Show Notes
This week on the Missouri Woods & Water podcast Nate gets to talk with Tanner Morrell of Morrell Targets. Nate and Tanner talk about the history of the company and what goes into a quality bag and foam target. Tanner talks about all of the testing and trial and error through the years that they have put into their bag targets. He also goes into how Morrell got into foam targets and how the high roller became a favorite in the target world very quickly. There are a lot of interesting things to learn about targets in this show. Thanks for listening!
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Show Transcript
[00:00:00] What's up folks? Welcome to the Missouri Wood Water Podcast. I'm your host, Nate Thomas. Just hopping on for a quick intro to today's show. Today we talk with Tana Morell of Morell Targets. Pretty interesting talk actually, we. We go into what makes a quality target, both from a bag target, which is where their bread and butter started back in the day.
And a nice foam target as well. So we get into the background of morel targets and then a little bit into both of those. But gotta pay the bills. So we need to do some sponsors before we do the sponsors. I wanted to give a quick shout out. I forgot to do this last week, but[00:01:00] two weekends ago I think it was, we were at the Heartland Bow Hunter premiere, which is pretty awesome.
It's around the middle of June each year. It's usually over by Bass Pro in independence. So anyways, we were there this year and ran into a few listeners some guys that are doing some pretty cool stuff too. So I wanted to say, and I think I got names right, but my memory sucks. Wanted to say hey to Landon and Brady.
Stockman and Allen, I think. And I forgot the girlfriend's name, so hello to you too. Don't remember your name, sorry about that. But I wanna say what's up to the guys. It was cool meeting you guys in person and keep it up. So let's get into these sponsors before we jump into two day show Morell Targets, man, that's the ones who are on the show today.
Check 'em out. Morrel targets.com. They've been making targets since the eighties and really quality stuff. I've got handful of them now. Just got the big one this year for my son so that if he misses, he doesn't lose [00:02:00] arrows, cuz I don't really wanna go buy two dozen more arrows. Morell's gonna help me do that, so check 'em out.
Weber Outfitters, make sure you enter the ultimate bow hunting giveaway if you have not yet. It's over a $1,200 package. Easy to enter. You just click the link in the show notes or go to our website under Webber Outfitters under our partners tab and hit the link. That's it. You can sign up. I think you can sign up like up to seven times.
So get it done and enter Alon optics, man. Haven't really been shooting lately cuz it's been hot and we've been busy, but I really wanna get my Midas tack on my 2 23 bolt gun and play with that a little bit, but still sitting in the box. So I need to get out and do some planking. Getting an itchy trigger finger.
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So it's pretty cool. River's Edge Tree stands I've got about three, two hand stands and I need to get set up for the boys. I'm hoping to get that done this weekend. I'm recording this intro on June 29th, so I'm hoping to get some stuff done this weekend and maybe put some tree stands together and, I don't know, maybe get some Hung, but it's gonna be hotter and shit, so we'll see.
Lucky Buck, I hope also to dump my July dump of Lucky Buck Out. I usually try to do that around the first of every month when I start doing it, so it'll be around that time. Hope to do that. I've been getting some really good action on my Minerals, excited about seeing these bucks continue to grow.
I've got a couple that look pretty decent so far, but I don't really know what to think in June, so I try not to get too excited and it usually don't [00:04:00] work. I do get excited, but hey lucky Buck helps me do that on X Bs. I've been using the hell out of it because of my Wyoming trip. So I've been learning a lot of new features.
You, if you guys listen to last week's show, I learned how to do line distance by just touching the map with two fingers that literally blew my damn mind, so damn cool. Check that out. And all the other stuff on X offers use our code mww 20 for 20% off on the website. You gotta go to the website to get that code.
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It's a game changer. Saved me hours upon hours I bought. Two dozen arrows a couple years ago and fledged 'em all myself, cut 'em all myself. Use it in Russell's saw, but we all did it ourselves [00:05:00] and it took forever just because it does, especially when you don't do it every day. And I got two dozen in a matter of a couple days, so it was pretty awesome.
And then camo Fire flash Sale, download the app is the way I use it. You can get on the website, camel fire.com, but honestly, the app is 10 times easier. And then finally, last but not least, reveal cameras. I've got four out right now and I've got another five that I'm getting ready to deploy, hopefully this weekend that I just talked about doing all this stuff on.
And the thing about 'em is they're so freaking easy, dude. What I do is I set the camera up at home. So I open the app, add a camera, set it up real quick, and then I turn it off and take it to where I'm going, turn it back on, make sure it gets signal, and I leave. It's that simple. I've never really had a cell type camera that easy to set up.
So it's pretty sweet and you have to check 'em out. Reveal cameras by tact cam. That's our sponsors for today. Had to [00:06:00] get that outta the way. But let's jump into our show with Tanner Morell of Morell Targets. This is the Missouri Woods and Water Podcast.
All right with us today on the show, we've got Tanner Morell with Morell Targets. You guessed it. Tanner. What's up man? What's up dude? How you doing? Pretty good. Pretty good. Just sitting on a Friday. Hot ass Friday. I don't know about down at Arkansas. I'm guessing it's the same there. Man, it's getting, starting to get humid.
Yes. I live in the river valley we live right by the Arkansas River, and I guess I'm used to it at by this point, so it's not too bad. I'm just trying to avoid the a hundred degree mark. Yeah, if we can avoid that, I'll be good. Yeah. My daughter has two softball games today and luckily the first one starts at [00:07:00] five 30, so you're on the down, down end of the heat of the day.
So I'm hoping I don't sweat too profusely today out there, but can't make any guarantees. Can't make any guarantees. I'm a hot natured person, so God putting me in the middle of Missouri. For my life is probably not the best pace place for a guy with my temperature to live, but, it's home and that's where I'm gonna stay.
So it's, it is what it is. I think I'm a little better suited for North Dakota, those areas is probably where my body types best for. But yeah, I'm not there, yeah. It's interesting cuz Missouri, you're right next to me, so I know all about Missouri. Yep. We're pretty much the same place, man.
Okay. Before we get into the meat and potatoes of today's topic give everybody a quick introduction of who you are and a little rundown about what Morel Targets is and a little bit of their history. Sure. I'm Tana Morell. I'm, I actually Del Morell's son and I'm the marketing director for Morell [00:08:00] Targets.
And on top of that, being his son, I have to work a lot more avenues. I'd like to say, marketing directors. Part-time and then everything else rolls up into one, position. But, I'm happy to do it. It's pretty cool. Mentality amongst the office and then the guys in the plant and how we're just one unit.
I've seen a lot of people come and go and I've seen a lot of people stay, I've been, dad started the company in 1986. I was born in 1988, so I've literally seen the company from the bottom all the way to what we are today. And it's been cool to see It really has been, especially, growing up in the outdoor industry.
All my buddies, they all hunt, right? And they're just like, man, what's it like to be in the outdoor industry? I was like, man, it's fantastic. It's fantastic. So I'm super stoked to, be a part of the culture that we have here, and [00:09:00] I just feel like that culture's just been getting better and better every year.
And our team just works really well together, so that's awesome. Yeah, obviously there's no secret we're partnered with Morel Targets. We've been talking about you guys since our partnership and we felt the same way with, the way you guys run things. We we got to talk to you guys at ata.
You have the coolest set up. I would say out of all the different target companies out there the spinning thing up top, it's awesome, man. You guys probably have to do a shit ton of work to make those I didn't even want to ask how much work goes into that, but and I appreciate it.
We've known you guy. We've known Morell since we've been hunters, obviously. But. We've had you on our radar to work with you from the beginning of our podcast, which, I think is a testament to, the company you are. You're local right here to where we are.
