EP 478. Favored Gauges, Shot Sizes and Chokes for Waterfowl: BOSS Shotshells Updates

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, where today 2 Mississippi boys going to talk Boss Shotshells. It’s been a while, Aaron. How the heck are you, man?

Aaron Carter: Man, doing well. Ramsey, doing well. Just getting off of waterfowl season and heavy into turkey season and getting ready to ramp that off pretty soon and yeah, just rolling with the punches here, trying to sling some shotgun shells and do a little hunting all at the same time.

Ramsey Russell: I actually met you. Now, you’re way up in northeast Mississippi, born and raised. I’m down here in central Mississippi originally from a Delta and Mississippi has been described very accurately as a small family, Mississippi’s kind of a family, especially in the duck cutting world and sort of –

Aaron Carter: I have to heavily agree with that.

Ramsey Russell: And so it’s kind of crazy that I met you and shook hands and came to know you, a fellow duck hunter from the state of Mississippi in Minnesota, of all places, at the Boss shotshell booth many years ago. And we’ve been friends ever since.  You were on a podcast several years ago, Chicken Soup, we named that because that’s what we were after out there in your field, we’re going to get to that in a minute. But I just want to ask you a couple of general questions, what got you into hunting? What got you into waterfowl hunting, specifically?

Aaron Carter: Man, that goes back, I guess I was probably – oh, I was a high school, I was probably in high school. I was sophomore, junior in high school and I’d always deer hunted and my dad’s from out in the country up in Tippah County, which is just a little west of Tukalo here. And my uncle had some property around there, so I’d always go deer hunting and I’d chase a few turkeys here and there and I noticed some coveys, like just some covey of quail flying around. So, I mean in my just teenage years, I just thought I would, well, I’m going to give this a shot, my dad did it as he was growing up. And so I would, I’d go kill, maybe like if I killed a quail, I was successful. Well, that led into my venture of I wanted to chase something more. And I have an uncle that lived over in Kossuth area, so he is right off the Hatchet River in Tuscumbia, WMA up there. So he said, well, why don’t you come over here and go duck hunting with us? And since you’ve never been. And so I started going over there with them and a girl I was dating back in high school, her brother had some ground, so I would go with him, he was a buddy as well. So just kind of started in high school and as I started doing it, it just grew stronger and stronger and then got to Ole Miss there in the college years and hunted the upper Sardis area with some with some college friends there and it just grew from there. And then once I got out on my own and was able to afford to do a few things more and lease ground, getting clubs out and travel, it spread like wildfire from there and the passion just got stronger and stronger. So it kind of led to – I went down the rabbit hole, as I said, I got interested in it and then it just, I just kept digging. Just kept digging and digging and digging and now I find myself actually working in the industry and doing what I love.

Ramsey Russell: Do you still remember your first duck?

Aaron Carter: Yeah, actually I kind of do, it was – Man, I guess it would have been – I couldn’t tell you what year it was, but it was a wood duck, was my very first duck, real prominent species around northeast Mississippi and I killed it. Actually, it was off of, I don’t know if where Bay Springs is, but –

Ramsey Russell: I do know where Bay Springs is.

Aaron Carter: It was off some backwaters of Bay Springs up around that way on a WMA. And man, it was an experience I didn’t know what to expect. And then next thing, daylight cracks and there’s all these woodies flying through and I just let all 3 rip and 1 fell and I was tickled pink, I looked like a – Some people would say I had a shit eating grin on my face and just ready for the next one.

Ramsey Russell: I like to ask that question a lot and sometimes there’s folks, because I don’t ever want to forget my first duck, I don’t know why because it was so – It changed my life. I was on what I thought to be a self driven course to get into waterfowl, I mean, to get into whitetail deer, that was my thing. In fact, I was deer hunting on a property boundary when every wood duck in the central Mississippi started flying back to a beaver pond behind me. And I didn’t know nothing about nothing on duck hunting, I was kind of raised into duck hunting, but did not hunt and when I was a child for ducks and my grandfather aged out before we got to that level. And I went back with just a pair of hip boots, a rubber boots or something, went back the next day not knowing anything about shooting hours, shooting time, not knowing nothing about nothing on duck hunting. But then I had a license to hunt everything in the state of Mississippi, so I went back and waited and waited and waited and it got dark, boy, them wood ducks were coming in, coming in, but not where I was sitting on dry ground. And the last pair of ducks, I could barely see them, they were right on top of me. I just raised that old 1100 pull the trigger, bam, splash, splash, it was a pair of mallards and that was my first couple of ducks and that sent me way down a rabbit hole, son. And then the rest, as they say, is history. And I don’t want to forget those first things because I think they’re very transformational, you know what I’m saying? I mean, especially here in Mississippi, most of us grow up hunting squirrels and rabbits and deer and turkeys and things of that nature, if we hunt at all, you know what I’m saying? And especially if you’re from northeast Mississippi or central Mississippi or Piney Woods Mississippi or the Gulf Coast, I mean, duck hunt’s kind of an outlier.

Aaron Carter: Especially the further east you get in Mississippi, though, it’s very much an outlier, you’re kind of in that middle ground of you just better stick to dry land if you can, because if not, you’re wasting your time.

Ramsey Russell: But now, in all the years since high school that you’ve duck hunted, you made another transition, another progression that I found extremely interesting and memorable when I met you from our first conversation sitting there in the sweltering sun at Minnesota game fair, when you explained to me that you and your posse of guys are big off into speckle belly goose hunting. And I would say, having hunted with you, that if a snow comes in or for some strange reason, a duck wants to come in and work in those decoys, they’re up for grabs. But the times I’ve hunted with you, we’re targeting speckle bellies, I mean, we’re targeting specs. I would almost describe you and here’s what I’m getting at, Aaron, to come from northeast Mississippi, which is not even known for waterfowl hunting, to speak of, to be now a, what I’d call a true blue before it became the cool thing to do in Arkansas, a speck hunter, a dedicated speckle belly goose hunter. How did that come about?

The Journey of Trial and Error in Goose Hunting.

Well, I got invited to go on a hunt with another buddy of mine and we went over and we went speck hunting and it was a guided speck hunt and it was something I’d never done.

