Hornady Manufacturing

On this episode of the Hunting Gear Podcast, Dan sits down with some of the big dogs at Hornady Manufacturing about, you guessed it, bullets. Hornady has been a family owned company since the 1940's and is one of the leading ammunition manufacturers in the industry. They pride themselves on innovation, research and development, and giving the end users of their products exactly what they ask for, a consistent and accurate bullet that preforms in the harshest conditions.

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Happy Friday everyone, and welcome to this edition of The Hunting Gear podcast. I'm your host, Dan Johnson, and today we are gonna be talking with Judd and Preston from Horny Manufacturer. This, these guys are a bullet manufacturer now, self-admittedly. I know nothing about [00:01:00] guns. I know nothing about bullets, how bullets are made, drop distant, whatever, like all the buzzwords.

And you'll hear in this in this episode that these guys actually have to correct some of the verbiage that I use. When talking about ammunitions and bullets and whatnot, and so I don't know anything about it. These guys are the experts, but I felt like it was important to get a company like Horny on the podcast because several of you, we're not all just archers at some point throughout the year, even myself, for Turkey season, I use a shotgun and.

I, I felt like it was important to step into the firearm side of things for a day and talk with someone who's a lot smarter than me about all of this stuff. And that's what today's podcast is about now on this episode we talk about, manufacturing process. We talk about casings, we talk about powder, we talk about [00:02:00] design innovation.

And so it's a really cool episode. I had definitely walked away from this episode learning a lot. Hopefully you guys do too. And that's really it, man. I'm gonna keep this intro short. We gotta thank the partners of the Hunting Gear podcast right now, and that's tethered. If you are looking for a saddle, then we definitely need to go check out tethered saddle hunting accessories platforms, saddles themselves, climbing sticks.

You name it, they have it. And on top of that, they have a huge community surrounding their product line. They have some new products that have just come out. You need to go check that out, tethered nation.com. So if you want to learn how to become a better saddle hunter, go check out tethered HuntStand.

Again, just a place the functionality with HuntStand, there's a lot of it, right? So the first thing that I always recommend to people is, don't take my word for it. Go to huntstand.com, read up on all the [00:03:00] functionality and see how this app can benefit you. See if it fits your needs as a hunting app.

And it, it does a really good job, man. And I'm talking about the ability to just journal everything that you see, the ability to document and organize trail cam pictures, the it's just the playbook for your season. And especially if you're interested in specific caliber of animals, HuntStand allows you to document all of that, journal, all of that.

So when it comes time to get out in the woods, you have this playbook right in front of you. So go check out all the functionality and all the availability of, information on huntstand.com. And I think you guys would be surprised. Last but not least, TCAM TCAM is one of those companies that.

Allows you to document your hunt. Now, if you don't know what tact cam is, it is an action cam that can mount to your gun or your bow, [00:04:00] and they have several other like mounting brackets that you can put in the tree over your shoulder and really document your hunt. If you're the type of guy who likes to make YouTube videos or if you're the type of guy who likes to just hit the record button so you can go home, show your wife, your kids your brother, sister, whatever.

And just show them on show them what you've seen. It's fun to do. And so the new 6.0 version has the ability to what is it? The new 6.0 has an LCD screen on it. It has the ability to record in 4k. It has so it has the playback function and it has ima image stabilization, so no more shaky videos.

If you wanna find out more, go visit tact cam's website and read up on the 6.0. That's it for commercials. I really appreciate you guys taking time outta your day to hop on and listen, huge shout out to the guys from Horny for taking time to do this episode. And on the Nine Finger Chronicles, I always talk about good vibes, right?

So we're [00:05:00] gonna, we're gonna have good vibes today. Good vibes and good vibes out, and we'll talk to you after this show. All right on the Hunting Gear podcast with me today. We're talking with Judd and Preston from Horny Gentlemen. Welcome to the Hunting Gear Podcast. Hey, 

[00:05:15] Judd: thank you, Dan. It's. It's pretty cool to be chatting with you here.

I've been actually a longtime listener, so it's neat to be on this side for 

[00:05:22] Dan Johnson: once. Oh, perfect. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I will be completely honest, I'm a bow hunter. Okay. And so I, I felt like the hunting Gear podcast always leans towards archery, but I know. All of my listeners participate in some type of, firearm, whether that's turkeys or, lot many states have rifle seasons, or go out west or even just sport shooting.

Okay? And so I feel like at times I'm doing them. A disservice when I don't talk about firearms. And today, obviously with you guys we're gonna focus on ammunition and it's awesome to get you guys on and [00:06:00] break the cycle of my ignorance, so to speak. And and so I'm relying on you guys a lot for to be the experts today, and I'm just gonna ask a whole bunch of dumb questions.

[00:06:10] Preston: Yep. 

[00:06:10] Judd: Right on. Yeah. Heck yeah. We're ready for it. I'm gonna jump in and say some stuff right here. All of us around the office, we do specialize on the ammunition, firearm side of things. But we are hunters. So in, in Nebraska where we're at, we've got a four month archery season.

Yeah. So I would say the majority of us here take advantage of that, oh, yeah. Along with the ri rifle seasons and the muzz letter season. Yeah. We do it all. 

[00:06:35] Dan Johnson: Yeah. I'll tell you, I'll tell you this, man. One thing I like about companies and if you are watching this on YouTube, I'm wearing a Vortex Optics shirt, and the reason I like working with Vortex and several other, the several other companies that I work with is the simple fact that they are participants in the activity in which their product sells, right?