You're just down in Arkansas, we're in Missouri. And then also, you know what, it can't always get done. We, we do have partners [00:10:00] where this isn't the case, but one of the coolest things about your targets is they're made where? In the ussa Man made, in all Made in America. And that makes me happy.
Not just the usa we're right in the heart of the Ussa right in the middle, and it's we're from the south, we're part of that hunting community. The city of Alma literally has maybe 5,000 people in it. So it's definitely rural America and. We just enjoy that lifestyle.
We've been doing it. Everybody, most people here hunt, have been, or at least has hunted or have a family member that hunts. It's definitely part of a lifestyle in a community that's, and especially archery. It's not just hunting, it's archery hunting. Yeah. Yeah. There's a big difference. And, people ask me all the time oh, put down this deer.
And it's cool. So what are you shooting? Oh, it's a, browning or Remington. And I'm like that, that's good. And I'm not downplaying that. That's great. But man, you need to pick up a [00:11:00] bow. It's a different, it's a different feeling. See what it's like. Like you, you do it once. You won't go back because it's just so much more intense.
It's just so much more intense on every level. You get to hear the deer come in, you get to see if it's cold enough, see, the breath that he takes and see really how he acts. What he is, what is he even looking at, if you can get, typically if you're gonna be a safe hunter, you're gonna let 'em come in at 20 yards.
Or if you're a confident hunter you can take 'em down at 30, 40, 50 even. But I've always grew up on, make sure and make a ethical shot. Let 'em come in at 20. Or it's much more personal, yeah. Bow hunting is much more personal with the deer. Cuz like you said, I'm sure there's archers out there that would disagree with me, but I don't really want to take a shot over 40, yeah. I'm comfortable. Other distances, but there's a lot that goes into shooting a deer. At [00:12:00] 60 yards or whatever, there's more than just, oh, I can make that shot. Sure, I can shoot a target at 65 yards all day long. But a, yeah, a live deer is not a target, I wish it was cuz then you'd feel a lot better about letting that fly.
But, if they're at, if they have any wondering of someone being around, they jump the string, something happens. 60 yards is a long way. 40 yards an in, it's like the deers on top of you, and obviously 20 yards an in, it's even different. I shot a deer at seven yards a couple years ago and it was, I felt like I could have just reached out and petted him before I, shot him.
It was such a cool experience. Yeah, you're definitely right. Yeah. And interesting is the, your ALMA in Arkansas is like a busting metropolis compared to our alma, which is, we have an alma oh, probably 25 minutes from where I live. And it's 350 people. Yeah. So you got like a metropolis down there in Arkansas.
No fun, fun fact, I think [00:13:00] I looked this up a long time ago in school, but I think there's an alma in every single state that we have in America. So in America, I'm pretty sure that's interesting. I'm pretty sure there's an alma in every state. I won't fact check you, but hey, that, that would make sense.
Yeah, please don't, I know there's, I know there's an Alma Arkansas now I know there's an Alma Missouri, and I know for a fact there's an Alma Kansas, so we got three of the 50 right there. Yeah. Hopefully some will let us know. Yeah, they can. They can fact check, yeah, they can. All right, let's get into Target.
So what I want to talk about today is, if you get on Morell's website, there's all these different offerings, right? You got bag targets, you got foam targets, you got 3D targets, just a little bit of everything, right? There's all kinds of different ways to go about it. What we'll start at 30,000 foot and then we'll probably, get closer from there.
But what goes into making a good target? Like, how does everything start for you guys specifically? [00:14:00] What, where do you thinking about when you set out to produce a, an archery target? Oh, absolutely, man. The first thing is r and d. So if you, if we go back to 1986, dad created a bag. Target was his first target that he ever created and he created in his garage.
I think he had a working prototype for four years before 86 to where he was just fine tuning it, letting buddies shoot it. And he finally put it together and made it a business in 1986. And that first first time he created that bag target there was a floating center in it. Okay.
And that's what he got. He got that patented in 1986. And that really put a staple in all bag targets. If you're shooting a quality bag target, they're gonna have a floating burlap center. And that's our patent that we had since 1986. Now that patents ran out. So a lot of competitors have put that into their bags.
I don't blame 'em. [00:15:00] I would do the same thing. It's badass. It's a better target. It is an absolute better target. And back then we actually had a burlap cover. Now we use polypropylene. It's a better material, but it's cool. Like in my office I have a, the second model fully.
It looks pristine and it's crazy. It's like somebody bought it. I don't even know where it came from, but somebody bought it and returned it to us, or I don't know how they worked through. One of the guys, one of the sales guys talked to 'em and they ended up giving it back to us.
We traded 'em for a brand new target. But it's a burlap target and it's completely built. And we get, actually got two of 'em and one of 'em I just broke into and I know what was made back then. We actually had a cotton stuffing material and, which is interesting. It was just basically burlap and cotton.
Stuffed in both sides. [00:16:00] And we wrapped it in a netting and then a poly bag went over it, and then we slid it into the burlap. That was the, the basic design of it. But y it hasn't, the design hasn't necessarily changed all that much because it was such a good design.
When you're working with bag material and bag material is a value target. That's what people want bag targets is cuz it's not, it's solid poor foam or a conventional or layered style foam target is gonna be generally more expensive if they're using premium material. Now some companies are using not so premium material, unable to break that cost down, but, you get what you pay for when it comes to the foam world, right?
Because you've gotta manufacture it. Bag targets are a recycled material. Every bag target that's made is, comes from recycled material. We have a, a pretty strong hold in the bag market today as a [00:17:00] company, and a lot of people don't know this about. 55% of all target sales taken the three Ds out of the equation, but about 55% comes from bag target sales.
Which is a pretty interesting fact. And then, that other 45% goes to, foam products foam targets. But we know that bag targets was super important back in 86 and it's super important now. And that design hasn't necessarily changed all that much. The only thing that's really changed is the type of materials that's gone into, a typical bag target.
So we, here at Morell, we have different grades of material that we, it's a trade secret cuz we know how to choose our materials in a way for, a certain price point. Obviously the higher end bag targets are gonna, we're gonna put our premium material, but we have different qualifiers of material that goes into it that way.
When you get one [00:18:00] particular bag target, it could have two different style of the same grade material, but they look slightly different because we're working with recycled materials just like every other bag target manufacturer. And that's one thing, they'll call and be like this thing has something completely different than my last one.
It looks different, but it's the exact same quality. Gotcha. So Makes sense. And that's the stuffing material that that we put into our bags. And then something interesting that we did this year that we're looking to do a patent pending for is a double. Burlap center and that's what goes into our kinetic target, our kinetic 1.0 and our Kinetic X.
So we're the first target company to ever put a double burlap center because, the burlap is good for, strong stopping power. We're able to shoot into that kinetic X and the kinetic 1.0 the 10 point nitro and shoot into that and get [00:19:00] maybe five inches of penetration and can pull it out with two fingers.
Dang. So for a bag target, that's pretty impressive and we're able to keep that price point nice and low for what it does. And We, so the actual bag target itself hasn't changed that much in design Yeah. In the 30 or 40 years, since you started, but Yeah. I fix it if it's not broke.
No. Yeah. And so I'm on your guys' website and I've got a multitude of your bag targets, but I've always, I'm one of those lay archers, like the three different bag targets I have of yours. I can tell there's something different about all of them. But I don't know what it is.
I'm just a guy that goes, this one's a, this one's a little stur. Like Stouter, this one is heavier. This one has a white face. This one's yellow, but yeah. What goes into a, like a high quality bag target, So the, I guess my question [00:20:00] I'm asking is, I won't name names, but Yeah.
