EP 502. Increasing Performance: Rob Roberts Custom Gun Works

 

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. Today, I’m in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for the Delta Waterfowl Expo. And wow, today’s guest is like roping the wind. I’ve tried for two years to get this master firearm genius on the podcast, and he might be busier even than myself. I owe my introduction to Rob Roberts to Terry Denmon, who, I don’t know, close to ten years ago, began to describe to me something about these patterns, something about this guy up in Arkansas was doing. And, I don’t know, I didn’t understand him. So, I called Rob Roberts and asked him, “What’s this Denmon’s telling me about? What’s all this forcing cone and this pattern?” He explained it to me for 30 minutes, and I still didn’t understand it. But anyway, today’s guest, Rob Roberts. Rob Roberts Custom Gun Works, I believe in Batesville, Arkansas. Is that right, Rob?

Rob Roberts: That is correct.

Ramsey Russell: Batesville, Arkansas. And Rob, boy, am I glad to see you across the table finally, man. You know, Batesville, Arkansas is, for somebody that puts a lot of miles on a pickup truck, drives east, west, north, and south, Batesville’s like Nashville. It ain’t the kind of place that life just brings you through.

Rob Roberts: No, but Nashville is a whole lot of finer place to have some fun.

Ramsey Russell: It is.

Rob Roberts: You talk about Terry Denmon, that sorry outfit. I’ll tell you something else, Terry Denmon’s one of the finest guys I’ve ever met, especially in this industry. He’s been in it for a very long time, and there’s not enough good I could ever say about that man. And I’m proud he told you some stuff about us, and I’m proud we’re finally getting together.

Ramsey Russell: He did. Terry has been a huge friend, a great influence for a lot of my life, and I’m really glad to have you on the show. I want to talk more about you to start with. Are you from northeast Arkansas? Is that where you were born and raised?

Rob Roberts: Yes, sir. Actually, I was born in Sioux City, Iowa, so it’s helped me on getting in some hunts up there in the Midwest. But in reality, my parents lived there at the time. And I actually moved to Arkansas when I was ten months old.

Ramsey Russell: Adjust that mic just a little bit.

Arkansas Duck Hunting

No, actually, we don’t talk about it, but yes, there is. We’re right on the river.

Rob Roberts: Okay. I moved to Arkansas myself when I was ten months old, so I learned southern English and became a – 

Ramsey Russell: Well, at ten months old, you had not developed much of an Iowa accent.

Rob Roberts: No, I do not have that. My dad still has a little of it, and I still have a lot of good family members up there in Nebraska and Iowa and that area. But no, my folks, all my family and everything, we’re Arkansan, so it’s a bunch of hillbilly rednecks, I guess.

Ramsey Russell: Is there a lot of duck hunting in that part of the state, Batesville?

Rob Roberts: No, actually, we don’t talk about it, but yes, there is. We’re right on the river.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Rob Roberts: So a lot of people come up there for the fishing aspect. We got people that want to come up there to catch all these trout and everything. We just as soon catch copperheads, personally. But there’s a lot of good fishing and stuff on it, but especially early on, like early teal season, everybody’s all over the place in Arkansas. I think the whole flight is moving around us. You know, they’re going from Missouri, going to Oklahoma, going around us, hitting Louisiana and heading on down. But we do have lots of teal, the early teal and the geese and everything are up there hot and heavy, but nobody really hunts that. I actually hate that I just said that because that might draw somebody in, and I kind of like to leave them alone.

Ramsey Russell: I heard that. I’m sorry I brought that up. What I was getting at is, did you grow up duck hunting? Your daddy moved from Iowa down to, you were a baby. Did you grow up an Arkansas duck hunter?

Rob Roberts: I grew up in Arkansas, but I was not a duck hunter.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Turkeys and Deer Hunting in the Arkansas Hills 

I grew up in the hills. So my aspect was turkeys and deer. And my family was not big on hunting, and I was the guy that grew up as a kid. I loved guns. My biggest thing is when I was a young kid, my grandparents, my granddad and grandmother basically raised me most of the time.

Rob Roberts: I grew up in the hills. So my aspect was turkeys and deer. And my family was not big on hunting, and I was the guy that grew up as a kid. I loved guns. My biggest thing is when I was a young kid, my grandparents, my granddad and grandmother basically raised me most of the time. They got me my first 410, bought me BB guns. I was a cat-smoking machine. I mean, it was like I’d sneak around and shoot cats. And I think every kid ought to grow up shooting cats, whether it’s with a BB gun or a 22, depending on your neighbors. But at that point, it was always really funny. It was like, why is this kid ate up with guns? They hunted, they were more of, like, pheasant people and stuff like that. But they weren’t hunters. My dad, I think the only deer he ever killed was one time a neighbor’s beagle was in our garbage, and he pulled out a .44 Magnum, which he loved guns. He pulled out a .44 magnum and shot at the neighbor’s beagle. And the only deer he ever killed was our John Deere. He had a tractor out there and shot right through the side of it. I mean, he was horrible with guns, but I had the passion. I don’t know what it was. I’m old. So it was one of those things, old Sears catalog at Christmas time, you’d pull up, go through the pictures, and I always looked at those guns that had the biggest scopes and all this kind of stuff. And I don’t know, I just stayed up with, I always wanted a bolt-action rifle with a scope four feet long. And if you look at my guns and my gun safe, you’re like, you made it. That’s it.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, that’s a lot of, that’s a lot of people’s background. My granddaddy was a duck hunter, took my daddy and my uncle. They aged out, didn’t want to go. My duboys, didn’t want to go. My granddaddy aged out. I grew up just a little boy, like, pellet rifles and shooting squirrels and rabbits and whatever else. Reading a whole lot of books about hunting and stuff. Never dreaming, you know what I’m saying? But that was just kind of how I made my living. I’m not going to say I hadn’t shot a house cat or two. Cause I have.

Rob Roberts: Me too. I still do at times, but I’m not politically correct about a lot of things. But at the end of the day, it’s not a bloodthirst. But it was like one of those things I always felt somewhere in the back of my head that somewhere that could save your life or protect your family. So I loved being out there shooting things, but I loved being in the woods. I loved this. And so I grew up, you know, like, squirrel hunting. Oh my, I just absolutely loved it. I’d come home from school, and my parents were, you know. I was in, what do you call it, Gen X now? I was baby boomer. So I’m old enough, I was still baby boomer. She’d come on, parents didn’t care what you did. You throw your books down, I’d go in there and I’d find out what kind of shells, what kind of 22.

Ramsey Russell: Well, back in old days, your neighbors didn’t care what you did, walking through their yard with a 20 gauge shotgun. Nobody thought nothing about it.

Rob Roberts: No, I’d go. I caught it. Yeah, I shot a squirrel, I killed a red bird, I got this, that, and maybe a cat. And one day, I’ll never forget, I was about twelve years old, alone. You don’t let kids alone like that now. But back in our day, or back in my day, they did. And so, you know, I come in, it’s like, hey, I seen a bear. And they’re like, oh, bull. And it’s like, no. Unloaded a pistol at him and took off running. I don’t think I heard him or me. But at the end of the day, that was my mindset. And so I had an absolute passion that all I wanted to do was get out there, sneak up on stuff. When you could sneak around in the squirrel woods and, you know, it got to where it was like, okay, using nothing but 22, and it’s got to be nothing but headshots. And of course, I think the military always looked at heathens like me, and that’s who they always got. But at that same thing, that’s what I enjoyed. It was not, I don’t know, it just felt like a survival thing with me. But anyway, as it grew on, it was always, how do you get better at this and going on that. So I actually grew up on that end. It was squirrels, turkey, deer. Because I was on the hillbilly side. We didn’t have ducks. The only ducks I ever shot was in some neighbor’s pond that I snuck over the bank and, you know, didn’t get arrested that day. Nowadays you kind of go to Alcatraz. Back then they didn’t care. It was like getting them off there.

Remembering First Duck Hunts

Ramsey Russell: When and where, and how did you get into wing shooting, I should say? Cause maybe you shot quail or something else. I mean a duck. How’d you get into it? Do you remember your first duck hunt?

Rob Roberts: Oh, yeah. I got into it later in life as we was going through, and me and a couple buddies of mine, which, you know, I don’t know how to name names, but these guys people would know in the industry, they’re no longer in the industry, but. But they were long, and they were really good shooters. And we ended up, you know, betting quarters on a tailgate, shooting skeet targets off this. And pretty soon, this one beat you. That one beat you, this one, that. And our competition side between buddies got a little deeper and a little deeper and a little deeper, and sooner or later, here comes along sporting clays, and so we’re into sporting clays, and we get into this wing shooting. And that’s kind of what got me into the gunsmithing side of this was I was. I’d got to the point, and I was working with them guys, and one of them had all the money, and it was like, hey, you guys go to work for me, let’s build this and go. And so we got to the point where we were able to go out with some of these guys, and some of these guys are still shooting today, world champions, national champions, everything in sporting clays, skeet, trap too. And I was around these guys that really could shoot, you know, I couldn’t do what they were doing, but it was awesome to come in here and see these guys that were, you know, if somebody told you, “Hey, I got a 15 and 3/8 length of pull with a 3/8 back pitch, and I got this, that, and this.” You can’t do that on our hunting guns. But what I found out was, man, it was amazing how much better you would shoot when the gun fit you, and it shot where you was looking, not where you were aiming it. Because a lot of people, you know, closing one eye and shooting at that thing, and it should die. Well, that don’t work. You got to be able to have the gun shoot where you was. So my interest kept going and got a little more passion, more and more about it to figure out how to do this. Now, in today’s world, we’re dealing with guns that you can’t do that with because everything’s synthetic, and you get length of pull is kind of what it is, and blah, blah, blah. But what we were able to do is transition this into the patterns. Okay. When I did, you know, just, like, forcing cones, when the first time I had one done, it’s like, okay, I noticed a little felt recoil off the shoulder. I noticed this. I noticed, hey, I’m, you know, my patterns are better. And then we got to where we were doing a lot of pattern testing, and this was the old days where just, you know, I really started off on the turkey side. So there you go. And so I’m out here patterning turkey guns on a picnic table for people, wearing a life jacket because recoil is just tearing you up. You’re shooting the biggest shell they ever made and your tightest and longest barrel. I had, like, 32-inch barrels on Browning BPS. I remember that one time. I was so proud of that gun.

Ramsey Russell: God.

