Gunwerks: A Turnkey Solution for Long-Range Shooting

Skip Davidson, the founder of Gunwerks, discusses the company's turnkey rifle system that includes optics, ballistics, ammunition, and more. Gunwerks aims to provide a solution for hunters who want to shoot accurately at long distances without the hassle of figuring out the right equipment. They offer training courses and personalized recommendations to help customers make informed decisions. The company's target demographic is professionals and business people who have the time and resources to invest in hunting and shooting. The price range for Gunworks products starts at around $4,000 and can go up to $28,000. Gunwerks offers training courses to teach people how to shoot long range and set up long range guns. They provide a safe entry for beginners and offer advanced courses for experienced shooters. Gunwerks also offers services for clients who already have a rifle but want to improve its performance. They ensure that every finished product is tested and proven to work before handing it over to the customer. Gunwrrks believes in ethical hunting and emphasizes the importance of making a perfect shot for a quick and clean kill. They provide a personalized and authentic experience for their customers.

Takeaways:

• Gunwerks offers a turnkey rifle system that includes optics, ballistics, ammunition, and more.
• The company aims to provide a solution for hunters who want to shoot accurately at long distances without the hassle of figuring out the right equipment.
• Gunwerks offers training courses and personalized recommendations to help customers make informed decisions.
• The target demographic for Gunwerks is professionals and business people who have the time and resources to invest in hunting and shooting.
• The price range for Gunwerks products starts at around $4,000 and can go up to $28,000. Gunworks offers training courses for beginners and advanced shooters to learn long range shooting and rifle setup.
• They provide services for clients who already have a rifle but want to improve its performance.
• Gunwerks ensures that every finished product is tested and proven to work before delivery.
• They emphasize the importance of making a perfect shot for ethical hunting and quick, clean kills.
• Gunwerks provides a personalized and authentic experience for their customers.

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Dan Johnson (00:00.975)
All right everybody, welcome back to the Hunting Gear podcast today. I am joined by Skip Davidson from Gunworks. Now, this is gonna be interesting because as everybody knows who's listened to this podcast or the Nine Finger Chronicles podcast before, I'm not a gun guy, right? I don't claim to know anything about guns. I'm not a professional. I know that where you load a 20 gauge and where to point it when I go turkey hunting,

But outside of that, if we're gonna talk about in -depth rifle analysis and all these big buzzwords when it comes to shooting a gun, I'm not the guy. But we do have a professional here today, Skip, how we doing today?

Skip (00:43.01)
Pretty good. Thanks for having me on.

Dan Johnson (00:44.81)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And so I've talked with some guys who are avid gun hunters. Some of them are hardcore coyote guys like predator hunting, bear, elk, western guys, even like your southeast guys who have the rifle seasons and they're hunting like power line cuts basically. And every so often I'll hear them talk about gun works. Okay.

And so I know you guys are notable. You guys have a big imprint on the industry and things like that. And so I think the best place for us to start is at the very beginning of this in chronological order in this timeline. And Skip, why don't you talk to us first off about who you are and what your role is at Gunworks and then we'll get into the rest of

Skip (01:42.67)
Perfect. I'm going to give you the short version. I'm the founder of Gunworks. I started this business almost 20 years ago, just out of college, finished an engineering degree and absolutely did not want to move to a big city. Was running a construction business through college, ran it for a few years after college and had enough of a nest egg

all alone threshold of fear and said let's go it's on opportunity to you do something pretty cool i got into guns and cool guns and hunting the world and that concept of the of that rifle system in the box that these continental and european and british you know explorers were taking all over the world to kind of colonizing and

kind of get a little hunting trips on the side while they're working. And that idea, you know, of this kit is kind of what started the whole Gunworks program. In college, you know, I got into reloading, I got into setting up rifles and kind of connecting that with my education. You know, I got pretty bored with shooting small groups out of a gun. Like you'd get a load worked up, you'd shoot a small group. And it's like, well, that's the end of that.

all of sudden that gun is boring and I believe Colonel Hatcher said only accurate rifles are interesting or he finds accurate rifles interesting. And you have to understand the difference between precision and accuracy. Precision is shooting small groups, accuracy is hitting what you're shooting at and that's where you start getting into this long range idea of okay I've got this rifle that shoots nice small groups but I want to shoot that target that's at 530 yards

Dan Johnson (03:12.912)
Mm -hmm.

Skip (03:37.358)
715 yards. And when I was in college, you couldn't buy a ballistic calculator. There weren't apps on phones that did your ballistics for you. the access to that information just didn't really exist that much. Laser range finders that we could use to measure distances only really started showing up in the late 90s. You know, that brick of a Leica was kind of like the first one that would give you a distance at seven or 800 yards.