I can pick up my, for instance, I have a morel, I have the Kinetic X, but I'm gonna say the outdoor field, outdoor range field port archery target. Okay. It's one of my favorite ones. Mostly because it it looks a lot like the hay bales. I used to paint of my father-in-laws. He used to leave me a hay bale and then I would paint that hay bale and that's what I would shoot into every summer.
And I would paint it a lot like that target is, so I'm just gonna use that one. I can pick up that target, that, that field port archery target, and I can pick up a target from company X, Y, Z that might be similar in size. And you can tell there's a difference. The basic design obviously is a bag target, but why do some seem like they're so much better?
Than others. What goes into that high quality target? Is it the basic design that your dad figured out 40 years ago? [00:21:00] Or are some just cutting corners where, morel doesn't, what goes into that good quality, bad target? Sure. There's a slew of reasons that can make a good versus bad target.
We get some returns. We don't get all that much when it comes to bad targets. Virtually any. And I think what that has to do is it's because of how we do it and the materials that we choose to use and how yeah, everybody has that same design. But I think some of not all of them, but some of our competitors have went to, they've tried to automate.
Creating the bag creation process, and we know how they're doing it, and we've looked at doing that ourselves. But what we do is if it's like a company policy, if we lose any sort of durability in that target, we don't come out with it. So [00:22:00] we looked at these designs where machines could, push in material and create more automated process, but we would lose quality in that.
So we elected to not do that. So we still have manual guys building our products because they, it's it's the secret sauce, but I'm sure everybody is aware of it. Yeah. They can get all the nooks and crannies and really build a quality target. Versus having a machine, jump in and put pressure into a bag target and then stuff it, and then there's still all these voids that it creates, which is not a fully packed, it's not packed properly, is what it is.
It's a faster way of doing it. But they can turn out five to your one, let's say. Exactly. But the one is gonna outperform all five of the automated ones. It's not gonna last long. It won't be near as consistent as a morale bag target. And that's [00:23:00] general. And here's the thing is, you know what, why, what are bag targets be more superior.
It's man it all goes back to r and d. The way we test everything. There's not been a target you have seen that we haven't tested. We have. So in our office, we have a mountain of competitors' products, and then we've tested every one of 'em. We believe that if you're not testing, you're getting behind.
You're getting behind, you're losing your edge. And that's, that's one thing I should probably talk to you about. How do we test? And we had this we call it the mq testing range MQ testing range since, for RL quality testing range. And that's where we take all of our products and our competitors' products, and we go and we test and we use high speed crossbows, the world's fastest crossbows at the time.
Whatever's hot. And then [00:24:00] weve, we also test mid range, 400 feet per second, and then we test 350 feet per second cross bows. And we use different, bolts and we use different tips. We use mechanicals, fixed blades fill points. We use out certs when, we're shooting compounds.
Same thing with compounds. It's high speed compound. You're doing everything you can to tear your shit up, you're trying to Yes. Yeah. Basically. Yeah, basically. And anywhere from, two 80 to, three 10. And we have the both setups for that. We have one guy that shoots and his name's Tucker Backus, but he's just the best shot we have on the team, so we give him I was like, man, you're gonna have to do some more shooting.
And, but that dude we all try to get him to do, tournaments and stuff, because he can just put it in there. Yeah. He's a very humble guy, though. Hell, you have to ask a guy you're having a que a conversation with a guy like him and you're like, Hey, you said his name's Tanner?
[00:25:00] Tuck Tucker. Tucker. Yeah. Your name's Tanner. That's right. Yeah. Tuck Tucker. What do you do for a living? Oh, I shoot a bow. No. What do you do for a living? I literally shoot a bow. Like what? A, what a job. I shoot a bow in the targets. Yeah. That, that'd be something to explain to people.
That's cool. That's that's not all he does. He's our plant one manager. But Uhhuh, he gets to do that too, though. That's fine. Yeah. He's a good little shot. But so what we do in our MQ testing is we test for, we have three different tests that we need to perform on each target.
The first test is what we call a PT test and l and before I tell you about that, so what we do is we set our target up and we go 15 yards back. The reason we chose to do 15 instead of 20 is because we wanted a little more penetration. It just hits the target just a little bit more to be extra safe, cuz most people will practice at 20 and go back.
And we decided not to use a machine to do this. Now that's one [00:26:00] way of testing, but you can't do that with bag targets because it's not practical. Let me tell you why it's not practical cuz inside of bag targets you don't have. A, so it's not a solid state. Okay. When you shoot a bag, target materials move around.
When materials move around, you can, depending on where that shooter is shooting, you can create voids inside a target. Okay. So if I'm hitting one spot over and over and over, all the materials are gonna spread from that spot. But if you have another shooter, vice versa, and you have a precision side target face, and they're using the dots, they're moving the material constantly and filling voids so that targets naturally, any bag target naturally is gonna be longer lasting if you use that technique versus just pounding over and over the same dot. And that's when we have pass throughs. That's what they're doing every time.
They're just hammering the middle over and [00:27:00] over. Yeah. In the middle, over and over and over. But how we test is we do a We get like a quarter size circle. It could be a quarter, a nickel, we go back and forth, but we shoot inside that quarter circle so it's not hitting the exact spot using a machine.
It's more of a human element to it. Realistic, practical test. Yep. And we will count every shot that goes inside that circle, and then we get our first count, which is the PT count. The PT count is a poke through count. So how many shots does it take till we get a poke through out of the back of the target that matters?
That's more of a, the reason that matters is because it's not like your target doesn't work, but it's more or less a comfort factor for the end user. If you can have a large p PT count. It the, our end user our archers that are shooting our targets are feeling good about it, [00:28:00] right?
It doesn't necessarily take the efficiency out of it, just they feel good about it. And then we move, we have that count to the next test, which we call the FF count, and that's fletching friction count. So how many shots does it take until we get friction on our fletching? And that basically just means when the fletching touches the target, when that happens, that's when we get pissed off customers because it, you can ruin fletching, start ripping fletching.
Yep. Yeah. And nobody wants to refl refl any arrows or go buy it or have to go to the store or stop what they're doing. So that's the count that we really strive to have a high count in, is that ff count. That's gonna be our most important one. But we get, we collect a number for that in every target that we have.
We have that PT count and then we have an FF count and then we keep those numbers and that's how we compare. We put it into a spreadsheet [00:29:00] and that's like our that's our secret sauce because there's a lot of knowledge in that spreadsheet because we use different setups. We use this slew of setups and perform the same test and that's a lot of knowledge.
So we know for sure what works and what doesn't work and inside the market based on a practical, realistic setting for an archer and their backyard target. And else, for a fact when a bag target's going out, once you've, let's say, designed a new one or cuz I'm pretty sure your kinetics are the newest model.
Is that correct? The Kinetic X is what we came out with in 23, which I haven't shot that one yet, but I'm ready to I've got it. It's a little, yeah. Yeah. It's a little brother to the kinetic 1.0. That was the one when I told you like, I have a several of your different bag targets. That was the one I'm like, man, this is like a brick shit house.
Like it's just outta the bone. Yeah. It just feels like that short dude that's full of muscle. That's what it feels like. Just this just this thing that's dense, [00:30:00] right? Yeah. When they say that boy dense, that's what they're, that the kinetic X is that target, but like the quality of this target for a fact when you send it out.
And I, that's probably the biggest thing because like you said, some of those automated targets or whatever, one could be. Really, you could get lucky with it. Let's say a consumer could get lucky with one and it's decent. And then the one that comes out right behind it is half as effective as that one was.
