Ward Brien Of Sniper Tools Co.: How One Invention Revolutionized Precision Shooting

About This Episode

In today’s episode of Tactical Business, host Wade Skalsky sits down with Ward Brien of Sniper Tools Co.. Ward explains the science and technology behind long-range shooting, including the use of angle cosine indicators and ballistic software. He discusses how shooters must account for gravitational effects when adjusting for target distance, especially at steep angles. Ward also delves into the real-world application of these tools in hunting and military contexts, highlighting the importance of precision. Learn how these methods improve accuracy, whether you’re a hunter or a serious marksman.

Insights In This Episode

• Angle cosine indicators help shooters adjust for gravity when aiming at targets on steep angles.
• Traditional ballistic software often struggles with accuracy beyond 700 yards or with horizontal corrections.
• Precision in shooting requires canceling out factors that reduce accuracy, like inconsistent software or equipment.
• Military adoption of angle cosine indicators proves their practical value in real-world combat scenarios.
• Shooters need to consider factors like density altitude and Snell’s law of refraction for accuracy in varying conditions.

About Tactical Business

Tactical Business is the weekly business show for the firearms industry. The podcast features in-depth interviews with the entrepreneurs, professionals and technologists who are enabling the next generation of firearms businesses to innovate and grow.

Episode Transcript

Wade: Welcome to the Tactical Business Show. I’m your host, Virginia Beach based firearms entrepreneur and copywriter Wade Skalsky. Each episode will be exploring what it takes to thrive as a business owner in the firearms industry. We’ll speak with successful firearms industry entrepreneurs about their experiences building their companies, leaders and legislators who are shaping the industry, and tech executives whose innovations will reshape the future of the firearms industry. Let’s get after it. Hello and welcome to the Tactical Business Podcast. I am your host, Wade Skalsky, and today I’m speaking with Mr. Ward Brien from Sniper Tools Design. Mr. Brien, how are you doing today?

Ward: Doing great. How are you?

Wade: I’m great! I’m excited to talk to you today. There’s been a big shift in precision shooting in the industry. So there’s a big demand for for this type of content. So I’m excited to learn more from you today. So the first thing I want to start with is the backstory of how you got into, let’s talk about Sniper Tools design first. How did that company come to be and how did you become the president of it?

Ward: Sniper tools started where I bought a rifle from a fellow right around 1996 or 1997. And, you know, we used to do quite a bit of shooting and fire shooting. And one day this fellow showed up with this carpenter’s level on the side of his rifle. And I looked at it and having a background in architecture and engineering, I went home and designed the angle cosine indicator in literally 20 minutes. And then I started moving forward with it and went through the provisional patterns and then the pattern. And it was such a simple tool that I, I was surprised that nobody had ever come up with this before. And so that’s how Sniper Tools got started. It was a great solution to a very old problem. And the part itself is completely mechanical. There’s no electronics, no batteries, there’s no failures. It’s impervious to the weather. It’s battlefield proven. It’s been in the theater of war for over 20 years now. Just a fantastic, very accurate and very useful tool that has literally thousands of successful missions behind it.

Wade: Well, let’s let’s kind of unpack that a little bit. For those of us who maybe don’t know a lot about precision, precision shooting or sort of the mechanics of it. What exactly is the problem and what is the problem that tool solves, and how does it solve it?

Ward: When the tool itself tells the shooter a percentage of his distance to target, and when you’re aiming up or down on angles. What happens when the shooter zeroes his rifle? He does so shooting flat. And what happens is you have the full force of gravity that’s pulling down on the bullet. So you adjust the sight height above the bore of the barrel to a certain height. So let’s say at 100m or 100 yards, that bullet arcs up, fighting the full force of gravity as gravity is pulling it down and then drops down on the target. Right? Yep. But when you aim up or down on angles almost 100% equally, there may be a 2%, 1.5% difference between up and down, maybe. But what happens is the forcefulness of the gravity on the projectile depreciates. So as an example, if you’re aiming up on a 500 degree on a 45 degree angle and you’re shooting at 500 yards or meters, you would multiply that cosine 0.7 times five for 500, and you’re corrected for gravity. Distance is really 350 yards or meters. So obviously if you don’t make that correction you’re going to miss high. And that’s a really big deal when you’re a serious hunter and you’ve just spent 40,000, Thousand dollars to go to Asia and hunt Marco Polo sheep.

Wade: And then how does so I understand the problem and I. And then how does the how does it solve. How does the tool solve that problem? Basically because you said it’s mechanical. So is it something that mounts on the rifle or is it something that you just that you have with you or how does that work.

Ward: It can mount on the scope. It can mount on the rifle, on the Picatinny rail. So companies like Badger Ordnance and SPR mounts, they manufacture a part that attaches to the mount or to the rail, where the angle cosine indicator will sit on the side of the weapon. The Americans and most of the Europeans put the angle cosine indicator on the left side of the rifle. The Austrians shoot it on the right side of the rifle, but it’s such a simple tool that there’s a little drum inside. It’s weighted with stainless steel weights or pins, and when you rotate the rifle, that wheel stays at zero 100% of the time, and the actual body of the angle cosine indicator rotates around the wheel and on the outside of the angle cosine indicator or the cosine numerals. And a lot of people have asked for angle numerals on the outside of the body. And so we have made it with angle numerals. But by putting the cosine numbers of the angle exactly where the angle’s numerals are located, you have a redundant system. It will you can count up in ten degree increments on the right hand side of the device, in angles or in odd angles on the left hand device, and still have the cosine numerals being indicated. So again, it’s a very unique part. I have a little picture here. I can kind of show you this. I don’t know if it’s just happens to be here.