Vortex, a lot of their guys are [00:07:00] outdoorsmen or sport shooters. Sounds like you guys are the same. And it's awesome because it makes. A company relatable to the end user, whereas other companies that I dealt with, you call 'em up and they're just like, oh, I'm sorry, I've never been in a tree stand before.

Or I've, I don't know what a Turkey gobble sounds or, whatever the, whatever you want to throw out there. So it's refreshing to hear. I don't know, for me anyway, it's refreshing to hear that a company like yourself has a bunch of participants working for it. Yeah. 

[00:07:31] Preston: It's like any new product development.

It's cuz we want it. Yeah. It's not, cuz we think that end user wants it though. There's a, we're all working on stuff and if we think there's a better mouse trap that we can use, we're gonna have the engineers do it. 

[00:07:45] Judd: Yeah. Yeah. The perk too, and Preston and I's position on the marketing team, and we do videos and things for products or how-tos none of that is, is scripted.

We, we are fortunate that we can throw our cameras on. Engineers ask 'em a question [00:08:00] and they will rattle off. Most times it's an answer that you can understand, but yeah, from our side on the video it makes our job easy a lot of the time. We've got some pretty good folks over 

[00:08:09] Dan Johnson: here.

Yeah. That's awesome. Right off the bat, engineering, okay, and I'm looking at this behind you. I'm looking at these designs of these this ammunition, these bullets and whatnot. What, so I'm green, right? I look at a bullet and I go, Hey, this is a bullet. I put it in a gun that matches this and I pull the trigger and it goes off.

How much r and d is done these days on new designs of ammunition? I, is this something that is this a category that has plateaued or is this continu like con, is there continued innovation in this category? 

[00:08:46] Preston: Oh, it's con it's continued innovation for sure. Brass has been used to make cartridge cases for eons at this point and there's some experimental stuff, going on with other folks in the industry for [00:09:00] cartridge case material.

But brass has been pretty static for a very long time. Now. On the other hand, powder that does nothing but innovate these days, the amount of new powders that have come out in the last seven years since I've started here, I can't put on two hands. Bullet design is always getting better. That, and that's what horny is.

First and foremost. We're a bullet manufacturer. Yes. We make ammo. Yes, we make reloading pools, but the bullets make the h is what they like to say. The horny. And I couldn't agree more. We make. Just a, an insane amount of bullets, and we're always innovating with them because if we can get a bullet to the target faster or with less wind, or with less drop or with more efficiency, we're gonna do it.

So the malians are always working on new bullets design. The powder companies are always Doing new powder designs as well and coming up with new stuff there. We have not plateaued at all, I'd say in the art, in the ammunition world. I 

[00:09:58] Judd: would even add on to that [00:10:00] as far as, the tools that our engineering staff have available at, now compared to what it used to be.

As long as they get the okay from down the hall, which is pretty easy process, if we can use a tool, Doppler radar for se we've. Done so much with that thing. And the fact that Doppler radar is being used to track bullets Yeah. Is just, it blows my mind, but, so yeah. It's just, it's never ending.

[00:10:25] Dan Johnson: Okay. So now you have to explain that you can't just go, Hey, we use Doppler radar. You gotta explain to me how you guys use Doppler radar in your 

[00:10:32] Preston: r and d. Sure. So in prior years, you would use acoustic microphones or shoot through chronographs and things like that, and you'd set 'em up, down range.

Okay. For an archery example, let's say you'd set one up at 20, you'd set one up at 60, if you were gonna do this with archery, which, you can use a chronograph for archery, but typically it's at the bow, right? But we want to know what the bullet's doing down range, because we need to calculate a ballistic coefficient for it.

And [00:11:00] now we're u actually using a drag curve for it. But in the old days, a ballistic coefficient, you plug that into your ballistics calculator with a muzzle velocity and some weather conditions. And it would spit out, I need to hold this high or I need to, come up this much in my scope to hit a target down range.

It's not just put the crosshairs on it and pull the trigger. We're shooting long distance. The doppler can actually track the bullet the entire length of its flight. I believe it's I can't remember the number, but it's every couple feet, two to three feet is like every less than a yard, it can track a bullet for a couple thousand yards.

Wow. So what we can find out with that is a number one of entire drag curve for a bullet. So we know what it's gonna do the whole time we're in the past, you'd only know where it's gonna, what it's gonna do at two different distances. Okay. So essentially we can get much more accurate things out of it.

So 

[00:11:56] Dan Johnson: you're not just seeing 2000 yards, you're seeing the [00:12:00] potential mile it could travel. Yeah. If you had the space. 

[00:12:04] Preston: Yeah. And it essentially gave us the ability to make our ballistics program, which we call Fordor. So if you go right now to the App Store, Google Play Store, you can go and download the horny, ballistics app with Ford off.

And if you have a bullet. That you're using that's in our Ford off library and you put accurate inputs in it, it'll give you accurate outputs to as far as you can imagine shooting for the most part. Okay. And that's a free app? 

[00:12:32] Dan Johnson: It's for free. Okay. Awesome. All right. Taking a backward step there now and.

I wanna talk a little bit about the components of a bullet. Okay. Obviously you have the casing, the powder the end, like both ends of it or whatever. So what is it about the materials that make up the component that make a quality ammunition? 

[00:12:56] Preston: Like I said, powder technology has gotten so much better over [00:13:00] the last few years.

So essentially we can. There's a appropriate burn rates for all cartridges of powders, right? So we want to use a, an appropriate burn rate car powder in the cartridge that gives it good accuracy. And then number two, I think for the most part, we're looking for temperature stability, right?