Rob Roberts: Oh, yeah. You wouldn’t carry that turkey hunting now for nothing. But at the point, it’s like, oh, this is poison nowadays, you know, with the ammo and everything they’re changing and the technology that’s going on with guns, I’m taking it you can take a 28 gauge and blow out what I was doing with that 32-inch Browning back in that day, you know, ammo and stuff wise, so it was like you beat them up. So we started noticing this pattern, this pattern, and when we started doing some of the stuff, like forcing cones or whatever, you know, like porting, that’s something we never talk about is porting barrels. I promise you, we’ve got the best porting there ever was on a deal because it’s real, the way it’s designed, the way it’s EDM burnt, the way the angle, everything that comes in the round, elliptical, everything. There’s no stress point. It’s actually catching it and pulling it out. But if you come in and said, “Hey, should I port my gun?” I’m going to say, no. You’re a duck guy. You don’t have a problem with recoil. You don’t want to be stuck in a pit somewhere with somebody that is shooting this gun, and it’s blowing your eardrums out, you know, blowing his out, not yours. And so there’s a lot of these things that we really found that does work that we don’t even take into the market because we’re not after your money. We’re after the passion of making it shoot. Right? We want to see you do better. We want to see. We like for you to go back, “Man, I tried this, and this really works,” and that’s what we’re after. And at the end of the day, you can say bloodthirsty or whatever, but, yeah, if you’re going to shoot at something, kill it. Don’t sit there and wound it. And, you know, I hear a lot of people that come in. It’s like, “Oh, I took this factory gun, and I went out there, and I shot this thing, and, you know, dogs chased him around.” I want to, boom, he’s dead.

Ramsey Russell: Let’s back up just a minute. Go back to that, your duck hunting origins. Are you a duck hunter? Do you say, I’m a duck hunter.

Rob Roberts: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: I know you’re the duck hunter, but you’re a duck hunter.

Rob Roberts: I wish I would. It’d be a whole lot cheaper and my life would be easier.

Ramsey Russell: So what was it like, where’d you cut your teeth, in your twenties, you cut your teeth with duck hunter.

Rob Roberts: I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what really hit me on the ducks, you know, and we got deeper and deeper and deeper. But what I learned, and I’ve got a lot of hillbilly family and hillbilly folks that still don’t. I’ve got a brother-in-law right now that me and him are super, super tight for a long time, and he’s now just absolutely born again, if you would. Absolutely. Just went crazy on waterfowl. Never did it. Never had it. Never had the opportunity. Never really went about it. But he was a super smart hunter, and I’m going to use him as an example of kind of what I did. He went into this, and he thought, “I’m not going to duck. I ain’t spending that kind of money. I don’t want to go out there. I don’t need a boat. I don’t want a dog. I ain’t spending that much for shells. I’m not spending this on gun. You know, I’m going to kill my turkeys. I’m going to do that. I’m a hunter. I spend hours in a tree stand killing deer and all that.” And I’m not knocking it, because I still do it. But what I found. And I come to him one day, and I said, “You know what the real hunter is these days? I said, I’m going to blow your mind.” He goes, “Oh, yeah, you know, it’s deer hunting. We got this, that.” I said, “Absolutely not.” I said, “It’s waterfowl.” He goes, “Oh, boy.” I said, “I’m going to tell you right now, a duck hunter is going to tell you when the season goes out, how many minutes it’s going to be before it comes back in the next year.” I said, “Most serious guys I’ve ever been, I mean, they put their lives on the line and ruining marriages and divorces and, I mean, it’s just, it’s awful.” But, you know, I had a guy tell me one time, he said, “How many bankruptcies have you been through, and how many divorces? I want to know how good a duck hunter.” It’s not good. I’m having my 42nd anniversary this year. So I’ve been married a long time. That woman has lived sheer bliss.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I guarantee, second week of August, one week of August, be my 30th. And I tell her, you know, just imagine, 30 years ago today, the best day of your life happened. You married me.

Rob Roberts: I’ll tell you what I did do. Her family was all out of the New Orleans area. They all fished, they all hunted, all that. So she grew up cooking deer, cooking ducks, cooking mainly fish. Absolutely fish crazy. So I was blessed on that end of it. I mean, other than that, I’m pretty sure I’ve driven her absolutely nuts. But at the end of the day, it really helps. So when your kids grow up eating squirrels, rabbits, deer, turkeys, all that kind of stuff, my kids are the same way, and the grandkids are going to be that way. So it is a good way of life. But getting back to why I love duck hunting and why I think it’s so good, especially nowadays, and we talked about that earlier about, you know, in today’s world, you throw out a deer feeder, you got your salt blocks, and you got 47 cameras up. You know when this deer is coming in, that deer is coming in, this and that. And you bring out your kid that’s ten years old, and you put him out here, and he gets to kill that. And I’m not knocking this. This is great because I know every guy. I know how every guy is because I am one. You want your kids to do the best, but in reality, are you teaching them to hunt?

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Rob Roberts: And, you know, we grew up in a time where you couldn’t do that. And as it went on, as it played out, it became more and more that, oh, we can throw corn, we’ll have all the deer out here you want, pick out what you want, do that. Which I’m still not knocking. I’m all about it, go kill them all. But at the end of it, with ducks, it’s a little tighter on that. You’re going to go to jail, they’re really serious on that. They don’t care that you killed 14 does out there in a day, but you go kill one extra wood duck, somebody’s on you.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, public enemy number one.

Rob Roberts: Oh, absolutely. But at same point what the cool part about ducks is, first off, you gotta be in them. You gotta find them, you gotta know where they’re at. You got to go into all that. And a lot of people work their areas, they farm it, they get their ducks, you know, I mean that’s a big deal. You can do all the scouting, you can do all the work, you can do all the gun work, you can do all the ammo, but at the end of the day, that duck comes up here, gets in your face, and it’s moving. That’s not necessarily an easy target. You’re not shooting everything off the water. You’ve got to put it all together. So there’s a whole lot more that goes into waterfowl hunting than just, “alright, my gun shoots great at 400 yards, I’m smoking everything that walks out there.” Like I said, I’m still not knocking it because I’m still that guy. I still go hunt, and I love it, especially Missouri, Iowa type thing. Get up there where there are big-bodied deer really go through. And I just saying at the bigger the body, it’s like my brother-in-law told me one time, he said, how big was it? I said, ah, it’s probably 150 inches. He said, I didn’t ask that. How big were the hams? And so that’s kind of like, get the meat and potatoes going.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Rob Roberts: And so that’s part of it. But waterfowl is just.

Ramsey Russell: That’s your heartbeat.

Rob Roberts: Oh, it’s good. And, you know, I have a gator fetch.

Ramsey Russell: You grew up a gun nut. Well, we’re going to talk about your gator fetch. You grew up fascinated with guns, young man hunting what you could, house cats and everything else. Got introduced to bird hunting clay targets and fell off into guns. Now, what is your background in terms of guns? Did you become a gunsmith? Is that where that landed you? Were you a gunsmith? Were you an engineer? Were you a rocket scientist? I mean, Rob Roberts Custom Gun Shop, I don’t know anybody else on earth that does what you do to these guns. How did you fall into that? I mean, I guess you are a gunsmith. Did you take an online gunsmith course, What?

Rob Roberts: No. I’ll tell you what, it’s the grace of God to start with. The good lord shined on, you know, his idiots and hillbillies and whatever that I am. I mean, he’s really blessed me on a lot of things. But the one thing I got into, and the best way I’ve described that to anybody that ever came out there was, if you ever watched the old movie with Tom Cruise in it, Days of Thunder, when he was racing cars and they’re going around circles and they come in. He said, “Hey, look, did the car do this? Did the car do that?” And he goes, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a driver, I’m not the mechanic; I’m the driver.” That’s what I am. I mean, to be 100% honest with you, no, I’m not a good machinist. No, I’m not a good gunsmith. No, I’ll fix your gun, I mean, that’s a given. But, you know, a real gunsmith is a guy that goes, Okay, I need this little part to go on this old 30-30 over here in the corner. I can build this part. I can machine it out. I can fix it. Don’t bring that to me, because that’s not what I do. Absolutely not.

Ramsey Russell: Well, what were you doing when you were a young man, doing all the shooting and finally getting to hunt? I mean, where were you working? What was your background?

Rob Roberts: I’ve done everything under the sun. I was like Mister Gadget there. I mean, I went from trucking parts to concrete to taxidermy to everything. But my passion was always, I mean, I’m not trying to be there but was killing things, skinning things, eating, you know.

Ramsey Russell: Mine, too.

Rob Roberts: It was in there. I want to be in the woods. I want to be doing, I’m that guy. And so with that said, I was fortunate enough to get into the sporting clay world enough to be around these shooters that were absolutely phenomenal. I mean, these guys were, it’s like, golly, you’re doing that with a shotgun? You’re doing this and that? And so my mindset on that was always taking it from, “I don’t care about that target.” You know, when I’d go shoot targets, I mean, it was fun. I loved to. And I’ve got grandkids now shooting trap and stuff, and I’ll push it, and I want them to do the best, and it’s awesome. But at that point, it’s like, if I can hit this target doing that, what can I do with a duck or geese? And I’m thinking, okay, there’s a, you know, people talk about, “Well, a goose, they’re so big.” Well, picture its head as a clay target. You know, think of that head right there. And what kind of lead do you need to hit that. And what do you want to do. And just like a lot of this ammo and doing chokes and all this kind of stuff you go back into, it’s like, find out what your gun shoots, what it likes, what the pattern’s like. Put the pattern in front of where it needs to be and kill it. Kill it dead. I mean, when you’re out there, and I’m not saying I can always pull it off because, no, I’m no world-class shooter or anything else.

Ramsey Russell: But even around those circles with them world-class shooters, you were looking for making it even better.

Rob Roberts: Absolutely. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Always about the edge. Always about a better trigger pull, about a better result.

Tight Chokes and Longer Shot Strings 

And it’s like, well, what I like to see when I come in here is, for example, shot string. I like to shoot tighter chokes because I’ve got a longer shot string that I may be in front of that bird, but as long as I’m in front of him, maybe even too much, the tail end of the shot string’s killing the bird compared to, oh, I’ve got a short shot string, which is like your big bores and stuff like that.