Whereas, yours, obviously there's probably some variance just because people are people, for a fact that target's gonna perform to a certain level for Yes. The person that, the end user that's buying it. Now, that's probably the most important piece for absolutely a consumer like me or anybody listening to this, is this thing's gonna perform the way it's supposed to instead of, I hope it performs, that's the biggest side for the r and d and my, from my perspective [00:31:00] is, I know it's gonna work.
Yeah. And yeah, I guess that's, I what you're getting at or what you're trying to accomplish with your research and development is, Hey this yellow jacket Supreme three, I'm just looking at it on the website. It's one of your cheaper bag targets. Looks like. Is it gonna do anything for me?
I know for a fact that it's been tested. Will it be as good as one of your super expensive bag targets? That's like comparing a Ford Taurus and a, expedition XL Supreme. They're the same brand, but one of 'em is made for a different purpose. And yeah, that's really the key is that it is, it's the, when you're picking an Archie Target, everybody asks this all the time.
So what Archie target do I get? I'm not real sure. What are you shooting? And then you ask are you a target archer? Are you trying to go out and field and hunt? And then it really just depends on the [00:32:00] situation of the archer to what type of target to get. And a lot of people, they're just gonna have to run the gamut of, trying things.
Because we can give 'em the direction, but when they get it in their backyard and they start practicing it, they're gonna want, most people are just going that's super sweet. Let me see what else you got. Or they, they wanna just shoot our, hopefully our whole mission is that they, shoot just for fun and then just get a little more advanced and then maybe want to go hunting and, maybe want to go to a tournament and, do all that stuff and develop them into, that's why it's important to us that we need to make the best product we can.
So it's hassle-free. Yeah, it's convenient for them. We really are very customer driven here. We try our best from the top down to do make our customers happy in every way [00:33:00] possible that we seem, that we can find. But and another thing back to that r and d is what's very important, probably equally as important for durability, is arrow removal.
The arrow removal. We call it the ar force test or ar poundage test. We go back and forth. But It's basically what it means. Arrow removal force test. And how we do that is we just get a metal there's a metal arrow remover that you can buy online. And then we attach a poundage gauge to it, and then we just pull it out and it can record the max force used.
And that's the number that we use for that given target. And we'll do a round of them, we'll do that several times. And and, but it's gotta be in, we only shoot in new holes, new arrow shot holes, because if you shoot in an area where you've already shot at it, that will change drastically.
So it needs to be in a new one. [00:34:00] That's the only way to get a consistent, accurate number for all of these targets. Yeah. Especially when we're doing other brands and we're gathering data. But that's extremely important because. I've, I have tried not on our particular, not on our targets, but I've tried other people's targets and then some of these are over a hundred pounds to pull out these arrows.
I, I will not name the company cuz I don't wanna get in trouble, but I bought a target probably, oh man, it's been maybe 10 years and I was so excited for this target. I'm, and I still have the damn thing, so I mean whatever. But the first time I shot it with just a field point, I thought I was gonna break the arrow getting it out.
Oh, sucks. It was that, I mean I ended up laying the target down and standing on top of it and pulling my arrow up cuz I'm one of those guys that like, I don't want my arrow to be bent at all. I have, it has to be [00:35:00] straight and I couldn't get it out. Yeah. I'm sitting there, leaning up against the target, like pulling this way and.
After I got done, Paul, that first. Yeah. You wouldn't believe all these positions that these archers are, they'll call us and tell us, man I can't get this arrow out. And just talking about an old target saying, what do I need to get? And they're talking about their previous experiences and they're like, I can't get this arrow out of the target and I'm having to pull and yank and then I have to call my neighbor over.
And then we're both pulling and yanking. Yep. And one guy's behind the target and just all these crazy formations in order to get one little bolt out, to get one damn thing out. And I don't want to have to grab an arrow. See no, that's a, like from a a, oh, what do you call it, consumer's perspective?
Was that target well built? I'm sure. I couldn't get a freaking arrow out of it though. So what's it doing for me? I don't want to have an arrow puller in my hand every time I go up to the target. Yeah, sure. And [00:36:00] we thought about, just to make it a little bit easier, is to, have an arrow puller with our target, but we're like, now we didn't do a very good job.
If we gotta give an arrow pull with every one of our targets, we need to make it to where that's not necessary at all. Yeah. You could start like selling cinder blocks because Yeah. That's gonna hold up well, but no one's ever gonna get their arrow back, so there's a give and take.
Like eventually we, we don't wanna make it so hard on the consumer to, like you said the arrow pulling test or I can't remember what you called that. Yeah. We don't wanna make it to where they're having to pull 190 pounds of pressure. To get a single arrow out of a new hole. Exactly. Cuz they're gonna not gonna the target for very long.
They're gonna, like me, I haven't shot that target very often since it was a pain in the ass. It wasn't the, after I shot the first one, I finally got the arrow out. I shoot another one. Same damn thing. What did I start doing? I moved the other targets that I already had and I started shooting those[00:37:00] every time.
Even though it might look like the newest, greatest thing, but then you shoot into it and you can't remove it like that. All the looks just went out the window. It just goes out the window. I, it's still pretty to this day cause it sits in my shop. Yeah. So it's not getting used. Every time.
Yep. And I've pulled my fair share of those, arrows outta targets that are just difficult. And our prototypes, there's been several prototypes that we've came out with way too hard. We can't do this. We have a certain threshold that we want to meet and we just have to pass up on a lot of stuff.
But, that doesn't, I never get discouraged when we have a prototype and it's too difficult because we're testing, we have to continually test. And that, that goes back to the r and d thing. What makes our targets good is that we do a lot of r and d. We really do. And it is just test. We test a lot and we come up with new designs.
There's been and I [00:38:00] might say names about this, but there's been a particular target design that we've had. I think dad really, he came out with a target design probably 15 years ago. That is a, a whole brand built their target around and I believe they got patented.
But it's funny, we still have the prototype sitting at the eye. We just never came out with it. There's so many scenarios to where we had opportunities to come out with targets and we did or didn't for certain reasons, and we, that's walking a fine line of, how to run the business and, what are we gonna risk?
So it just depends on what we're doing that year. And all sorts of things have to unfold for us to come out with a new product. It's got a lot of criteria to meet. Yeah. But on the bag target side, I've, I want to do one thing before we move into foam, but. Is there anything else on the bag target side that we haven't really touched on that you think would be a good learning [00:39:00] point for anybody?
Oh man. Absolutely. I talk bag targets all day. I talk, you talk all day, but I think one of the biggest things that a consumer should know if they're listening is you can replace the cover of your target. So many people don't do that, and they're really missing out, man. They really are. And you can do it often and it's easy to do.
It's just a cover and you sell 'em. Yeah, you put 'em right over your existing target. You don't have to change anything, just, it comes with a black poly bag to make the polypropylene cover slide on easier and you got some zip ties at the bottom and you're done and it looks like a new target.
But you, but when you do that, you gotta make sure and lay that target on its side. Or on, its on its belly or back. And you, you need to stomp on it because it's material again, it's you're, what you're doing is the material didn't necessarily degrade [00:40:00] unless you put elements into it, like rain or sun UV rays.
Yeah. Son. But if you take that away, and your bear didn't eat it up you can lay it on its back and then stomp on it, shuffle that material around, and then put your cover on it. You basically got a new target. It's not gonna be a hundred percent, but it'll be about 90%.