And then all of a sudden this equation of calculating the ballistics was missing. So to me, I felt like it was a wide open frontier to find the right solutions and package them up as a turnkey rifle system. And we're talking optic, we're talking ballistics, we're talking ammunition, rifle, everything, and turn it over to somebody just like in the world travelers from 150 years ago.

that were all over the world doing the coolest adventures everywhere, just like that. They would take that box and it had their reloading kit, their sights were regulated out to five, 600 yards, everything ready to go. That's where Gunwerks started. And that's essentially what we do is we sell a turnkey rifle system that has been tested, vetted, set up, tuned, know, ballistics calibrated, and we sell it with, you know,

rear bags, ballistic correcting range finders, ballistic turrets, scope, scun, kit, everything, ammo. And we handle all of that, we hand it over to the customer. Now, he doesn't have to waste any time saying, well crap, is that my load, is that my scope, is that my bedding, is it this, is it that? Because dealing with that stuff does not make you a better shooter. Like dealing with that stuff doesn't do anything in improving your skills.

We get it to where all you have to do as a shooter is learn how to get set up with your equipment, equipment management, aiming, trigger fundamentals, just basic marksmanship fundamentals, and then add on top of that this art of reading the wind. And we allow you to just carve out all the rest of that crap and focus on those core things that are really the true shooting skills.

Dan Johnson (05:58.417)
Yeah. Yeah.

Skip (05:59.468)
and get way up that learning curve so much faster. That's what we do and that's why we do

Dan Johnson (06:05.441)
Okay, so when you're sitting at college and you're working this construction job, and I don't know about you, but when I started my company, I was at work, not doing work. I was thinking about what I wanted to do outside of work. so I always love this next step. That is from idea.

Skip (06:19.17)
Yes.

Dan Johnson (06:30.254)
or concept to actual creation of the business. What was that like for you in Gunworks?

Skip (06:38.414)
We're still creating our business. it's what is it like for us at Gunworks? There was this crossover Nexus where we we found initial success. We filmed our hunts. We showed how you could actually do this and be successful. And a lot of people just they just didn't realize, you know what the potential was, what their potential could be. And so so showing

on a TV program showing that on video, we were real early on YouTube. That was a pretty exciting thing for a lot of people. it was almost, there was a lot of guys that called BS, you know, like they didn't believe that it was that possible or, know, that, well that's those guys, they're experts, but how does that work for me? So I think that was a really big part

of getting the industry moving in this direction was showing that it's actually possible and being willing to take the hit. That was the early days of cancel culture. Like if you're a long range shooter, you were on the outside of the norm and very at risk of being canceled by people inside of our industry. So that was a risk that existed there.

Dan Johnson (08:01.55)
For what reasons? Canceled for what reasons?

Skip (08:05.402)
Taking long -range shots. It's unethical according to some you know I mean I think when we started the What we brought to the table was this idea of a combined system and the willingness to do the work to combine it because Where everybody else was at the time was they build this awesome gun and they would send it the customer And the customer had to put a scope on a customer to get a load going you know customer had to make all this stuff going

And when something wasn't right, everybody just start pointing fingers. Well, that's your Leopold scope. It's not working or that's, your, you know, your hornety animal is not shooting good or whatever the case was, you know, try, try a different load. There's still companies that are like that. It's like, well, it doesn't shoot that load. You haven't find the right load yet. You need to keep trying and see if you can find something that works in this gun. And I think, I think the idea of us taking the heat and absorbing all of that work.

was kind of the big nut for most of the customers that we were chasing. And we brought a ballistic package to bear that would create a custom ballistic turret for that rifle system when we were all done. And so for most guys, out to four, five, 600 yards, distances that were completely unheard of for normal mainstream Western hunters, we would just give them the system that they could just spin this knob and pull the trigger, and there was a dead animal. It was magic.

Dan Johnson (09:28.852)
Yeah. Yeah.

Skip (09:30.334)
And, and, and shortly after that, we introduced a rangefinder that did the ballistic corrections for air density and incline, but still gave you a shoot to range to use a ballistic turret. Because as hunters, like we speak in the language of distance. Like you pull up the rangefinder, the first thing you say is how far it is, right? Maybe, maybe you got something that gives you a calculation and now you start talking minutes and this and that, but we talk in distance. And so I think

Dan Johnson (09:50.481)
Yeah.

Skip (09:59.982)
You know that that system that kit that was just really easy. It was really turnkey and it was really new. It it it got a lot of momentum and we had this Nexus about shucks. It was probably about halfway in. You know, maybe not even 10 years in where we had to say. Alright, this is fun. We're making some money. This is exciting. People are excited. You know, do we optimize this business and make profit or?

do we set our sights higher and make something really awesome, which means never taking any profit. So when we decided to reinvest in the growth of business, mean, we're almost 100 employees today. And our R &D contributions are very significant in developing new technologies and bringing new things to market from smart scopes, smart rangefinders, know, ammo systems, know, a lot of accessories

Like here's one we've been working on for the last six years is barrels. Within the next year, we'll be making enough barrels that we can start selling barrels to the public. like we're just contributing and investments in R &D and machine capabilities. And that's kind of where we're

Dan Johnson (11:13.794)
Yeah. Yeah. So in the early days, when you came out with this, you know, this system, this product of kind of like a one stop shop for hunters, shooters, whatever the case is, how did you overcome those who were skeptic about your process and win them over in the long run?

Skip (11:41.422)
so there was probably two major skeptics at the beginning. One of them was the, let's say the fair chase hunter crowd that believed that there was something wrong about shooting an animal that was far away. There was that crowd. There was another one

didn't believe that a ballistic turret was a good solution and really didn't like how easy and how accessible we were making that ability to shoot at distance. It was kind of like the old boys club that had figured it out and didn't want anybody else to join in. there's those two. So how did we address the second one? Well, first of all, we sold a lot of product.