Rob Roberts: I love listening to somebody that was a national champion maybe once or twice in sporting clays or a trap shooter, or, you know, skeet shooter. And it’s like, well, what I like to see when I come in here is, for example, shot string. I like to shoot tighter chokes because I’ve got a longer shot string that I may be in front of that bird, but as long as I’m in front of him, maybe even too much, the tail end of the shot string’s killing the bird compared to, oh, I’ve got a short shot string, which is like your big bores and stuff like that. And, you know, it’s kind of like turkey hunting to duck hunting. So, like a turkey hunter, he likes a big bore. He likes his shot string to be real short where all pellets are on impact. And so some of your big bores. I’m not getting into names. I’m not here knocking anybody. I’m not here to knock that. That’s not the purpose. My thing is, like, a big bore shotgun, for example, is going to have a shorter shot string, so more pellets are going to be on impact. So if you’re shooting at a turkey, you’re shooting at a silhouette target. And I’m showing you this, and I know people listening to us can’t see what I’m showing you here, but, you know, his head is sitting here. So you’re shooting 200 pellets in a ten-inch circle. I’m shooting 400 pellets in a ten-inch circle, just numbers. And so, boom, as it goes through the air, this turkey’s got his head up here. He’s standing still. The first pellets are hitting him. His head goes down, he’s dead. All the rest of the pellets go right over his head. So what difference does it make whether you got 200 or 400 in there? Get a solid pattern. Now let’s go to ducks or geese or something that’s moving left to right and flying. Let’s go to teal that’s really moving on. And you’re out here, and you pull in front of that thing, and you’ve got a short shot string. Well, you either smoked him, or you missed him. If you’ve got a little longer shot string, then what happens is you might be, as long as you’re in front of him, there’s a good chance that that string, as it’s going through the air, is long enough. I’m probably not explaining real good, but it’s, so you shot in front of him. If you’d had that short shot string, you missed him because you shot in front of him. But now that you’ve got a longer shot string, the tail end of that shot string smoked him.

Ramsey Russell: Because, see, that’s the crazy thing. I spent most of my life, and patterning, to me, is a new phenomenon. I’m 58 years old. I was telling you I’m an old geezer. But once in my life, I went out and patterned young to me, and that was when we converted from lead to steel. And you’d go out with them old, advent, antique, old-school shot shells and couldn’t ever get a good pattern, but it was good enough for government work. So we’d go out and shoot.

Rob Roberts: Exactly.

Ramsey Russell: Break, break. If birds were dying, I would pattern just shooting birds. And if they’re winging, tipping a little bit, I might need to tighten up. But it wasn’t until Ball Shot Shell came out with that narrative, you know, “know your pattern, take ethical shots,” that I began to really focus a little bit more on this patterning. Okay, but the thing about a pattern, and you’re talking all around it, that it’s like if I draw a convent, draw this hotel with crayons, like first grade, it’s just one-dimensional. Boom. I shoot, I shoot. I count my BBs and I circle them. I draw a 30-inch circle. Bam. I do it. I count them. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Okay, that’s still. That’s like a crayon color of this hotel. A pattern is not like that. It’s really dimensional from here to there. It’s a string. It’s a start and a finish. It’s a length of shot going out. But now, when I start swinging, trying to catch up with a 40 miles-per-hour duck, now it takes, now it’s gotten real three-dimensional. Not two-dimensional no more. Now it’s three-dimensional. So how does what I’m shooting in a 30-inch circle equate to a three-dimensional object that’s not only, I don’t know how long a shot string is, I’m going to say 20 feet. Now it’s starting to stretch. Let’s say a bird’s coming in right to left. It starts to stretch right to left. Now it’s a real weird shape. How does that translate? And why, I don’t understand that. My mind can’t get around that Rob.

Rob Roberts: It’s kind of telling you why, its taking me toward duck hunting has become a really big passion for me, because there’s so much more to it. And so, yes, you have a shot string, and that’s the one part that is hard. We’ve really not come up with that yet. Technology is getting there today. And I know, I mean, I’ve dealt with the guys at Remington and Federal and these kinds of guys, and Federal is really coming up with some stuff in there where they can take some of the camera work and stuff to take this shot string and put it on there to where they can show in enough slow time that when you’re shooting it through a certain choke. I’ve not got the capabilities or whatever, you know, old timers have tried it, but they’ve never proven it. That shot string is so important. We know that a big bore makes it shorter, but we can’t just turn around and go, all right, look, you’re shooting a Benelli M2, and you’ve got a T2 choke in it, and so your shot string is this long. It’d be nice if we could tell you that. That would help some. That’s going to be at a certain day and age. We’re not there technology-wise to prove that. But once we get there, that’s going to be pretty awesome.

Ramsey Russell: It’s like a pattern to me. If I wanted to really see what my pattern would be, I’m shooting at a target the size of an 18-wheeler trailer, a reefer, and midway through that point, you’re going to throw a target at 35 miles an hour, and I’m going to swing through and shoot at it. Now I’m going to get up and count my BBs and see what I’m looking at. That’s my pattern.

Rob Roberts: You know, some of the old timers actually went out there with, you know, I’ve heard stories back where they actually hooked to them with a PTO on a tractor pulling a big sheet across there and just go boom to see how it spreads out and stuff like that. That’s not what we need. But that does show that, yes, you gotta get in front of it. And what you’ll find is, it’s given us enough that we know the tighter the choke, the longer the shot string, or the tighter the bore, the longer it is. Okay, but is that what you need? That’s another side to it. You gotta have, I don’t know, it’s the wing shooting, Billy. That’s the one X that we’re all looking for, you know, on our side of the table. That’s the one thing that is still out there. For me to give you a bona fide answer on shot string, I don’t have it, and I don’t know that anybody does.

Ramsey Russell: We’re all looking, we’re all thinking.

Rob Roberts: We’re looking at it. But you know, the main thing is there ain’t that many looking, and people need to think about it. And that’s kind of what I was talking about. You gotta take it out here and get, you gotta think about that, because you gotta understand that there is that. And let’s just say, for whatever, six foot, you’re not going to be too far wrong there. Six to eight feet. And so if you’re thinking, okay, every time I shoot this gun, I’m going to have a shot string in there, it’s going to be about six to 8 feet long. So that means if that bird’s coming through here and I’ve got a three-foot lead and, I mean, he’s at 40 yards, blah, blah, blah, you’re probably killing him. And there’s been some things that we played with, I mean, we’re not sponsored by them. I don’t know if we should name their names or anything, but, you know, I see them all the time. I’ve got some of them I played with, like shot cam or something like that, where you can go in and look at those guys. That’s some pretty cool stuff.

Ramsey Russell: I’m going to tell you about a shot cam right now that I was telling a buddy of mine yesterday. Using a shot cam to record kill footage for little Instagram reels that has done more for my shooting.

Rob Roberts: I agree.

Ramsey Russell: Number one, when you turn those crosshairs on, you go, “Whoa.” I was three body lengths in front of that mount at 35 yards. Wow. You know, we were talking before we recorded about that one Mississippi count. If everybody just goes “one Mississippi” and watches that duck, picks that duck, and watches it, then goes through the motions and lets their internal clock do the rest, we’d be a lot better shooters. Following that duck to the ground, just going through that arc, boom, and following it, has made my swing better. I really think just the practice of going through those deliberate motions has made me a better shot, whether I’m filming or not.

Rob Roberts: And, you know, we played around with it. I got a nephew that brought one during dove season. He said, “I bought this thing, I’m going to set it up.” And I said, “Man, you’re getting me with technology. I’m too old, you’d have to hook it up for me.” But hey, you’re on your own. But I want to watch it when you get done. And when I got done, I noticed. And this kid’s 20 years old, 21 at this point, and that’s all he’s ever done, just grew up killing things. And probably ain’t worth killing any of that. And I hope he’s listening. But he’s really hard, like on dove season. And so he took it out, and he dove hunted there two days and was just smoking dove and everything. And I got to notice, and I said, “Well, I can tell you right now, you’re a point shooter.” I said, “That’s all you are, but you’re good at it.” Oh, he just wore them out. But it was so amazing because he was using one of those cams on there that he turned on, and there it is. Here he’s shooting, and this time he’s just pointing the gun and going boom. There was no swinging through or anything else. But I do think if you use some of that technology, oh, I think that’s outstanding.

The Origins of Robert’s Custom Gun Works

But no, it was really grace of God, good dude. 

Ramsey Russell: This kind of conversation makes my imagination run rampant, just thinking about shooting clay targets under light. If I could see my pattern with respect to those targets, that’d be kind of cool. How long have you been doing this? When did Robert’s Custom Gun Work start? When was it, boom, I’m now this shop?

Rob Roberts: I was in there actually working on this stuff, doing everything for 10-12 years prior to it. And in 2006, it was a great year in my life.

Ramsey Russell: So many people beating your door down. You was kind of doing it privately.

Rob Roberts: I was financially embarrassed. Cost a nickel to defecate; I would have had to throw up. But at that point, I think I tell people this still today, I had $248 in my pocket.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Rob Roberts: I had a daughter in high school and a daughter starting college, and it was like, “This ain’t good.”

Ramsey Russell: No pressure.

Rob Roberts: No, I mean, it was like, okay. And I said, no, we’re going to move this. And so we started a little shop behind my house. And like I said, that was in 2006, and by the grace of God, I mean, it’s just, the good Lord shined on Heather, and it just kind of grew. I had a guy come in out of North Carolina. He said, “Man, I love what you’re doing.” I said, “Man, I’m sorry it took so long to get to you, but it’s kind of like me, you know, by myself.” And he goes, “Man, I wish I could help you.” And he was, he was a guy I’ve only met one time in my life. He was like, “Hey, dude, I’m going to send you some money in the morning. You need to get this going.”

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Rob Roberts: Oh, absolutely. Put chill bumps on you. And he did. And then he sent me another one and another one. And it was like, “What do you want?” He said, “Oh, nothing. I just want to help a man out.” And that was the boost that we needed.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Rob Roberts: And from that, it grew.

Ramsey Russell: Like an angel investor? Somebody that believed in you enough to say, “Hey, I know you need.” Wow.

Rob Roberts: Yeah. It was awesome as that went on. To this day, if I go out here and get in a car wreck, go get my wallet, because there’s at least $248. I’ll carry it to the beach with me. I’ll have $248 with me at all times. But no, it was really grace of God, good dude. Haven’t talked to him in years, and it’s like, “Hey, I don’t need none. Hey, we’re good.” Any young guy, good Lord sent him.

Ramsey Russell: That really and truly would have been right about the time, plus or minus a few years, right about the time that I talked with Terry Denmon. I know Mojo was working with you on their little aftermarket chokes. And Terry was trying to explain to me, we were down in Argentina duck hunting, and we were shooting those chokes and shooting those guns. And he kept on trying to explain, but I don’t know if he didn’t understand or that I couldn’t understand what he was explaining because the man is too smart sometimes.

Rob Roberts: Oh, Terry’s brilliant. And Mike Morgan, remember Mike? Mike came in, and Mike was just super. And I asked him, I said, “You know, Terry, come talk to us about something.” I said, “Is he real about this?”

