's not as many elephants as there used to be, but based on carrying capacity to land, they're overpopulated.

[01:26:50] Matt Siemens: That has to do with geopolitical stuff and farming and all that kind of stuff. And they have to manage to hurt. Interesting. And then you get the bad apples again. Like there are some fish and game guys in one of the countries, they're poised on the water holes. And then it went and found all the ivory.

[01:27:04] Matt Siemens: They killed hundreds. Well, that doesn't help anybody. That's not conservation. I 

[01:27:08] Travis Bader: was having sushi with a, uh, a friend and. He's, um, uh, British individual has a family over in, um, Zimbabwe and anyways, or he gets a text coming through and looks, it makes a bit of a face and like, Oh, what's going on? Say, Oh, you don't want to see this.

[01:27:28] Travis Bader: Okay. Yeah. You know what we do with poachers over there? Anyways, they, they deal with them rather harshly. Yeah. When I was 

[01:27:36] Matt Siemens: both elephant trips to the Zimbabwe, when I was there the week before. There were poachers shot in the area by PHs and stuff. Just line 

[01:27:46] Travis Bader: them up and take 

[01:27:46] Matt Siemens: care of them. But Fish and Game have no problem with that.

[01:27:49] Matt Siemens: National parks, what they're called over there. But the police department has serious issues with it. Interesting. Yeah. And even though that they, the one, the one time that they were shot at first, they returned fire, but it's, they, they don't deal with it. I have signs when we're going through an area, don't get out of your vehicle because there's no hunting in the area.

[01:28:09] Travis Bader: You get out, they're going to think 

[01:28:10] Matt Siemens: you're a poacher. And it says right there, if you, if you're out of your vehicle, you'd be dealt with as a poacher and shot in sight. Yeah. 

[01:28:17] Travis Bader: Yeah. It's just a different world than what we're used to over here. And poaching 

[01:28:21] Matt Siemens: there is what's killing African wildlife. It's not the hunters.

[01:28:26] Travis Bader: Well, what's driving the poaching, obviously there's a market for it, right? 

[01:28:29] Matt Siemens: There is. Yeah. If there was no market for it, they wouldn't be going after, they wouldn't be doing it. Right. 

[01:28:35] Travis Bader: Huh. Well, um, what else? Anything else we should be talking about?

[01:28:43] Matt Siemens: Oh, there's so much stuff that we start going down these rabbit holes and stuff and Cape Buffalo. 

[01:28:48] Travis Bader: There's, uh, uh, they're on the big five, aren't they? Yep. 

[01:28:51] Matt Siemens: I shot a Cape Buffalo in March. Okay. Past March with my son and distance on that, uh, about 70 yards. And it was, I practice, I'm on it, shoot as fast as I can, but everything in Africa bites you, the bugs, the trees, and I got tangled up in the bush right in front of me and it grabs onto your skin and incredibly painful.

[01:29:14] Matt Siemens: And the time I got cleared, the Buffalo had run 10 yards, turned back, I'd run another way. So I hit him on the other side, almost. Exactly mirror image of the other side. And he went into this real thick stuff and piled up. So then he, I was, we were walking up to him and I see his tail was still moving. So then I gave him two more with a 458 and that was all she wrote.

[01:29:34] Matt Siemens: And that's a hunt that was great to do with, with my son, but it's a hunt. And another one of my hunts, I never thought I'd be able to do on my income. Right. So that hunt, like trying to run things down. I was serious. I had a budget. I reached out to three people I knew in the industry. Hey, I want to do a Cape Buffalo hunt.

[01:29:54] Matt Siemens: What can you do it for me? Two guys came back with, what's your budget? And the next guy came back with a price. So I went, I 

[01:30:02] Travis Bader: went. I'm not giving you my budget. No, because whatever, whatever it is, it'll be more. Yeah. It'll be at or more. Yeah. So you're in luck. It's exactly that amount. 

[01:30:10] Matt Siemens: Yeah. It's just like, I remember watching one of the duck commander guy and Phil Robertson was talking about when he bought his first lathe, he went to the lathe shop and I got 30, 000.

[01:30:18] Matt Siemens: Well, you're in luck. I have one here for 30, 000. So I am. I did that and it was a great hunt, great memories. My son shot two head, shot an ostrich and a warthog and he had to hunt hard for them. And even this quote unquote high fence, I didn't think he was going to get them. Really? Yeah. Like it 

[01:30:39] Travis Bader: was. So what would happen if they got rid of that hunting?