And we got a lot of people excited and naturally that pulls people to emulate and to follow along. And so I think just leading the way that way, because we made products that worked so well for customers and they had so much success, a lot of people followed along and kind of filled in the gaps. Within three or four years, every major scope company was offering some type of a ballistic turret solution. it's just, it's the way that hunters work in

cuts out so many potential problems. The way that we worked on the other side, the skeptics, with the, let's call it the ethical crowd, was we just asked questions and we said, well, what is long range? How far is too far? And basically had that conversation. I think the conversation seemed to work better. And in sharing stories, like I raised six kids.

and taught most of them how to hunt and shoot, you know, and at least half of them are passionate about it. And, you know, when we could sit down and be steady and take time and take a shot that's 400 yards and make a perfect shot and have a great experience and share and then share that story, you know, couldn't somebody knock that as too far, right? You know, 400 yards, is it too far at the time?

Skip (14:06.606)
There was a question, was it too far? But you start just sharing those stories and addressing that, you know, and then coming back to more technology and better solutions, you know, the rangefinder that does a shoot to range that encompasses, you know, air density equations and incline equations and everything. So again, you just push a button that says 450 yards, you dial to 450. Like that's, it's pretty easy and it's pretty certain, you know, that your, that your outcome

Dan Johnson (14:09.187)
Yeah.

Skip (14:35.788)
better and I'd always ask the question it's like you know how many how many misses happen at close range you know has anybody ever wounded an elk with an arrow right how many how many wounded elk are on the mountain from archery versus long -range rifles right you just start asking questions and having conversations and I feel like that addressed it pretty well bringing more technology and demonstrating success and bringing customers kind of address the other side

Dan Johnson (15:05.622)
Gotcha, gotcha. So you have this idea, right? And you're getting it out to the masses, but there's

whether it's a product or it's a service, you have to educate your consumer on what it is that you're actually doing and identifying a problem and trying to tell them, listen, I have a solution for this problem. What was it like educating your consumer that you had a product in a process that was gonna solve some of their issues?

Skip (15:37.774)
You know...

I've got to hunt a lot and use our equipment

That's a blessing and I'm very grateful for that opportunity. At the same time, we had to film those opportunities and those hunts. And that's how we educated was we would show people how that worked. And maybe like a quick, you know, discussion of what that shot was with some details so people could like understand what that was. think changing the paradigm of what is possible.

was the first step in that education. So basically just flipping the switch on to everybody that's like, crap, I wanna do this, I could do this, let's do this. And then the next question is, okay, well, how do I do this? And I think that ease of access of how simple that system works was a really key element of that, because it was so demonstrable.

And then we were real early, like our first long range shooting course was in 2007. And we built that into a huge business. We have three full time trainers that work all year training people on how to shoot long range. So there's a physical education piece to our business that a lot of people don't realize. A guy buys a $14 ,000 gun, a real smart guy is like, well, how do I get way up the learning curve?

Skip (17:16.782)
and get the most value out of this and they'll go do it. And they'll come spend two to four to eight days with us in different courses that we offer. I think there's another piece of that that we were really early in, which is the shooting tips and the YouTube videos. And we put a lot of content out there. We're probably 800 videos on YouTube right now, I'll bet. YouTube's huge for us.

You we have, you can go watch an episode, can go, you can go say, hey, I want to learn about the Yovatos effect or, or, or wind, you know, wind mirage or wind reading, you know, setting up with a rear bag, how to shoot off a bipod. Like there's tons of learning stuff there. That's all free. We thought probably, I think we may have actually got tired of fighting this, but we fought

License our music and to do all the steps so that YouTube didn't serve our guys up ads So for probably the last 10 or 15 years we didn't you watch our channel you didn't get served ads But I think YouTube's finally maybe winning that winning that Effort so there there may actually be some ads there these days, we never tried to monetize that channel It was always for it was it was intended to be free and accessible

Dan Johnson (18:18.709)
yeah.

Dan Johnson (18:39.724)
Gotcha. All right. Who's your demographic?

Skip (18:44.802)
You know, I like to think the cup, we've spent a lot of time with our customers because we're mostly direct sale and we have this training program and a lot of guys come here to pick up rifles and they come get trained and, the guys that I've spent the most time with seem to be professionals that have, you know, or, business people or, you know, in that demographic of upper middle class that have been successful.

finally have enough money and time to where they can you know go hunting and Take some time off, you know go to Asia go do a sheep hunt in Canada go out west and hunt elk and They're and they're starting to do that. They're spending time maybe they've been putting putting in and they're starting to draw tags or maybe they're You know that their business has finally achieved that point where they could step away a little bit and they have a little extra cash

And maybe they want to be successful and they don't want to waste time. And I think they've come to that realization that time is more precious even than money. spending time trying to figure out why their brand X rifles not shooting. Is it a scope? Is it an ammo? Is it a bedding? Is it a trigger? Like, why is it not shooting? Is it me? They don't know. It's like wasting the time.

to get that dialed in becomes very painful for this demographic. So I would say it's in that 50 to 60 year old range. It seems like we have the strongest presence. But over the last three or four years, we've seen a lot of 40, know, late 30s to 40 year old people that have achieved a little more success that are able to start doing some of that a little earlier. And those guys are looking for those solutions as well.