Ramsey Russell: I took a shortcut one time, like traveling in these other countries that use Celsius. Which I’m going to tell you all, metric makes a lot better sense than what we do over here. But I just memorized it. I couldn’t do the math, but I memorized 1.9. If you break it down, 1.9 times Celsius plus 32. So if I look and it’s ten degrees, okay, it’s 52 degrees Fahrenheit. I just need to know that.

Rob Roberts: That’s awesome. Yeah.

Experiencing the Rob Roberts Patterning Difference

Ramsey Russell: And Terry made the comment one time, I’m going to his smarts here. Now, the man can, for a man that’s only got ten fingers, he’s pretty smart with numbers. And I told him, man, he goes, no, no, no, there’s no direct correlation. I go, of course, it is exactly 1.9. I’m dumb enough, I say two times instead of 1.9. And the man got quiet for about 32 seconds. Then he goes, oh, well, of course it is, because water boils at this and something, something, and he cross-multiplied in his head. I’m like, wow, the man’s smart, but he’s trying to explain something. So here’s what I’m getting at. So about that same time, I came home from Argentina and took my beloved Super 90 Benelli that I had shot for ten years. And so I’m going to send it to this man. I called you up, and I asked you, I said, hey, I want to send this gun to you. What do you do to it? You said something about lengthening a forcing cone is where we started. What does that do? And I’m going to say this. Watch what you said. You said, “Ramsey, a man that hunts and shoots as much as you are,” and you went through a big, long blackboard explanation of what this was going to do to my pattern. But then you said, and all I can tell you is a guy that shoots as much as you do, you’re going to notice it in the first box of shells. So I grabbed my gun, Forrest’s gun. I sent it off to you. He had an M2, got him redone. We went out dove hunting. A few weeks after we got them back, he didn’t know he’d done anything with his gun. He just got his gun out of the box, and off we go. And I was the first man off the field. Bam. I shot great. And it ain’t that I shot great, it’s that the doves died. They died. And as I’m still folding up mojos and putting everything together, getting ready to hit the dirt, here comes Forrest. “What’d you do to my gun?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I’ve never shot that good.” And we were the first two people out of field. What is the long and short explanation? Because I think that’s one of the cornerstones. If a man doesn’t do anything with his gun, and he sent it, Rob Roberts, get his forcing cone lengthened. But why? What is that doing to my, to these patterns and to this stuff we’re talking about? What’s going on?

Rob Roberts: Well, you know, in today’s world, a lot of these new guns you’re getting, a lot of guns, Browning, Remington, some of these that are American guns, they’re actually taking care of that before you’re buying the gun now. They’re getting them out of it. So that kind of proves the point that, hey, somebody was listening there. And all your European stuff still has those in play. And, you know, years past, what they did was they had a forcing cone in there, which is kind of like a wind gate in your barrel. It’s past your chamber, so it looks like an O-ring if you ever look down the inside of it. It’s not an O-ring, but that’s what it looks like. And so when your gun went off in the older days and older shells and all that, you had plastic wads and all this stuff, and it had to conform and everything. So when it, when the shell would open, boom, it goes off slow motion. The shell opens, this wad cup goes through it, kind of formed, did all that kind of stuff. Well, we’re not in that world anymore. Nobody’s using those kinds of wad cups and stuff. You’re going in here, so actually in a lot of guns today, especially European model guns, you’re coming in, you’re getting distortion out of it. You don’t need that in there. So what we did was, we started playing with it. And a lot of people, a lot of backyard guys, are going in and calling some places like Midway, I’m not knocking anybody. I’m just saying they go buy a reamer, and they go, hey, we’re going to take them out. We’re going to cut your cones. We’re going to do this, we’re going to do that. All right. Well, there’s a little more to it than buying a forcing cone reamer and just going in there and cutting them out and then trying to polish them back or whatever. And that’s all important. There’s a thing called piloting it in. You got to make sure when you set this all up that it’s not wobbling around there, it’s not bulging the barrel. It’s not doing this. You’re taking sure it well.

Ramsey Russell: I am sure it’s a fake mode serial number of shotgun manufacturers slightly different?

Rob Roberts: Well, it does, and it all boils on bore diameters. It’s kind of like you talked about millimeters and stuff like that. You know, on a lot of guns, you can look in, especially, let’s say, Benelli or Beretta or something like that. You can pull it up, and it’ll say on there, you know, we used to look, if you don’t have a bore mic, you can pull it up and say, what’s that 17.4 millimeters mean? Well, that’s, you know, 700, It’s 0.722 inches. You know, it goes into that thing. But at the end of the day, you would take these out, and we pilot the bores front and back. So when it goes in, it cuts it, it’s taking that completely out at the right length and all that. And I’m not going to go into a bunch of that. We kind of like to stay alone on how we do it, but at the end of the day, it’s taking back pressure off what’s going on. So a lot of people will, you know, a lot of the clay shooters will do forcing cones just to take some recoil off their shoulders so they can shoot more targets. They’re shooting 100, 200, 300, whatever during the day, they’re shooting these guns, boom, boom, boom, boom. So they wanted the felt recoil out of it. But what we were also seeing is it was bringing a lot of strays in the pattern back into the pattern. It was taking a lot of distortion, certain shells, this and that. And so there was never a negative side.

Ramsey Russell: Was that just you sitting in your backyard reaming a little bit and shooting a little bit and just dialing it in and figuring this out over a period of time?

Rob Roberts: Yes, some but it was also being around these, what I said, these shooters. I’m with these guys, like, oh, yeah, I’m going to do that because I’ve noticed I broke more targets, or I did this, or I had people like, hey, man, I’m getting way less recoil by doing it. I’m going to do it to my guns. I want this doing that. And so I just paid attention. And it was like 10-12 years of being in that and being with the guys that are the bomb. These guys are the shooters. And so learning from them, and it’s like, you know what? Nobody’s taking this into the hunting world, and I don’t want to be in the target world. I want to be in the hunting world. I want to shoot things. I know, politically incorrect again, but I want to take it into that world. And that’s, that’s what I did back then. And it’s been great ever since.

Ramsey Russell: Lengthen the forcing cone. What are some of the other treatments? Because when I get a brand new shotgun, it goes to Rob Roberts. And I’m not just saying it because I like Rob, I’m saying it because the proof is in the performance. I just want a Rob Roberts gun. I guarantee the forcing cone’s going to be lengthened. I’ll start with check box number two, Cerakoting. You all were doing graphic films, you probably still are, but then you mastered Cerakoting. Well, what is Cerakote? I like it because I’m not my granddaddy. I don’t come home after every hunt and break out the WD-40 to go through every nut and bolt in the shotgun. If it starts throwing stuff, my eyes are slowing down, I’m going to clean it. And the Cerakote keeps the rust off, keeps it going good. But on the practical side, I can point to a wall of 100 guns and say, “That’s my gun.” I like to personalize it, but what is Cerakote, really, practically?

Rob Roberts: It’s a great product. I mean, it was one of those things. We did other things, and we still do, you know, dipping and all this kind of stuff. We were never into the bluing spectrum because it’s so dangerous. You know, you walk in a room or something, you’re not supposed to be in that room with all the chemicals and everything. You walk in there, you die. So it was like, nah and plus, we weren’t good at it. You’ve got people that can watch her and blue a gun, and it looks just brilliant. There aren’t that many out there, but the few places that do it are fantastic. And they’re the ones that need to do it; we’re not those guys. Cerakote was something we started playing with, and it’s grown into a monster. No bigger than we are, we’ve got two Cerakote buildings. I can’t tell exactly how many employees, but we’ve got double figures on employees with ovens. We just added a new building, actually we got new building, and it has eight ovens in it. The other one had five, because we’re trying to speed up the process since we do a lot of OEM stuff,  and lot of factories. You know, Benelli, we’ve done a ton with Benelli and stuff like that. It’s even on the graphic side of it, you know, if you’re going to dip a gun or do this or that, the main thing is to do it right. You know, we love it. Well, we don’t love it.

What is Cerakote?

I’m just saying, we strip them down to the bare metal, then we do our thing, degrease, Cerakote, and bake it on. 

Ramsey Russell: What is Cerakote? I mean, is it Teflon? What is it? I don’t know anything about it. I just know it’s a cool color, and it doesn’t rust.

Rob Roberts: It’s kind of like a two-part epoxy that people put on their concrete floors. It’s a ceramic coating of paint.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Rob Roberts: It’s a mixture-type thing, but it’s a two-part. Basically, when you put this on, we take a gun and completely strip it down, every spring, everything in that gun comes down to the bare minimum. So, you know, we have people say, “Hey, can you do it?” It doesn’t matter what it is, whatever’s on it. It’s like, even if there are other coatings, we’ve stripped them down to the bare metal, put them in, and do it. People do that. I get it. I’m just saying, we strip them down to the bare metal, then we do our thing, degrease, Cerakote, and bake it on. And like, a lot of these colors and designs and everything, people think, “Golly, that’s a lot of money to do that.” There’s a lot of work that goes into that.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of work. Because it wasn’t too long ago, Rob, not too far before the pandemic, which is like yesterday, that it came in a couple, two or three flavors. Go to you all’s website down. I mean, it’s more than Baskin Robbins, man. I mean, and you all are still developing stuff.

Rob Roberts: Oh, we’ve got four or five guys up here, and it’s like they get on drugs and go psychedelic on us at times. But no, it’s just trying different colors. You’ve got to stay ahead of the game. You’ve got to come up with new stuff.

Ramsey Russell: It’s so personalized those guns, you know it’s like, If I read the names of some of these Cerakote patterns and stuff you got, it reflects, a zip code of a collection of hunters.

Rob Roberts: You know, one of our most popular ones, Bayou View, that’s one of the most popular. And it’s because it’s like, “Well, if you’re in Bayou View, what would it look like?” Try this one, this and this one. And Ryan and some of these boys here, Hunter now. And we’ve got guys, Cory, and these are just guys at the shop that do this kind of stuff back and forth. It’s like, let’s try this color with that color with this over here. Okay, yeah, let’s do that. We’ve done different names, different things. You know, if you come up here, and let’s say, I know you like Sitka, so you come in here and say, “Hey, what about marsh?” Well, we take those marsh colors, and we put them in. It’s like, “Okay, it looks like marsh.” Well, what about Mossy Oak Bottomland? That’s a huge one for us.

Ramsey Russell: Oh boy, you better believe it.