Aaron Carter: Well, it goes so, I mean, I guess we kind of hit on this years ago. But when I got out of college, I was kind of I was in that middle ground of searching for a career and searching to do things that I could now afford because I was working on my own and I was still living with my parents, so I had a lot of just disposable income. I say a lot, not a lot, I had disposable income that I could use at under whatever I wanted to. It wasn’t mom and daddy’s money anymore, so I could come and go as I pleased with my extracurricular activities. Well, duck hunting and just waterfowl hunting in general was one of my – probably that and golf were my 2 extracurricular activities. And I got in a few clubs here and there and it just wasn’t satisfying like what I was wanting, because I kept seeing this abundance of birds that nobody ever hunted and everybody just – it was a disgust of this dang geese this, dang geese that. Well, I got invited to go on a hunt with another buddy of mine and we went over and we went speck hunting and it was a guided speck hunt and it was something I’d never done. Well, we had a big old time, we killed all of our birds and it was just something different and it really caught my attention. Well, it was probably a year or 2 after that that I was still in a club and I started playing with the, with the geese around the club and just trying to figure it out on my own because like nobody’s hunting these things. Well, my buddy and one of my best friends, I just said, hey, Jason, let’s just go on and let’s just go try to chase these geese, and after that, I just started, I just started trial and error. Trial and error, trial and error and then it finally came down to I was like, okay, I think I’ve started to get this figured out a little bit. Now I’m going to go search out for my own ground and find my own place where I can do it, where there’s not I’m not having to pay somebody dues for a club or pay somebody for a membership, I can just have something that’s mine. So I searched out and found my own lease and I came about my farm that I now still currently hunting. I just trial and error until I became successful, as anybody that should, who’s really wanting to learn how to hunt. Of course, seeking out information from people that do it more so than you, but also in the same return, I kind of hate to say this was, I was trying to kind of keep it under the radar because I didn’t want anybody coming in to where I was hunting. It was almost like –

Ramsey Russell: Good luck with that idea –

Aaron Carter: Yeah, that’s like, well, I figured out my niche and what I like to do, so – And I still keep it that way, you’ve got to be a really good buddy of mine or somebody I really highly think of to either come hunt on the farm because it’s just my private ground that I hunt. So yeah, that’s kind of how that all came about and then for, I guess, probably 10 years now, that’s our primary targeted bird is specs. And, of course, we’ll set up on the snows as well if they’re in the area.

Ramsey Russell: And you all got the birds in the area up there, there’s no doubt about it, that’s speck central nowadays and snow goose central and everybody from around the world has started moving into that part of the world, sent that shop.

Aaron Carter: Yeah. And that hits on another subject that really myself and quite a few other guides and of course, I don’t guide, it’s just me and buddies. But is that, that brings up kind of like the conservation factor of it that I think a lot of people are missing is the whole aspect of these birds are very adaptive. So from the year I started, where I’m at now, to even last year, I’ve noticed a decrease in the amount of birds in a centralized area compared to the very first year and that brings up, okay, the question of why is that Aaron? Well, as the speck hunting in Arkansas and even other regions now has grown to what it is and the more outfits that have come in, there’s more and more pressure. So these birds are starting to move to places where they normally weren’t. And so we’ve now and I feel like I’ve kind of been part of the problem because, I mean, I’ll just go hunt and wouldn’t think anything about it. Go the next day, hunt the same spot, go the next day, hunt the same spot, go home, come back, hunt the same spot and its over time, as it grows and grows and more people are even, not even like in, within sea and distance, but they’re in the general vicinity. These flocks of birds getting pressured and now it’s become harder and harder to do.

Ramsey Russell: Hunting pressure is real. We’ve done a lot of, there’s been a lot of research on it throughout the Mississippi alluvial valley and elsewhere, there’s been a lot of biological observations. But it just occurred to me, as I was doing some research, that the United States of America and I’m talking primarily the lower 48, we kill far and above more waterfowl than any other country on earth, I would almost say without having because some of the numbers ain’t they don’t have numbers for Azerbaijan or even Argentina harvest numbers. But I would almost say that we’re probably killing more waterfowl than any 3 or 4 other countries on earth. That is mind numbing as that gets hunting pressure is real. And the whole wildlife management model, which was borrowed from forestry anyway, is maximum sustained yield and I’ve actually got a former chief of migratory birds coming on to talk about the concept of maximum sustained yield, it’s a viable model, we all want it. We all want to go out and shoot as many waterfowl on the good days as humanly possible, that’s what we do. But at the same time, those models are kind of – and it’s just a real simple graph and curves, think of it as coming from fisheries, I’ve got a pond slapped full of fish. Well, the more I fish it, the more I catch, the harder it is to catch fish. And that’s just the downside of it, you know what I’m saying? And so, I mean, it is what it is in that world right there. Here’s where I’m getting at with this, with this line of questioning about who you are and what you do and everything else and we’re talking about the specs, which I find extremely interesting. But since I have known you and hunted with you, it’s been a small borg, a sub gauge game. I think Forrest and I showed up with a 28 and a 12 the first time we hunted, I know that since then I’ve hunted with you, I’ve gotten to wherever, throughout the United States and Canada, mostly I shoot a 28 gauge, I just love it. How did you get into the sub gauge game and why?

Aaron Carter: So that’s actually a really good question. And it goes back to – how would you say this? So it got to where I become successful with my harvest and I was trying to figure out a way to keep it sportier. At this point in time I was still shooting steel. This was before even Boss was even came about.

Ramsey Russell: Like you swapped to 28 gauge, 20 gauge, you went down that rabbit hole of sub gauge back during the steel era.

Aaron Carter: Yes. So I dropped from a 12 to a 20 in the steel era and it came about because, well, I wanted to figure out how I could keep it sportier.

Ramsey Russell: You needed a handicap.

Aaron Carter: Right. Not to say I’m the greatest of all things and, but it was and I still say this to anything, anybody, anytime is like, okay, I’ve got a 12 gauge, I can shoot whatever size shot I want to, I can choke it down as tight as I want to and I can still reach out there at 50 yards and never even check up like. But, so dialing back to that 20 gauge made it more of a competition with me and the birds to say, okay, I want you here in my lap and then once I get you in the trap, I’ve done the job, it doesn’t matter what I have in my hands.

Ramsey Russell: Yep.