[01:30:43] Matt Siemens: All the game has to be euthanized. Like it doesn't get let go. So like with, if South Africa finally shuts down their lion hunting, they have all these lions behind the Hiawatha wire. And some of these farms are 75, 000 acres plus, and people think the anti hunters, well, we're going to show the hunting and save these lions.

[01:30:58] Matt Siemens: Yeah. No, they're going to kill the lions. The lions have to be euthanized. So you're not saving 

[01:31:05] Travis Bader: anything. They just can't put the captive lions out into the wild? No. 

[01:31:11] Matt Siemens: Even though there has been cases where they will survive and we'll, we'll breed. No, they have to be euthanized for case in point, uh, the guy was hunting with us in March, his, the property next door sold, and there were 75 bounty buck on it.

[01:31:27] Matt Siemens: And bounty buck looks very close to a Blesbuck, but there are sighties, endangered animals, dangerous species. So the other property owner said to my buddy, you can have them for free. You had to pay to catch them and you can put them on your farm. The government said no one killed them all. Really? Yeah. So like, like there's no rhyme, no reason to it.

[01:31:48] Matt Siemens: And why would you just kill and bury 75 of these? No kidding. Even if they weren't endangered. 

[01:31:56] Travis Bader: Well, what would the economic outcome be if they got rid of these hunts? Oh, it'd be 

[01:32:01] Matt Siemens: for the South African farmer and hunter. Huge. Like it's some of these guys only, it's such an industry down there that it's, it's huge.

[01:32:10] Matt Siemens: And the vast majority of outfitters are doing it, right? Some guys are doing it for pretty small pieces of property, like we talked about. It's not my cup of tea, but there's some places. For instance, my buddy in Namibia, where I hunt, he has his farm separated to North and South across the highway. His property, his fence line, I think is 13 kilometers by 17 kilometers.

[01:32:33] Matt Siemens: Like we aren't talking 40 acre plots. Right. It's big enough there. If you walked onto there and you didn't have water and you got lost, you'd be in serious trouble. 

[01:32:42] Travis Bader: Right. Decent 

[01:32:45] Matt Siemens: size. Yeah. It's like I said, I, I, I'm not a high fence guy, but the spirit of fair chase does come into play down there. 

[01:32:54] Travis Bader: So do you get to go hunting with other people from work?

[01:32:57] Matt Siemens: Yeah, I'm on the lion hunt in March. Um, my boss is coming with me. Nice. So. 

[01:33:03] Travis Bader: Nice. So full support for why you're not going to be at work. Oh, yeah. Yeah. 

[01:33:09] Matt Siemens: So he's looking for, he's looking for a good male lion too. We'll see, we'll see what we can come across. 

[01:33:14] Travis Bader: Right. Interesting. Oh, it'd be interesting to see how that, uh, that works out.

[01:33:18] Travis Bader: Love to hear the story on that. Um, yeah. What else, anything else? Trying to think of the list we discussed. Oh, we got some stuff about, uh, you got SCI, uh, First Safari, um,

[01:33:35] Travis Bader: um,

[01:33:39] Travis Bader: yeah, you know, talk, you've talked about ballistics there a little bit and you're, you're, um, and that, that's something that you, you're dealing with the general public mostly with your, uh, with Korth group there or. Yeah. 

[01:33:52] Matt Siemens: Well, I generally deal with accounts directly, but the consumers would get ahold of me sometimes and I steer them in the right.

[01:33:59] Matt Siemens: Right direction and get them looked after if they have issues and try to educate people. But the biggest thing is like, we can do a whole, whole talk just on this is what people consider a bullet failure. And you killed the animal, you shot in the right place. It died. The bullet came apart while, okay, did it really fail?

[01:34:24] Matt Siemens: It's, I mean, when you go back to the. Weatherby cartridges, which were developed long time ago and they're still holding their edge, like velocity wise. And they're still right up in the top, even with today's standards. Roy Weatherby wanted that bullet to blow up. Okay. He believed in the hydrostatic shock theory, goes in and comes apart, massive damage, shock power.

[01:34:49] Matt Siemens: Right. And that's what he believed in way back then. And so guys are shooting the modern Weatherby cartridges or the Weatherby cartridges, the 300 Weatherby, and which came out in the forties, I believe. And they're putting these controlled round controlled expansion bullets in them and having great success, but that's contrary what Roy wanted.

[01:35:06] Matt Siemens: But there's, well, what I'm trying to say there, it's there's two schools of thought and they both work. 

