Ep. 75 | Gas Guns Vs. Bolt Guns for Long Range

welcome to the vortex nation podcast brought to you by lovers of hunting shooting public lands the Second Amendment and good food [Music] vortex nation podcast listeners how's it going the hopefully buttery tones today are not brought to you by MC Ryan so if it sounds like crap that's courtesy of MC GM I apologize if that's the case anyway we're here on the road and of course we're on the road we get to talk to cool people that meet up with us on the road when we're in their neck of the woods or or we're in a mutual neck of the woods and we have Dylan easily here and Garrett Grover from Rhys armament Dylan easily is uses Rhys Armin yes but you are with a number of different things you should competitively in companies both of you guys are new to the podcast for for us here so that'll be that'll be good for people to get a little intro on you and who you are we'll let you do that in a second of course you got Jimmy and mark here as usual but we are going to talk about today bolt guns versus gas guns in particular for long range shooting and maybe just spell a couple of myths a couple of misconceptions out there perhaps or just shed some new light on a different type of platform than you may be used to but like we said let's let these guys introduce themselves what's alphabetical order Dylan you until first in that case I'm Dylan I'm chiropractor in Kansas City been shooting for vortex as a shooter since I think 2015 and rise from right around the same time line shoot for several the companies warn scope mounts and Phoenix Trinity and several other other great companies that have been supporters for me so far been having a lot of fun with this and it's been an adventure now I get to play in this game yes you you've gotten a little bit of everything going because you were doing the three gun for a long time and then you started getting into some PRS stuff I'm not mistaken I've been playing in there lately so it's changing change platforms a little bit change the size of the scope the amount of magnification the size of the targets the distance everything kind of comes into play that you know and 3-gun we're used to four MOA target and then all of a sudden somebody's gonna throw out a half my target like okay well this isn't this isn't what I'm used to right we're gonna give it a shot and so it's been a lot of fun it's kind of learning experience though right yeah I remember when we went out to the shooter store smash in Texas last year and you were out before the match shooting a bolt gun and I was like who the heck is that yeah like it's Dylan and I said well he's not shooting today are really fast what the heck's going on here yeah you're shooting like a 65-yard you set up around bolt gun so that's right I mean you go to a range that has twelve fourteen hundred yards available toss it in a car yeah you know throw KCMO in let's see if we can have a chance to go have some fun yeah and then you've also been doing the tactical games and games was was fun it was physically more demanding than anything I've ever done I've done football in baseball two-a-days working out - you throw up and all that stuff and then go to the tactical games and yeah it's different give us a brief I guess synopsis of the tactical games so their motto is you know no days off so a lot of these guys are Special Forces groups military SWAT officer stuff like that and then they tried to kind of mix CrossFit and shooting if you will okay so yeah you're gonna go through and give you an idea of like our ABS our first stage it took me 6 minutes so 6 minutes of constant shooting in physical activity 55 60 pound sandbag pick it up throw it over your shoulder take off run and eighty to a hundred yards dump it do a rope climb up 18 feet come down run up to the top of the berm then you're gonna shoot at 50 yards and then by the way you have a plate carrier or what people refer to as a bulletproof vest and you have to have a minimum of 15 pounds in that plate carrier and then you've got loaded mags on you you've got a pistol holstered you've got a rifle slung and you have to go up the rope with all that so then after you shoot you go down you pick the sandbag up again run up dump it into a preset area they have to run in go through a shoot house come out the other side of the shoot house pick that back up run all the way back over to where the rope climbs our dump the bag shoot again go back up the rope come down the rope pick up the bag and run across the finish line and one of the things I didn't think of is and apparently this is a SWAT military aspect there's a memory part of it they're going to show you here's an animal or here's a cartoon that's your target in the in the shoot house don't shoot anybody else's target that's your target who okay cool that's not a big deal so mine was a scrooge mcduck I walk in first one's a duck I almost draw my pistol nope go to the next room there Scrooge McDuck there's my target as you get to the end like all right what did you see in here that doesn't make sense I'll come on and it was what's in the room that you wouldn't think would normally be in a room in a shoot house yeah and it was a mental aspect of did you pay attention to everything and then of course this guy's like you can't go back which you got 60 seconds before he can leave this room you have to sit here for 60 seconds so if you don't want to do anything fine but there's a piece of paper there in a pencil write down what you saw missing and I'm like uh now it's time to go through and like what did I remember and it was it was kind of ugly cuz I'm like okay and was that like does that sounds like that was like a surprise that was a surprise complete surprise I had no idea that was coming because all you did when you went in the room is just look for Scrooge McDuck I'm looking for Scrooge McDuck one one main thing I'm looking to do like most competition aspects you know here's the target hit the Alpha and so I go through and I'm like okay it's a shoot house all the doors already open I would expect that you have to kick a door in right so military I'm a civilian so I've never been in that scenario and the guy's like huh nobody's ever said that before I'm like there was a dummy on the floor in one of the rooms that somebody's already laying there dead I mean it's a dummy but you know yeah Terry aspect and they're like nobody's ever said that before well each one of the things that you happen to pick out as being a legitimate that's kind of odd to walk into a shoot house and see that's ten seconds off your time oh and then the scoring on it could be pretty painful because if you aren't perfectly in the center of a paper target it's ten seconds every miss so the good part of shooting three guns shooting USPSA and PRS I didn't have any misses and then I had thirty seconds coming off my time so we got to the end my time wasn't the fastest cuz I was definitely probably one of the biggest guys who were out there as I like to joke I had high body fat content for the elite division so as I as I came back and you know went to do the scores I'm like oh man I'm not real confident with that I didn't cross that finish line early I went and checked well a lot of those guys dropping a lot of shots on paper because they were trying to just burn through it instead of being accurate oh all of a sudden I'm sitting in like third or fifth please why your C is accuracies an aspect that really comes into play but then you're gonna go through you might have a two or a five mile run later and it's not my place where I excel so I didn't finish where I would have really liked to and I was shooting in a division where I was kind of physically out of my league you know some of these guys are coming out of Special Forces groups and going to do that you know pictures taken no names associated everything else they're going like alright cool that guy can run in full kit rifle slung pistol holstered with a vest on with mags everything else for two miles at a seven minute mile pace I mean even even down to where I'm at now a 250-pound five