And I think that's worth doing. Yeah. And it saves you some money. Yeah, I'm looking I'm on the website now, I guess I'm not on the replacement covers, but a replacement cover is obviously cheaper than a whole new, brand new target. So you can like you said, you can increase the longevity of the life of that target by doing that.
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm, and you can do it not just with our targets. Just check the size on the cover and, you can do that with, a different brand, as long as that cover fits. So you look at the brands target size and then look at our covers and then you can, recover it there.
Cuz a lot of the brands don't sell [00:41:00] replacement covers oddly enough. But Yeah they're probably pandering to a guy like me who doesn't dick with it and ends up spending more money. Yeah. But, yeah. Okay. So on your bag targets, Micah would be mad at me if I didn't bring this up. So we have a, it's not a fight, but we have a ongoing debate on which bag target is the best.
And it, there's really no right answer. So I personally like the Ys four 50 because of the dart board. I love that damn dart board. It just it makes you try to be really precise. It's YS four 50 is a good one. And then I really like the outdoor field point archery target just because of all the different abilities.
It's a bigger bag target too, obviously, but all the abilities that you have to. Shoot at different, dots in different areas. Yeah. You guys do a really good job on that one, in my opinion. And the yellow jacket that I shoot on, just giving people so many options, cuz that's what I used to do with my hay bales.
I would spray paint [00:42:00] all these different dots and xs and different things, that I wanted to shoot and that, that target reminds me of my hay bales. But Micah loves the campaigns keep hammering outdoor bag. And obviously campaigns is on there, so that probably helps out. But when you guys are designing the faces of these things, that's just one of the questions I wanted to ask.
When you're designing the faces of these things you guys really think about as giving people as many options to shoot at as I think I've ever seen. Any of these targets, the campaigns one, the yellow jacket that I'm talking about, any of them. There's freaking stuff all over the place.
Like the new Kinetic X, looks like somebody had a seizure on one of them. And it's just, it's so cool all the different options they have. What are you thinking about when you guys are trying to design the faces of these?
That's a good question. So [00:43:00] a fun fact is myself and another graphic designer, her name is Shauna. We actually build all of the designs for all of our targets and then butcher sales manager we typically discuss quite often of what to do every single target design. And we come up with a general idea of what this is for.
First is it for, a standard. Consumer or is it built for the professionals or is it built for a hunter? Once we have that, we can have an idea of what we would like to put on the target based off of many things of what people talk about, what they want, and what sells. So we'll take all of those and then we can develop a general idea of what we need to put on each face.
Is it a four side target, two side target? If it's two-sided targets, we need to be very picky. Four [00:44:00] sided. We got a little more room to put, some games on there. And then maybe some vitals, maybe some, a long range shooting side and maybe some precision dots. So we go back and forth and just decide as a team where we should go with this particular target which kind of.
Leads me to, and I don't wanna say too much information about it, but it's a new completely new target design that we have come up with internally. Just, probably, we've been talking about it for about four months now, and we have built everything and now we're starting to manufacture it and get it ready for 2024.
And I think we're gonna release it in 24. But we'll have some prototypes before then. Obviously that will probably send out to our, our field staff, pro staff, et cetera, get some battle testing in. But hey, we'll take care of that for you. [00:45:00] You send it our way. Yeah. I'm just, I'm really, we don't get stoked this much about, I probably haven't been this stoked about it since we came out with a high roller for the first time really.
Yeah, so it's pretty cool. And what it is it's finally a target that can work for any style of shooting. I, so if you're a professional, it can work for you. If you're a hunter, it can work for you. If you're a target archer, it can work for you. If you need to tune your bow, it can work for you.
There is several different applications for it that you can utilize and nobody's ever, and it's so simple and that's the thing. It's just so simple and it's just I know when our competitors see it, they're gonna be, dang, why did I think of that? Let I think of that. Yeah, because it's so simple and it's it's gonna be so useful for, a consumer.
You, you buy this target, you [00:46:00] really don't need another target. Nice. So unless you wanna shoot three Ds. Yeah. But even then, you can still do that three practice without the realism of it being another dimension. A third legs and things like that coming off.
Yeah. Nice. But it'll be so easy for, an archer to tune their bow. It'll be easy for them to, work on their precision. It'll, and then, step out and, shoot some vitals and, have games. It just covers everything and it's something that we've never done before.
And Yep. And that's gonna be new for 24 and we're pretty, pretty pumped up about that. I'll have one for sure. No doubt. Sweet. That's great. Every pro that I've talked to was like, all right, so if I I'm giving you my input, so can we get one? And I'm like, of course you're gonna get one for sure.
They all want it, right? Which is, I guess that's a good thing. You think of it as a, like a Swiss army knife. That's the concept [00:47:00] behind it. And that's like the best hint that I can say is it's got a bunch of tools on it. That's awesome. For sure. Looking forward to it, man.
We'll, if you need testers, you send 'em all way. We'll give you our input on it, man. I got you, man. So to pivot into foam targets, because what's funny is at the beginning of this show, you talked about how like the market, over 55% of the market is bag targets. When I started shooting, I was the other way.
I was, I I looked for foam targets and when I first started, Looking around at different target companies, I equated morel targets with one target, which is your guys' high roller target. And isn't that funny? And it's just funny cuz that's like when I thought of Morel targets back then it was that target that I thought of the dice.
Yeah, you guys are the dice company. That's just like my mind. That's what I thought. And that's been one of my favorite targets that I've probably ever had. Mostly because you [00:48:00] can, in my opinion, what's fun about it is, you can have it set up obviously to shoot, but then you can just throw the damn thing out like a dice.
And test yourself. I'm throwing this out. It's at 22 yards. I need to shoot that right there. This time's at 21 and a quarter, whatever. And it's to me it's just a cool design. Plus you can throw it in the back of your truck, take it out to Colorado. Shoot doesn't take up a lot of space.
Now I've got the big high roller now, which is a little larger than the original, I guess you'd call it. But even the big high rollers, not gigantic. I think it's 16 by 16 if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Nailed it. So what goes into the foam side of what you guys do? Cuz obviously you're known for the bags you do great at those, but there are some people out there that know you for foam like me when I first started shooting. So what goes into the foam side of what you guys do? Yeah. This is it's really funny because, in our eyes here, we're known for bags. Cause that's the first thing that we created. And honestly, [00:49:00] we've been a leader in bags. Since the eighties and the foam world, we came out with a high roller foam in 2018.
That was the year that we came out with a high roller. And it's a precious little baby to us, because we have turned so many foam target opportunities down because we were always waiting for a, just the right one. It was, we were just waiting for the right one.
And finally we were approached by a company that said that they had a particular foam formula that we might be interested in. And of course, we're big on testing, so we're like, all right, send us, we're all in, let's see what you got. And and when they usually do that, it just, it's just a block, just a, yeah.
A block of foam, just a cube of solid board foam. And this is a polyurethane type type of foam. But anyways, sent us that. And then when we shot [00:50:00] into, we're like, this has got some real potential. Like it's got real potential. And this foam was actually given to another target manufacturer, but I don't know what happened there.
And then we got offered that particular foam and then we took it. Obviously cuz we honest, when we came out with a Humongo series, oh gosh, I guess that was the nineties. I. Where it was like a Broadhead foam target, and we sold a ton of those. And this is a little bit before my game.
I wasn't in the field at that. I saw it all happen. I still went to the, I think I've been going to these trade shows for, since I was like a teenager, Uhhuh, like a mid teenager. But we sold a ton of those and then we kinda got outta the game of the foam. That's when Block jumped on at some point.
And then they really took a lot of the market share when it come [00:51:00] to foam and at least that block style foam. Cube. And then we would have a couple different, yellow jacket layered foam vertically style targets. And then we came out with a dual threat, which is in the yellow jacket line, but it's.