Back in the day you'd go get some surplus powder and you'd shoot it at 30 degrees. And it would be, let's for an example, say 3000 feet per second, but then you go shoot it at a hundred degrees and it's 31 50. So temperature swings via just powder itself can actually cause some issues. So temperature, stable powders, you might be seeing point.

Two to 0.7 feet per second increase or de decrease per degree of external, temperature. So you gotta use temperature, stable powders. A good bullet. We hand inspect all of our cartridges here still to this day, which is [00:14:00] crazy in today's age, but, right out there. If we walked outside of the studio and walked down the stairs, there's a whole mess of people hand inspecting ammunition That looks like jewelry.

Yeah. We're also testing bullets as we make them start of run. We have accuracy expectations, or accuracy goals, or not goals, but. Yeah. What's the word I'm looking for? Crying out loud. Just a criteria that they, accuracy criteria that the bullet has to make in order for the press to go off and run.

Okay. And then if something happens on the press, we send it back down to the lab and it gets shot again. It's gotta meet accuracy. Then we do the same thing with ammunition as well. Okay. 

[00:14:37] Dan Johnson: And so how, walk us through how you measure that. I envision a guy with a gun on the factory line pulling a trigger and testing, testing the end, the bullet to see if it goes off and does what it's supposed to do.

And then throughout the day you have the same amount. So you see the accuracy or the. The consistency in the manufacturing [00:15:00] process, is that how it's done, or how do you actually test quality? 

[00:15:05] Preston: So for down in the lab in our main facility, we've got a 200 yard indoor underground tunnel.

Perfect. Free of any exterior factors. The guys will actually load up the bullets in in cartridge cases. And then we've got an accuracy fixture that takes 1.2 or 1.25 straight contour barrelled actions, and they'll put it in the accuracy fixture so that thing's not moving. And then it's got a, actually a pneumatic trigger so they can close the door, fire it off behind closed doors.

And they'll shoot it for accuracy in an indoor tunnel. 

[00:15:39] Judd: Yeah. So it's not quite as fun as one may think. Yeah. We used to give tours back a few years back and everybody would go down to the tunnel on the tours and say, man, you guys got the best job in the world shooting guns all day.

And it's we're really just pushing this button 

[00:15:52] Dan Johnson: right here. Yeah. Do it for eight hours and then tell me how you like it. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Now going back to the [00:16:00] components, what makes a quality 

[00:16:02] Preston: powder? As far as powder goes, we're probably not the experts on that, but to me I've always had good luck as a hand loader with extruded base or extruded single base powders.

Single base seems to be a little bit more temperature stable, maybe a little less temperamental, but essentially there's certain powders that are historically. Accurate powders in cartridges. One, for example, being H 43 50, I'm sure you've probably heard of the six five Creed more. You like to say it's the overnight success that took 10 years? Yeah. That was actually introduced in 2007 for 2008 and until I got to horny, I hadn't heard of it. Huh. But it's obviously hugely popular now, but H 43 50 works really well in that. Particular cartridge case Reloader 16 works extremely well, IMR 43 50.

It just a certain burn rate seems to work really well for a certain sized cartridge, pushing a [00:17:00] certain weight of bullet. Okay 

[00:17:01] Dan Johnson: Go ahead 

[00:17:02] Judd: and on the bullet side of things, we could probably talk about that just a little bit. Just like anything I would say, consistency is king.

So as far as accuracy goes, if you got a little something wonky on a jacket, on one bullet versus the other, they're definitely not gonna fly the same. So consistency, and that goes out to. I'm not exactly sure how often it is that we change our tooling on the press, if there's accuracy issues going on, they'll either fix the tooling or it'll be all new tooling cuz that'll wear, on the press as it goes.

But, overall, in my opinion, looking at it from layman's terms, consistency and that goes for, the bullet's, actual weight as well. 

[00:17:39] Dan Johnson: Okay. You mentioned earlier now, just so I'm clear here, you guys use another company's powder to put in your bullets and you guys do that at your factory and then ship 'em out?

Correct. Okay. All right. All right, before that you mentioned something about, brass was, brass has been kind of king for several years, or, for [00:18:00] eons or whatever. And talk to us about why that is, and then also talk to us about some of the new materials that are being used in bullet creation these days.

[00:18:11] Preston: Brass is a number one. It's the right hardness essentially for what we needed to do. We needed to be strong yet slightly elastic. Because when we fire that cartridge in the chamber, it swells to the cart, to the chamber walls, and then it has to be able to shrink back just a little bit, right?

So it's got that a little bit of elasticity. Copper would be too soft. You can use steel, although it doesn't shrink as much. With thinner walled cartridge cases, maybe like a 2 23 or 7, 6 2 or 39 stuff you typically see steel cases with. You can get by with it, but brass is just the right material for what we need to do.

Hard enough yet mount, has the right amount of springiness to it. Okay. And new materials, we haven't really got into that. There's some other companies out [00:19:00] there talking I want to say polymer. We haven't got into it, but the other companies have, they're on a very small 

[00:19:05] Dan Johnson: scale.

Gotcha. So your guys' main focus is brass then still? Yep. Yep. Gotcha. What is it about the design? Because obviously pulling a trigger, causes an explosion. All right. A controlled explosion. What is it about the, your guys' design or just designs of bullets in general? Get that. That keeps that explosion con controlled and consistent, firing the projectile and not just blowing the gun up.