Rob Roberts: So we turn around and go, “All right, look, what about Realtree?” Well, hey, look here. This is a color. And so we started matching it with, because we dip all of those things, Netgear, you know? “Hey, what about Netgear? What would you put with that?” Well, this right here blends with it, and we like to color coordinate. I know that sounds a little different coming from a guy like me, but I’m one of those guys. You don’t wear polka dots with stripes like that guy we saw at the hotel earlier. It looked like Ray Charles dressed him this morning. I said, “What is up with that guy?” But we are in Baton Rouge. It’s funny, this is a great place. I can’t wait to go.

Ramsey Russell: Okay, it’s almost, I’m going to check another box. Polish the action. Is that a new gun treatment only, or would you do that with other guns?

Rob Roberts: That’s your new gun stuff. You can do it on your own.

Ramsey Russell: What is that really doing?

Rob Roberts: What you’re doing is putting pre-wear into it. And when they say, “Well, I don’t want to wear my gun up from the start”, no, it’s actually making sure there’s no burrs or anything rough. It ensures this thing goes off. If your life depends on this gun, you want it to go off smooth.

Ramsey Russell: All these firearms are being mass-produced. There could be a little click, little ditch, little ding. Okay, I get you.

Rob Roberts: And so, you know, if you’ve had a gun, especially how you use one, after a year, you’ve polished the parts in that gun.

Ramsey Russell: Are you done? Especially. This is literally the way I feel. I feel bad, people are going to buy my, but it’s the truth. I’ve got a Benelli. I start shooting it. It’s got powder. At some point in time, it starts slowing down. Squirt, squirt, more oil. You know what I’m saying? And it keeps rolling. And if I’m out in the boonies and don’t have oil handy, water. Water will make it work, baby. But still, it’s got that little, you know, you got that powder, that stuff in there, and I feel like it’s just polishing for me. It’s like putting on an old pair of blue jeans.

Rob Roberts: It’s sandpaper. At the end of the day, if you’re shooting it enough and you’ve got enough of that powder and stuff building up there, that grit, and that’s one of the beauty parts about Benelli, Beretta’s always been that way, too. They like oil. They always tell you to shoot them dry, no oil, you don’t have time. I’m nitpicky, and I’ve got, it’s real easy to take a gun apart and put it back together.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Rob Roberts: But at the end of the day, squirt, you know, like, for instance, I like it like a G96 type.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Rob Roberts: I’ve used it for 100 years, it seems.

Ramsey Russell: Me too.

Rob Roberts: Open action. Squirt some in, work that bolt a few times. You ready to go hunting again in the morning?

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Rob Roberts: And until you start seeing some surface rust, don’t worry about it.

A Unique Waterfowl Hunting Gun

Whatever my imagination says you all got that you all can come up with. And I do love, I love, love, love that new old-school marsh pattern you all have come up with on cerakote.

Ramsey Russell: If it finally gets so caked up it just ain’t performing, then I’m on. That’s why I like Benelli. I can take it apart. It’s like the straight six we were talking about. Anybody can take it apart and put it back together. And then you’ve got the trigger. Because those are the four keystones I’m going to get done. I’m going to take, I’m going to send you a black gun. It’s going to get cerakoted. Whatever my imagination says you all got that you all can come up with. And I do love, I love, love, love that new old-school marsh pattern you all have come up with on cerakote. I love it. But then I get the trigger done, and I can remember somewhere, for some reason, I didn’t check the box for trigger work. And I was down in Argentina this year, and I swapped guns six weeks into the trip, and that afternoon was hell. I guarantee that was that trigger that hadn’t been tuned. And I promptly took it out and put my old trigger in. I like that. What are you doing with that trigger, and why?

Rob Roberts: And certain guns are different. You know, let’s say for a gas-operated gun, a Browning, a Winchester, Remington, Beretta, whatever it gets, we’re going to take those guns down. You don’t want to take them like a rifle trigger. So we’re going to take them down to, like, a three-and-a-half-pound pull, take the creep out, and just make it a good crisp trigger. So when you pull up, you know, people notice it, especially turkey guys who never do stuff like that. You know, they’re not wing shooters, or not. I say they’re not, but a lot of them are.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a totally different sport.

Rob Roberts: But it’s a different sport. But a lot of guys like me, I’m going to hunt it all. But some of those guys are like, “Well, that trigger on old daddy’s old such-and-such is fine.” Well, no, actually it ain’t. ‘Cause you’re going to miss left and right because you got a terrible trigger. Whether you’re shooting right hand, left hand, or whatever the case may be. It’s gonna, I think that came up on why Trump got shot in the air. You know, it was like, bad trigger pull. We’re not going there, but I’m just saying, crisp trigger. He probably, you know, thank God he had a bad trigger.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Rob Roberts: But where I’m going with that, though, is like, okay, like a Benelli’s inertia gun. So we can take it down to three and a half, three and three-quarter type pull, but we’re going to have to leave a little creep in it because if it don’t have creep, because that gun functions off inertia, it’ll double-fire on you. So if you go on a gas gun which doesn’t have that situation, you can get them a little cleaner. Now, that’s not to say that the gas gun is better than inertia. We’re not going into that argument. But that’s the deal with triggers. And so, yes, when you take it down and you get that trigger from a six, seven-pound trigger, which a lot of factory triggers will come with, you take it down to a three and a half-pound pull. What people notice is when they pull up and they go, boom, it went off when they were thinking it needs to go off not. And so they got crisper, cleaner kills, they’re shot, it boosts their confidence. It’s like, alright, I didn’t like it. You know, a lot of guys would go out and go, “Oh, man, that first couple times, I was a little early.” It’s kind of like we talked earlier about the guy that jumps out of the blind and goes, and it’s like ducks are now ready to shoot.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Rob Roberts: And so that comes back into play. Good, crisp trigger. Your kill ratio goes up.

Ramsey Russell: It really does. It was like my timing was off going to a stock trigger, which are great triggers if that’s what you shoot. But my timing was off after a million trigger pulls shooting a tuned trigger. And I went right back to that tuned trigger. Brought that trigger up here to hand it off. Ryan said, “Hey, here you go. I need some love.” And what originated one of the first, there’s three things I’m going to ask you about, one of the first little accoutrements. I’ll call it the slammer button. Where’d you all come up with that? I mean, that’s a Rob, Robert boom. “I need a bigger slammer button,” and I need a longer charging bar.

Rob Roberts: We played it. The charging bars kind of go back and forth because they’re handy. The slammer button was really good because you could go boom, boom, boom, and grab a shell, boom. You know, it was just so much quicker. It was just, once again, it’s like you shot three, but boy, if he was good enough, you could go boom, boom, boom and catch that fourth one on the way out, even though you, I don’t know what we were shooting. Let’s say it was dove, because you know you don’t do that, like, on ducks or whatever. You want to make sure you stay legal, but you want to be able to get that other shot. You may miss the first three, and you want to kill one on the way out. Is that politically correct?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Rob Roberts: Okay. Okay. I just want to make sure we were still there.

Ramsey Russell: We want to see.

Rob Roberts: I didn’t want you to think I was doing something wrong.

Ramsey Russell: No, no, buddy, let me tell you what. I want that four shot legal.

Rob Roberts: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: If I want duck 0-1-2-3-4-5, I got to get my six ducks, and let’s face it, there’s no guarantee that another flock’s coming in that day. So, yeah, that’s how that slammer button, originally it was. Let’s figure out what we could do.

Rob Roberts: And so we started playing with the different mechanisms, which we’re still working on some of them, we’re having to change because, you know, there were other companies coming in and saying, Hey, we’ll do them on your. And I’m not picking on any company now. I’m just saying, okay, well, you know, let’s say a Browning has a different mechanism than the Beretta, the Benelli, this and that. So, you can go ahead and drill and tap and come up with and we’re doing this. We’re going to actually make them for other stuff and different designs and stuff for these other guns. We just never really did prior to because I didn’t really want to see you having to drill and tap the button to put it on and hold it together. We wanted to build the full, solid button that went in that way. It’s not going to break on you in the field because, you know, a lot of those others with a screw come loose, you drop the button. Now you can’t, you know, and I didn’t really want to get into that, but, you know, we’re eventually going to get there because we get so much call for it because a guy would rather say, “Hey, I’d like for the possibility of that to screw up sometime and have it work these other four seasons,” you know what I mean? And be able to get that off. So that’s something we are, it’s going to be available through us. But that’s where that came from. So we were making those. You know, I think actually Beretta was the first one we came up with. And then we really worked hard because we were so big with Benelli and doing stuff with them. They’ve been a great partner of ours forever. And so it was, we wanted to get it, and then we figured out how to get it.

Ramsey Russell: And the last little accoutrement I’m going to ask you about, never seen it before until I just got a gun last week from you all. And when I took it out, I looked at it and showed it. I’m like, did Benelli change the trigger on this thing? It was something over the trigger, something different you all did that wide thing on. And I looked at it.

Rob Roberts: We stuck a trigger shoe on you.

Ramsey Russell: And dude, I’m going to tell you what, I like it with a big old clumsy finger like mine. I love it. What is that doing?

Rob Roberts: Now certain, the trigger shoes are a love-hate situation.

Ramsey Russell: Trigger shoe.

Customization for Left- and Right-Handed Shooters

And so what we do is we build these and they’re ambidextrous because we put Allen sets on, well we put it on so that you can flip it left or right. So if you’re a left-handed shooter, you put the Allen sets on the right. If you’re right-handed, put it on the other. Cause it squeezes in.

Rob Roberts: Trigger shoes. That was something we didn’t invent or anything like that. I’d seen them way back in the circuit. And then we did it how we felt they should have been. That was something that I don’t know even who came up with it way, a 100 years ago, but you hadn’t seen them. Nobody was doing them. It’s like, man, I love these. And so what we do is we build these and they’re ambidextrous because we put Allen sets on, well we put it on so that you can flip it left or right. So if you’re a left-handed shooter, you put the Allen sets on the right. If you’re right-handed, put it on the other. Cause it squeezes in. And what this does is it’s a fatter trigger. First off, you can feel it. So, like, if you’re out there and it’s ten degrees and it’s freezing rain and it’s cold and it’s whatever, you’re still feeling your trigger. You’re not missing out on your trigger. And especially, like, on your Benelli side, it’s kind of sucking up a little creep when you pull it down. And a lot of people go in, it’s like, man, I can feel my trigger no matter how cold it is. I know I don’t shoot with a glove on my finger. I just can’t do it. I know there’s people who do it. I can’t do it. I gotta have skin on the trigger. So I might have the best gloves in the world on, but I’ll have this finger cut out, or this one will be stuck somewhere until time to shoot. But I gotta feel it. You gotta feel that trigger, and that allows it. And like I said, it just makes it a crisp trigger. I mean, it’s just… it’s just like a quick fix on a lot of times, if it’s not going to make your trigger pull any lighter, but it’ll suck up the creep.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. I’m looking forward to trying it. You know, I looked at it, and it came with a little Allen wrench tape at all.