Dan Johnson (20:44.944)
Gotcha. Okay. Do you guys have like from a price point, do you happen to have like an average customer spend that you'd be willing to share with us? Like if I call you up and say, hey, I'm ready for a system, what can I expect to spend?

Skip (21:04.718)
You're talking single order,

Dan Johnson (21:07.502)
or yeah, something like that, yeah.

Skip (21:10.67)
You're going to break $10 ,000. There's stuff at the other end. I've seen an order ticket be $28 ,000. But we also have a rifle offering that's down in the fours. So if you're really, really careful, you can get access to the cool stuff that we're doing without spending a lot.

You start looking at the Revic Optics side and you look at some of the rangefinder solutions. We make the best rangefinder in the world. It's the Revic BR4. It's a monocular, it's a handheld. It's kind of geared for the Western 100 higher magnification. The ranging is just stellar. We make a rangefinding monocular that is very nice. I prefer that device.

But it's 2 ,600 bucks. It's not a $4 ,000 Swarovski. It's very nice. I've seen all our high -end guys that are serious about shooting and killing stuff. They've walked away from their more expensive European binos, set them aside, and they've picked up that revic and ran it. So I think there's a really good value matrix there with the range finding, the optics, the combined device, the success that that brings.

And I'm pretty happy to be able to bring products like that that do provide a lot of value for the dollars.

Dan Johnson (22:34.35)
Okay, all right. So how's this process work? All right, some guy hears this and he goes, okay, I've never heard of Gunworks before. I'm interested. I have the funds to dedicate to this. Where do I start? How do I get the ball rolling?

Skip (22:52.364)
You know, I'm very conscious

of the requirement to provide value for the dollar. And, you know, for me personally, like I don't mind spending money when I have some. don't mind spending it and buying something nice. The worst thing in the world is buying something and then having remorse for the spend. You know, like you go buy a Swarovski pair of glass, you will never regret the spend.

Now you, it might hurt the dollars that disappear from your wallet might hurt, but you will never regret it because it is the most magnificent optical experience. they're not necessarily saying they're the best, but they combine so many things that are so pleasant. You can't go wrong. But for $4 ,000, a lot of people are like, you know what? I can't get there. And so they start at the other end with maybe another green brand in this. They spend

$800 and then pretty quick they realized you know what I Wish I would have I wish I would have bought something else and then they're like, okay Well, I can get to 2 ,000 right and then like man. I hate this I wish I would have just bought a little bit better in the meantime They just pissed away 2 ,800 bucks, right but used optics it on the lower price point scale They don't bring a lot on the resale market. So for me, I would rather do the do the right investment up front

and maybe suffer through that pain, but kind of end in the outcome. I did this with a plane. I've been wanting to fly for a long time. Finally got my license, bought a plane, a shit ton of, sorry, borrowed a bunch of money from the bank. And I bought a nicer plane than probably what I could afford. But you go buy this old clunker plane and then you work on it and you put money into it and you never get the full use out of it. In the meantime,

Dan Johnson (24:40.636)
All

Skip (24:56.14)
I've just been having a blast with this thing. I think about the dollars, I probably bought a plane at the peak of the valuation market, the peak of the interest rate market. Like it's the worst, worst time to buy. The worst pain financially you could suffer, but I enjoy that thing so much and it fricking works so good.

It's it's that same mentality. think making an investment in good gear. I set up, I did a back country camping trip in my airplane with my wife this week and we flew to Idaho, you know, landed on airstrips out in the middle of nowhere, grass strips and really, really awesome. But I took my big Agnes copper spur three or whatever that tent was. I've had that tent for 10 years. When I bought that, it was probably like five or 600 bucks and it hurt.

to buy that, like there was no pro deals for Aaron Davidson on that deal. But that tent has been used so much and it still works, never torn anything, never had a zipper come apart, never had one failure of that tent in all those years. And I was just reflecting on that because I broke it out and we took that tent and I was thinking, man, what a great piece of gear that that was. And that to me is what I want my products

attain for a customer whether it's a $1 ,200 product or a $12 ,000 product is wow that was expensive but I really like what this does for me and I'm very glad that I made that investment.

Dan Johnson (26:28.225)
Yeah, I'll tell you this man. I bought a $680 sleeping bag and when I told my wife how much it costs, she about shit her pants. Okay? But I will say this, it is superb. I mean, it is comfortable. It is everything that I want in a zero degree sleeping bag.

Okay, it has a huge range. I can use it wherever and however I want and it's comfortable and like it's just it's short term ouch, long term thank you type of deal, right? And so, okay, but now getting into the actual details of your business. So I hear what you're saying and you're like, okay, expect to spend somewhere around 10 Gs. What comes with $10 ,000 if

Skip (27:04.664)
Yeah. Yeah.

Skip (27:18.798)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (27:20.993)
For me, if I think I'm gonna spend $10 ,000, I want access to a human being that I can bounce ideas off. Yep, exactly, okay.