[00:19:33] Preston: Let's just fix voca. The terminology there, it's perfect. It's not an explosion. Okay. A primer is an explosive, okay. But what it does is it ignites a burn of powder. Gotcha. Now, all that's happening very quickly. Sometimes it's 65,000 pounds of pressure. But it is a burn rather than ex, than an explosion.

Good to know. 

[00:19:55] Judd: And the pressure, that's set by Sammy Standard, so there's a standard out [00:20:00] there that all ammo manufacturers have to stick to be within 

[00:20:03] Preston: Sammy Spec. So yeah, Sammy is a sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturer's Institute. So Remington, Winchester, federal Horny.

Browning, anybody that makes a gun or ammunition on a large scale for the most part are members of Sammy. And so Sammy has a set stack of tolerances for cartridge case and chamber dimensions, and then also pressure limits that they have to be upheld to. And we all share, like reference ammunition and stuff.

Okay? So if Federal wants to make one of our case designs, they can, and we have reference ammunition. So that they can set their pressure barrels to the appropriate level. Yeah. Make sure every everybody's operating the same way. Gotcha. 

[00:20:47] Dan Johnson: All right. So there's the composition of a bullet.

There's so many different variations of, different bullets out there. What seems to be, and I know there's. This is just like Pandora's box at this point [00:21:00] where we can talk about, it can go any direction. And I'm just gonna ask a very high level question. How do you guys determine what.

Type of ammunition you're going to design and manufacture every year in order to meet the needs of horny customers. 

[00:21:21] Preston: Yeah, and that's a great question cause we're spread out. Across the world, right? We're a worldwide company, so what people need in Europe is different than what guys in Utah need.

Wildly different. What guys in Iowa need is wildly different than what western hunters need for the most part. Yeah we have to play a balancing game. Obviously we don't have a press for amu every ammo skew that we make, that would be really neat and an operator to run it, but it's just not the reality.

Obviously we've seen what's selling, what the demand is for what is on order. So we're able to keep track of that. But, we have to have 2 43 for guys east and west and. We have to have 300 PRC for guys out west. And [00:22:00] I don't know, I think our sales team does a really good job of allocating that stuff, when it does get made and putting it out all over the different places, that way everybody has a chance to do it.

But over the last few years we've been behind just like everybody else as far as not being able to get enough stuff made. So we've always got heavy hitters, six arc, six greed more, six five, PRC, six five. Creedmore, 300 prc, those are constantly being run. 3 0 8 is still huge, but everything gets its turn right.

Except for, I'd say in times, like we've had in the last few years, some of the almost obsolete cartridges that we like to keep around. Those might get run every couple of years. Okay. All right. Yeah, 

[00:22:45] Judd: and then that's a tough job on the ammo manufacturing side of things. And then even our sales crew.

Allocating to certain customers and whatnot. And I don't want, I don't part, some of the phone calls I'm sure that they've had and it's [00:23:00] tough. But, it seems to be getting a little better here now that we're a couple years out of the craze. Yeah. 

[00:23:05] Dan Johnson: What was it? Cuz I know there was a crazy ammunition shortage on a variety of different ammunitions My dad was complaining that he couldn't get some bullets.

I know. I believe it was like nine millimeter. Was hard to find for a while. What, what caused that and is it rebounding? 

[00:23:25] Preston: There's several factors that caused it, I would say. But a number one, COVID 19 came about. Yep. People were freaking out. There's riots and all this stuff. Right?

So I believe in 2019 or 2020 or whatever the year was, there was 7 million new gun owners. Yeah. Yeah. And so those people all need ammo too. And typically, they, you get a new gun, you might get a couple boxes. Talk at the gun stores like ammos hard to get, so let's get as much as we can.

Yep. And then that happened with the already existing gun owners. People that would buy a couple boxes are buying a case. But it's just compounding change 

[00:23:58] Judd: of the political [00:24:00] office, that switched over to one side to the other. So there was a little bit of bump in, purchases there just because of the scarcity.

You don't know when you're gonna lose it yeah. People were buying because of that. Yeah. But the gun owners was a huge part of it too. 

[00:24:14] Preston: But yeah, I'm just, when things get weird like that, You guys see like us pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, but guys like us that, that love to shoot.

We're worried about getting it in the future so we get as much as we can. It just, it gets bad. But yeah, I would definitely say it's rebounding some, I think nine mill and 2 23, those commodity type ammos are, I, I walk into sports wounds. I see a whole freaking rack of them at this point.

I think those are. Are caught up on and that's allowing everybody to get the other stuff made to. Okay. 

[00:24:46] Dan Johnson: You brought up a good point there, Jed, about like the political climate and how that can sometimes control ammunition or gun sales and things like that. What is it, [00:25:00] what is. Do you guys ever have to when it comes down to like your design and saying, okay, hey, we got this great idea.

Are there any laws in place or steps that you have to go through politically or regulation wise, before you sell ammunition to make sure it meets, I don't know, like the rules and regulations set for ammunition. 

[00:25:26] Judd: Maybe Preston could say something, but on the actual manufacturing or design of a product, we hit on Sammy earlier, as long as it's a safe product.

Yeah. But I would say the issues that we're running into are almost more on the marketing side now. Okay. Of, targeted marketing and. There's a lot of stuff going on in California. We're always having meetings about things we can and can't do in California. So I would say the marketing side is more restricted, whether that be, marketing to a certain age limit.

We can't go under [00:26:00] whatever age. You can't target kids, you can't do so much tactical type. Photography and video stuff. So yeah, there's, I'd say on the marketing side, we run into more issues on, that side of things, 

[00:26:14] Preston: but, Yeah. And it's literally just a political thing.