Rob Roberts: You might hate it.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t think so, Rob. I walked around the house and showed it. I said, I kind of like this. So I’m in.

Rob Roberts: I’ve actually put them on rifles.

Ramsey Russell: I’m going to take it off if I don’t like it, but I like it, at a glance, I like it, haven’t shot it yet. We don’t know which came first because I sent my gun, I shot the doves. I was liking what Rob Roberts Custom Gunworks did to my old Super 90, and that made me a Benelli fan forever. And then one day, I guarantee over here to show, I’m going to go, Rob through that Benelli booth. I love walking through there and finding all them pretty toys. But one day, I was at, I think, Dallas Ford Club and walked in the booth and looked around. I go, what is that? I saw some I ain’t never recognized. And I walked up and there was a Rob Roberts Performance Shop Benelli. Now, which came first? Did you develop some of these technologies and put this all together? And then Benelli came to you, or was that relationship with Benelli driving that?

A Perfect Partnership with Benelli

And like I said, our relationship with Benelli has always been just spot on. They’ve been fantastic.

Rob Roberts: It was funny. It started with a fight on the phone. Back in the day, you know, when I was telling you I had $248. I called this guy, and I said, you know, I’d like to get some Benelli parts because I want to be able to do some of this stuff, you know, and it’s me. And this guy goes, you can’t do that, but you can talk to this guy. So he puts me with this guy, and I said, I’d like to do this and this to a gun. And he’s like, no, you can’t do that. And so why can’t I? He said, you can’t do that. I said, let me get this straight. And I’m talking real big for a guy with $248. I said, so you’re telling me if I went here, you know, I’m in Arkansas, if I went down here to Fort Thompson’s or D and W or Max Prairie Wings and I buy a Benelli gun and I bring that to my shop and I do this work right here to it, that I can’t sell that gun? He goes, no, no, you can’t do that. I said, why not? This guy’s not with Benelli anymore. But he is in the industry. But he’s not there anymore. And he’s a great guy, but at the time, he was POS with me at that time. But it’s like, huh, I said, you’re telling me I can’t do it? He said, no, you cannot do that. I said, well, you stand back and watch. I said, yeah, hold my beer here. I’ve got $248. I can’t even afford to buy a Benelli or a beer. Yeah, I mean, I gotta feed the kids. So I end up, I go down and takes me a couple months there, and I buy a Benelli, and I bring it to my shop and do the cones, do the porting, do this, do that, and we weren’t even doing the dipping then. I went in and had a guy dip it, and it was actually dipped in Nat Gear, and it came in because that was an Arkansas company at the time. I said, I’m on sports. Here we go. And I put this all together, and I end up and I go to the NWTF, like, a year later, and this guy walks by, and he goes, I got to ask you something about that gun. I’m sitting there with, like, one little plastic table. I’m handing out cards, and back then I called it Gobber Guns. You know, some people may remember that. I don’t know. It’s like, hey, there’s one of them, I can’t do ducks gun yet. I gotta work on a turkey gun, you know? And so a guy comes by, and he looks at it, and he goes, hey, do you do all this? Yeah, man. What do you do? And I did force cones, here’s where I ported, there’s a choke tubes built, and I took this and that I did, and pattern tested it, and I put this sight on, and here’s, you know, blah, blah, blah what it did. And the guy goes, it’s pretty good. He said, can you do that for us? There’s one guy standing there, and it’s like, sure, us. And he tells me the name. I won’t mention it like that. And he said, I’m with Benelli, USA. I said, and here comes, you know my first time in life, I shut up and went, how are you doing? How are you?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Rob Roberts: And he said, yeah. He said, yeah, I’m interested in talking to you about.

Ramsey Russell: He may have been from Missouri, the show-me state.

Rob Roberts: But it was like, here you go. And he goes, 10:00 tomorrow. Would you come by? And went by. And he sat down there, and it was really good because he was an innovator on that type. He was in charge of their stuff, and he had the idea. And even though me and him had butted heads, he was a good enough guy. He came back, and he goes, hey, look, I want to talk to you about that. And so we sit down and talk about and he goes, I like that. I’m going to send you, I think it was like three or five guns. And then it started off, and it was like 25 guns.

Ramsey Russell: Now, were they doing something with these guns or were they just like for sale.

Rob Roberts: He want to start and he actually coming in, he goes, I’d like to go, would you have a problem if we call this the Benelli Performance Shop and you do this stuff for us.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Rob Roberts: Absolutely not. Let’s do that. And so it was like, you know, 25, now 100, and now 500 you know, it just went to that, and it really grew, and it took off. And once it hit to the point were and we hit the waterfowl side of it, and these guys were going down there, it became like, to be honest with you, it was their most popular gun, today it’s what is going on because of the waterfowl gun, and it was really going. And like I said, our relationship with Benelli has always been just spot on. They’ve been fantastic.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Rob Roberts: Good folks and everything. But it’s funny because it started off as a butt heads type of thing.

Ramsey Russell: Well, some of my best friends growing up, we got in scraps on the playground. That’s just how boys are.

Rob Roberts: That’s it. You gotta get in a fight once or bust each other up, and you’re hooked up. Your best friends for life.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. That’s right.

Rob Roberts: And that’s how we’ve been with them ever since, and it’s been a great, great ride.

Ramsey Russell: You know, when I got that first gun done, you also married that up with a Rob Roberts T2. And I said, what is it? Because at the time, I knew this was, man, I’m talking steel shot. That was steel shot days. If I wasn’t in a foreign country, I was shooting steel shot. And I’ll say it. I don’t have anything against Federal Blue Box fours or threes. I mean, I shot, that was my load. It was cheap. I bought it at Rogers. So, I want to ask you about these chokes. And I remember asking you, you said, “Well, you need that T2 because you shoot those ounce-and-a-quarter, #3 steel shot loads.” And I knew I had gone to an improved modified choke and I got the patterns I wanted. Well, the T2 is kind of sort of like that. It ain’t really this, it ain’t really that, but it’s going to perform like that. What was going on? What was your T1, T2, T3, and where were you coming from? I guess was it steel shot, or maybe all shot? But why the choke, and how did it jive with what you were doing to the barrels?

Rob Roberts: Okay, one of the things on chokes, you know, and it’s not one of these things that, people have their own ways of thinking, you need this, this, this. What we tried to do when we started the T series or when I did it, I don’t know. I’m not a smart guy, you can already tell that by listening to me. But at that point, I spent hours thinking, and I really wasn’t like an Edgar Allan Poe where I was on drugs or heroin or anything like that. It just came into a different way of looking at it because a lot of guys were, you know, I’m still old school. So you had a guy that goes, “Look, I’m going to use an improved cylinder lead choke, but when I go to shooting ducks, I gotta go to an improved cylinder steel choke.”

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Rob Roberts: You know, I’m still from back in that day. I wanted to get rid of that. So, what we would find is, most of the time, by going out here and patterning these guns, it would take two or three chokes to make your gun, you know. Okay, I’m going to go shoot skeet, okay, I want a skeet choke. I want something, you know, like a T1. I’m going to shoot quail. Now, I’m going to dove and all that. But as this has transitioned, we’ve even gotten farther into it, where you don’t need two or three chokes, you don’t need four or five chokes. I got tired of going to a sporting place, watching a guy walk up and look at a target and go, he’s measuring in his mind, and he’s thinking, and he doesn’t know. He just, and I shouldn’t say that, I’m probably insulting somebody who does that. But at the end of the day, I want to see what the gun likes. So, when we were taking these machines and we were going in there, and patterning guns, and patterning and patterning and patterning, we found out that not all guns, Benelli was an easy one because they liked one choke for dang near everything, and that’s about it. You get a Browning with a bigger bore, it likes two chokes. Berettas and Remingtons, they’re kind of in the middle, they like two or three chokes. You know, they kind of mix it up. But we wanted to get it to where it was, now, as far as a choke tube, and I’m going to say this: you know, we’ve had people in disgust come in and say, “You know, your chokes, we see other people that have really smooth chokes. They’re slick on the inside, they’re this, they’re that, they’re blah, blah, blah.” Well, I went back a little farther, and if you’ll do research on any kind of shotgun ballistics and all that, I’m a dummy, but I’m not completely stupid. And I can read at times, but it was like, so I tested what some of these old scuff chokes from back in the 1800s would do. We found that, you know, people come in and say, “Well, why aren’t your chokes as smooth on the inside as some of these others?” It’s because we don’t want them smooth. We’re actually bead-blasting the inside. We’re roughing the inside of these chokes.

Ramsey Russell: And what does that do? 

The Secret to a 10% Bigger Shot Pattern

 He shot it ten more times. We came up with a 10.1% increase in pattern.

Rob Roberts: What you’re going to find is it gives a little enough tug. And this, which is gonna, this is a transition that really got into when we went through our triple threat series, that’s been working great for 20 years or whatever. And this new Raptor, it was like, all right, all these years of whatever it’s come to play, and this choke kicks it. And it’s like, we’re not going to tell you this is the greatest choke in the world. You can find out for yourself or whatever. And I’m not telling you this to try to sell it to you or the audience or anything else. It’s like, fine. But the idea of this is like, we took a choke and, I don’t know, you remember a guy named Keith Anderson? He worked ballistic, Singapore and all that stuff. Keith’s a good friend; I grew up with him playing baseball. We had a love-hate relationship. You know, we’d give each other a kidney at the time, but it’s the same thing. Whatever he said, “You’re wrong.” And whatever I said, he’d say, “No, you’re wrong.” But I still don’t get it. He’s still in there. We got grandkids and all that kind of stuff. I still know him, but at that same point, I took him one day, and I said, “All right, we got a Benelli shotgun here with a factory choke.” “Yep.” I said, “Here’s a box of shells, and I can’t remember what box of shells it was. Take this box and go out there. I want ten patterns. Boom, boom, boom. Ten shots. I want you to shoot it.” He said, “All right, factory choke, factory improved cylinder, Benelli choke.” And I think we were shooting them at 30 yards, I think that’s where it was. I said, “Okay, shoot ‘em.” Boom, boom, boom. I said, “All right.” He said, “Well, I said, I’m not looking for point of impact. I’m looking for ten shots on the paper, holes in the paper. Here’s where the pattern is, here’s a percentage, here’s how many pellets in the load, here’s the exact, here’s where it comes to.” He got it. I said, “Alright, come back in. I want you to do this. I said, because you’re going to think I’m full of crap because he’s going to argue with me, and it’s great. I said, “Now take that choke out of that gun, stick it, and put it in rubber jaws right there in a vise. I gave him a rat tail file. I said, “All right, now I want you to go inside this choke tube, and I want you to just scar it up, go nuts on it.” He goes, “What’s wrong with you?” And I said, “Just do it.” So he’s just tearing inside this choke up, and he’s scuffing it up back and forth. And he said, “What? What’s this proving?” I said, “Just do what I’m saying. We’re going to run a test right here.” I said, “All right, same box of shells, same gun, screw the choke back in, let’s walk back out, same, same everything. Shoot it ten more times.” He shot it ten more times. We came up with a 10.1% increase in pattern.