Completely fused layers versus, a partially rotted, fused, layered target. Which makes a difference. And that's got its own theory, or not theory, but its own design of how it works. But and then, we got offered that foam formula and we tested it and we thought it would be good and we wanted to test it and come out with a design of a dice.
Because what's cool about the dice is that the spots have off placement on the backside. So you're not shooting. So if you had a one spot here, so this is a block, okay? You had a one spot here at one spot here. Both your arrows are going through, so you're gonna penetrate that hole much easier [00:52:00] than versus if you had 'em offset.
So you utilize more of the target and a dice has that naturally. So for the most part, yeah. So we're like, dice would be sweet. We needed something that was small and portable. Something that you could throw in the back of your truck and take it to camp, but, and make it easy to where you can just lift it out.
The thing is 10 pounds it's nothing to, throw in the back of your truck and then pull it out when you wanna shoot at home and put it underneath the tail. It's very versatile. And the functionality was so awesome because, we were shooting 400 feet crossbows at it in 2 20 18, and it was handling it.
And not only that, it was a lot easier to pull than all the other competition that we've seen. We, we had to make this work. And I actually have the very first model I don't, but one of the first [00:53:00] models at the house. That we did an initial video for. And then, from that video there was a lot of people hyped up about it because it was just so you couldn't see it.
That's when I shot Scorpion 4 55 into it. And it was able to not bury up like six inches or so, and then I was able to just pull it out and people were like, oh my God, how'd that happen? You didn't have to stand on top of it and take you, you didn't strain. Yeah. Where's your arrow? Polar man.
Yeah. We actually were gifted that foam form and now we, control that particular formula into this market and we decided we want it to be that red dice with, the white spots that it contrast, is good. I, nobody really has that contrast. Yeah. So that's always good when you're, when you're shooting.
Yep. We've got a lot of compliments on that contrast [00:54:00] between that red and that white and just the Dyson general. So we called it the high roller, and then we built a big brother, the big high roller, and then all the other solid port foams where we had a different foam formula. We converted that to high roller foam.
And so anything with red foam of ours is high roller foam. And it's the same formula. Yeah. But what makes it is the formula and that's in close works with our chemists that we work with and doing a lot of r and d man. Yeah. When we say we shoot and we say, all right, we need a little bit of this.
We need a little bit of this. This prototype worked well here. This prototype worked well here. I think it might be this, our high roller foam's a little softer, and I've been seeing a lot of other companies starting to come out with a try and mimic that reverse engineer that [00:55:00] formula to that kind of softer, more pliable foam.
And none of 'em hit it yet, but right now we still have that market share and that style of foam, but whoever whoever came up with the idea without, without making it to where their head's too big to fit through the door, you gotta give 'em a pat on the back for me.
Cuz to me it's the most, it's the most recognizable phone target out there. It's dice, that you throw around. I literally, yeah. Used to throw it around now. And the cool thing is it's got a handle so you can like, toss it. I end up breaking the handle cuz I was a little too mean to it.
But it's really recognizable. It was a, it is a great idea. It, it's a target that doesn't really look like a target, but it's one of the most versatile targets there is too. It's it, there's a lot of things going for it. And then, like you said, you've got the foam on other targets that you use.
You've got some 3d you got an 3D buck called the transformer. And if I'm not mistaken, the [00:56:00] core is the same foam. Foam, correct. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And you can actually take what I think is really cool about the 3D target to, transfer into him is, You, it's got a carrying handle on the top of it.
You can actually take it apart and just take the bucks, midsection or the core with you, like you would the high roller, you can throw it in the back of the truck and use it in a similar fashion. So you got two targets of one. You got the 3D ability and you got the ability just to take the target and, put it in the truck and take it to camp or whatever.
I thought that was pretty cool. Andy's got red eyes, so I'm guessing you guys did that on purpose with the Yeah, the dice. We had to put some little Yeah. Marketing spin on it. Yeah. He's got red eyes, so he looks like he's a dick. But I like him. I like him. So that's, I don't know, I, from the foam side, I know that you guys had gotten into that a little later and I'm [00:57:00] guessing you do the same r and d.
That you do on the bag targets with your foam, you're shooting the hell out of them. Absolutely. It seems like you're using pretty much the same foam now for most of the foam targets, but that was the biggest thing for me on that one was just the ability to be able to, it holds up just like any other foam target I've ever shot.
And I didn't have to, throw it off a cliff to get my arrow out, which was nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Much more convenient. And we have two foam lines, and that's that completely fused, layered foam line and then the high roller foam. The high roller foam is a polyurethane solid port state foam archery target.
And then the other one, Is a polyethylene layered thinly thin layers about, oh gosh, what are those? Like a quarter of an inch or something like that. But there's a whole bunch of layers. And what's unique about that one too, that most people don't really understand about it, is that the fused walls, [00:58:00] since it's not a, it's not a bunch of rods that go down into the layers and then fuse all the layers together.
It's completely fused. So that layer where it's fuses is a lot harder. It's more bonded because that polyethylene is heated and combines and creates that layer. So when an arrow and man, there's oh gosh, over 20 layers in each target. So when an arrow goes in, it hits that softer polyethylene foam.
And which has some stopping power. And what I mean is slows down that kinetic force of the arrow, but it hits that layer and that layer is more fused, which is a. More harder foam, cuz it, they were both heated. And melded together. So as soon as it hits that layer has a lot more stopping power, just cuz it's a little more, it's denser and it's harder.
So it'll hit that and then it'll slow it down and then it, and it hits the regular polyethylene, the bubble [00:59:00] cell foam. And then it'll go through that and then hit that, hit another layer. And that's really the technology behind that. It's like soft heart. Soft heart. Soft heart. So when that arrow goes through, it'll, that's what is the stopping power?
The polyurethane foam. Solid port foam. High roller. It's just the foam. It's just all one in general. One in general. Yeah. Like it's just the whole state. It's just a, it's just a great quality foam so that the fused foam is like your dual threat set up one. That's, and it's the Yj dual threat.
Yep. Yep. Cool. Yeah, so it's kinda if you pictured, if you took. A bunch of pieces of cardboard, and obviously these aren't cardboard, but I'm trying to paint a picture with how it's made. Yeah, man. Put 'em on top of each other and then they were totally glued together and you did that 50 times. Yeah.
That's the idea of the foam. Yeah. A great way to think of it. Yeah, for sure. And you couldn't have that material throughout the target [01:00:00] because it would be way too hard. You would never get your arrow out of it. But since it's a thin layer, it works. And the same thing with if it was all soft and it was just polyethylene, through and through without no layers or anything.
It would be way too soft here. It would punch right through it. Yeah. So it's a combination of having that hard and soft. Hard and soft, which makes it able to become a good target to do what it's doing. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Cuz I've seen targets the other way where it's just that softer foam that's almost I don't even know how to explain what it is.
It's. It's just super lightweight, I've, I've had a target that, I think it was wrapped in wood, if I remember correctly. It was like an octagon. It was wrapped in wood on the outside, and it was just that foam. It took me like two days to punch through that thing and have total pass throughs where I was shooting and Arrow was disappearing behind it.
The idea, so was it had a bunch of thin layers horizontally, and it was two wood bracings That was compression [01:01:00] down? No. It was just like a piece of lightweight foam. Just one large piece of, not even large, just maybe the size of a basketball. It wasn't very big and it was just lightweight foam.