[01:35:12] Travis Bader: What are the biggest education pieces that you typically have to deal with? And how do you guys tackle that? You educating consumers, you educating the, uh, uh, the retailers. We'll, we start with 

[01:35:25] Matt Siemens: the retailers, but we will do.

[01:35:29] Matt Siemens: Like we've been at some, at some of the trade shows and hunting shows with our booth there. And we're there to talk to people firsthand. And we love video displays sometimes, depending what the comments and we'll have people from the factory come up. It's funny, you can have a guy who works at Hornady in Nebraska, come up and tell a person something.

[01:35:47] Matt Siemens: And they'll means a whole lot more coming from him than me. Sure. Even though that guy sits behind a desk. Sure. But it's just because of the credibility thing. Right. Yeah. And so that always helps, but no, we'll, we'll get with the, with the dealer, try to educate them and we'll do events with them. I'll what we call PK product knowledge sessions.

[01:36:08] Matt Siemens: I'll go in. Usually right time to close and go over with employees and have a chat and go over stuff. And they'll ask questions and we'll explain why we do this, why it's this and how it competes with our competitors or, and 

[01:36:22] Travis Bader: that kind of stuff. Right. You know, there's never going to be an end to people modifying or doing things differently than what the manufacturer intended it to.

[01:36:30] Travis Bader: Yeah. I haven't been through a number of the different manufacturers courses and programs. It's always neat. The things that you pick up that you thought were maybe, uh, they didn't realize are actually design features because he didn't know the proper way to use it. Um, I can see the education piece being a very valuable, both sales tool, as well as, uh, uh, ensuring that people are getting the most out of whatever product they 

[01:36:53] Matt Siemens: have.

[01:36:54] Matt Siemens: Yeah. I was shocked at how many people don't focus binoculars 

[01:36:57] Travis Bader: properly. Okay. Talk me through it. 

[01:36:59] Matt Siemens: Well, you have your, your main focus, then you have your diopter, which adjusts the one eye. And, um, so when you're looking through, you, you pick up, pick out an object, uh, you're in a store. So obviously pick up that stop sign across the street, put the lens cap on.

[01:37:16] Matt Siemens: The right eye focused your left eye with the main focus. Close that one, open the right. Now adjust the diopter and the same thing. And, uh, so you're focusing each eye individual, but you have your diopter you're focusing, and then your focus, your course focus are set up the same. Most people have both eyes open and they're focusing, oh, sorry, focusing, hitting that.

[01:37:39] Matt Siemens: Or they squint with one eye, but when you squint, your body changes. 

[01:37:43] Travis Bader: What if he, what if he said the diopter first? Well, it doesn't matter, probably your way is better because then, you know, at least you've got a, 

[01:37:51] Matt Siemens: I, I, maybe the way I do it is backwards supposed to do the diopter first, but along as, long as you're doing it both individually with the lens cap on the, on the optic or covered.

[01:38:02] Matt Siemens: So you're not squinting with both eyes open. It's going to give you the 

[01:38:05] Travis Bader: best performance. Awesome. Okay. So diopter first and the other side, but I might try the, try it doing, okay. I mean, 

[01:38:12] Matt Siemens: and it's, I was taught, the guy who taught me. Well, sitting in a PK, he said, this is how you do it. And you know, human nature, that's what I was told.

[01:38:21] Matt Siemens: So that's the right way. It doesn't 

[01:38:22] Travis Bader: mean it was. Well, if that's what the manufacturer designed it, you might as well try using it the intended way. 

[01:38:27] Matt Siemens: Yeah. Like as a rep, I get things wrong sometimes too. Right. So he could have had it backwards too. And, and, but it, it makes a huge difference on focusing it that 

[01:38:37] Travis Bader: way.

[01:38:38] Travis Bader: No kidding. What about, uh, scopes? If you put too much, you know, a lot of PRS shooters will put their hand over top of the scope and when they're shooting. I've watched videos that, uh, MDT has put out about pressure testing on barrels. What if you press on the scope? Is that going to make a big difference?

[01:38:57] Matt Siemens: Maybe in laboratory conditions, but I can't see it in the field. Okay. Um, I know when you're resting your, resting your rifle on something, you want it on the forearm, not the barrel. That's going to affect harmonics. And all these things, I know what drives me nuts when you see guys carrying their rifle by their scope, like a handle.

[01:39:14] Matt Siemens: It's not a handle. It's don't use it as such. Note to 

[01:39:19] Travis Bader: self, stop carrying rifle by scope. It's, uh, it's 

[01:39:25] Matt Siemens: yeah, there's so much stuff out there that. I still will find myself using incorrect terms, even though. Like I'll be talking to people and I start talking, I use the term gather light, like we spoke earlier.