Ramsey Russell: Holy cow.

Rob Roberts: And he’s like, “Okay, now, here’s what was good,” because he knew enough about ballistics and shotguns and shooting and targets and all this kind of stuff. They turned around, and he goes, “All right.” He said, “So you’re telling me you got 10% better pattern by scuffing the inside of this choke?”

Ramsey Russell: Why?

Rob Roberts: I said, “Absolutely. You just pulled the trigger on it.” He said, “Okay. All I got to do is go from an improved cylinder to modified.” I said, “Man, that’s a great argument. Super argument. You’re right.” I said, “But now, here’s where my madness comes in.” I said, “All right, now you come back, let’s say, because he’s a big turkey guy.” And I said, “Okay, let’s go on the turkey side. All right, now, you come in, and this gun, you’ve watched where we shoot a choke through that gun, and it’s a,  a 604, 65655, 666, 665, 670 constriction. And you see that this gun loves a 655 constriction.”

Ramsey Russell: Yep.

Rob Roberts: You’re there. If you go 660, it’s worse. If you go 650, it’s worse. Yep. I said, “Now, I add 10% to that.” He goes, “Okay.” I said, “That’s what I’m saying. Once you find that sweet spot of what that gun loves,” and that’s like you keep talking about, you know, you talk about the T2, okay? That Benelli loves that T2.

Ramsey Russell: With teel shot.

Rob Roberts: It Loves it on.

Ramsey Russell: I have done that, but now, okay, because it’s all about the confidence factor and this is getting to it, because, uh, I love the T2. I ate to wonder, then it ain’t leaving that gun. It stayed in there. It’s all I shot. I got back from Argentina shooting ounce, ounce, and 1/8 load, killed, watching lots of ducks die, no problem. And went up there to Michigan and met those Boss boys. And old Brandon said, “Well, let’s go.” I’m like, “I don’t think I need a 70% pattern at 40 yards to kill a duck myself.” But we go up there, and we go up there and shoot the box and bang off shooting, like, a 39% pattern. And long story short, when I put that factory mod, 55, 60%, millions of ducks. And that Raptor series, it sounds like to me, talking to some of you people might be where I need to start transitioning, shooting, or that biz choke. What’s going on now? Because you’ve gone from the T series to the Raptor and something else type series, because a lot’s changed since I first met you, Rob. We’ve got all kinds of ammo at our disposal. And then here, I’m a guy that, I mean, it’s hard to go from shooting ounce and 1/4 ball shot shells forward all the time to whatever they hand me in some foreign country, which could be an ounce, ounce, and 1/8. Who knows what the quality is? You know what I’m saying? I can’t travel with a box of chokes.

Rob Roberts: I’ll take the conversation from the T series into the Raptor and then the Raptor into bismuth.

Ramsey Russell: All right, let’s go there.

Rob Roberts: Because that’s kind of where you’re going with this. And so because bismuth is, it’s a little different game because you can shoot it. And personally, if I’m shooting bismuth, if I’m shooting bismuth, I’m shooting a biz choke.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Rob Roberts: I’ll argue with all of them on that stuff.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a one-fits-all.

Bismuth Choke Design and Performance

You know, but you got to do that. So, yeah, our “biz,” what we call the “biz choke,” is a whole lot tighter than the T2, and we’re not getting the fragmentation or tearing up or all that. We’re getting results with it, with all of it. And we shoot all of them.

Rob Roberts: No, you. It’s not for every shooter, though, because a lot of guys, you’re shooting it. I think you’re going to go to it because Bismuth is something you can squeeze down and make. That’s why you’re hammering with it, because you can squeeze it down, and you’re putting tight pedals, so you’re putting more pellets. You know, but you got to do that. So, yeah, our “biz,” what we call the “biz choke,” is a whole lot tighter than the T2, and we’re not getting the fragmentation or tearing up or all that. We’re getting results with it, with all of it. And we shoot all of them. I mean, it’s like whoever’s… And we’re shooting them, and then, man, we’re getting great patterns with it. But go back to the transition from the T series into the Rapture series. What we got into is like, okay, this is working. And this started off on one of my crazy things because, you know, like I said, I think I’ve got mental problems. But the deal is, I was back from one of my gator hunts. I go out, and I’m on a twelve-hour drive back. I’ve just been out whacking gators. And the guy I hunt with is an old-timer, and he’s got a huge number of gator tags. And it’s just really awesome because I really love doing that. I don’t do it like catching them on a string and shooting them; I like to shoot them at 200 yards, you know, if you got his head sticking out. It’s all about that shot, and that takes us into a rifle aspect. But I’m coming back, and he goes, “I noticed on the side of your truck, you’ve got a lot of turkey tracks and a lot of ducks flying on it and all that stuff. Where’s your gator at?” And I said, “Well, you know, we don’t make gator chokes.” And so that was one of those things that I’m driving back, I got about a twelve-hour ride back, and I’m thinking, you know, we can do this gator. We’d have to come up with a choke, and, well, we might change this porting over on it. We’ll build a ported choke because everybody likes ported chokes except us. And I don’t like a ported choke because, you know, I always found that the point of impact moved around a little bit, especially on the turkey side. I like the non-ported because it’s all back into the wad-stripping aspect. A ported choke is not for recoil. It’s actually a wad stripper. And with a shotgun, your wad-stripping effect is not the same. It’s not a rifle. I mean, the wad might catch here, might pull it left, might pull it right, and blah, blah, blah. And I’m not here to get in a big argument about all that, but I like something that shoots the same spot over and over and over, and a non-ported is going to put you there. And so, as this went on, we started building these chokes, and we went out here and we played. And it’s like, all right. We’ve ported in every kind of aspect that we’ve come up with, lines, ellipticals, this, that, back and forth. And what we came up with, it’s like, okay, our T series is still kicking everything we’re doing. We got a one-inch parallel we put in our chokes. We got this, we got that. And we tried different parallel sections. We tried this, we tried that to see what works.

Ramsey Russell:And a parallel is basically, and I’m broadening on you here, I didn’t mean to go there but just for somebody listening who’s like, “What are you talking about, a parallel in a choke?” A lot of chokes, a factory choke is just built at that constriction, a parallel. What we find is, if you put these parallels in a choke, it’s like an hourglass. If you take an hourglass and you flip it upside down, that sand goes through the spout and it sprays out. That’s what it does. Now, if you take that spout and you make that spout a little bit longer, not any bigger around or not any, you know, smaller tower, just made a little bit longer, what you notice is that sand holds together a little bit longer before it sprays out. And so that was the aspect of putting the parallels into the choke tube out the end of the gun. It’s like, okay, if we can make this pattern, everything’s in a 24-inch circle at 20 yards, and it’s still staying there at 40 yards. Hey, man, this is really, we’re kicking it. And so that was the aspect, make this pattern that you’re hitting everything with. And you’re making this pattern go from here to Memphis. I know that ain’t happening, but that was the idea, let’s make this go as far as we could go. And so we found that when we did this, we found an inch to inch and 8th parallel somewhere in that section where we were hitting. And it was coming in, and it came back, and we still went right back to the T series, which had a one-inch parallel. And boom, there it was. That was the best patterns we were pulling up. And so okay, so now it’s like, okay, now let’s take this choke, let’s port it, let’s put this cool design, let’s do this, this. Man, it was terrible. We would lose 20-30 pellets out of the core every single time we ported. Whatever way we tried. Said, “Alright, well, we got to do something now.” We’re on this, spending about three months of testing daily. And it’s like, we spent all this time, we got to come up with something different.

Rob Roberts: So now I went back to what I was telling you about scuffing them and running this. It’s like, okay, well, we can’t have somebody stand here with a file going over them. We got to figure out, maybe… do we knurl it? Do we do this? Do we do that? We got to have something mechanically in there that this choke reproduces. This one to this one to this one, every turnover got to be the exact same thing replicated. If I got it, you got it. It’s got to be the same thing. And so I said, “All right, let’s start cutting now. Let’s go here.” Now, I’ve got an idea. Let’s take on what we call a Tula cut, which, I don’t know that I didn’t just dream that up one night, but it was like, I want this cut, this, that. Now, when you come back to the machine, and you asked me if I was a machinist, no, but I’ve got the guys that are, you know, it’s like, “Here’s what I want. This is that. Days of Thunder. I’m the driver here. Okay, look, I want this. I want it to do this.” Is this… can you put this cut? Let’s take it in a v shape, let’s put it in a u shape, let’s put it concave, convex, this, that, this, that. And so we went over and over and over and over, and then we hit. Now, let’s move this in the transition. Let’s put this cut, let’s run it to the end of the parallel, the front of the parallel, the middle of the parallel. Back here, back here. Let’s take the transition going up this choke. And when we hit it, it was like, “Holy crap, here we go!” This core just went boom, boom, boom. So a lot of guys that were T fans, T2s forever, put in a T2 on the Raptor and go, “Oh, my God, this is awesome,” because the core just started blowing the cores out. And so that’s kind of where we were going with this whole deal. And so, God, now it sounds like a sales pitch, and I’m not trying to give you that. That’s where it was at. So it got to be, this is where… this is poison. So you got a guy that comes out there, he’s a doctor, lawyer; he’s the guy that only gets to hunt four or five times a year. He doesn’t get to go out and practice because he’s making a living doing what he’s good at. He doesn’t have that time. He might not need something so hardcore in it, but for you guys that are guiding and everything, what they’re coming in, they’re going, “Oh, man, this thing is hooked.”

Now, let’s transition to where we’re talking about lead and bismuth and steel and, you know, whatever heavy shot or whatever the case may be. What we find is, a lot of times, once you find a gun that likes a certain choke, whether you’re going out there and you’re going into the lead, if you’re actually taking this thing and putting them on paper and you’re shooting them and you’re going here, you’re going to find that that gun really likes it.