foot nine guy does not do that I am NOT a gazelle I'm planning on going back in November I won't be doing the elite division I'm going to be doing the intermediate this is let's fun go have some fun division so right on man it's completely different aspect well that's cool too yeah let seems to be kind of a new thing to this tactical games right so they've they've kind of exploded in a year went from like this is a cool concept let's do this - hey do you want to do it at our range and then this year they've gone from one event to like six and they're already looking at contracting ranges for next year so in a year it's it's grown quickly sounds jet so if you're listening check him out so there's Dylan Garrett hello Garrett Grover and the product specialist would rise arm I've been with rise for a few years I was a sponsor tutor with them on the 3-gun team and then I came on board as an employee a couple years ago I'm a combat vet I spent most of my 18 years in the military in the reconnaissance and sniper world so a lot of that kind of transitions over to competitive shooting you can shoot okay I'm kind of like Dylan I'm not really I'm not a gazelle either but yeah so shoot mostly 3-gun but do some long range the vortex extreme obviously he's one that is definitely my favorite yeah for a long-range competition and then do some pistol matches and stuff too very cool yeah awesome so speaking of you know the vortex extreme which is kind of a difficult match you wouldn't say necessarily as difficult as the way you were just describing different kind of difficult and different kind of difficult you know it's it's it's less sort of it's more just like a haven't even know how to explain it marathon versus sprint okay I mean that we didn't have to have plate carriers on but we would we don't remember how many miles it worked out to eight point eight to nine point three something like that I heard various numbers for a distance but yeah it was it was completely different I mean it was we hiked is what I probably refer to it so we didn't know we'd really take off at a run yeah so that part came into play and then of course you know every quarter half mile you got another stage and gonna shoot out to 1200 yards or so exactly yeah and so you guys were shooting and part of the reason this topic came up was that you guys were shooting a new division for the vortex stream last year and it was the gas gun division and we hadn't we had had a gas gun no we didn't had a guest on division but we had people who had shot gas guns kind of sparingly in the past but it wasn't that popular most people when they go to a match like that a long-range precision match with a lot of hiking and stuff like that involved a lot of them were carrying bolt guns Oh Jim that's because you can't shoot that far with a gas gun you have brought up exactly what we were hoping to tackle here and so what what you guys take on that because you guys you guys were shooting guys did you actually placed very well overall you end up winning the gasket division and there's some there's some interesting aspects to shooting a gas gun out in Long Ridge first off some people think they're less accurate I mean that's probably a big one some people just think bolt guns are just more accurate than gas guns why do they think that is that some of that was true in the past is it still true is it weird that kind of conception come from so I mean there's definitely it was true for sure well for a long time yeah absolutely even in the army you know the standard that our gas guns were held to was about a minute and a half where's the bolt guns well to under a minute standard so the standard was different for gas guns but I think in recent years the technology has come along you know your mechanical accuracy with the bolt gun is going to be better there's no moving parts during the firing cycle all that stuff you're typically gonna have heavier barrels your bolts gonna you know your headspace is going to be more precise all that all that stuff comes into play with a bolt gun but practical accuracy it's getting to the point now or with a gas gun if you apply your fundamentals right I mean most gas guns out there now will shoot as good will hang with a bolt gun in a practical accuracy scenario explain practical accuracy because mechanical actually I'm kind of getting what you're saying it just sounds a lot like how precisely are things fitting together and that's kind of what you think of a lot but I don't think a lot of people think of practical accuracy they kind of think I got a Gentoo razor mechanically very accurate I got a super Gucci bolt gun mechanically very accurate but what's this practical accuracy thing so practical accuracy I just is a term that I've kind of made up but is it your scope mounted properly you know it's obviously a part of it but well I guess I would kind of go into mechanical accuracy but practical accuracy is like so what am i a bipod you know a rear bag and application of the fundamentals you know yeah because when we introduced the human into that that's where things go south so you know we go through and you can put that let's say into a ransom rest like you would a pistol or something and go through and fire and it's just gonna sit there and one little bug whole group on almost every gun that you've got that's you know premium gun you go through and put a human in there and it's like hey you know what maybe you're capable with this gun of three-quarter inch at 100 and so that's one of the things that that I notice is I got you know this awesome bolt gun spend a bunch of money built-ins everything's fantastic super light trigger everything's wonderful my my accuracy with it is right around where it is with my gas gun right but I should gas gun a lot so that bull gun is probably more accurate than that so if I shoot a half inch group with both of them well that's fantastic the bolt gun is capable of probably quarter inch or butter the gas gun is probably capable maybe a quarter inch so it's really I mean there's a case of it's not you it's me yeah there's an aspect where like if I miss a shot with either one of my bolt gun or gas gun its I'm not blaming the gun that's one of the things that excuses disappeared a long time ago if it doesn't malfunction it's me you know my scope I figured out how to mount it absolutely perfectly level perfectly torqued everything is correct you know I'm not over twerking I'm not doing things like that I'm not letting it slip loose and it it's perfect it's exactly how I want it so it's me so I took all the guesswork out yeah there's a lot of that that happens I think cheating that it's easy to it's easy to overlook especially because and maybe of course being in marketing in a company in the firearms industry you know maybe a little bit of is our fault but you always talk about you see these banners and these billboards and this hyper accuracy you know sub em away and all this then the other thing it's kind of like everybody just thinks well I just buy I just buy accuracy and it's like you can't do an extent exactly to an extent ya know you buy $100 a are barrel you can't expect it to shoot a half inch group but if you have a good barrel you can expect it to but can you it was a conversation I think I had with a buddy of mine recently I said you know how many rounds this is going to shoot out but I was looking at getting a different barrel to use for the vortex extreme this year he's like well it'll probably shot out 16 to 18 hundred rounds that's a pretty short life as well but you know most shooters it's gonna be three thousand what do you mean and he goes well if you take a shooter who can shoot a one-inch group and the barrel is capable a quarter-inch group and then as he gets better with the gun he can shoot three-quarter inch as the guns starting to open up to a half-inch then from two thousand and three thousand rounds it's opening up to three-quarters to an inch and that's where he's capable so he can shoot that gun for 3,000 rounds 2,500 rounds but the gun for PRS standards for accuracy is shot out at 1618 because