Aaron Carter: So it was no longer about killing at that point in time as much as it was a lot like a lot of Mississippi guys would do with turkeys. I just want to call that bird in there as close as I can, I want to trick the bird, say I won. And so that’s when I started shooting the 20 gauge and I mean, it’s just a lot less recoil and I mean not that I couldn’t bear it, but I mean, there was, why shoot a heavy gun and heavy load whenever they’re at 25, 20 yards? Like, I can’t kill them with a 20 gauge. And at that point in time, I think I was shooting a 1oz steel load, maybe 7, 8 to 1oz and number 2s, 3 inch number 2s and a 20 gauge and I was having no issues. So I just said, well, let’s just all bring it to this and if we only get 3 birds out of our 9 or 12 birds, we can kill, well, guess what? Birds won that day. We didn’t leave empty handed, but it just wasn’t our day. But it also kept down the shooting pressure from, okay, if birds were just hanging up, we weren’t sitting there blasting at them either way. So, yeah, we might have been educating them with decoys and calling, but they weren’t getting shooting pressure and in the chance of wounding a bird and sailing on us. So it just made it a lot more sporty and then as times have changed and the progress of shot type has come around with the tungsten and the bismuth and it just became the 20 gauge, even became the new 12 gauge. So once I started shooting BOSS, I felt like I had gone back to shooting my twelve gauge with a lighter gun and a lighter payload, being able to drop pellet size and payload size.

Ramsey Russell: It’s been a real pendulum for me because I do hunt worldwide throughout the year and 12 gauge is the gun I pack because it’s a universal cartridge, you know I’m saying, it’s what available. But now the difference in everywhere else in the world and I mean everywhere else in the world versus the United States and Canada is 2 and 3 quarter inch shell, which is a lot like what I grew up shooting with a 20 gauge, then a 12 gauge, back in the days it was a 2 and 3 quarter inch shell back in the lead days. And you go to some of these countries that do have steel shot mandates like or non toxic mandates, I should say, like the UK or Netherlands or Australia, they don’t have 3 inch shells or 3 inch shells are prohibited, it’s a tie 3 quarter inch shell and it’s a lower recoil. And when you go to a lot of countries and I mean most other countries around the world that don’t have a non tox mandate just because of manufacturing or whatever for whatever reason, they don’t have it. Now we’re back on a target load, I don’t mean a 2 and 3 quarter inch lead number 2 Max Hammer, I’m talking something like what you’d go out and shoot clay targets with in the United States. And boys, 7s, 6s, 5s, which are all metric, which just are deadly, like back in the 1970s, America, growing up like that first pair of mallards I shot I guarantee you it was a pair of 2 and 3 quarter inch 7 and a halfs that killed them. And so boy, I tell you what the transition from growing up in that era to a 3 inch shell and I realized real quick, I mean, the first box of shells I ever bought that were 3 and a half, I realized real quick, this wasn’t for me. It ain’t that I couldn’t take it. Instead, I didn’t want it. You know what I’m saying? I value the feelings in my taste and then as that hypersonic technology that equation, speed versus – Because, let’s face it, steel is way lighter than lead.

Aaron Carter: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And so we got to speed it up so it hits hard, well, dog man, some of these companies sped it up all right to where it felt like I was getting kicked by a mule or struck by a bolt of lightning and every time I pulled the trigger, cut my fingers, you know what I’m saying? And it hurt, man, it just hurt to shoot 15, 16, 17, 100, however fast it was going, hypersonic loads, it just hurt and that’s kind of where it is. And to me when Boss Shotshells came along, all of a sudden, 2 and 3 quarter inch patterns, like lead go back to the mole granddaddy chokes and it was so familiar that it just fell into place, you saw I’m saying, it just fell into place. And then I wasn’t looking for a handicap a dead duck dead goose, dead duck dead goose, I wasn’t looking for a handicap until Boss Shotshells came down the pipe and especially when they come up with this copper plated bismuth and then all of a sudden, well, wait a minute I’m not shooting steel shot, that’s got 30% energy equivalent, all things equal of lead anymore, I’ve got something that’s 80, 90% equivalent to it and I can’t take this handicap. And now I’ve got a gun that I feel like I could just about shoot that son of a gun one handed, it’s so low recoil, it hits like a hammer. Somebody was showing me a video back this past duck season, I just showed up at a camp and they were showing me some videos of him and his boy shooting and as I was watching those videos, I said, did you all get 28 gauges? They go, yep. How’d you know? Because that 28 gauge in that video, it hits that duck like a pool cue. Not like the cue ball hitting them, but like a little pool cue, surgical strikes, bam, bam, bam. And you see it and, boy, in real life, when it hits that bird, you can see it because he dies, it’s something about that square load. So that’s kind of how the technology evolved and that’s what brought me into the sub gauge fold. But the 2 and 3 quarter inch shell and something that most resembled lead, which I shoot, shot entirely growing up until the mid 90s and then shoot worldwide on a daily basis and don’t miss the recoil, don’t miss 3 inch shells, don’t miss nothing about it, you know what I’m saying? Not at all do I miss it that it brought me back into the fold good.

Aaron Carter: Yeah, I know. And here’s a fun fact, like, just on my behalf, of course, I’ll never get rid of my 12 gauges, I mean, a 12 gauge is just a staple just like anything else in, in any kind of other industry, is you got to have a 12 gauge regardless if you shoot or not, because if things were to really come down to it you’re always going to be able to find a 12 gauge shell. Might not find 28 gauge shell, you might find a 20. But I’ve personally never hunted with any of our 3 inch copper loads. The only 3 inch loads I’ve ever shot out of BOSS, that out of our line of products was field testing a 3 inch steel load that we just came out with. So I’ve never even shot or hunted with – I should say hunted with, I’ve shot them for patterning purposes and testing stuff, but I’ve never hunted with one of our Boss 3 inch, one and a half ounce payloads.

Ramsey Russell: I have and I’ve shot them. I’ve hunted with them, I’ve shot cases of them. For the record, I don’t like them, not because they’re BOSS, but because they’re 3 inch. And I don’t think looking through shot cam footage, it hit ducks, I don’t think just patterning it on a paper or especially shooting it at ducks, live duck, I don’t think it, I don’t think it, it doesn’t do what I want it to do. And the 2 and 3 quarter shell does well.

Aaron Carter: And here’s my personal and this is my personal observation with myself, is I see no advantage for it for myself if I’m shooting a 12 gauge. I cut my teeth on the 2 and 3 quarter inch shells in the 12 gauge and I dialed it in to my gun, so I know exactly what it’s doing, even out to 50 yards with my setup. So I never felt handicapped, even from shooting honkers down to teal with my 12 gauge. And then I have customers ask me, well, why am I going to shoot a 2 and 3 quarter compared to a 3? Like, doesn’t the 3 have more pellets like? Yeah, it does. But being able to drop 2 to almost 3 shot sizes depending on what you’re hunting with your pellets, you’re gaining so much more pattern density that you can actually save a few dollars by not shooting the 3 inch and its less recoil. So it’s a quicker follow up shot and it’s more – I don’t like to use the term precision with shotgun shooting because you’re throwing a pattern, you’re playing a game of percentages, but you’re more quick to get back on target with the less recoil that you have. So therefore, I knew what my gun was doing, I knew how the shell performed and I knew what my ranges were and that’s all I ever saw fit for it.