It seems like, at this point, just to make it hard for us. Yeah. Essentially is what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. I, as far as like designing a new cartridge, for example, like seven PRC was done, I don't know, years ago, two and a half years ago, three years ago. And we only released it in October.

Gotcha. Just because the timing wasn't right. Yeah. There was way too much demand for all the other existing stuff. So stuff like that does happen. But as long as it's approved by Sammy, which is collectively, all of the ammo, gun makers, we can go ahead and do our own designs.

[00:26:51] Dan Johnson: Okay. All right. And then, Let's talk a little bit, let's jump into the hunting side space right [00:27:00] now. And let's talk about some popular, because cuz obviously if you're gonna be a, if you're gonna shoot a rifle in the east you may not have as far to shoot. You're restricted by trees and other houses and smaller parcels and out west, man, there's, it seems like there's guys who are shooting.

I just watched an elk, a guy shoot an elk at 1900 yards, which was blew my mind. And I was just like, holy cow, that you could see the vapor trail and everything go. And so that, it was a cool shot, but Talk to us a little bit about some of your most popular ammunition for, let's say, guys east of the Mississippi who are hunting whitetails.

[00:27:38] Preston: Yeah. I would say four 50 Bushmaster is our most. It's in the top five of rifle cartridges every year. Yeah. Ever since all the straight wall stuff started happening in all the individual states, which I believe you guys are in as well. Yep. 

[00:27:52] Dan Johnson: We're a straight wall. We now have a straight wall cartridge that's allowed during our, I guess you would call it the shotgun season, but, so during our firing [00:28:00] season.

Correct. 

[00:28:00] Preston: Yeah. Yeah. And so Michigan was one of those as well. I believe Illinois was as well. But yeah, four 50 Bushmaster seems to be hugely popular. And you're right. You're not it's hard to find a longer shot in those heavily wooded areas. So you don't really need a long ball, 300 prc, seven prc, something that.

And you say 1900 yard shot. And then my ma my mind was just automatically thinking how much energy is left out of all the cartridges that are out there. And I'm like, that's a, that's a long shot. Yeah. I might have to look at that one. Yeah, you have to tell me off camera 

[00:28:36] Dan Johnson: where it was.

So what is it about that round that makes it so popular? 

[00:28:43] Preston: I would say it was the first, it was the first. Straight wall cartridge that was really out there that was modern. That would fit in an AR 15. That's probably the big thing. It was designed around the AR 15. Okay. Post band. You can just go get 'em.

They're ready to hunt. Yeah. You can put an upper on an [00:29:00] existing AR 15 and they're stupid accurate somehow. And I don't understand it. Yeah, like it's a straight wall cartridge with the big old hole, but it just makes one big ragged hole most times. 

[00:29:10] Judd: And there, there's a lot of 'em out there now.

We just did that podcast the other day. Yeah. But I can't remember what year. 2006, 2007 actually. Two seven 2006. So yeah, since 2007 there, there's how many? Four 50 Bushmaster platforms out there, if people already got 'em, that's the struggle with, new cartridges. You gotta have the rifle too.

So it's a whole system where, if people already have 'em out there Yeah. It's gonna be popular. For that 

[00:29:34] Preston: fact right there. Yeah. And there's some new guys on the scene. Three 50 legend and the 400 legend. I think there's a bunch. There's a bunch of 'em out there now that are a little bit smaller and attempt to take a little bit of the recoil out.

Although the four 50 s not bad, if you're just hunting with it I don't 

[00:29:52] Dan Johnson: think. Gotcha. All right. Now let's shift west of the Mississippi, maybe past Iowa and we go into some of the open country in Nebraska and [00:30:00] out west, for bigger game, mule, deer, elk, things like that.

Maybe pronghorn. What seems to be the most popular round in, in that environment? 

[00:30:09] Preston: If I had to pick just one, I'd say six five. Prc. Yeah, I mean if and if I'm going to elk hunting, I'm taking a seven or a 300 prc. But I wouldn't hesitate to take my six five PRC if that's all that I had.

But it shoots a super high ballistic coefficient bullet 200 feet per second, faster than a 6 5 3 more still in a short action rifle, so a long action cartridge, 3.340, or in a 300 PRCS case, 3.7 inches in length. This guy's down at 2.950. And it packs a punch and it's fast. And it's flat and it bucks the wind really well.

Okay. 

[00:30:44] Judd: I would say too, it depend, if you're elk cunning, you're probably using something else. If you're deer or antelope punting, I'd throw a six five creedmore in there. It's gotta be one of the more popular ones too. But then, yeah, as you get up, we've got our line of the precision rifle cartridges starting at the six, [00:31:00] five, the seven and the 300.

So those have been super popular. And just the technology has changed. I was gonna mention a little bit when you started this question here, and, just like we said at the start, the tools that we have, the engineers have, and even the consumers, the shooters have now in the last 10 years, 15 years, has just blown, the, from, measuring the weather, measuring the wind speed.

To the ballistic apps that we have using Doppler radar. 

[00:31:32] Preston: It's like once first Rangefinder was something I could barely afford in high school. Yeah. And it would range out to like maybe 400 yards on a reflective target. Yeah. Now, vortex has got the Crossfire Rangefinder, which is super affordable, same price, but it'll range out to what, a thousand yards.

Yeah. Yeah. It's getting so much better than the technology. Yeah. And 

[00:31:53] Judd: the cartridges, every cartridge has its place. As far as past cartridges go. And [00:32:00] then even on the new side, you know the bullets that the PRCS are shooting now and the creedmore are shooting now, you know the twist rates that are specked for those rifles.