Don't even know. Is this a di, is this a DIY project? I don't know where I even got the damn thing. I can still show it to you. I've had it spray painted. I still, every target I've ever owned is in the back of my shop still. I don't think I've ever trashed one. I've got this old 3D deer who had plastic legs, who I duct taped together over the years, and that thing is so beat to hell that I don't even know what brand it was, where it came from.
Could have been Walmart. I have no idea where the damn thing came from. But by the time, I'm now, I'm 40 years old, still sitting at my shop, haven't shot it in 10 years, still sits there, don't know why. Just like I can't get rid of stuff, but I still got the damn one I'm talking about, and I'm pretty sure it's just like one piece.
But maybe it was just like pieces [01:02:00] together that have been compressed, but I have to go look at it now that you're saying that and making me wonder if I'm wrong. But whatever it was so lightweight that it it took no time to punch through it. Yeah. One of them deals.
Yeah. It'll, and there's several reasons for that. A lot of it is the density in your PE foam, right? And the amount it's compressed down. So it could be a multitude of reasons. People look at targets and think, oh man, it's just a bag filled with stuff, or that's just a phone block.
But there's actually a science behind every target. It's more complex than what it seems to be a lot of the time. But, a lot of people do d i Y stuff, and you may have, you may come up with a, decent target. Oh, I saw one dude and he was just had layers of carpet, and he compressed them down.
And a lot of people are doing that. It works, but just not convenient, man, because it's usually you hang, you have a bunch of hangups and you have pass throughs, and then you have.[01:03:00] Issues with, error removal and time savings. You can do it that route, but you're gonna work for it.
Exactly. The time savings thing, I, yeah, Andy's got a, he didn't make it, but he's got an old target that somebody made, which is like you were saying, it was bunch of pieces of foam or something that there's a piece of wood on the top, piece of wood on the bottom. And then threaded threaded things with nuts on each side and they compressed them down.
He had that for a while. But the time savings, how mu how long would it take me? How much would it cost me material? How long would it take me to build it? Or I can just go spend 200 bucks on a big high roller and move on with my life, for a guy like me Yeah. Who's got four children, full-time job, part-time side business with this podcast.
I look at my time. Yeah. Yeah. Is this half an hour that I'm using worth my time right now? Is it, or is it this two hours of me spending on making the target? If it takes me eight hours to make that damn [01:04:00] target, I wasted money because I could have went spent 200 bucks on a big high roller and been dumb with it.
That's the difference between, that sort of stuff. Would it be fun to try it? Sure. I've never done it. I've always thought it'd be smarter just to go buy a target and move on with my life. Yeah. Especially when, it's one of them deals. I'm not a mechanic, so I go pay a mechanic to take care of my stuff.
I don't build targets, Morell does, so I'm gonna just go ahead and defer to them. And that's what I've always done is I just, buy the stuff from the people who know how to make it. Yeah. And you know what I'm a DIY guy. I do diy. With everything, absolutely everything. And but with targets it's just like outside.
I can get any target I want at any time, pick that away. But it's just, it's not minutes. You need to start thinking hours if you're gonna DIY a decent target. And that's just how it's gonna be. And [01:05:00] a lot of the times if you can get the material for free, more power to you. But a lot of the times you'll have to go buy carpet or some sort of material to put in for the stopping power.
So Yeah. You know the wood, unless you get it laying around, but at some point you did pay for it. Yeah. So it's not, it's free as you think for the most part. And, it's a DIYer is gonna DIY man. Yeah. I'm not trying to say, I'm not trying to convince anybody to not diy. If you want diy, go for it.
We've all done it. I'm, I've done it too. And I usually regret. My choice. Cause I've tried to be my own mechanic before and I'll never forget, my listeners are gonna laugh at me. I'll never forget though, I had a set of windshield wipers on my truck, start not working the right way. So I'm like, I can fix this myself.
I don't need no damn mechanic. I watch a YouTube video, I buy the parts, I fix my windshield wipers on the truck, and I'm like, hell yeah, done Turn the wipers on and the damn things like go all the way off the truck [01:06:00] and then stop vertically on my truck. I'm like, what in the hell? I watched this video.
I did everything perfect, blah, blah, blah. Ended up calling my mechanic. I said, Hey, listen, I tried doing this. I can't figure out what I did wrong. He's yeah, you put 'em on the wrong. You had to take 'em off exactly the right way and put 'em on the exact same way. Now your timing's off. So I spent four hours of my life doing it myself.
And guess where that truck ended up? At my mechanic getting done the right way. So like sometimes you're just like, you see the mechanic in this situation was the guy to do what I needed to do and that's why I don't mess with my trucks anymore. And a lot of times I regret it, but it's still fun to tinker, but I typically end up regretting trying the process out.
Yeah. It's a cat and mouse game, man. You win some and you lose some when it comes to diy for sure. Yeah. And then I do have to say something about one more of your targets. I have not used it yet. I will say that. And I'm doubting that you send a lot of 'em out the door, [01:07:00] but this feet of one, this big ass thing.
I'm probably most excited to try to use that this year. Yeah. I got one the other day from you guys and it's huge. But I'm excited to use it and it's not cheap, but. Damn I'm excited to use that thing. What, why'd you guys decide to make some something that large, just for guys like me who want that big target that you can shoot anywhere?
No, originally, yeah, we did it for feta and then just, everybody wants a big target. I think that, I'm pretty sure that's 52 inches, right? It looks, that sounds about right. It's pretty, yeah. Yeah. I think it's, is it 52? Hold on, I'll tell you. I'm looking at the website. Yeah. 49 by 13. By 49.
Okay. So it's 49 by 49. So yeah, everybody, it's every archer has tried at least tried. There's a lot that practice it day in, day out, but at least tried because [01:08:00] it's you always wonder in the back of your mind man, How far can I shoot and be decently accurate?
Like I, I just want to know, I gotta know. Let's step back, gotta hit a hundred. Let's just fling one and see what happens. So you can't, it's hard to fling one at a high roller. It's 13 by 13. If you enjoy money, having money. Yeah. You know what I mean? Spending money on arrows.
Yep. Yeah. So that idea, that concept. You can literally take any high roller that's 13 by 13. You can take the square on it fits more in the grooves, but the regular high roller will work as well, like a rounded edge one. That's more geared towards. It rolls a lot easier.
So if you're that type of guy, you can roll it a lot easier. So you get the round one. The square one is built for that insert, but both of 'em will work. But that's the whole concept, just saves you money. And it's built for, there's a lot of ranges that get 'em. A lot of indoor style [01:09:00] ranges will get 'em, and if you wanna fling it, fling that arrow at a long distance and you're, you practice long distance.
It's definitely a must. And if you don't have that, you get an archery wall of some sort. That's just the that's the Rolls Royce. Yeah. When it comes to targets. I like it and I'm excited. You also have, yeah, the center punch, which is a little bit smaller version, it looks like, of the, pretty much the same thing.
Just a, it's a, actually it's half the price almost. But it's still. What is it? It's 35 by 35. So it's, yeah. It's still three by three. It's a good size target. Yeah. So the feet of one is a sin, it's a center punch. So it's that style design, the center punch, and then we have that 35 inch, and I believe that other one is 24 20.
24 20, I can't remember. But yeah, just, a plug and play type of deal. You get your high roller and then you can throw it [01:10:00] in that casing just to give you a little more surface area to shoot at. Super simple. Push it in, push it out, replace 'em, I, if you wanna keep it for as long as possible, always shoot at the high roller.
Yeah. You don't need to. Shoot at the other, any other places? Just make sure and rotate your high roller and you're good to go. And you keep that thing forever. Yeah. It's it is more costly upfront, but man, it'll last forever. For a guy like me, I've got a son who just got his first bow two weeks ago.