Ramsey Russell: I’m with you on that. But all that said, what is the number one most selling cartridge in the Boss Shotshell lineup?

Aaron Carter: There is no doubt, hands down, the number one shell by a long shot is the 12 gauge, 3 inch 3-5 Legacy load. And it outweighs everything, I mean, it’s astronomical, that is – And I’m not just saying by a little bit, I’m saying a lot.

Ramsey Russell: Now, for those of you all listening, for everybody listening, that just jotted that down and said, that’s what I’m going to buy this number one selling. Let me, let me back up because here’s what we’re saying is, here’s my thoughts looking into it, it’s been 3 decades since non toxic shock became mandatory in the United States and I now meet men, Aaron, that are 35, 40 years old grown men with kids themselves that cannot tell stories about going hunting and shooting lead shot. I see them in foreign countries, I see them in Mexico, I see them in Argentina, I see them in Azerbaijan, I see them practically everywhere else around the world that I hunt and I see these guys that are ardent, serious kick ass duck hunters that hunt 45 of 60 days in the Mississippi Flyway and got great ground to do it. I see them show up at some of these places, us shooting Papaw’s 2 and 3 quarter inch lead shot and they can’t hit shit, I’m like, well, you’re behind it. How do I, you’re behind it. How do you know I said? Because you’re behind it. I promise, you’re behind. This ain’t 1500 feet per second, hypersonic loads. This is old timey stuff, you got to adjust your lead. I see it.

Aaron Carter: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: And what they’re doing is, well, 3 inches better. 3 inches, this and that another, I need a heavier payload, I need more BB’s out there flying downrange, I need, I need more kick, I need more humph. And it’s just, you’ve got to go back, not to the past 30 years of your reference. You got to go back to the entire reference. Go back 100 years, go back 70 years, go back to Papaw’s era or great granddaddy’s era. Those men killed fire out of ducks.

Aaron Carter: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Way before, as recently as the 70s and 80s and the heyday of duck hunting in the deep south, those men did not shoot – I did not have a 3 inch gun, we had a half dozen shotguns in the house and there wasn’t a 3 inch chamber in the whole mix. It wasn’t until steel shot came along and I had to take that compensation science seriously to kill a wild duck, I needed that speed, I needed everything that came with that technology to compensate for the energy that was being lost by converting to a lighter pellet. And all of a sudden, that’s what brought me into the Boss wheelhouse, was all of a sudden, this ammo was available that kills better with less, I mean, less is more. You know what I’m saying?

Aaron Carter: Less is more. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: The Boss way, know your pattern, take ethical shots, make clean kills. And I believe that most of your customer base takes that seriously. I believe they ascribe to that philosophy, but I think if they truly were disciples of know your pattern, take ethical shots, make clean kills that are 2 and 3 quarter inch would be on your leaderboard, not a 3 inch shell, but it’s hard to make that jump back. Now, I do shoot, I have shot the 2 and 3 quarter inch 28 gauge, I do shoot the 3 inch 28 gauge, but we’re talking an ounce of 16^th and like I say, I can shoot it one handed like a less recoil than a 38 special, you know what I’m saying? If I were to shoot it with my left hand, it’s just no recoil and it patterns so amazing.

Tailoring Recommendations Based on Yardage, Bird Type, and Environment.

I usually try to give them 2 equal scenarios and try to fit it to them, what’s best to the yardage they’re looking forward to, the bird they’re shooting to, even down to the environment that they’re hunting.

Aaron Carter: And I handle a lot of the technical customer service in aspects of the company as well, so people who have a lot of these questions of coming to me about what choke or what gun do I see and all the different combinations usually and it’s not – and I don’t try to persuade one person to the 2 and 3 quarter to the 3 inch I give them, I usually try to give them 2 equal scenarios and try to fit it to them, what’s best to the yardage they’re looking forward to, the bird they’re shooting to, even down to the environment that they’re hunting. That’s how I try to assess every customer that, that is intrigued to know what’s best for me, a lot of people, they just buy an assumption, but we’ve gotten quite a few customers throughout the years, I mean, really, every day that they are intrigued to know, maybe I can drop down to this or maybe I can do this or what happens if I just started shooting a 20 gauge or 28 gauge? What have you seen with your experience? And I’m not saying I persuade somebody one way or another, but the majority of the people that I’ve talked to and even throughout the fan page that I’ve talked to, they’ll tell you, once you drop down and realize you’re more accurate because of less recoil and trust your gun and trust your setup, there’s no going back to anything that’s just going to beat the hell out of you.

Ramsey Russell: No, there’s no doing it. And I just cannot – You just got to see it to believe it, you know I’m saying? You just really have to see it to believe it. And I’ll say this, I have killed a bunch of birds with that 3/5. I know that that duplex works, I know it does.

Aaron Carter: But it’s a really good round.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a good round, but people ask me all the time and we’re going to get deep, we’re fixing to run down a rabbit hole. People ask me all the time, I have shot the 7s, I love the 7s, Boss Shotshell 7s, I love it. And that really goes back a 2 and 3 quarter inch 7 or 28 gauge size 7 for blue winged teal, for morning doves, for everything that really goes back to kind of my childhood, that’s how I really cut my teeth with the smell of gunpowder is going back to that load that round. And I have shot decoy mallards and everything else with it, but I’ve shot the 5, man, do I like those 5. And I shot the 3-5 combo, man, what a great load. I shot the 3s, I’ve shot the 2s, I’ve shot the 1s and but honestly, day in, day out, day in, day out, 28 gauge, 12 gauge, it don’t matter, I am all in on the 4s because that’s Boss number –

Aaron Carter: That’s my go to.

Ramsey Russell: That Boss number 4 has got the energy of a lead number 5 and I don’t mean a metric 5, I mean an imperial 5, which is the absolute universal standard of killing waterfowl, bona fide for as long as they’ve invented shot, that lead 5 was the standard worldwide for killing waterfowl. And honestly, I have bought the aftermarket chokes, I’ve tried them, but I’m telling you, factory mod on my 12 gauge, factory mod on my 28 gauge for copper plated bismuth, boom, that’s it, that’s all I need, that’s all I want. And sometimes, once in a blue moon, because there’s a lot of parts of the world there and that we hunt, that pass shooting is a very – it’s the standard normal pass shooting.