it's no longer shooting quarter inch so that the standards that you're being held to on that aspect are completely different I see what you're saying yeah very interesting so what else is going on as far as like bolt gun versus gas gun again specifically for long range shooting what other kind of stuff did you guys run into that was like like pros and cons right so we've already talked about a little that mechanical accuracy of a bullet gun is just inherently it can be more yeah look two moving parts well and and four I mean two to three moving parts for a bolt gun when the bolt closes yeah so when the gun fires you have your stun your your hammer and your firing pin yeah no trigger and that all happens before the bullet exits yeah the casing wears I'm a gas gun arguably the bolt the bolt should be unlocking if everything's done right right about the time the bullet exits the muzzle but if you're well times a little long or whatever it's possible that you could be having your bullets still actually in the barrel as the bolt starts to unlock and that will affect accuracy so there's a game that you got to play there with your with your gas length your gas system length and where you put your gas hole and all that kind of when people talk about tuning again is that that's kind of what their that's some of it is that no it also has to do with the your gas management and your buffer system and that sort of thing but the big advantage to a gas gun is much faster follow-up shots yeah which is in the tactical world is huge you know so if you can and and more manageable recoil too because we gon' world even more huge that times i've tried to pull the trigger a second time on a bolt gun and it doesn't go nothing worse than sitting at a VRS match and you hit I guess a yell impact and you go to shoot the next target and you're just sitting there pulling a dead trigger oh my god I'm looking more on for all these people times we actually the week before the vortex extreme Garrett had to help me with it because like most three Gunners I tend to tinker with everything and I threw a buffer system into my rifle before I went and had some malfunctioning issues and come to find out if you read the instructions that come with a buffer system it tells you to do a certain thing and I didn't do it because I bought it and slid it in the gun and I was having some just really major malfunctions with it and and Garrett goes through figures it out in about two minutes and all of a sudden it's like oh yeah this gun supposed to run like a sewing machine does think that happened again recently didn't it yeah oh yeah that comes to that we were talking about weapon maintenance versus cleaning yeah apparently you have to kind of do at least one of them right yeah and I didn't triggers dead what's going on bolt guns not working right now it's a gas gun well you should clean it because the inside this is growing things family refugees living as lower receiver yeah so one thing I you know you brought up like quick follow-up shots I mean did you guys find like it seems like you know we're talking like with Ian about f-class and those guys will try and break shots when conditions are perfect yeah and the faster they can follow up and kind of maintain consistency between those conditions and wind calls is that an advantage for you guys as well I thought it was I think it was as well you know the the the damp the recoil dampening effect of the buffer system and all that helps you stay on target faster helps you get back on target fast you're not breaking your cheek weld when you cycle the gun which if you do it right you shouldn't anyways but so everything stays exactly the same and if you're if you got your bipods loaded and the gun setup right you're gonna fire that first shot because you get two shots per target at vortex extreme or however many shots per target at whatever you're shooting at if you're set up right and you fire that first shot you need to make a second shot you should just settle right back on target are pretty close to it and be ready to go like pretty much immediately I mean I can usually with my razor you know I've got the magnification up I can usually watch my own bullet race yeah my gas gun and I wanna need a spotter yeah that is pretty huge you know because you are talking about a target that is anywhere from let's say the majority of the targets at that particular match are three to nine hundred yeah that's kind of where the majority of them fall and you know that's that's pretty far you know first Wisconsin boy especially here oh yeah but when you're looking through your scope especially if there's a lot of jarring motions happening and then rifles moving a lot you know and with me Eric and I are running a couple of rigging Americans which are fine performing rifles you know probably outperform us you know you're talking about like mechanical versa practical accuracy I think are practical accuracy it leaves a lot of room for a lot of different reform very well shocking how good this thing is but not exactly a the smoothest bolt throughout and especially Eric for some reason this was pretty stuck-up seeing he kind of had to like break your cheek well like you're saying then rack that bolt bring it back and next thing you know it's kind of like shoot where's the target and then you got to look around and you're trying to find it through a scope and you can find it outside the scope and then I think I'm pointing in the same general direction you got to look through the scope back down the magnification next thing you know you just wasted ten fifteen seconds off the clock which you guys have already broke and probably both your shots off we're on to the next target yeah yeah yeah I didn't think about just the speed aspect of just being able to stay on target and never leave mm-hmm when you're shooting nine hundred to a thousand twelve hundred yards you get your wind call you fire your first shot and let's say you miss right and you're you know you're quarter mil off the right edge so I'm gonna hold a half a mil farther left okay cool I can do it right now yeah you're making that correct immediate correction and I mean that came in handy for us cuz I think we had a pretty good a pretty good strategy for it so yeah our communication was really good but that's a whole nother topic sure yeah but it did help as far as the wind calls cuz we go through and have a Kestrel catch the catch the weather everything else and in the environment and then go through and get everything there then you were gonna shoot first because we felt my gun was a little more accurate but our velocity was super super close which is kind of rare for two guns to be almost identical but yeah you guys were there like 20 feet per seconds yeah it was it was insane it was I was gonna ask you know you mentioned something too earlier and you know we're talking about accuracy with with gas guns and you said well that used to be the case you know and with some you know I guess you know modern and that advancements or things like that you know not necessarily the case anymore so what what are some of those differences you know now versus then that are making these gas guns so accurate well a lot of it's in the the barrel you know people are people are just building guns better by one thing you know I mean that the large frame AR has kind of been a kind of a weird animal for a long time and now it's getting to be much more common much more popular you're still not really a spec tenney buddy follows you know I mean everybody kind of does their own thing but people are figured yeah I don't know why that's so strange because the air 15 which is just a small frame version essentially I know there's there's a fair amount of differences but it's like they've got that thing so specked out well but that's because the military adopted it I see okay so the military adopted it as their standard issue weapon and so the civilian side you know all the manufacturers just followed suit but that hasn't really happened with the the large frame okay but people are gonna innovate you know in