Rob Roberts: Like, for instance, my gun. I’m going to go out there tomorrow. We’re going duck hunting. I don’t care. Let’s go to Saskatchewan, let’s go to wherever, wherever we can start up, let’s start shooting. And, you know, you’re going to look in there, and I’m probably going to have an M2 Benelli in there, and it’s going to have a… I’ve gone to the Raptor 2 on it, and it’s like, what are we going to shoot? We going to shoot geese? We going to shoot that? I don’t care. What are we going to shoot for shells? You’re going to throw in the blue box, you’re going to throw in Bismuth, you’re going to throw in heavy shot… Where we going? I don’t care.

Ramsey Russell: It doesn’t matter.

Rob Roberts: That’s what’s in my gun. I mean, that’s what I’m going with because that’s what my gun likes. Now, if we’re going to sit here and go, let’s beat each other up on patterns and stuff. The biz choke, which we’ve not pushed a ton, but on the other side, we built a TSS one for a lot of guys that are going into the TSS. And I think what you’re finding a lot of times, TSS is the most poisonous thing that ever happened, especially on turkeys. But now let’s go into ducks and stuff like that. You know, I’m a hunter. I’m going in. I’m shooting them. TSS will kill. I mean, it’s as poisonous as all get-out. It’s very, very expensive. But at the same point, a lot of times it’s going; it’s not flattening out. It’s not giving the impact, it’s blowing holes, which is working on a turkey because you’re looking, you know, number nines are going to whack a turkey. Oh, it’s going to smoke a turkey because you’re breaking bones. You know, I come from the old days where I shot lead fours. We didn’t have any heavy shot, bismuth, TSS, we didn’t have that stuff. We had lead. So I would shoot fours where a lot of people would shoot sixes because I didn’t care how many pellets were in a ten-inch circle. I wanted to see a turkey go basically, tits up over here, just hammered him. I wanted to see feathers fly. And so, when the lead fours would hit because it was bigger, it would flatten out. So you had the shock power going in. So if you go into TSS, you’ve got holes going through it. You don’t have the shock power, but you’re breaking bones. That’s killing your target, that’s killing your ducks, that’s killing everything. So that’s all great, but you’ve got a silhouette. So turkey? Oh, absolutely TSS, 100%. But on your flying things, you’re not always hitting bone. You’ve got them flying. You’re going through here. So TSS is still going to go through it really hard. But you might be blowing holes, and you watch over there, and that bald eagle’s eating your duck because it went out of dog range, and you know, he’s eating your duck. Compared to, like, if you could shoot lead, which bismuth is a whole lot like that, you’re getting a flattening. You’re getting in that impact stuff.

Ramsey Russell: I shoot so much lead in countries that don’t have steel mandates, don’t have steel manufacturing. I spend a lot of time in other countries. We still shoot lead, and that’s why I like bismuth personally, because it behaves more like it.

Rob Roberts: I agree with you.

Ramsey Russell: You know, it’s just, the more consistent I am, the better. I want to go here because I can tell you this, I will have a Raptor choke in my gun. I mean, talking to you boys, I’m going to go out and pattern it. I’ve learned to do that. But I’m going to have a Raptor gun, and I’m going to stack that Raptor up against that factory mod and put it on paper. And I think it makes sense. Well, in here, everything you’re talking about makes sense.

Rob Roberts: But here’s the one thing that –  where I was going?

Ramsey Russell: Or maybe that biz choke. You take biz as part of the Raptor serious, it’s one of the Raptors, okay?

Rob Roberts: And when you get into it, what you’re going to find is, if we’re looking at paper, that biz choke, shooting whoever’s Bismuth you want to shoot in it, it’s smoking it, okay? But that’s not necessarily what you gotta have. So a lot of guys, you know, we go into it knowing, knowing your shooter, knowing your ability, knowing when you’re going in. It still is. If your gun likes this one here, I’ve got it. I’ve got something we haven’t touched on. And I don’t mean to keep this conversation going forever, because me and you both like to talk. We talk for two days. I don’t think we’d ever get out of here. But, you know, bore diameters. So, like I said, we were talking Benelli because we both shoot Benelli. So we had the small bores here. Now let’s bump up. Let’s say we swapped to Brownings, which we’re not, but, you know, let’s say we’re shooting them. So now you’re,

Ramsey Russell: A lot of listeners do shoot Brownings.

Rob Roberts: Absolutely. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but you’re talking bigger bore. So now you’ve gone from a, And I’ve said this on other podcasts and talked about your bore diameters and stuff, and I’ll try to make this real short. But if you’re using a T2 choke, which is about a .015-inch constriction, and you’re running on a Benelli that’s got a small bore, so let’s say you’re at a .725 bore for good numbers, and that puts you at the .710 constriction. Nobody ever talks about constriction on the wing side, they always talk about it on turkeys. So if you’ve got a Browning with a .740 bore and you add that .015-inch constriction to it that puts you at .725. So you’re not, you’re not comparing apples to apples. So a lot of times what you find if you’re shooting a Browning or Super X or, you know, three or four, whatever, you’re going to go in, you want the T3; you want to go to that tighter choke. And so that’s just a little bit of food for thought. So we were talking T2, T2, T2. Well, that is like the perfect choke in a Benelli, but not necessarily a Browning or a Winchester Super X4 or whatever that type thing is. Bigger bore, you might want the T3 or the Raptor 3. Does that make any sense? Yeah, it’s a little off the wall. But I did want to mention that because I didn’t want to make you think that the only choke you need for any gun you’ve got is a T2, because it’s really handy in your smaller bore guns. But for your bigger bore, that T3 comes in really handy on your bigger bore guns.

Personalized Performance 

I mean, going to your custom gun shop and getting these performances done. 

Ramsey Russell: Rob, you know, there’s a lot of folks, some of them listening, probably left 20 minutes into the conversation. I have people tell me all the time, you know, they’re shooting their papaw’s $119 “collision of cloth” pump, and they’ve killed a million and thousand ducks with it. And if you’re having to buy an expensive gun anyway and get some upgrades done to it, you’re buying the wrong one. That’s a prevailing thought. Those people left 20 minutes into this conversation. But to a lot of us, here’s where Ramsey’s coming from. Says the guy driving a $75,000 pickup truck with a lift kit, roll bar, and all kinds of speakers and tires and wheels and everything else. We like to personalize. We like performance. Okay, you were telling me a story one day about, you know, your part of Arkansas. You put a lift kit on it, you’re going to tear a dirt pan out on rocks. You know, going through some of the, you know, I take a great gun, I make it better, because I don’t care where you hunt, how you hunt, who you hunt, what you hunt. In the waterfowl world, be it public or private or whatever we do, we all spend a relatively lot of money and time, and it comes down on the good days and bad days to the trigger pull. And I can mess with the ever-living best. Oh, my God. I can. I can mail Charlotte all good. She ain’t God. I want every single advantage I’ve got to close the deal with that duck that I have gone forever to kill.

Rob Roberts: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: And that’s why I want to have you come on. I mean, going to your custom gun shop and getting these performances done. Some of the stuff, the Cerakote, that’s decorative, that’s personal stuff, sure. But the performance, the proof is in the pudding, son. I mean, ducks die. And you’re right. I don’t want to see ducks wing off on a riding. I want them to crunch. If I got that shot cam on, I want to see them fold like a love letter and crash the water.

Rob Roberts: We want to take that guesswork out of the guy, out of his mind, just like, all right, we’re going to do this. Here you go. You’re ready now, go back to worry about it. Is your dog in good health? Is he doing your thing? Or do you got the ducks? Where you at? Where’s there? It takes that out of their mind because a lot of folks are always worried about it. They go through all this stuff here, and then they take granddaddy’s old gun, which might have been good back in the day, but, you know, between the ammo, between everything else that’s going on, the world’s gotten better. And then getting back to what I think we talked about earlier, is that old gunslinger type thing. At the end of the day, you’ve hunted, you’ve got your ducks, you’ve got your gun, you’ve got your dogs, you’ve got your boats running good. You’ve got whatever it takes for you to be there. You gotta play in the mud. You’re feeling really good about yourself.

Ramsey Russell: And there’s a blue man. The ducks cooperate and come in.

Rob Roberts: And there they are. They’re in front of you, and you jump up and go boom, boom, boom. Oh, crap. I didn’t hit nothing.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Rob Roberts: And that’s that old gunslinger mentality, you know. Wyatt Earp, I think, is one of those that said it, just like, get up. You don’t have to be the fastest. Just get up, take your shot, and bust it. You know, take that extra second if you have to, but bust it. And I think you put all this stuff together, and we’re just part of the package. We’re just happy to be in a duck blind with you. You know that. That’s what I’m doing. It’s not about money. It’s not about that. It’s about the passion part of it. And if we know that we’re somewhat a part of your duck blind, man, that’s awesome. That is awesome.

Ramsey Russell: First time I duck hunted with Mr. Terry Denmon, to close the loop on this deal after with my Rob Roberts custom Super 90, Denmon didn’t compliment my shooting. He said, well, I can tell you sent that to Rob. It’s finally hit. It’s finally shooting where you’re pointing at. That’s how he said it. It’s finally shooting where you’re pointing.

Rob Roberts: That’s it.

Ramsey Russell: Thanks to Rob. But anyway, Rob, thank you so much for coming on today. I have enjoyed this conversation. I hope everybody else listening has. You know, I think we owe it to the resource, and we certainly owe it to ourselves. And as we talked about earlier, our families, who we’ve spent a lot of time away from, to close the deal.

Rob Roberts: Absolutely.

The Art Form of American Duck Hunting

Ramsey Russell: The whole game in America, American duck hunting, has elevated every single aspect of duck hunting to an art form, using the best technology, the best science, as compared to the rest of the world that copies it best. You know, we’re serious duck hunters, and I think we owe it to ourselves and to that resource to close the deal on these ducks. Give yourself every single advantage you can. And I really, Rob, I’m just saying this because you sit in front of me, everybody knows I’m a huge fan. I mean, I take two or three guns, traveling just down Argentina, and I hand them boys that gun. And a lot of boys come home and send their guns to you, because they’re like, wow, this gun’s shooting better than mine.

Rob Roberts: Thank you so much. Because I know you have. I know you have, and I’m very thankful for that.

Ramsey Russell: But thank you, Rob. Thank you for what you do. And, folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We’ve gotten deep down the bushes on a better trigger pull. See you next time.