Aaron Carter: No, like, I mean, I’ve seen some of your videos, there’s no decoy birds they’re flying down the what I must say the channel and the you just shoot them at that –

Ramsey Russell: No, they’re coming over and you let a wind kick up or let the birds get a little rangy, there’s not enough wind to keep them low. I’m going to tighten up to a factory, improve mod with either of those guns. And it’s just something about it increases that density, maybe lengthens that shot string, now I’m getting out of my talk, I’m just saying, I tighten up my choke and I go back to shooting them, adjust my lead, tighten up the choke. But so far, the factory mods with those guns and I had a friend, I’m not going to say his name, because he introduced me to the absolute best oysters in the United States of America. He brought a whole bushel of them to the duck blind one day and I consider him a dear friend for life for that very reason. But I just saw him post something or say something or I can’t remember we were texting or what I was driving I know that and he said, I can’t hit shit with these Boss shotshells. He said, I can’t hit shit with him, I’m starting to give up. I called him, I ain’t going to text for this kind of thing, I called him and said, let me guess, you’ve got something, something super tight, extra full, something choke, he goes, yeah, I do, I said, do me a favor, kind of like the old doctor saying, take 2 aspirin and call me, call me tomorrow. I said when do you hunt again? He goes, I’m hunting Saturday, I said, put in with that Benelli, put in a factory mod and call me on your way back to the house and tell me. And he called me up and said, holy shit, it’s like he found religion, Aaron. He went from some super tight, something like I would imagine you would buy to go shoot a turkey at 97 yards and he went back to a factory mod and he said, I cannot believe, he said, it was one of the best I’ve ever shot. And he was shooting those little shorty 5s, decoying ducks with a factory mod and he felt like a rock star –

Aaron Carter: And there’s a lot to say about that because I mean, the factory load when Boss came out, I say factory, the standard load, was it operates really well off constriction, but within that is, you’ve still got to allow yourself some forgiveness. So a lot of people would get or I’ll say this first, a lot of people just went off of what somebody suggested never put it on paper, never even shot at water, never shot at a moving target to see what their shot stream pattern, what everything looked like, they just assumed because it works in this guy’s gun, it works in the other and then they go out and they have poor results. So when you’re that tight or it’s either, A, blowing the pattern or B, it’s too tight that you’re just in front of them, behind them or over them, below them and you get lucky every now and then hit them. Whereas backing down to that modified to a more open choke is now allowing you more forgiveness and letting those pellets spread out more. So you’re actually letting the pellets do the work for you, the pattern do the work for you as in it might not have the best consistency of a pattern, but at 35 yards, that somebody that’s not the greatest shooter, it allows forgiveness to where they do start to see a more consistent success rate.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve always been a fan of a – I want more BB BB’s, let’s just say in a 30 inch circle, if I go shoot a piece of paper with any kind of load imagined, I like to imagine I’ve got more BB’s in that 30 inch circle. Could really, truly, I do hunt some deep water habitat, but universally, the ducks I like to hunt are in need deeper, shorter water and all I got to do, really, all I got to do is break a wing and the dog going to get him, it’s just that simple, you know what I’m saying? I want to break that wing, and a 30 inch circle, I just imagine a green winged teal or a mallard duck or wood duck with his wings outspread him, banking right there and I just want to put as many – there’s nowhere in a 30 inch circle that bird, a breakable bone or vital, can hide, so I go down to pattern density. But speaking to a lot of you all that have been born and raised and cut your duck killing teeth in the past 30 years since this compensation science steel shot thing, this non tox thing came down to pipe, the reason a lot of the shot sizes available in steel shot are in twos and threes and ones and there were BB’s and triple B’s and t shot and f shot, the reason that was, is because steel shot, it’s got to be faster, all things equal, to have the same energy, you know what I’m saying? To balance it out. But it slows down because it’s so light, no matter how fast you send it down the barrel, the speed is still going to fall off more quickly than something heavier. Therefore, I need a steel 2 or steel 3 or number 1 to hold that energy 35 yards downrange, because now it’s moving much slower, that I would have all things equal with a number 5 or number 6 or whatever lead shot, it’s all this compensation science. It’s got to do with mass and energy and speed, those 3 things work together, you can mix them on both sides of the equal and both sides of the plus and it’s a balancing equation. That’s what I mean by compensation science mass, energy, speed, boom, that’s how this thing works. And so we’ve really, to a lot of conventional duck hunters in the United States, Canada and other places, it’s become almost this perverse understanding of how that works, what that formula is and how it works. And to me, it’s all trying to get back to the minimum pellet size with the most energy to kill a wild duck, that’s it. Go ahead.

Aaron Carter: And you’ve got all that also and another equation to add to the whole formula is the amount of pellets on target, because if you don’t have pellets on target, well, all it takes is one pellet, but everybody’s looking for that look, that one golden pellet to hit or one lucky BB, but the more pellets you have on target, the better chances of your success rate. So that’s what gives you the your best, optimum chance of being successful, which is converting from steel to a denser pellet to bismuth and on down the line. So it all plays a part of the equation. And so and with bismuth being a malleable alloy, like such as lead it operates a lot off constriction, so one of the things that you’re also seeing with the modified choke with bismuth is you’re not seeing as much deformation of the pellet as you would with an extra tight choke. Therefore, it’s flying truer and holding more shape, spherical shape and carrying more energy because it’s not slowing down because of an oblong or crack shape or whatever it might be, which it brings me to another rabbit hole with a line that we have now brought and then we introduced it last year or actually, this past year would be the first season for it to be available to the market, which is the Warchief load. I don’t know if you want to go down that rabbit hole yet, but it all put on –

Ramsey Russell: Well, I’ve got it on my list of things to talk about and I’m going to circle back just a minute, and number one, how was it that I came to meet you at the Boss booth in Minneapolis? And then how is it how did you initially fall in with Boss at that level? And then how did you fall in with Boss at your present level?

Collaborative Development of 20 Gauge Shells.

So I’d reached out to Brandon and we just started hitting it off, we hit it off really well. So we started talking pretty regular and he would send some loads to me to try out to see how I liked it, patterned it, because I mean I took it, when I say I took it through the wringer, I spent hundreds of dollars on chokes, lots of paper, a lot of counting, a lot of time with a Sharpie pen and a calculator, sitting here, circling pellets and drawing 30 inch circles.