The past cartridges from a Sammy speck, are for a twist rate speck. They couldn't shoot these bullets so you don't stabilize them. Yeah, they're just too big, too heavy. But the BC goes up with that. So that's why, like you talked about the 1900 yard shot. Yeah, that's a crazy poke.

But the technology that people have at their fingertips now Yeah. To calculate that shot is just mind blowing. 

[00:32:36] Preston: Yeah. For free for the most part. Yeah. Minus range finder. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:32:41] Dan Johnson: Is there a round, so there's obviously, there's a whole bunch of guys. You got your experts who, they're gonna use different rounds in different scenarios.

And then you have guys probably, like me, if I was gonna buy a rifle I would buy one rifle. And I would teach myself one round, educate myself [00:33:00] on one round that would do the most work. Is there a workhorse round that a guy could, use on Whitetails in on the east and then take a trip out west and be successful with that round?

Doing any Western type hunt? 

[00:33:17] Preston: There's several of them, but I think the king of them right now is the seven millimeter prc. Okay. Yeah. 

[00:33:24] Judd: I will say though, I mean it's a lot of just preference though too. It is. It is. You said seven millimeter. I said there's a lot of them. The thing that hits me for the last 10, nine years.

Six five Creedmore. I've done almost everything with six five Creedmore. 

[00:33:39] Preston: Yeah. My wife shot an elk with a six five creed mark. Yeah. Killed at Stone dead, yeah. 

[00:33:43] Judd: It's a lot of just preference. There's 

[00:33:45] Dan Johnson: so you guys ever get in fights at the office disagreeing all the time?

Like Uhuh, you're wrong. Six five is the better. 

[00:33:52] Preston: Yeah, that's all we hear. 

[00:33:55] Judd: And I'd go to, shooters, we'd go to shows and we see YouTube comments and social [00:34:00] media comments, Everybody has their preference, oh yeah. There, there may not be one right answer. So you know, it, yeah, ev, everybody's different and a lot of the cartridges that are out there will work just fine.

Yeah. 

[00:34:13] Preston: Yeah. That's not wrong. Yeah. But I would say seven Prc I, that's what I would do. Okay. 

[00:34:19] Judd: Getting on another tangent here too though, depending on that cartridge. So you say seven, I say six five. If I was going on a deer hunt, I'm going to choose a different bullet, most likely right, than what I would use if I was going on an elk hunt.

I would shoot a solid, monolithic or CX bullet. Out a six five for an elk. Whereas if I'm going on a deer hunt, I'd either shoot the a hundred grand interlock or the E LD X. There's things you can do with a cartridge to push you one way or another on what kind of game you're going after.

[00:34:50] Preston: Okay. And I and I disagree cause I just shoot the 1 75 El LD Ldx on everything. Yeah, man, I, it's all personal 

[00:34:57] Dan Johnson: preference, right? I tell you. In [00:35:00] archery, they have it. I'm sure in firearms they have it, but I can remember going to a wine tasting with my wife, and we sat next to this lady who was the biggest snob.

I'm like, oh, I, this is, ugh, this is disgusting. I will never drink a bottle of wine under $40. And I'm just like, who are you? D does the ammunition world have ammo, snobs? 

[00:35:25] Preston: Oh yeah. Ammo, SNO ammo, snobs And bullet snobs. Bullet snobs. 

[00:35:28] Dan Johnson: Okay. 

[00:35:29] Preston: Yeah. All right. And we see 'em in the comment.

And that's you. We see you. No. But obviously we run the YouTube channel. We'll put out a video. It's funny what, think, what makes a person think that they'll put a comment on a video that could potentially live in the world forever. It is just astonishingly we but we'll put out a video, like a sweet video, something nice and then totally irrespective or unrelated to the subject. Somebody will throw in a dig at us and say something else 

[00:35:58] Dan Johnson: is better. It's come on. Like [00:36:00] nice shirt buddy. 

[00:36:03] Preston: Yeah. This nice old man came to see us. Burger's better than you. No. Come on, figure it 

[00:36:08] Dan Johnson: out guys.

That's funny. One buzzword that I hear when talking about ammunition is stopping power. What is stopping power? And how does that how do you connect that buzzword into hunting different species of animals? 

[00:36:29] Preston: I would say please go to the Horny Podcast on any. Platform or YouTube and check out our episode, I believe 64 is terminal ballistics with our head lead, ballistician, Jayden Quinland.

Now I'll say there's essentially three systems that you need in order to kill an animal or one of them and you have the nervous system, and that's going to, that's the electric system within an animal and that. May be disrupted, [00:37:00] but not necessarily always lethal. There's a circulatory system, which is blood, right?

And then there's the respiratory system, which is air. So I would encourage you to watch that podcast, but I would say as far as stopping power, any ammo can have stopping power depending on shop placement. But a lot of times you'll see somebody shoot something on the internet and it drops.

That's because its central nervous system was disrupted somehow. It's pretty rare from what I've seen, that something gets hit and is dead before it hits the ground. Yes, it may hit the ground, but it's not quite dead yet. It's lungs have to fill up with blood and essentially you have to.

Prevent the brain from getting oxygenated blood. And that's what expires an animal. 

[00:37:44] Judd: And on the game side, yeah. Preston's right. It is very dependent with any bullet, with any cartridge, any manufacturer, shop placement is extremely important. Just like in archery side to break this down, maybe a little bit easier to understand.