this pattern there's a DPMS and an armed light pattern and then like ours is kind of a lovechild between the two you know and then there's there's other companies that have a small large frame and a large large frame yeah there's all kind of everybody's got their own take on it you know and you rarely ever find two that will actually work together yeah like from different manufacturers right right what is getting at is that people have kind of figured it out you know the engineering is there advancements in technology computer assisted drawings all that stuff and then you know barrel technology has really come along and you know just people are figuring out all the you know I can take you know tighten up my free board diameter by a foul and squeak this a little bit more accuracy and and push the the lead out a little bit further and you know people are just figuring it out and with chamberings and when we were developing our 65 I went back and forth with with the company that that cuts our chambers and I had to move it like a foul at a time deeper until I finally got the accuracy that I wanted and that's why we're our guns are so happy it was a long process and are you doing that then using because we've talked to now I'm trying to draw parallels between our reloading podcasts our long-range podcasts and stuff and you know we've talked about the chambering and jumping or jamming and having to try and make something pretty standardized for a lot of the different factory loads out there and understanding that people are going to be getting factory loads reloading their own ammunition and stuff so so how are you doing like using a certain standard like this is the bullet that we're gonna have this thing standardized to or so I have a standard that I use that I'm like okay this is the one yeah okay that and this and it's usually one that's pretty common that everybody uses I'll just tell you in our guns it's the Hornady 140 the factory load shoots great that's what I use but I also will go to Walmart and find the cheapest like 65 Creedmoor ammo I can find or whatever just because I know that's what a lot of people are gonna do and see how it shoots with that as well Gerald rarely does it shoot as well but as long as it fits you know within that sub MOA guarantee you know we're good yeah I think it's probably fitting within the expectation of the person buying that ammo - exactly and like yeah right like I said you do pay a premium for precision and accuracy not not all the time but I'd say oftentimes and some like and for goodness sakes if you're still talking sub em away yeah I know a lot of times I've gone into the store and I've been guilty of buying the cheapest ammo possible and I always just think to myself I have this moment in my head like if I just make sure to break off a really good shot and maybe maybe I can just kind of if I make sure that my practical accuracy is like as close to zero em away that's how you become a really good shooter yeah yeah if you're shooting a deer at 30 yards I think you're good yeah around Wisconsin yeah very likely could be the case yeah so you think probably does a lot of it come down to the barrel then I mean cuz cuz with a gas gun you have a lot of like you look at a gas gun and there's a lot of meat there so to speak right cuz you got a lower you got you got pistol grip you got a stock buffer system handguard upper lower I mean there's there's a ton of stuff to look at but really if you kind of looked at like a Superman x-ray vision look at a gas gun I mean the part that's actually doing a lot of the the accuracy portion of things it's just it's what is it the barrel and the BCG where it yeah well well there's there's more than that I mean you how you tune your comp if you're running a compensator can actually affect your accuracy if you're running a flash hider the way those gases move around in that in that tiny little space and that brief split-second as that bullets passing through that compensator can affect your accuracy and I don't do it because I you know I mean I'm happy with the way they shoot with them just set up out of the factory but there are guys out there who like especially some of the the extreme like bullseye shooters and stuff actually doing their comp to their ammo and they'll they'll cast their their chambers and see where their their lands are starting and they'll actually extend their you know lengthen their their bullets out or not their bullets with their cartridges out a little bit longer they won't see their bullets quite as deep so that it's engaging with the lands right where they wanted to and then 50 rounds later they're doing it again and it's insane oh my gosh yeah yeah but with a gas gun so there's yeah you're bolt is is very important I learned that playing with the 224 valkyrie like the the bolt is kind of a big deal with that yeah there's a couple different types of it six eight SPC bolts out there and you got to have the right one to match up with your barrel which is crazy because I went through a couple different bolts and finally found one and now I'm getting good groups experimenting with but yeah so your bolt you want you want that dwell time to be appropriate you want it to be perfect the guns got a cycle and you got to bleed off enough gas to make the gun cycle reliably but you don't want it to cycle so fast that it's unlocking before your bullet while your bullet is still like in the barrel does that make sense yeah can you explain dwell time so dwell time is the time from where the back of the bullet passes the gas hole in the barrel and gas starts to bleed off into the gas tube and the bullet exits the muzzle so that's what's called dwell time so as you look at the outside of your barrel it's essentially the space between the gas block in them and like yeah basically yeah it's the space between the gas on the muzzle and that's what dwell time is and that time you want to try to time it to where that gas is hitting your gas key and traveling down and your into your care here and just starting to unlock all right as the right as the bullets exiting the muzzle on that little gas that's still behind the bullet has enough to bleed off to make the gun cycle it's a trick and people tune their gas holes and everything and all that stuff comes into play with the gas gun so you can if you really wanted to get into the science and you had your own shop I mean you could make a gas gun that it yeah that is incredibly accurate but most of the most of the gas guns out of the box nowadays especially ours are capable of sub MOA capable of it mechanically rightful of it that's one thing that I've heard I think I was talking with Ruben once about it too cuz we were looking at a gun that he had was it I know I had built like to ARS and Ruben had built a couple and we were looking at him and then we we'd worked with you guys on getting a I think it was I think it was a rise our M&A our that came in yeah something like that it was sent you guys a couple of my 308 I'm a couple of 223 i thinkin yeah yeah and I remember we pull them out of the box and Ruben was like there's something about a factory gun that's just way different it's just like you can't build it yourself in your garage like they build it like when it comes out of the box do something about a factory that's just better and as you talk about these things where it's like dwell times tuning things the bullets leavin exactly as the bolt is unlocking and just all these other factors that go into it I'm realizing that these are all things were like when I just bought a bunch of random parts on Brownells or midway or whatever and just slapped it all together like I didn't think about any of that like right O's what any of my built guns are doing like well we're yeah I mean we're talking about this mechanical accuracy in here and Garrett talked about this trial and there a sow sow sow a sow and just marrying all these different parts up essentially as perfect as you can mmm-hmm like you're just gonna get a better result do you think it's easier to build an accurate old gun than it is to build