Aaron Carter: So, going back to before Boss was even Boss, I’ve kind of been on some, I’m going to say some field staffs for some other companies within the industry. And so I kind of had a pretty well versed network of people working within the industry, friends in the industry and I was able to get my hands on some of the shells that were – I’m not going to say pre production, but they were pre company, they were freshly out of Brandon’s just shop off his hand loader and because a buddy of mine knew I shot 20 gauge and he said, hey, why don’t you try these? And so I started trying them and putting them through the wringer and then through the network of people, I learned who Brandon was. So I’d reached out to Brandon and we just started hitting it off, we hit it off really well. So we started talking pretty regular and he would send some loads to me to try out to see how I liked it, patterned it, because I mean I took it, when I say I took it through the wringer, I spent hundreds of dollars on chokes, lots of paper, a lot of counting, a lot of time with a Sharpie pen and a calculator, sitting here, circling pellets and drawing 30 inch circles. And so we clicked in that manner to where he understood that I got it and I understood that he knew what was going on and we formed that bond in that relationship and became friends that way. And that would have been the summer of – maybe 18, I guess, 18, 19, somewhere in there and yeah, that would have been summer and it was the – no, fall of 18. And so I actually shot a few shells for the very first season that were they were, I was testing them out so I pretty much helped and this was all 20 gauge stuff, so I pretty much helped develop that round working with him to get it to today’s standard is where, because, I mean, we bumped down from payload sizes, up payload sizes, velocities, changed powders, we did a lot of toy in there. And so it just built that relationship with me and myself and Brandon, and then the company started. And he also offered for me to come up and kind of help get the thing running with he and Meg at the time and things just didn’t fall in place with my life at that point in time, I was getting married and we were still sorting through things of starting life together with myself and my wife, Meredith. And nothing was drawn from that because I couldn’t come up there, so, I mean, we remained in contact pretty much weekly throughout hunting seasons, bounce ideas off each other and then this past year, I guess probably a little over a year and almost a month now to date, almost a year or a little over a year, he called me up and said, hey, I need you full time and this is what I think we can do. And so we hashed out some details and of course we’ve kind of chatted about this leading, progressing up to where we are now throughout the years and we finally made it happen. And now I play a key role and I hope to think I play a key role in the company and just moving the brand along as a whole.

Ramsey Russell: I thought that was interesting because since I first met you and just in the last year, now we’re going to get down that rabbit hole about some of the different products. My experience with BOSS, somebody handed me a Boss of one of them boxes that come off of Brandon’s homemade, not his homemade, but one of his first initial runs. They were just coming off his little old press, his daddy’s press and it shot good, it shot like some other bismuth I’d shot. I mean now look, bismuth showed up on the scene, I believe that company was out of UK back in the mid 90s, mid to late 90s, right about time the steel shot stuff started coming down the pipe. I actually saw a gun down in Mexico the other day that had a bulged barrel at the end that somebody shot steel shot through. Way back when steel shot first started coming out, people started having to shoot it, so they started running it through daddy’s gun and granddaddy’s gun and bulging barrels, it wasn’t made, it won’t come through those old guns.

Aaron Carter: And people just didn’t know. They didn’t know, they didn’t have any clue.

Ramsey Russell: They didn’t know, so we had to go buy new guns and do all this kind of stuff, it was an adjustment and maybe this bismuth tin alloy technology had existed around steel shot days still proliferated the market. But to answer that call that, hey, some of these old guns, people want to shoot something that’s malleable, that have come through the barrel here comes this other bismuth. And so when I got brought into BOSS, I had, boy, had I killed some ducks with some steel shot, since then, once I figured it out and I got handed a Boss a box of Boss Shotshells. And it was shortly after that that Boss and this is what made them exceptional to me this really took another level, is they followed the same trend that lead shot had, they went from just raw lead, whatever little lead pellets dropped, they had bismuth pellets drop, they went to copper plated and that was a game changer. And that’s now what you all call your Legacy load.

Aaron Carter: Yep. That is our Legacy load is now the copper plated bismuth. Just our standard loads.

Ramsey Russell: That forevermore will be remembered to me as a very epiphany moment, a market move was that copper plating on that bismuth, because it made the shot tighten up, it made it behave differently, it made it less brittle. It was just an absolute game changer. And last year, preceding my trip to Africa, I do travel off shotshell, matter of fact, going to Argentina last year, I brought 82 pounds of Boss Shotshells. Thank the lord, have mercy, they didn’t ask me what was inside that 82 pounds, I’d still be paying duties. I brought 82 pounds of 28 gauge Boss Shotshells, but I always liked to travel with it, because where I really became just a fervent believer was taking 50 or 100 or 82 pounds worth of this non tox load into lead countries and shooting it in front of indigenous guys that have seen tens of thousands of ducks die with lead. And they’ve started looking at me and looking at my shells and starting asking themselves questions in their native tongue about, what is this magic bullet? Because we bring the American technology followed, I’m saying it’s a little bit lighter than redhead, but it hits harder, kills better and patterns better, usually. And so, anyway, last year on the way to Africa, Dirk had – He and I were on the phone and he said, hey, let me send you some of this new stuff we got coming down, it’s called Warchief is buffered, I’m like, yeah, buffered, whatever. Dude, I’m telling you what it was, I’m going to say in the first 2 or 3 trigger pulls on big, mean, gnarly, ugly as sin spur wing geese, it was clearly apparent, I don’t know what buffer does to that load, but it does something and then it’s like taking it another level to hitting harder, patterning better, performing better out of that Benelli 12 gauge. What is it? What were you all wanting to accomplish? What does the buffer do in the war chief load? Tell me about the buffer and why it came about and what exactly it does that myself and the people I’m in a blind with can notice a difference in the way those birds are being hit now that I’m shooting this Warchief.

Aaron Carter: So to kind of start this off, Brandon is a man of many ideas and his wheels are always turning to, how can I make something better? What’s the next step? What’s our next move? What can I do to improve this? Because, I mean, if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards. And so that’s how the company is operating off of. Brandon comes up with an idea, this is what I want to happen, all right, let’s do it. So he got to tinkering with, all right, we’re seeing really good patterns with the Legacy, but we’re, I guess, almost kind of like taking the good, putting it the bad, what can I do to improve the performance of the shell? And so that’s where Warchief evolved. So, in my personal opinion, the Warchief shell is, after it was all said and done, is the most versatile and I mean, how it’s by far the most versatile shell we offer for the money is performance to performance to dollar, there’s nothing in our lineup that will outweigh the Warchief. And so, by design, we now manufacture our own wads that are made out of a biodegradable product. And so it’s still a plastic wad, but it is a full length wad and we’ve designed it to where the pedals, they peel back at a certain rate due to design and we have buffered those pellets.