And I want him not to have bad experiences upfront, and I'm not expecting him to be a great shot upfront. Maybe he will be, that a target that's bigger like that, he won't lose arrows because if he misses by a foot, he's still gonna hit the damn target. And we get to go back and try to figure out what we're doing here.
That's what I like about it, is honestly my excitement of it is because it's gonna be in front of my son and that's what he's gonna be shooting at all [01:11:00] summer. And it's gonna be at probably 15 yards for a long time. Then we're gonna see how he can do, but. Now I don't have to worry about, man, I just bought you two dozen arrows and you're already down to seven.
Yeah. I've got 27 arrows in my field that I gotta try to go find right now, yeah. I don't have to worry about that as much with a large target like that. For me it's really cool. I was just, I just had to bring that up because that's probably what I'm most excited about right now is that big ass thing.
And then the round design because I like to take care of my stuff. I'm gonna roll it in and out every time. And dude, I would, I can't stress that enough, man. Take care of your targets and they'll take care of you. No. Last you a long time. If you really take care of it, bring it indoors, if you don't bring it indoors, you could get you could get an old grill cover or tarp and just throw it over it.
Protect it from the uvs. Yeah. You wanna go to the extra mile, make sure it's elevated off of the ground. If we're talking about target care and maintenance, those are the two biggest things. Keep it off the ground and keep it covered if you do those things. If you [01:12:00] wanna not do any of that and just take it inside, that works.
But if you're gonna leave it out there, put it on a block. If you like a cement block or something, or a big rock or something, put it on something, elevate it off the ground and then cover it. The reason you elevate it off the ground is because moisture. And the ground gets wet and that water will soak up through your target and if it soaks up through the target water over time with the material will degrade it.
And water log it. Yeah. And it doesn't make for a good target over time and you lose some longevity and covering it. You keep all the sun off of it, your cover's not gonna fade near as fast at all. And it's a simple fix. And I thought for a long time, for years, should we come out with a cover like.
I don't know. I know we wouldn't sell that many, but it's not really about that. It's about, and this goes back to the customer service side of the company, of what do the customers [01:13:00] want? What will make their life easier when it comes to targets? And we're probably gonna come out with a target cover here soon.
I've got several different prototypes of designs to do. I don't want something that just goes over the top of it and that's it. I want it to be a little more versatile to work with every target that we have. That's cool. Hey. Yeah. I'll telling you this much. There's a million people out there that put covers over their grills.
There's plenty of people that have put covers over their targets, yeah. I'm one of those dudes. My grills, I treat my grills. If one of my kids, my grills actually don't stay outside. They go into my garage. I have two grills that move in and out every time I use them. Just for that reason.
I want 'em to stay, nice and protected. Same thing with my targets. I typically move the targets I give a shit about in and out every time. I do have targets that just sit outside that have, moved on with their lives that I don't really mind anymore. But the ones that I, still want a baby, they, they go in and out.
Each time we shoot. Yeah, every [01:14:00] practicing archer has those group of targets that are all like UV ray faded and just half there, half gone. Everybody if you're huge in the industry or your first time shooter has been shooting for a while, like it's just funny. Yeah.
People's backyards. You can learn a lot about a person's backyard, man. Oh yeah. I remember me and the guys found a there was an archery shop in our area, actually, it's not even close to us, but it was an hour and a half away. They were going out of business, and I happened to stop in like the last week.
They were in business years ago, and they they're like, yeah, we're selling all of our targets. I'm like how much do you want for 'em? He said, we'll, take 20 bucks a piece. And so I came back the next day with my van totally stripped out of all the car seats, and we shoved as many of their targets into my van as we could.
And bought all these targets. And so we've got all these weird ass targets, [01:15:00] throughout me and all my buddies that we all bought 'em. We've got like I've got a wolf out in my house. We've got, oh, bears that look like they're dying. These targets had been like repaired so many times.
So there's like foam shot into the target and yeah. So my backyard does look like that toy story. You remember Toy story? Like the kid, the Sid kid that would yeah. Kill all the toys and then he would put 'em back together, all messed up. That's what my backyard looks like.
It's just like different targets and some of them look like they've been put back together by somebody who shouldn't be operating on people and it's funny. But not my morel stuff. I'll tell you what, that new high roller, I've got a new high roller and that feta, they look beautiful right now.
I almost don't wanna shoot 'em. But I'm gonna, so man, once, don't you give everybody a plug. How can they look at the Morel stuff and check out morel targets? Man, the best way to do it is just to go on our website. We're available everywhere.[01:16:00] Most e-commerce places, we'll have morale targets and stores all, I always direct people to their, the pro shops, if you can talk to 'em about it.
Because a lot of the time, if they're not carrying us, they absolutely can't carry us. Cuz chances are we've sold them targets at one point in time, and that's what we were, we had meetings about this is like, all right, how are we gonna find new customers? We've already talked to them.
We've already talked to them, and it's hard. It gets harder and harder cuz we haven't been around for over 30 years. But, if they've ever carried morel targets before, They can do it again. So nice. Just talk to them about it. And you can get information online. I watch YouTube videos. Oh yeah. Let the people read reviews.
Let the people gather your information from them. I'll direct 'em to our reviews all day cuz they're good. They're not gonna lie to you. We're not gonna lie to you, they're gonna tell you the truth. But, be wary of those. That some of the problems that people [01:17:00] give reviews for is pretty funny.
But, you all, you have that with every product. Yeah. You will. Somebody's not finding so, read through the BS and then you know what's true. So that's true. Just check out some reviews and online we have usually put everything up that you can get any sort of information by, and you can always call our office too.
We have our one 800 number is 805 8 2 7 4 3 8. And then any one of us would be happy to help, given the situation of whatever you're in. Yep. But that's awesome. Okay, so I know this's gonna be hard for you, but I'm gonna make you do it. You're the son of the founder of the company. But if I put a gun to your head today and said you have to pick one of your targets that you can shoot for the rest of your life and one only, what are you picking?
High roller. See, so I was right. That's how I envisioned morale targets, yeah. It's high roller man. Now pick one of your bags. [01:18:00] No. Wait, hang on. I wanna take this bag. So it's high roller right now in 2024. It could change. It's our new design. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Now pick one of your bags. What percent, what bag would you have to go with if I only let you shoot a bag? Target for the rest of your life. Oh, the bigger the better man. Yep. Probably outdoor range. X L, that thing. I've never seen one of those. And then Andy got one and I'm just like, damn, I should have got one of those things too.
That thing is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. They're sweet. Yeah, for sure. I, I'm that guy that likes to step back and shoot a long distance. Who doesn't? I'm, I enjoy it. I'm not good at it, but I enjoy it. Yeah. And that, that matters more to being good at it, so No, who doesn't? That's how my archery range is set up.
I can go all the way back to one 50 if I wanted to. But I've got all of my postmarked every 20 yards, or is it every 10 yards. And I can go back as far as I'd like, but That feta probably will get some arrows put in it this year, way back there [01:19:00] cuz I've got that and I've got a new bow.
So a lot of new things going on the archery side for me. So let it loose. I'm gonna let it loose. I'll judge you. I'm gonna, that, that Feeta might have some holes in the fringes, but hey. That's all right. Tanana, Morell with Morell targets. We appreciate your time today, man. I thought it was a good talk about, what goes into a good archery target both from the bag side and the foam side.
Morell's one of the best out there and appreciate you coming on with us. Absolutely, man. Enjoyed it. All right. Enjoyed it. Let's do it again. All right, bud. Thank you. All right. See you.