an accurate gas gun yourself like by piecing parts together so I've for those reasons I've never built a bolt gun myself okay so I can't really speak to that I feel like it should be you know because there's a lot less parts right it's it there's less parts to mess with but I think like anything else you're gonna have the gunsmith aspect the guy who's gonna take the care to look at the little my new details yeah because there's me with a gas gun that are likely people go like that that's crazy yeah but the gas gun comes out and it shoots a half-inch group right like you know you're not gonna grab too many off the shelf and get that kind of accuracy but if you tweak this and you adjust this and your gas is set here and you're using this part and tuning this to where it's fitting perfectly then things change and I'm sure with a bolt gun is I'm lucky enough I live close to one of the best bull gun builders in the nation in Kansas City and when those guys are building those bolt guns you know they're going through I've been in and seeing the the stocks that are being betting it's like yeah that's got to sit there for the long wait what why you just bedded it and you put it together and you ship it out right now it has to sit here this long and they're going through like what kind of inserts you put in the stock and what type of you know pillars and all kinds of things that I don't really understand as a gas gun guy so when I had my bolt gun bill I mean even with a chassis I went to him I'm like okay here here are all the parts that I would like yep can you get me this barrel and they got me the barrel it's like okay whatever you do do your wizardry and then when I got it back it shot fantastic but I think it's so attention to details you probably can take a remington 700 bolt gun and bolt it into a chassis yourself and like a hot shoots three-quarter inch does that mean that you eat everything out of it god right you know yeah yeah I'm sure there's bolt gun builders out there who buy my question they're probably tearing their hair out like both guns are complicated alright challenge accepted the vortex extreme and but yeah it is it's something like because so many people get into building stuff in their own oh yeah garage I actually converted my closet at our old house into my gun working room and but oh my mom was all for it you know kept me out of trouble okay I did it in high school but yeah like I put stuff together all the time back there and I've keep looking back on it now and it's like the more we talk about accuracy the more I've talked with Ian about guns that he's built like that I'm just like what was I doing like those guns are probably just underdog crap they go bad that's what I was building the judges building the work yeah it was just like that was cool but here's the thing it doesn't matter how accurate it is if it doesn't work yeah who wants it you know what an Enzo I'm not gonna trust my match or my life or whatever do gun that doesn't work without a sound you ever hear to three gun match he has a click when you expect that guy it's it's even louder when you're overseas yeah yeah but and we're really getting deep into the science on it but the truth is I mean you can go out in your garage I mean I've got guns tore apart on my workbench all the time you know and I'm just slapping them together and I'll here's this one part and I'll stick it on there and take it to the range new shoots great you know I don't always get sub my curacy out of them you know but you can typically build just like you're building in your closet with just a hodgepodge bunch of parts and get a gun that's gonna shoot pretty good a lot of its you know get a good barrel yeah he's good ammo this is like a that's one thing that a lot of people overlook is the ammo that's that's one that's always funny you go through and have this just absolutely Ferrari doubt rifle with this great optic great mount everything's perfectly SPECT and then like Walmart budget ammo call come on buddy let's just can't really expect more rings right yeah that totally is well then the thing that comes into play like well what did you toward you torque them - oh I torque them plenty yeah I'd say lot this many they six times each one when I was squeezing it exactly this thing is a 308 and I've ever heard of it but it's gonna kick and I want these rings down tight yes 40-foot pounds exactly at first I couldn't get the Rings to seat and close all the way together but eventually no as you bring up ammunition what are the ammunition or are there any ammunition considerations when you're talking about gas gun first bolt gun you know do you does that change up like like if I'm running a gas gun hey you know I'm used to going to the store and you you brought up like 140 green eld I think it was al DX yeah yeah just imagine LD match I'm used to going to the store for my bolt gun and just grabbing a box of those now is that is that gonna dude I imagine it works just fine in a Gascon but are there any like you know ways to find specific things that we didn't have what your gun likes as far as a bullet and ammo though and I remember correctly I think Hornady had one of the superformance or something like that it was actually recommended not to use in a gas gun there's a little really hot okay at least at the time that was the case because I had a 308 a long time ago and you know went and bought it like man mm-hmm these flinging brass and accuracy in that great and look at the brass and the flattened primers and little camo or pierced primers or yeah chunks of primer back in your bolt carrier so both guns can handle a little bit hotter loads the big things happen to move yeah they're logged and they stay locked okay okay so there's that and then magazines you'd ammo has to fit the magazine where's a bolt gun you could load your ammo you know a long kid loaded a little bit while there if you needed to okay you know and load them individually whereas you can't do that why you guys who can with a gas gun you've got a magazine in lock it back drop it in and your bolt release but it's not really real practical it's not as practice you want it you know you got a you got a load of magazine link though there are some considerations I mean 99% of ammo out there's gonna work fine in both guns every gun you could build two identical guns that come off the line back-to-back and they're gonna shoot different they just have personalities we just got lucky in our stars yeah ours both you know like that ammo that we should that we were shooting and we were lucky we were in in Wyoming the week before and we got they had a range there you could shoot out too and it's like okay well let's let's see what these things can do and what we can get dope while we're here and so we went ahead and did that it was like okay well there's this target out there ten inch wide it was a it was a popper hanging upside down and there's a hanging popper so whatever that since it's a center scoring circles ten or twelve inches eleven hundred yards we were shooting it and basically calling for each other like you know a group coming out of your guns you know you're you're catching it all over a ten inch and this one's hitting a five inch or 6 inch group at that distance this one's this one's gonna be the one we used for four points his gun I was grouping a little bit better than mine so I I shot first and then we used mine to make the we know if I get hits great but we used my gun to get the wind call and then his gun was grouping a little bit better so I know I might get I might get three or one or maybe four points you know out of my gun but we were more likely to get four points out of his gun and that was the strategy that we used as a good strategy yeah so Dylan he's sent he sent you in like the canary then yeah yeah well if you're gonna have somebody get some information for you send a sniper to get first points after well you know in sniper teams the way they're organized is not like in the movies the senior man is always the spotter and usually you got your guy that just graduated sniper school on