Skip (27:27.98)
Yeah, that's what we do. It's what we do. so you're going to probably the best way is you go to the website, you get an idea for what you're looking at, right? Unfortunately, there's so much BS in in the world on the internet on forums that you you have to be really careful. You don't let your your ideas that you've created lock you into a direction because somebody is going to come say I want a four and a half gun.

that's a 28 nozzler that shoots 1 ,500 yards, right? That's what somebody's gonna ask for. But when you call us up, I've got about a half dozen guys, kick butt guys that are shooters, hunters. mean, two of these guys, three of these guys started in the manufacturing side. Like two of them shot guns to finish guns for years. So when they tell you, hey, you don't want that combo, like they know what they're talking

So they're going to give you some recommendations based on real experience. We've got some hardcore hunters in there, you know, that have, you know, have, have had successes and failures that they can speak to, but you're going to call up the guy's going to talk to you. He's going to ask you all sorts of questions about what are you hunting? You, where are you hunting? you know, what kind of hunting trips have you had? What kind of pain points have you gone through? You know, what's your experience level? Etc. They're going to, they're going to learn all about you. And then you're going to tell

what you think that you want and sometimes you're spot on. Like you're right there. Like you've done the research, you've got good data, you're in the ballpark. And sometimes, you know, they might, you know, have to take on a little campaign to convince you that you want something that's just a little different or you can find a little more optimum solution. That way you can have some trust and faith that you're gonna, that spend that you make isn't gonna result in, shoot, I wish I would have done something different.

You know, one of the big questions is, are you just gonna buy one? Do you think you're just gonna buy one? Or do you think someday you might have two? Because I feel that it's hard to make one gun be the right gun for everything, but you can make something that kind of lands in the middle. But if you could say, want two guns, I want a mountain rifle and I want a long range rifle, that informs a different decision matrix

Skip (29:51.858)
the kind of guns that you set up. So I think those guys will go through that whole discussion process, really try to dial in on that. And then they'll start making some recommendations. They'll build a couple quotes, let you process and stew on it. I don't feel like we run a high pressure organization. My guys aren't sophisticated, you know, sales manipulators. They're more like, okay, here's what I think you should do. Here's what it looks like it would cost. You know, here's how

along it would take to deliver it and you know, let me know if you want to, you know, take action. And like it's just, it's, it's a pretty low pressure process. We do have some really great dealers that would have product available. I think that's another option you can go to. And then we've created this training program and you know, we used to, used to be so new that people would be like, I just got to see if this is real. And they would sign up and they would come to the event and

every single one of those guys would buy a gun because they were just waiting to see if it was a real thing and when it was real they were like, I'm in. So you'd book 12 guys and you'd sell 12 guns, it was pretty cool. And nowadays we get a lot of guys that are buying the weapons on the trust or on a repeat purchase or whatever and then they'll come and experience the school and get training on their

But I've been really careful to take this level one course that we have. It's a two day course, and then you do level two, three, et cetera. You take this level one course, and the core content of that course is this is how you set up a gun for long range. And we're not doing silly stuff like how to mount a scope. I mean, that's not what this is about. This is how does a ballistic program work? How do you make it work? What do the parameters mean? And then how would you go about

mapping out a gun and building the ballistic tools that you need to be able to shoot long range with any gun. so what that course is, is it's basically how to go set up anybody else's gun, including what you have in your cabinet to shoot long range. And essentially my sales guys and my training guys, they have separate functions. Training guys teach people how to do stuff. Sales guys sell

Skip (32:12.972)
So our training guys, their job isn't to sell you guns. Their job is to teach you how to shoot long range or to teach you how to set up a long range gun. And so that first course, I think is a really, really safe entry for somebody that's interested in starting because you go sign up for that course, you leave, you're either going to say, you know what? I'm in, I'm buying a gun or trifle. Like I know I can set one up. I see what is behind the scenes of setting up a long range rifle. It's

I'm just going to go that route. I can do it if I want to, but I don't need to because I've got other things I can do. But at the same time, it could be, you know what, you know, this is a $1 investment and all of a sudden I'm not going to waste any time, you know, setting up my, you know, secants with a vortex and I know how to get there. I know how to check it. I know how to diagnose when there's an issue. Like I have the skill sets now to go do this and that's my approach and we're, we're fine with

Dan Johnson (32:45.188)
Yeah.

Skip (33:11.342)
Because the truth is you're probably gonna buy a rangefinder, because we make pretty superior products on that side or something else. You will be a customer. You'll come back and get trained again on the next level. You'll do advanced wind with us. You'll do mountain shooting. A customer is a customer, regardless of what scale. We're all about it. Even our bipod. We make the best mountain shooting bipod. It's 375, 395 bucks.

And so like anybody can play with us, regardless of where

Dan Johnson (33:43.155)
Yeah, okay. How involved do your clients need to be throughout this entire process?

Skip (33:53.931)
I would really like to see them get active once the product gets in their hands. If you can have some faith that our guys aren't going to steer you wrong on a recommendation, you could be a one 30 minute conversation, order's done, and it's in motion. Delivery and pickup, we coordinate all that stuff. It's very straightforward. You're going to probably have one conversation.

at the end of the build cycle, do a final payment, make sure we coordinate an FFL shipment. We'll deliver it, you'll get some notifications, you go pick it up, fill out your 4473, you're done. It's really, really easy to do

Dan Johnson (34:39.318)
Yeah. Now, do you guys put any rounds through the finished product before you hand it over to the end user?