Ramsey Russell: They are biodegradable.

Aaron Carter: That is correct.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a huge – it wasn’t until last year I was up hunting with Rob Reynolds in Alberta and we walk downrange we pick up the shells and pick up everything, we walk downrange and started picking up those wads, it’s unbelievable how much plastic we’re putting in the environment that’s just there forever and I think, I think biodegradable is a great trend to start, really do.

Aaron Carter: And so with that shotshell, what we used to buffer was ground walnut shells, so that’s also environmentally friendly. But it also, not just being environmentally friendly, it also acts as a very good buffering compound due to the fact of what it does for the pellet, the bismuth pellets. And so what happens when upon ignition is the pellets within, let’s just say a Legacy load, they’re sitting upon each other, so there’s nothing there to keep or cushion the pellets from pushing against each other. Well, within the Warchief load, you’ve got the buffer, the walnut shell. So what happens after it all expires through the barrel is those pellets now remain a more spherical shape and fly truer to where it’s producing a more consistent pattern, your pellets are flying true or your pellets are holding more energy because they have not deformed as such if they didn’t have anything to cushion them. So it’s kind of like a three in one deal, you’ve got a better, a more solid pellet, a truer flying pellet and a more consistent pattern is what that shell did for us. And to top it all off is we’re seeing a lot better results through less constricted chokes. So going back to your modified choke, if you want, you could shoot that modified choke and you would see probably anywhere between a 10% to 15% tighter pattern or I’m not going to say tighter, let’s just say a uniform, a consistent, uniform pattern compared to the Legacy and the Warchief is going to be that much greater than the Legacy. And so like by doing –

Ramsey Russell: Well excuse me. Go ahead.

Aaron Carter: So what it’s allowed you to do is now you can use less constriction with same, if not better results than the Legacy as a tighter constriction. So what I found throughout the all year of hunting with it from out west down to even hunting teal in Louisiana, but primarily within just the main duck season from timber to the field, rice fields to even cornfields is I can use an improved cylinder or a cylinder choke in the woods and get that load to open up quick and still be good and uniform to kill birds at 30 yards or I can go to a modified, to an improved modified and zing one out there to 45, 50 yards if I need to, if it’s real windy or keep the pattern tight if it’s extremely windy to have more success rate.

Ramsey Russell: I could not explain what the buffer did to – I could not have explained the why and whatnot, but it’s like the just based on trigger pulls and performance, it’s like the new ad says, hell, yeah, I’m all in on the new Warchief and I knew that within 3 trigger pulls. Wow, I don’t know what this is doing, but it’s making a difference. Great difference.

Aaron Carter: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Change the subject a little bit, because beyond the buffered, you all got Legacy, you’ve got Buffered Warchief, now you got a full spectrum of offerings coming down the pipe. Just real quickly, tell me about how you all are going cover the entire spectrum of the waterfowl market in terms of shotgun shells.

Aaron Carter: So this spring, we just released two new lines, the Steel Reserve by Boss and the Wolfram by BOSS. So, of course, Steel Reserve is our – We’ve done just a select, small, I say small, select 2 shot sizes of steel offerings, now that were, we’re using as a 30 yard marketing as a 30 yard inch shell, 1s for geese, 3s for ducks. A very effective built round for what it is within 30 yards, we’ve got a couple different payload offerings there at 1/8^th ounce and 12 gauge, one and 3/8^th ounce and 12 gauge and then 7/8^th ounce and 20 gauge and 1s and 3s. And so we’re that’s a good intro into the brand if for kids or for somebody that might be a little pinched for money during the year or just wanting to be a part of the community as a whole, that’s a good offering. And so there’s where we’re introducing the copper plated steel, so, Steel Reserved by BOSS. And then we have, of course, there’s our Legacy, so we’re kind of marketing as steel would be 30 yards and in 40 yards and in would be Legacy and if you want to stretch it out, the most versatile round from short to long range would be your Warchief and then comes the big guy of Wolfram, which is our new TSS waterfowl line.

Ramsey Russell: What are you calling it again?

Aaron Carter: Wolfram.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Aaron Carter: W o l f r a m. So, Wolfram, back when tungsten was founded, Wolfram was the guy who founded it. And so we’ve just just kind of named it off of it’s beginning.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Aaron Carter: So, I mean, people in today’s time know it as TSS. So that’s our 18 grams shotshell size that we offer in 9s and 7s and that’s going to be a 12 gauge 1oz, 20 gauge 7/8 ounce, 28 gauge 3 quarter ounce payloads. And that’s the top tier of shot selection there. But, I mean, tungsten got its place, I’m not going to say it’s best for all things, but it’s got its place. It also comes with a pretty high price tag just because I was going to say this –

Ramsey Russell: I pull the trigger too much for tungsten. And the truth of the matter is, it goes back to my initial our long conversation, lead is the universal standard and it’s toxic for the environment and it’s bad for ducks and it’s bad for raptors that eat dead ducks. But to me, the copper plated bismuth tin alloy is the best of all worlds, it’s more expensive than I could have afforded 20 years ago, 15 years ago, you know what I’m saying? When I had kids and all that kind of good stuff going on, but, yeah, I mean, I shot my share still back then. What would you say? I like the fact that you all focused on 2 shot sizes, 1s for ducks, 3s – Excuse me? 3s for ducks, 1s for geese, I like the fact that you all really concentrated, how would you describe Boss steel shot as compared to other steel shots available?

Aaron Carter: We have found and this is another load that we’ve put a lot of research and design into, we’ve manufactured the wide specifically for this load. So we’ve made it to where you can shoot and we’ve seen the best results between improved cylinder and modified chokes with that steel shot. So we’ve manufactured that wad to Open up and release within that range.

Ramsey Russell: Have you all tried a light mod with that round? Because I always, I still got bunches of light modifieds and Rob Roberts T2 chokes, through out of a Benelli like a light mod back from the steel shot era. And that was just my doubt that – it’s a wonder one of them didn’t get stuck in my gun, but if it had, I’m shooting steel choke that have been fine because it threw a great pattern which is a light model.

Aaron Carter: I personally have not shot a light mod through it, I’ve shot everything down to roughly about, in a 12 gauge would be 600 thousandths. But I actually found where I like shooting at the best for what it is because of it’s a 30 yard load. People are going to push it, so be it, that’s on them but where it’s a 30 yard load. So I shot it with an improved cylinder out of my 412 gauge. And anything within 30 yards, whether it was a goose, a snow goose, a teal, mallard, gadwall, whenever was in 30 yards, it performed flawlessly on. And that’s why I just said well, there’s no need in tinkering with it anymore to see what else I can get out of it because that’s just not what it’s designed for. I could achieve on a 2 dimensional paper, I could achieve with my improved cylinder around 90% at 30 yards. And at that point in time, how much more do I need at 30 yards? Because at 10 yards or 15 yards, I’m throwing a softball or a dinner plate at them.