[01:39:35] Matt Siemens: Sure. It's not, it's, it's transmit and it focus lights and all that kind of stuff. But Leupold's put a lot of stuff, money into training us. They have a range out down in central Oregon. I can't remember if it's 2, 300 meters or 2, 600 meters, but it's a ways. It's well, well past the mile. And, uh, they have us lined up there.

[01:39:59] Matt Siemens: With all our competitor scopes and our line. And then you get there before sunup. And as soon as you can start, as soon as you can start, you can see, you can start shooting. And then the same thing in the evening when you shoot till you can't see. Right. And there's two optics that are consistently the first one shooting and consisting of the last two shooting.

[01:40:24] Matt Siemens: Interesting. And Leupold's one of them with their new light system with the new lenses and they've put stuff. And there's some, we've got some great competitors out there and we've got some competitors that aren't so great. 

[01:40:39] Travis Bader: I think the biggest thing that makes her company is the people behind it. Yeah.

[01:40:42] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[01:40:43] Matt Siemens: And it's still a family owned business, fifth generation, fifth generation. And when we do these tests and when they do the, the punisher test, the impact test, they don't go take a scope off the floor. They run down to the local sports shop and buy everything. Even the loophole product they buy off the shelf.

[01:40:59] Matt Siemens: Yeah. So it is a true test. Very cool. 

[01:41:03] Travis Bader: I was just thinking of, uh, you know, if there's education pieces, maybe we, uh, create little, uh, short education content that'll get people out there using products properly and, uh, or maybe that's something that, uh, Korth is interested in doing. 

[01:41:17] Matt Siemens: Yeah, we, we've talked about that.

[01:41:19] Matt Siemens: And it's always, always intend to do it. And then the next thing you know, a year's past, right? Yeah, 

[01:41:24] Travis Bader: shot again. And everyone's ramping up for that and then dealing. 

[01:41:26] Matt Siemens: But it's funny, like this industry back to A type personalities. Um, I was at a event with Rob Furlong and he was talking to a guy about shooting and about shooting down here, uphill and how the range finder.

[01:41:45] Matt Siemens: And this guy looked at Rob, he goes, well, obviously you haven't shot very much. He goes, because the bullets defy gravity. Nothing happens. And Rob, Rob goes, yeah, I'm just new. I'm just learning. And I, I always thought like, why didn't you put that person in his place? He goes, what's it going to change? Yeah, exactly.

[01:42:01] Matt Siemens: Yeah. So here's a guy at this time, at this point, I think Rob was still number two in the world for, for length. Here's a guy, Talking to him, like doesn't have, uh, doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. Yeah. Talking down to him. And if you only knew, if you only knew who he was talking to, but you can't, 

[01:42:18] Travis Bader: you can't help some people.

[01:42:19] Travis Bader: You know, sometimes it doesn't rise to the dignity of a response, 

[01:42:23] Matt Siemens: right? And it's no matter what you tell people, people, some people just want to complain, want to find something to argue about. Yep. And they don't quite listen to what was said, or they take it as a absolutely every scenario, this is how it works.

[01:42:38] Matt Siemens: And it doesn't, there's too many variables 

[01:42:40] Travis Bader: in this stuff. Yeah, you know, I've spent some time with Rob in the past and, um, you know, good, good fellow. Definitely knows what he's talking about when it comes to, uh, shooting. I remember I was at SHOT Show one time and I'm at the, um, uh, AI booth and there's a fellow there who's really looked like he was dyed black hair, really dark hair, looked like.

[01:43:01] Travis Bader: You could smell it on him. He was giving her the night before tattoos up one arm down the other. He's just standing there in the AI booth. And I'm looking at, I think there is some, uh, packs, maybe they're ever, ever really sock. Maybe I forget what it was. And he comes up, he's like, Oh, I'm doing some, um, uh, pack design.

[01:43:17] Travis Bader: Oh, okay. And he's like, yeah, no, they, they wanted my input on this stuff. Oh, are you with these people here? Well, no, no, I'm not with them. Okay. Right. And we had this little conference, very awkward conversation. Basically he's like, don't you know who I am? Right. So the guy who was Craig Harrison, who took the, he took the, right.

[01:43:41] Travis Bader: And, um, and, You know, he was, he was looking rough, maybe from the last night in Vegas, probably going out with all the other, uh, industry reps and then taking them out. But I had no clue. I've seen pictures of him, like he's fully, he had shirts on, his beret and everything else. And he looked to this guy was like, like, okay.