Skip (34:49.026)
That is a requirement to do that. For a couple reasons. Number one, we want to make sure that everything works. And you would be shocked at how many times we go to shoot a gun and it's not going to pass. It's not going to work. And we either have to work on it or we have to fix something on it or whatever the case is. to me, that final step of shooting

and proving function and performance, it gets mandatory, absolutely mandatory. I couldn't imagine sending a gun out without doing that, because there's so many variables involved in building a gun that if you don't prove it, and you leave that aspect for the customer to do, he's not gonna be able to diagnose, he's not gonna be able to fix it, it's not a good experience. And you see a lot of forum reports about companies.

Dan Johnson (35:39.603)
Yeah. Yeah.

Skip (35:45.494)
that do high volume manufacture, that do ship products out, that take some work to get set up and working. I think the second piece of that is the ballistics capture. And we call it trajectory validation, but it's basically you have to measure the performance of the gun so that you can customize the ballistic solution of that gun with that ammo and that optic, et cetera. So that piece of

absolutely requires shooting.

Dan Johnson (36:16.067)
Yeah. Do you guys ever have instances where someone already has a rifle and they like, dude, I love this rifle or it has some kind of sentimental value to them that they send to you and then you work on

Skip (36:28.312)
Sure.

Skip (36:32.47)
Yeah, I we stay away from gunsmithing. So if your rifles a piece of crap, we're not going to be able to do anything for you. But let's say you bought a nice rifle like a Seekins and it's going to shoot good. Right. And you've you've shot it. It works good. You're happy with it, but you don't want to come invest the time in the course. You just want to get something that's turnkey. You can send that to us and we'll do what we call a scope mount and data collection package

So we'll mount a scope, we'll validate it with the ammo, we'll measure all the ballistic parameters, build a custom turret, send it back to the customer. So that is a package we do. We've done a lot of them. We've had a lot of experience with other weapons. We require something that works.

Dan Johnson (37:14.67)
Gotcha.

Yeah. Okay. What's the, the timeframe from the time I have a, a phone call with you guys to the time it shows up at my door.

Skip (37:28.878)
You know, for the last five or six years, know, our idea was take this billion different combinations that we can make and deliver it as fast as possible. And we averaged around 60 days. One year our average was 48 days from order to delivery on rifle systems. But we're managing these massive skews. Inventory's absolutely getting out of control. mean, our inventory doubled in the last four years, like huge inventory.

And, and, and I realized that we could satisfy a lot of that quick turn demand by building to stock our high performing, you know, most popular either recommendations or purchases, and then, and then extending a little bit our build time. So this year we tried a new system. I think we're a five month delivery time on a custom make to order rifle, but we stock.

about 150 different rifles at any given point that are in different build configurations. generally, unless you've got a specific color requirement or something like that, generally you can buy exactly what you want and it's in the mail two or three days

Dan Johnson (38:46.448)
Wow, wow, that's pretty quick. Okay, kind of getting into a different lane of questioning here. I've heard you talk about multiple weapons are different. I know some hardcore gun guys and they have a gun for every scenario. Is there such thing as a multi -purpose rifle? Yeah.

Skip (39:09.144)
I think so. I think so. If a guy says, I just want a rifle I can do everything with, and I'm going to buy once, I'm going cry once, I don't have a budget to do a whole safe full of these things, we're going to put him into one of the seven millimeters. We're going to give him a gun that's a reasonable weight, that he's not going to beat him up on a mountain hike, but if he's got a long cross canyon hunt, it's heavy enough he

you know, recover from the recoil and get some good shooter spotting capability out of it. So you're probably going to end up in a Magnus or a Nexus. You're going to end up with a 7 PRC, 7 rem mag. know, a guy's going to want a Nosler, but we're going to push him down in a little bit smaller cartridge. And then we're going to try to build him a gun that's around nine pounds -ish overall weight with scope. So it's a good middle ground

you could take on any hunt and be in any scenario and be successful.

Dan Johnson (40:11.643)
Okay, this is a question I probably should have asked at the beginning of the podcast, but what is the definition of long range shooting?

Skip (40:23.18)
Me personally, I think it's when you have to start correcting for the bullet drop.

Dan Johnson (40:28.069)
Okay.

Skip (40:29.07)
So if you're correcting for bullet drop, then you're long range shooting. And I think that starts happening pretty much around 300 yards ish, kind of in that ballpark 350.