the how the actual gun because a monkey can quarter a target and pull a trigger yeah yeah bonnie is is no joke trying to make those trying to make those calls at long range trying to figure out if the bullet splash came from the bullet passing behind the target or if it was in front you know it's like well then go in through if you want to see trace you know I had a couple people out to to my range and we were practicing some long range for a match that's coming up and you know he never looked behind a spotting scope and I'm like okay so I can see Tracey's a card it's all blurry like don't worry about that like I'll shoot just just watch don't touch anything just look through the lens and watch and you know next he's looking through he's like okay well what spotting scope is this what tripod is this what is this how do you do this and you know he was he was going nuts cuz he could actually physically see it yeah and it's like well you can't zoom in on the target and get a really good view in the trace and you can't zoom all the way out and get a really good view you kind of have to be in that middle ground and if you don't know that type of stuff the first time I went out I had no idea and you know got the spotting scope and I'm looking to like you had target super clear cool good for you don't guess not always just the best part of it typically try to when you want to see traces focus about two-thirds of the way to the targa yeah so there you go big trade secret right there maybe that's an entire podcast on its own but I mean it sounds like you guys both have a lot of experience spotting I mean what are some tips out there that I mean that's obviously like a really really good one there but like you know what are some you know hot tips to become a good spotter so the biggest enemy the long-range shooting is wind yes you know so there's all these other effects and that's great but they're they're really easy to calculate and a little bit of experience you can get it figured out wind is a can be a nightmare though especially if you're shooting over valleys and in-between what you know what obstacles whatever especially like in an urban area where you've got buildings that you're shooting in-between and stuff it gets pretty crazy mm-hmm so learning how to read Winwood be focused 90 percent of your time on because especially with ballistic apps and stuff nowadays you just type all that stuff in you know what you can't horse wind gusts and things like that that that takes experience gotcha so like an if you are spotting for somebody where should they be positioned I mean is it gonna make a difference I mean that they're ten feet behind directly behind them yeah as close to their boar as you can get yeah it was with us shooting the vortex extreme we were both behind the gun yes sir your side by side which you know I had a larger PRS style muzzle break so Garrett figured out real quick if we were shooting kind of at an angle he did not want to be on a certain side I mean he got punched in the face by the most brakes so that was not that was it was comical am I in then of course we got like a 10-minute walk to get to the next stage was cursing my name it's always like a little bits of a it's always comical when you're the guy with the break oh yeah because life is pleasant as can be for you well and that was interesting the tactical games part not to go back to for muzzle breaks no longer allowed after a bunch of three Gunners showed up and shot it had some brass blowing off of it and hitting shooters next to us and I believe one guys eye protection started melting from the from the muzzle blast and yeah so flash hiders only now made it a little safer because suppressor is perfectly fine I don't want to carry that thing for a two-mile run but yes suppressors fine yeah you guys were shooting when you guys were out at that match you guys were shooting mighty fast and then we talked about the follow-up shots but you guys also had and now we're just chatting a little bit about strategies cuz obviously your strategy worked pretty well you guys said that this year it seemed as though the cardio was the biggest thing to get back into so but you wonder you're you guys are shooting fast like as far as it be one troupe ago two shots boom boom and there are times where like the next shooter would almost shoot like immediately and was that part of the reason was part of the reason for that just because you didn't want conditions to change in between shows it was impatience yeah well we're trying to save time I mean the whole course is timed yeah so I mean granted we're gonna shave off a few seconds you know or maybe a minute off a stage but over ten stages that's ten minutes mm-hmm pretty big yeah yeah yeah I mean that's there were a couple times I think we probably could have taken a little more a little more time because we had one of them has twelve hundred yard target and we're up there and we fired her shots it's 1,200 yards argA and I don't think either one of us connected with I think it was a little off and it went through and he's like you guys finish you got three minutes left that was probably one where I could have taken little more time and that's all I'm shooting PRS chant I'm at a different style if you're if you're shooting in 2g precision pre-race match near me in Kansas City you got 90 seconds to shoot the stage my first instinct is like fastest time possible and three gun mm-hmm and you go and you break your shot and you hit you know if there's eight targets ten targets whatever and you hit four that's not good it doesn't matter how fast you were that's not good yeah and so it's a it's a different aspect to so I know for me impatience was kind of part of it but there were certain stages there 300 yards I'm pretty comfortable ripping through that pretty quickly yes the close ones I would shoot and I would move on to the next target while he was engaging I wouldn't even spot for his 300 yards Yeah right you know within three gun we do that with our little six power scopes three all the time you know yeah yeah that makes sense but I was wondering you know because like we'd come up to a stage and Eric and I if we were really really booking it and by that I mean you know fast walk instead of a slow walk but you know you get up there and somebody would just be finishing and he'd overhear him in like winds going right to left and so I look at Eric and be like we got this winds going right to left we get down set up five minutes later we start shooting we're holding you know a little bit to the right expecting this right-to-left win know what's going left to right at that point and it was just like what the heck's going on I thought was going right to left he's looking again he's kind of like no it's weird it's like the sagebrush over there is actually is blowing left to right no no that can't happen it couldn't possibly be that those guys did that on purpose and we were at the banquet last night he took the last roll watch this we were running our time down every single time you get you know what a ten minutes on the stage once you get once you're locked and loaded or once you're ready to go you get ten minutes six six yeah I don't know why I thought it was 10 but we were running ourselves down to just like the end of our possible time every time I don't think we ever ran out time we got through everything but every time it was like you got 30 seconds and we're like we got to shoot three more shots yeah and one thing that I also thought that just occurred to me too is that we had to reload in the middle of while we were shooting through it so there's oh sure you guys have like a three or a five round four round mag of thing and so and you're saying you guys didn't have any issues with that guys up a 20 or ten ten round magazine yeah I said I literally loaded up ten ten round pmags mm-hmm and you know the long range the lrp max through min - my pack and there's when we show up with stages grabbed another Mac see that would be that would be pretty slick that would be especially with that limited time because yeah I mean it