The Boss Way: Ethical Shots and Clean Kills.

I just thought of this, I want to share the Boss way, know your pattern, take ethical shots, make clean kills, that right there is what really before the actual product or products

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. I just want to say that we’ve talked a lot about compensation science, we’ve talked about shot sizes, steel shot TSS, bismuth tin alloy, buffered, unbuffered legacy, the work, we’ve covered a gamut. And I just got to share this, I just thought of this, I want to share the Boss way, know your pattern, take ethical shots, make clean kills, that right there is what really before the actual product or products, plural now, that’s what pulled me into the Boss orbit, was just an old school practical duck killing, because let’s face it, no matter how much money we spend, how far we travel, how hard we work, how far we dig, whatever, it all comes down to the crucial moment of the trigger pull, that’s the most crucial link between me and a duck on that strap is the trigger pull. And I just want to give this guy a shout out, I’ve met this young man a couple of times, I think he’s former military from Oklahoma, but for those of you all that aren’t wanting to go spend cases, buy cases of ammo, you know what I’m saying? And try all this kind of stuff? Brody Hensley over at pattern pros in Oklahoma, he come up with this novel idea of where you contact him and you get these kits and you can try different loads, different manufacturers on pattern boards he provides. And it’s a really, if anybody that duck hunts today owes it to themselves, to the people they hunt with and especially to the resource to go out and pull the trigger on a pattern, you know what I’m saying? But I’m just going to throw that out there and give Brody a plug, because I think it was a great idea to come up with. I mean, when we all went, nobody that I know and certainly not myself, had ever patterned anything pre seeding steel shot, all of a sudden, they threw this steel shot thing on us, we had to go to a pattern board, we had to figure stuff out real quick because we couldn’t hit nothing with some of the first incarnations of steel shot to hit the market. And we were blowing up guns and doing everything else, we had to go downrange and then I found my comfort level, ounce and a quarter steel 3s, light modified choke and until, boom, here come the new world of Boss Shotshells. And we go back to the pattern boards and now I’m dialed in just what I want, you know what I’m saying? With all the guns I shoot, I know what I want, but I’m just trying to say this as an encouragement to what else you got to do one afternoon but go hang up some paper and shoot some patterns and see what this stuff is doing for you out of your gun, the way you shoot with the loads you’ve chosen. Go pull the trigger and know your pattern, take ethical shots, make clean kills, because that’s what it all boils down to, is that crucial moment. Aaron, I got one more question I’m going to get out of this – You fall down this speckle belly rabbit hole, now you’re working for Boss Shotshells and I know that you’re on the road one heck of a lot more during the North American hunting season then you might have been 5, 6 years ago when we met, are you more opportunistic like myself and you just kind of go with winning Rome wherever it brings me or do you find yourself trying to gravitate back into that speckle belly passion you got? Do you try to take that speckle belly passion everywhere?

Aaron Carter: Well, yes and no, I kind of hold my farm there in Arkansas to the it holds a high standard for me there, but I try to leave it there because, I mean being the outside sales manager and I handle all the clubs and outfits, the bulk orders. So that’s kind of my, well, it’s not kind of my, it is my avenue within the company. So I take care of all our clubs and outfitters that work with our company. And so I just go with the flow, if we’re hunting ducks, we’re hunting ducks, if we’re hunting geese or hunting geese, if we’re just sitting on the couch shooting a shit, that’s what I do.

Ramsey Russell: And when you show up to your Arkansas goose camp, what is in your gun bag? What Boss Shotshell are you running? What are you shooting?

Aaron Carter: So my go to within and this is going to go for everybody that hunts with us now is everybody’s pretty much set on either a 28 gauge or a 20 gauge and that’s pretty much all we allow now within our group, it’s going to be either Legacy 4s or Warchief 4s. And like I said, I’ve hit hard on the Warchief just because of the versatility of it, but I mean, there’s a lot to say about it that, I mean, people have never even shot, BOSS, they shot it and said, that’s what I want to shoot and that’s what I want to keep shooting. So the Warchief fours and 20 and 28 gauges, but you’ll find 95% in my blind bag if I’m going out to the goose field.

Ramsey Russell: I’m all in on the 4s, that’s me too, Aaron. I’m all in on the 4s, I had handfuls of that 82 pounds left last year and shot doves and pigeons down in Argentina with it to get rid of it and but I have shot big Canada’s, little Canada’s, snows, specks, ducks, teal, blue wings, mallards and eiders. I showed up, I was out on the Olympic peninsula last year, pulled out that 28 gauge and my host said, are you sure? Go ahead and get that 12 gauge, I said, donna, I’m good, he really, it made him uncomfortable hunting out on that big water for scoters with a 28 gauge and I said, look, a number 4 copper plated, Boss pellet is a number 4 copper plated balls pellet. And I made him a believer, you know I’m saying? He provided that I got in front of them birds and hit them, there’s a few of them, I did, there’s a few of them I was way behind and that’s the thing about you can buy the best shotgun shells on earth, they’re not magic, you still got to hit the birds.

Aaron Carter: You still have to do your part. I’ve just found with the 4s and I know we’re trying to wrap this thing up, but the 4s are just the most consistent pellet with the larger birds, that is just kind of where that’s my go to pellet now. If I’m in the timber, I’ll shoot anywhere from 6s to 5s to this pasture I even shot 8s one time and it was great. But 4s for the field, 5s or 6s for the timber and that’s pretty much what you’re going to see with if somebody were to ask me, hey, Aaron, I need a couple shells, that’s what you’re going to get.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you, Aaron. Tell everybody how they can get in touch with you?

Aaron Carter: So for reaching out for BOSS, you can look us up on bossshotshells.com. Any clubs or outfitters, if you just email at info at bossshotshells.com and you can find your link to me, well, it will come through and it will get filtered down to me and I will reach out to you from there. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to the shop anytime and we’re always available for you if we can help in any way.

Ramsey Russell: Yep, you all really are. Thank you very much, Aaron. Folks, you all been listening to my buddy Aaron Carter, the outdoor sales manager with Boss Shotshells, speck hunter, dedicated speck hunter and I’m home guy right here from Mississippi. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We’ll see you next time.

[End of Audio]

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