[01:44:00] Travis Bader: So, and he was talking about the rifles a little bit and like, oh, so you're, you're, you're in the manufacturing of these. Oh no, no, no, no. And he skated all around the issue. Yeah. If he said, Hey, I'm Craig Harrison, I would have known who he was, but we just had this probably about a 10 minute long, very awkward conversation where he left like, Oh, I guys.

[01:44:20] Travis Bader: So probably maybe similar to the whole Rob for a long one. Well, it's 

[01:44:23] Matt Siemens: one of the things that's like most things when the people. People have to tell you what they've done. They probably haven't done 

[01:44:30] Travis Bader: it. Yeah. Or maybe they're just, you know, surrounding themselves with the wrong type of people. I clearly didn't recognize him out of uniform and all the rest and not diminishing what he's done or his achievements.

[01:44:41] Travis Bader: And, you know, he's had a rough go as well. Afterwards, there's some pretty difficult things that he had to, uh, work through. And that's, um, but, uh, Yeah. Yeah. You know, sometimes it's better just to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool and to open it and remove all doubt. And 

[01:44:56] Matt Siemens: that's just like, sometimes like when I'm in a situation, someone's talking, I'll.

[01:45:00] Matt Siemens: Sit there and think, should I interject? And I don't, and I regret doing it, but then when I do, it's like I shouldn't have. And then you really regret it, right? Yeah. It's like, so it's keeping your mouth shut, like you say, just Mm-Hmm. it goes a long way sometimes. So I like to sit and listen and, um, hear people talk and social media's and thing out, watch these chat rooms and stuff and people discussing stuff and it's like, yeah, I know.

[01:45:22] Matt Siemens: You dunno what you're talking about. Yeah. But it's, you get in there and try correcting it. It just, it goes nowhere. And it just digresses and this raises your blood pressure. Nothing else seems to happen. Right. 

[01:45:34] Travis Bader: It's all about finding the right group of people that you're going to surround yourself with, who value your time.

[01:45:39] Travis Bader: And you don't have to get into the, the convincing, you know, I, I guess it's difficult when you're really passionate about something and you see things. The consequence of not stepping in and saying something would just be the continuance of that ignorance, or at least less openness to that way of thinking.

[01:45:55] Travis Bader: But generally 

[01:45:56] Matt Siemens: speaking, no matter how well versed you are in this, you learn something every day. Even from people who don't know a fraction of what you know, but they might know something that you don't, and you listen to them and it can go a long ways. 

[01:46:12] Travis Bader: There's always something that you can pick out. And even if you think it's a little offside, go give it a shot or do your own research and find it out before jumping on the person.

[01:46:21] Travis Bader: Nice. Well, why don't we take a look at wrapping it up here? We can, we can, um, uh, look at future, future educational type things. Absolutely. As we work through, because I think that's, I think that's a really important part. I mean, we're not going to convince people listening to this at Africanadu is great or terrible.

[01:46:41] Travis Bader: We're not going to convince people of, uh, different politics that they're already set in a certain way, but Hey, maybe some people are going to be able to use it. Their, uh, binoculars a bit better moving forward, right? Or understand the high twist rate on their, um. ELDX bullets and what's happening there.

[01:46:56] Matt Siemens: You know, I mean, long people listen to each other and, and we start working together as that's, I mean, that gets beat like a dead horse, but it's, we still have the same 

[01:47:06] Travis Bader: issues. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that just comes down to what you're saying before, maybe keep our mouth shut a little bit, take a listen, see where it's at and we find the correct way or the correct audience that we, I mean, 

[01:47:18] Matt Siemens: everybody has their passion.

[01:47:20] Matt Siemens: And like living in the States for as long as I did. A lot of people like sitting in a tree stand with a bull waiting for a deer to walk by. I can't think of a bigger waste of time personally, but I will fight for their right to do that. Right. A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, it's what they have, it's what they do.

[01:47:35] Matt Siemens: And they love it. And yeah, exactly. Yeah. Some people get the sheep bug. Yep. I, I've shot sheep, but I never got the sheep bug. Yeah. So. Yeah, that's nothing wrong with it. It's everybody has their own passions and you've got to follow 

[01:47:49] Travis Bader: those whole different world. And is looking down at the other ones who are doing the exact same thing as you just in a different way is not helping anybody.

[01:47:56] Travis Bader: No. Well, Matt, thank you so much for having me. 

[01:47:59] Matt Siemens: Really enjoyed this.