was like every time we got there you know we're sitting down we're looking at the targets finding everything and meanwhile like loading loading rounds into our little tiny mag you slap those in and it was like maybe it was three I don't remember the number was really awkward because you shoot two per target it was like okay I shot two on this target he shot two on that target you shoot two on the next one he shoot two on the next one and then you would shoot like one on the next one and then have to reload or whatever it was and it was just like it always came at really inopportune moments and then you have to take that out reload and then put it back in and I'd be I just the more we talk about this the more I'm really curious to shoot it with a Gascon was one of the advantages I think for gas gun at that particular match what's a PMAG twenty bucks maybe for uh for 308 when you can finally buy you can find them less in there okay so let's say twenty bucks if I get $200 in mags turn there it's like yeah okay well for my bolt gun chassis that's like two mags I'm not gonna go buy eggs for my bolt gun yeah I mean because in in PRS I'm not gonna be using 10 mags so I've got probably five and one of them's like a three round or five round I don't take with me and the rest of them are ten round and they're expensive and I mean like I just talking to a friend of mine about he wants to go shoot it and like yes and you know you'll take these mags I'll give you the mags I'll give you the gun scope set up here's the amal to buy go have fun I'm like you're gonna you're gonna need a backpack to carry this thing do not try and put it on a sling and give them a warning ahead of time and needs like okay well yeah just little the mags up like that not like what we did I'm not gonna go buy six more or whatever and ask for that thing yeah you're talking thousands of mags probably Magpul now has the AI seus pattern magazines I have 1/4 mile my remington bolt gun chassis gun that is yeah yeah they're a lot cheaper yes still they're still kind of expensive they're about 35 bucks but it's not $100 or whatever right I mag you know metal one right yeah I'm gonna give that a shot this this coming year but you guys mentioned to I mean just as far as as we kind of feel free to bring up any other things too that we miss as far as our questions go but you know you guys are speaking to a little bit of the stuff you're preparing for this next vortex extreme and what what kind of stuff for you guys thinking as far as the way things went last year first away things but this year maybe placing a little higher overall you were talking about what do you lose the total point count do you remember that like how many and I know there were like a mark question stages 10 stages each person was gonna take 80 shots yeah and you had a potential of there was a man thought there was eight points what's 8 times 4 16 32 points possible first stage so 320 possible for the whole match sounds right and then you're you know how fast you finished was you know scaled and like that was gonna like you know 30% of the sent was through I think if I remember right our score was around 2:45 to 250 that 3 so so obviously we want to improve on that it's a big part of the score but that other 30% both of us are big guys and in order to make an improvement that 30% still a low-hanging fruit so if we were able to get through quicker I say that's gonna help quite a bit so you did it in what four hours yeah we could shave 30 or 40 minutes or even an hour off our time he's lost I don't even know how much I've lost 20 pounds nice press it was funny with the vortex it's you know we're both three Gunners and we go shoot this match the the vortex extreme and now we're both like alright we gotta lose weight all year we've been prepping for it like we talked about at least once a week we got the same personal trainer and I got Garrett set up with the same trainer and so now he hates him too Tony I'm sorry well hey you I only hate him from 7:45 to 8:45 every morning well after that he's a good guy right right you know but during that time I hate his guts so you guys are taking it serious serious yeah so this is the match that the 2019 vortex extreme I have done more preparation for than any other match ever and it's still like four months away or whatever right what the fall with you guys afterwards see how that all worked out when you guys started this training I mean did you have you got did you take like a solid baseline of where you started then yes far as using that and then also going through the trainer and kind of explaining where where we're at right now yeah and where wanna be okay and he would go through I mean the the first I don't kind of the same thing when I talked to you the first week or two that you're in the gym doing something like what am I doing this is this is not what I want to be doing this like a well you're fat and out of shape guess what you need to do things to get the muscles in the bones ready to actually work out like yeah yeah whatever I could do it he goes okay no just stick with this for a while then you get up the next morning you realize like oh I'm really sore like I didn't do that much I'm really sore and then two weeks later you realize like yeah he was right because this is not fun there's nothing and I think the last workout I did before we came here was 30 burpees that day was a small portion of it yeah you know that was a very small portion like this is not meant for enjoyment if that's what's going on yeah you know you're in store for some pain yeah exactly yeah I get off at just prepping for this match and just to be fit in general you know cause it's gonna help me in 3-gun and just general life but I get up at 4:00 in the morning go to the gym yeah it was it was the ve that that inspired it you know when I was a weightlifter before we're improving lives you guys are changing people's lives exactly but you know as a weight loss before and then I just sorry guys oh no I was gonna say maybe I need to get that same motivation that probably be a good idea you probably get an a well you need to get an A our first I think you know maybe I'll hit up that Gascon division priorities if you show up to the gas-gun division at the vortex extreme this year I am going to my mind will be you will have gone from having no a are suddenly competing with one that would probably be enjoyable dare to dream dare to dream indeed I've got more than will make it even better to view that one really dare to dream you never know man that is a cool conversation I have with you guys and what do you say we jump into some last calls about this stuff like gas guns these guys familiar with the last call arrow flash calls I'm not we're just gonna bring it in for a landing so whatever is you just follow your heart okay whatever your heart tells you to say at the end final thought yeah this is your like Custer's last stand on the podcast okay you're not gonna die at the end oh thank god just I mean just think of something you know off the cuff you'll know that as long as incredibly profound then you'll be fine yeah yeah Marco how about you because we our guests are always the better ones that line cause we kind of suck at it mark you go first I don't have a good one I just every time I leave any of our podcasts I leave with a lot of inspiration and intrigue and I'm just kind of I don't know I don't want to I guess create a concrete self prophecy here but I've got some some intrigue of the Gascon division right now yeah my question for you guys and Garret and take the focus this is called the deferment last call this is a deferment mark used it last time and I used a regular last call but now I'm going back to my defer bring the attention off rise and the stuff that you make here for a bit okay as far as the long-range gas guns is there really anything else out there besides like the ar-10 platform or ar-15 some of them can go long ish you know but like are there any other viable long-range gas gun platforms that are that are not roughly based around the AR right yeah like I'm trying