We do high speed video [00:38:00] shots of all. Expanding bullets. We're looking at a nice two foot long by probably 10 inches block of ballistics gelatin. From my perspective, when I'm running the camera, the engineers are doing their thing. But from my perspective, there's a balance, depending on let's talk for a whitetail type projectile, it's.

It's dumping energy as far as the expansion goes, and then penetration. So you're balancing, maybe even three things. Throwing weight retention in there. You're balancing how much penetration you're getting with the weight retention of the projectile to get that penetration.

And then as it's expanding, it's dumping energy to, create the wider wound channel. So you're balancing all that from the ballistic gelatin side of things, from what I see. That's what the juggling act is. And, just to go on a little tangent here about how, we may do that.

Preston may be able to talk on this, but as far as the bullet design goes, a bigger cavity in the [00:39:00] front and the tip of the bullet with a polymer tip that pushes back into that cavity, that promotes more expansion, that pushes the jacket and some of the core out to promote expansion.

There's interlock rings that we put in the bullet jacket into the lead core to to stop as much as we can. The expansion process for higher weight retention, and then there's solid monolithic projectiles that will have 95% weight retention that won't shed much energy. So there's a juggling act of all sorts of things to, to promote expansion, penetration, weight 

[00:39:35] Dan Johnson: retention It's a no-brainer.

You shoot a, you shoot an animal in the heart or the lungs and it's it hits both lungs, more than likely it's gonna die. You hit 'em in the heart, more than likely it's gonna die. You spine them and they shut off, more than likely you're gonna die. But what's the most important thing when it comes to bullet performance on marginal shots, let's say like guts or on into a heavy bone, like front [00:40:00] shoulder, in front of the, in vitals or even back in the ham.

I would 

[00:40:05] Preston: say front shoulder shot versus a gut shot are opposite ends of the spectrum. Depending on the critter, if you say it's on an elk, right? That scapula is actually pretty darn thick and tough. Yep. As long as you get penetration through that scapula and into some lungs and have adequate, I would say adequate temporary wound, cavity made after it goes through depending on bullet design it's gonna be a lethal hit, right?

If you, like you said, if you get into that second lung, chances are it's done, right? But if it goes through and just blows up and maybe gets one lung or zero lungs, that's not a dead animal. It's not a dead critter. Whereas if you were shooting a monolithic bullet, That judge was talking about gets a hundred percent weight retention for the most part, and penetrates through 36 inches of gelatin, it's gonna go through that shoulder, still create a temporary wound cavity that's quite impressive, and a permanent wound [00:41:00] cavity that causes, the lungs to fill up and respiratory system to be done.

So that's a dead critter. Gunshots are a little bit tricky, right? As long if you don't get A massive amount of blood loss or disrupt anything in the central nervous system. There's a chance that you're not gonna find that critter, and maybe it'll die days later, but you will have, it'll have lost you by then.

[00:41:26] Dan Johnson: Okay. And so I is there, The hard part here is breaking. If I knew that I was gonna shoot an animal in the gut, I would want this bullet. Sure. It versus if I knew I was gonna shoot him in the gun, or excuse me in the lungs, I would want this bullet. Is there a performance difference or as far as hunters are concerned, do we just go, Hey, this is the best for a vital shot.

[00:41:53] Preston: Obviously the vital shot's, what we want, but I would say yeah, if you get a lead core bullet that's actually gonna lose a little bit of its weight [00:42:00] and dump energy If you shoot it in the guts and maybe a piece of that bullet travels outside of the wound cavity and hits the spine. That's obviously ideal.

Or a piece of it goes off into a lung that's gonna help. Whereas a monolithics just gonna go right 

[00:42:14] Judd: through it. Gotcha. So the way I was right when you said that, Dan, the what crossed my mind? Let's compare it to archery, fixed blades and expandables. Yeah. 

[00:42:22] Preston: Oh my. What are you doing here, judge? You're starting something.

[00:42:25] Judd: But I'm saying, because I've, toyed with each one, what do I shoot? This and that. Yep. And as far as fixed explain and expandables. The way I'm gonna compare the bullet side of things. I actually lean the same way, fixed blade expandable. So I would compare, again, layman's terms here, but I would compare a fixed blade broadhead to, similar to a monolithic.

Okay. One of the solid projectiles. So that's going to get you the penetration. It's gonna get you a nice wound cavity. Also, but it's gonna get you the the penetration. So then on the expandable broadhead side, I would [00:43:00] go with more of a traditional cup and core lead, core projectile that is designed to dump energy, to expand rapidly.

You may not have that high weight retention on the back end, and it'll still be 50 and 

[00:43:14] Preston: you may not get the penetration that you would, but that is 

[00:43:17] Judd: gonna dump energy and shock and trauma, a bit more than what that solid. Projectile will do. So to compare a little bit, you could maybe make those comparisons.

And for just me, I'm, I like the shock, the expansion, so I tend to go with the more traditional style lead core bullets. And on the archery side, I can go with an expandable product. Again, it's just preference. But I think you could make that comparison between, I think that's 

[00:43:45] Preston: two's, that's a fair analogy.

Yeah, 

[00:43:47] Dan Johnson: I do. It actually makes sense to me, so thank you. Yeah. For that. I don't feel so dumb right now. And so Preston, I saw you smiling there, it sounds do you again disagree, and do you like the monolithic ground?[00:44:00] 

[00:44:00] Preston: When I'm rifle hunting, I like a lead core bullet. Okay. I really do the expandable type.

When I'm bow hunting, I'm a fixed blade guy. Okay. Now 

[00:44:08] Judd: you're gonna have to rethink that.