Dan Johnson (40:38.489)
Okay, okay I've seen I believe I I believe it was a 1900 yard elk kill one year On YouTube and I'm not sure who shot it or but I'm almost positive It was 1900 yards, right and I look at that I'm a bow hunter and I'm I just can't even fathom that distance where where do you guys or the long -range hunter like

Is there a yardage or something that starts? I mean, I'm talking about when people start to get fired up. Like I shot this deer or this elk past X number of yards and it's like, okay, well if it's 300, it's okay, but if it's 350, now you're, eh, whatever. Like what's the yardage people start to get pissed off

Skip (41:28.43)
If you've got, if you're running a Tika and a, you know, and a burst fulfilled to with a whole little radical to get you to three or 400 yards and your hunt, you got a really cool gear tag that you drew in Utah and you're, you're hunting and you're stomping around out there in the desert. You're trying to find this big deer and you finally find one and you're stocking in on him and then somebody else shoots him out of his bed from eight or 900 yards. Well, that guy's going to say, you know what? Eight or 900 yards is too damn far to shoot, you know, a deer,

Dan Johnson (41:55.965)
Right.

Skip (41:58.99)
Here's, this is the key thing about long range shooting. I call bullshit on the 1900 yards. So I'm a long range guy, bullshit. And I'll tell you, and I'll explain why. Not because of my feelings, but I think that as shooters, we should have a standard of expected performance. And let's call that hit probability, right?

Dan Johnson (42:08.332)
Okay.

Dan Johnson (42:24.435)
Okay.

Skip (42:25.55)
And so we can argue about what hit probability is acceptable or not. if I said 50%, would you say that's good or bad? Just you personally. You have a 50 -50 chance you're actually going to hit it well and kill it versus not.

Dan Johnson (42:35.89)
What? I

Dan Johnson (42:42.918)
Yeah, I look at that and I say that's not good. That's better, yes.

Skip (42:45.582)
Not good. How about 90

I think 90 % is pretty damn high. You can't be a lot more sure than that, I think, in a lot of situations. What about 80

Dan Johnson (43:00.128)
And so like for me, I am I'm my mind right now is going back to archery and how close I personally set up to deer,

Skip (43:07.787)
yeah. yeah. applies to archery. applies to rifle. applies to all that. Muzzle loader,

Dan Johnson (43:13.81)
Yeah. And so like for me, I go, what am I personally capable of? And the further

Skip (43:20.11)
Yes. Not capable. are what are are the because is because 60 % of the time you're capable of making that shot 40 % of the time not does that you're capable 60 % of the time to me that's low 80 % for me personally starts to get at the bottom end of what I would consider a doable shot for myself. So I think somewhere in that 85

range, we cross this threshold of ethical, you know, responsibility to shoot well, to kill well. Like, and I think most people around a campfire are going to come to a number that's very close to that. Now, that means that there's a chance, there's a chance that we don't shoot well. But we've, we've done all the work, we've set up our equipment, we've practiced, you can't control everything, but we have invested the time.

to do the best we can and you can't be 100%. So that number, let's say that's the number, right? Let's say it's 85 % or above. So now you have to come to that shot opportunity because there's 400 yard shots where you might not have an 85 % hit probability. And in that scenario, you either need to get closer or you need to pass and move on and wait for another day.

There's scenarios that I've been on where a 1 ,200 yard shot was better than 85 % hit probability. Better than. And I think that that is the key. It has nothing to do with the distance. It has everything to do with the hit probability for you to make that first shot count and make it happen. Any long shots, I mean, long shots, in my opinion, are just as

Dan Johnson (44:54.006)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Skip (45:17.166)
bragging potential as big porn or big antler. mean, a lot, you know, sometimes you get lucky and shoot something big, but a lot of times big stuff comes from the hard effort and the knowledge and years of skills development that has allowed you to be successful and to pass smaller stuff so that you can take a big trophy. And it's the same thing with a long shot. I mean, sometimes people get lucky, but hopefully

Dan Johnson (45:21.41)
Yeah. Yeah.

Skip (45:46.466)
people are taking shots that are inside of their capabilities. And then to me, that also demonstrates the hard effort, the years of learning and skills development that enabled you to make that shot. So for me, like a perfect shot is just as valuable as a big trophy. Like I think if somebody's telling you about this long shot they take, the first question I ask is how many shots did it take?

Dan Johnson (46:04.53)
Cut. Cut.

Skip (46:15.246)
That guy that shot 1 ,900 yards at an elk, I will bet a big old juicy steak dinner that he didn't do that in one

Dan Johnson (46:24.872)
Yeah.

Skip (46:27.046)
There's another piece of that, which is a scientific piece, which talks about terminal performance, how bullets work, know, how wound cavities kill and, and, kind of what it takes to make sure that that bullet works at the distance or the scenario that you're shooting. There are not any hunting combinations that I know of that can deliver the scientific requirements for performance

ensure adequate wound cavity size, good thoracic cavity destruction, and a good bleed out and kill. So I would say we can probably look at it from a scientific point of view and the terminal performance thresholds of different bullets, that that was outside. And we've taken some shots that were like that. My son killed an elk at a long distance once with a 7 rem mag. And we looked at the bullet performance. We watched what happened there.

I think at that point we decided, you know what, the science is true. It really works. If you stay inside of these thresholds, you get this performance, you go outside, here's what happens. So we learned a lot on that one. We pushed some boundaries and it really, really matters to understand what your system is capable of as well as what you're capable of.

Dan Johnson (47:37.859)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (47:48.17)
Yeah. Yeah, that's a that's a great point there. Now, I got to play devil's advocate here for a second, because even in the archery world, we start we start talking, you start talking about ethics. Right.