to think of anything you know I mean there's the m1 that's pretty okay yeah it's like really heavy wooden want to carry around a lot as accurate as it's not it's not the weight really with that with the m1 that one a it's and there are some that shoot really really well Oh undoubtedly but as a general rule they're not my experience they're not as accurate quite as accurate and I mean other than that is there and I can't really think of it and so you start to get into like a Barrett 50 Cal or something like that if you oh yeah yeah sure yeah yeah yeah okay there there are some other ones out there but for the most part what you're gonna find is an AR platform I was curious cuz you know I always have to try and find something different than what everybody else has yes I just get an ar-10 that I'm like everybody else who's gonna get gas guns if you show up with a Barrett that would be so awesome the 18-yard off the internet I don't want to stand there and watch it I'm gonna have to start doing some tactical games to get him to do more than that they I'm gonna have to like we might need more more targets about pounds worth of muscle remember the so one of the stages there's like an 80 yard off and there's a seven yard and so we're standing there and of course there's two three Gunners they're going through like okay well at the buzzer you guys can start the beep Garrett's whack-whack and he drops down prone whack black I dropped down prone so we both got all of our hits on it obviously and as we drop down in the background we're talking about the target distance okay it's this hold or whatever and the guy's like 11 seconds all I can think is I'm pretty sure to be 11 seconds that first shot holding a Barrett 50 Cal in the off and target and then all right guys stop we got to go pick the target you broke everything yep I just was super-embarrassed on that target because I was walking up and you know I'm with Eric barber who's like Midwestern hunter extraordinaire just lives and breathes shooting deer around Wisconsin and such and I'm walking up there at Mike right so we got an offhand target on this next and I'm like do you know the proper technique for shooting an offhand target and Eric's like mr. happy-go-lucky he's kind of like oh no no what is it and I'm like well you know I've heard from a number of folks out there you gotta do this yet I'm walking him through the whole thing as we're walking up to the stage probably like three-minute conversation like all this you know advanced ballistic and in shooting form whatnot and he's like oh cool yeah sounds really cool anyway they start the clock and he he's actually for some reason started out prone but he just gets up stands up and just with this Ruger American right there goes boom boom teen and then he goes down prone and I'm kind of like oh wow this must be I'm like probably taught him really well I mean I jump up and I try doing my whole thing missed both of them we go through the whole stage and I was kind of like man like you did pretty well it off and I was like did you I was like did you do anything straight he's like guy I gotta be honest with you I didn't do any of that he's like you know that target in particular though I always loved that one it's actually one of my favorites because I think mentally people there's like oh I mean they're already on to the next target before they even start to shoot and you're not the only you're not the only one that missed that one it's I mean that's a fun points you got to take it as seriously as ever it's eight points that's the easy eight points you have to get we actually had some they don't always get fun at shot show not this last year before we grabbed a four-and-a-half 227 razor we put it on the new 65 Creedmoor kind of showing it at the show and we shot it a couple times and Garrett had just absolutely dialed in at the target at 960 and I shot it I'm like okay that's boring look I need one I want one but that's boring and I'm like I'm pretty sure you could do this standing off hand he's like wow if we have time later so we come through and eventually we had a little wool so I stood up and fired the first shot hit it off hand I'm like who put this down so then so you did it and then so then people started coming I heard you can shoot 960 yards off and with this rifle 960 yard off and impact to see the rise 960 next year it was it was interesting cuz we I don't know how many people we ended up we ran about 20 probably it's a pretty kind of big names in the industry Rob Pincus came and did it and then it became who can do it - who can hit it three you've been four out of five four out of five 960 I did what I think two out of five dang yeah it was it was almost comical though because if you if you know how to shoot offhand you're kind of drifting through the target and knew exactly where to hold and the one that I missed at about five was like an off right edge and he goes uh-huh one of these rifles please and like I already got the scope to put on it so that's sweet all right was that a last call on your in all right Garrett to impart some wisdom here are the most profound person right now okay well so I'm just gonna say this life is not about the destination it's about the journey so how I saw that on the t-shirt look at that I'm pretty sure yeah I was on a shirt and so what you're getting at is the journey of a 6-5 Creedmoor round as it makes its way through the 10-round PMAG and then into the bolt-gun and then on its way to that's it starts before that it starts as a chunk of lid in the ground and a minor you know extracts it from the ground mm-hmm you know and then it gets it goes through the casting process and gets turned into a bullet and then it lives its life on a shelf in a store for however long just waiting waiting to find its destiny talking to its other bullet friend it looks up it looks up to its right and sees the 300 was in there and it says why you gotta be such an that's supposed to mean wisdom is a gentleman why you got to hit people on the shoulder so our long-range cartridges I'm very kind to people and meanwhile you're over your bucking people around like a like a bucking bronco I don't know I don't know what to say I don't either mark I don't either well no so on a piece of randomness yeah we will close this one out appreciate you guys coming on thanks for having me was an honor conversation guys as always hit us up on Instagram follow the guys at Rhys dillan easily - on social media and whatnot see what they're up to and check out one or the other if you're a gas gun guy alt guns try it out like Dylan has or if you're a bolt gun guy check out gas guns and you know perhaps we dispelled some misconceptions out there about their accuracy or potential accuracy and we've coined a new phrase what was it again practical accuracy I don't know a Mara who might already exist but if not I made it up know everybody goodbye good night alright that'll wrap it up for this episode of the vortex nation podcast thanks everybody for listening hit that subscribe button so you can always stay up to date on the latest happenings over here at the vortex nation podcast leave us a review or comment down below we want to hear what you have to say about the show maybe what you like maybe what you didn't like so that way we can make these podcasts as good as they can be you can also follow us on Instagram at vortex nation podcast will be posted about each episode released so that way you can go back find these things maybe grab a little nugget information that you can take with you to the range out of the field or maybe to the kitchen if we're talking about some good food so the end everybody thanks and happy hunting and shooting we appreciate it have a good one

Channel: Vortex Nation Podcast

Views: 2,603

Rating: 4.891892 out of 5

Keywords: Vortex Optics, Vortex, Vortex Nation, Vortex Nation Podcast, Podcast, Optics, gas gun, bolt gun, dillen easley, Garrett grover, rise armament, long range, shooting, precision

Id: nEPHLeHWoFk

Length: 61min 11sec (3671 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2019