[00:44:12] Preston: No. Okay. I'm gonna stick to thick 

[00:44:13] Dan Johnson: plates. Gotcha. All right. Let's talk about horny overall then. As far as a guy who's listening to this, and they may be shooting another brand right now, but they're listening to us talk and they're like I'm interested in horny. What is it about horny that makes what you feel guys makes you so special or might set you apart from the rest of the companies out there who do the same thing you do?

[00:44:40] Preston: I know I think you have to start with the history a little bit. We started in 1949 by Joyce Horny, who wanted a better bullet for himself. Just like we were talking. If we in the office want something, we'll just make it. And a lot of times it becomes a product. That's what he was doing post World War ii.

He unfortunately died in a plane crash [00:45:00] on the way to Shot Show in 1981. Okay. And, Family was faced with some difficult times and probably some decisions to sell the company or not. And we're still here and we're family owned. We're the largest privately owned bullet maker I believe, in the world.

And we take great pride in everything that we do. Like we said, all the ammos, hand inspected. And then at the same time, I would say we're users of the product. 

[00:45:23] Judd: Yeah. Family owned and operated. Steven Jason Horny are in. Weekly for sure. They travel and they have sales meetings and they're doing a lot.

But as far as their involvement in the company, 100%. Yeah. So they still partake. And then on the hunting side, Jason is better than Steve. Steve's to a point now where he's got a little more freedom, where he is gone. I'll fall, he's hunting, not all fall. I shouldn't say that. That's probably gonna come back to bite me.

They live and breathe hunting and shooting and I would just build on that. From our, from the employees here, from all of us, it's awesome to come to [00:46:00] work. And be able to talk our, there's 

[00:46:02] Preston: days before rifle season where nothing gets done 

[00:46:06] Judd: well hey. So the, I was gonna take that a different way, Preston.

I was gonna turn into positive, just honest. 

[00:46:12] Preston: What is it positive? 

[00:46:12] Judd: We come to work and talk about our passion, but yet that's work. So it's man, and that drives, I would say from the employee side, the personnel that gets hired at Horny are users.

They are that person with passion, they have on the engineering side especially, and our marketing side too. Sales, everybody you know has the education that they need. But if you don't have exactly that, but you have the passion and you're the right fit, the passion just drives you.

If you've got all the schooling on engineering in the world, but this isn't your passion, it's a little tricky to, get excited about bullets and, with everybody participating in this sport for a primary good chunk, everybody wants to make [00:47:00] good better products for themselves, which Yeah.

Translates to, putting a better product out there for the shooters and hunters out there. Yeah. I keep, from my perspective, I keep saying the passion, everybody for the most part lives and breathes 

[00:47:15] Preston: it here. Yeah. And you said you don't do a whole lot of.

Rifle shooting, right? But like for an example, you've heard at six five Creedmore, we created the six five creedmore, the six Arc, the six creedmore, the six five prc, the 300 prc. The seven prc, all within the last 10 years. And those are probably what I would call the most popular rifle cartridges out there right now.

Yeah. And they are because they work. Yeah, you can only market something. You can only prop something up for so long until people realize that it doesn't work. Yeah. But these things stand for themselves and we're making products that people want to use and enjoy using. Yeah. And are better than what we had available 

[00:47:55] Dan Johnson: before.

Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome just listening to this conversation, [00:48:00] man, because I feel like if you can be as big as you want, but if you start. If you start detaching away from what made the company great in the first place, there's, in my opinion, there's always some kind of loss that happens, right? And it sounds like horny.

Has is not only growing, but has kept what has made it great. And so that's what I, that's e even though I don't use your products, even though I don't know anything about guns I can tell you that just the brand itself stands out because of that reason. 

[00:48:39] Preston: Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate you noticing.

Yeah, that's awesome. 

[00:48:43] Dan Johnson: And it, the opposite is true with some of the other brands. Especially in the archery world. Once, once you get sold and you go to a big giant conglomerate and you, it just, some of my favorite products over the years have just been lost from a technical standpoint and it pissed me off.

But that's again, personal. I, first off, I, [00:49:00] I just wanna say thank you guys for taking time outta your day. I really appreciate it. You've al you've already mentioned the app that's free. You can go and download that. If, are there any other resources available for people to go investigate your guys' products and be, become better educated on horny?

Sure. 

[00:49:20] Preston: The app, we also have a reloading guide app. Which is essentially our loading manual, all thick reloading manual. If you're into that, there's some information in there about the bullets themselves, but then also just horny.com, right? And you can see a lot of stuff on horny.com, but if you're technical, like I think your listeners are, and like we are we have a podcast as well, and we've done a lot of deep dives on cartridge specifics, bullet specifics ballistics in general. You can get yourself overwhelmed with that. Yeah. If you really want to. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:49:54] Judd: Yeah, give us a call, talk to the guys upstairs. We go to quite a few shows in [00:50:00] our world, in our industry, we go to a lot of different shooting competitions.

There, there's a lot of us around. Yeah. The biggest thing, and Jason preaches that day in and day out, horny as a whole. Jason's perspective is number one, we need to be easy to do business with, right? It, you need to make it as easy as possible. If that's communication, if that's, getting a message across to a customer, if that's whatever, just number one, horny needs to be easy to do business with.

[00:50:31] Dan Johnson: Absolutely. That makes perfect sense. Judd Preston really appreciate your guys' time today, so thank you very much and you guys are welcome back anytime. Hey, thanks 

[00:50:41] Preston: for having us. You just let us know.

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