Like the more you talk about ethics, the more you find out it's not black and white. It's a gray area. And so for those out there who say that, you know, that animal has no chance to defend itself. It can't use its eyes. It can't use its ears or scent at that a thousand yards or whatever.

Skip (48:21.774)
This is the gayest argument in the whole world. if you take, like I'm an engineer, so you take something and you test it at the limits of the argument. So what are these guys hunting

Dan Johnson (48:29.376)
Okay.

Skip (48:40.886)
Just give me a knife. What are they hunting with? It's probably a, it's a compound bow with a dial sight and you know, super arrows and stuff. And I say, well, if that's truly the case, why aren't you hunting with a spear? Like to truly give the animal a chance to defend itself or to escape. It's like the ultimate would be a spear or a short knife. It's like, why are you not doing that? Why are you taking advantage of this technology?

It's so hypocritical for somebody to do that. It absolutely is. And I actually, I firmly believe that our only responsibility is to kill well. It is not to give the animal a chance. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. We're humans, we're apex predators. No animal has any chance against us in any situation, period. That's the dumbest thing in the world. We own this world. We control everything.

Dan Johnson (49:31.825)
Yeah.

Skip (49:38.926)
That argument is false. What we can do is we can try to make sure that we make a perfect shot and we make a fast, perfect kill. That to me is way more important and trumps all that bullshit other arguments that you have. That perfect shot and perfect kill is to me the most important thing. And I think that an animal at 400 yards that's feeding, that's not pushed, that's not aware,

where you have time to set up, you have time to go through your checklist, you have time to make sure everything's perfect, time to wait for it to present the right broadside and then take a shot that executes perfection, that is to me what everything is about. We're out there to kill, that is the ultimate goal and we have a responsibility to kill well. Contrast that against somebody that's like, I'm gonna stalk in the forest and I'm gonna jump shoot a deer and I'm close,

So it's like it's more ethical, right? Cause it's close and the animal's got all of its senses and awareness about him. And so you do that and you jump, shoot one and you swing on him and you throw lead and you shoot it at the guts and it runs off and it dies a horrible death. Tell me that that's more ethical. Not, it's not at

Dan Johnson (50:53.937)
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Great point, great point. Yeah, it's just fun to hear. So was it the Boone and Crockett Club? They put limitations on as far as how far you shot that animal. Is that the case?

Skip (51:14.68)
I've heard rumors there. I've had guys tell me that they're anti and then you have some board members that are realistic and they realize that's not the case. So I think they've kind of been wishy washy a little bit the last few years.

Dan Johnson (51:27.435)
Yeah, I got you. Yeah, I wasn't sure. I don't... See, that's the thing.

Skip (51:30.68)
Do they even matter anymore? They're completely irrelevant. They're not even a real organization. They don't do anything for anybody anywhere. Nobody gives a shit. They use their score sheet. That's

Dan Johnson (51:39.956)
Yeah, and that's the thing. Right. And that's the thing that that I can get on board with big time is, OK, you measure deer and you put your name in a book. What's that mean? Maybe maybe maybe it used to mean something back in the day when initially these organizations were set up. But that's I'll get on a soapbox here pretty soon and then then there's no stopping it. So. All right. Last question, I'll let you go.

Skip (51:52.78)
hahahaha

Skip (52:03.436)
Yeah, yeah.

Dan Johnson (52:08.635)
If somebody hears this podcast and has any questions or is really thinking about Gunworks, why should they literally and figuratively pull the trigger on Gunworks and make the move?

Skip (52:17.752)
thinking about.

Skip (52:26.766)
I think probably the most significant reason to do that is

Our willingness to invest in not just product, but in our customer satisfaction yields an experience that in the whole is significantly different than what you're going to get with any other

Dan Johnson (52:54.374)
And once they find out, once they want to go check out Gunworks, where do we send

Skip (53:02.37)
So you gotta remember we spell ours with an E, that's a trademark word mark. So gun works with an E, G -U -N -W -E -R -K -S. You plug that into Google or whatever browser you're using, it'll pop up our website and probably our YouTube channel. And I think that's two really cool places to go to. Our website will serve up a lot of our content, whether it's podcasts, TV show episodes, shooting tips, et cetera, or YouTube as well. Same kind of.

selection of content. You know, just consuming some content and getting a feel for us and what we do, why we do it, you know, how we do it. I mean, there's tons of, you know, factory footage. There's tons of video of us and, you know, the employees, you know, hunting together or doing adventures. You'll get a sense that this is very authentic, that we're not some, you know, big, you know,

corporate owned VC funded entity. This is a real bunch of people in Cody, Wyoming that are busting their butts every day to make good products and to satisfy our customers. And if you start digging around on the products and building some different configurations and getting a feel for what does that look like, and then you of take it to the next step and call and talk to somebody and kind of validate your ideas and maybe

you know, get a little input on some suggestions, kind of refine that into the perfect system or the perfect training experience or, you know, accessory, and then we'll take care of

Dan Johnson (54:40.72)
Absolutely. Well, Skip, man, I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to hop on and school us on gun works, man. Thanks for your time and enjoy the rest of your week.

Skip (54:52.696)
You're welcome. Thanks again for the opportunity.

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