Wade: But we’ll have a link to the website because I’m looking right at it. Sure. If I understand it correctly, before this tool, people were trying to do this calculations in their head or just guess at it basically, and then do the math themselves in terms of the angles that side of the problem.

Ward: Well, what they did was, is they would originally they used a protractor string and paperclip and they would put it on the hold it on the side of the rifle and then rotate the rifle to to their point of aim and then grab that angle it’s being indicated, go to their data books and look for the cosine number of the angle. If they didn’t have it already memorized, and then go ahead and multiply that to their distance to target. There is a concept of using ballistic targeting software with this, because theoretically the ballistic targeting software will take into account the ballistics of the weapon. In other words, the velocity of the projectile, perhaps the spin drift, the wind, the all of the density, altitude, incompleteness. But most of the software that’s out there on the market really doesn’t work past, let’s say, 700 yards or meters, and it doesn’t work at all with the horizontal or the windage. And so just to cut to the chase and tell you that a lot of the ballistic targeting software users will do a thing called truing, where they change the velocity to match the point of impact at, let’s say, 200, 303, 54, 400, 5500 yards or meters, so on and so forth. So the trajectory matches, but that only occurs in one density altitude and density. Altitude is made up of temperature, barometric pressure, and humidity and not to get too finite, but humidity only makes up 1/100 of an inch for every 1000 yards or meters. But if you have to fudge your software to give you a correct vertical, why wouldn’t you have to fudge your software to give you the correct horizontal? Mm. So it goes back to the old school method once again of using the angle cosine indicator, being able to range your distance to target with let’s say the crosshairs, you know, the mil radian or minute of angle stadia that’s in your crosshairs in lieu of using a laser rangefinder.

Wade: So yeah. So and I think like thinking about a software, you’re going to introduce a lot of points of failure, right. Because if you’re going to use software you’re going to need power. There may be a problem with the software or whatever is happening. And so if you just have a mechanical device, you’re decreasing the points of failure if you’re in the field. And the second thing is that time does matter in these scenarios if you’re hunting or if you’re using it in a military application, you don’t have unlimited time to sit there and mess around with everything. So I would think whatever decreases the friction for points of failure in time, it would be the best solution in that situation.

Ward: Well, it’s interesting because I teach, I have a friend that says to me because when I talk with my friend about the Mountain Shooting center and he asked me how it’s going. I said, well, my students are really unique students. They are very smart. They’re the intelligence level is through the roof and they know what they want to learn. It’s like teaching a formula one course to formula one drivers, the students that come out to take a course from me. But with the software, you have to be cognizant at a science level or at a math level. Two things theoretically. One is that with a hand-held unit, they have what’s called a fixed point processor. There’s two kinds of processors out there a fixed point processor and a floating point processor. And on your computer or your desktop, you have a floating point processor, and the latter that allows you to crunch numbers and accounting numbers and graphics and all kinds of stuff. Where a fixed point processor, you’re limited to a certain amount of processing. And when it comes to the equations that are needed in a hand-held unit on that ballistic software, there’s a thing called mantissa digits, and mantissa digits are all the numerals to the right of the decimal point of a of the representation of a logarithmic equation, and that mantissa digit string gets so long that the fixed point processor cannot calculate all the numbers, and so they truncate that string of numbers randomly.

Ward: 100% of the time. Mhm. So if you took a handheld unit and you kept hitting the solve button, it’s going to give you a different answer every single time you hit that solve button. And if you have eight men, once upon a time I used to instruct the instructors, the sniper instructors, and I had the best group of men I ever had out in my life. They were just ready to take the course. They were professionals or Marines, and they came from Bridgeport, California. And when we did this little exercise of making all the handheld units the same and giving them the exact same problem to solve. Every single hand-held unit produced a different answer. Everyone. And then when they turned on the Coriolis routine, the answers were even more abstract. So, you know, when you get down to the finite analysis of what’s going on, you have those that have taken a class from me or one of my instructors, and they understand what precision really means and the underlying elements of how to reach that level of precision. Because anybody can do it. It’s just canceling out the stuff that doesn’t work and replacing it. It’s like eliminating the negative and replacing it with a positive. It’s as simple as that.

Wade: Well, okay, so now I have a really good we’ve got a really good sort of macro view of the product and the problem that it solves and how it solves it. So now I want to kind of dial this kind of pull us out of that granular look at it and go more towards the business side of it. So you invent this product, right 20 years ago or so and it’s like you said, it’s you’re surprised that no one else has done it. You may be easy to you, but it seems rather complicated to a layperson who’s not an engineer. Right? I’m a lawyer. That’s why I didn’t like math or science. Right. So I went to be a lawyer. And so you’ve created this product. How did you go about bringing the product to market in the beginning, and then how did that change over time?

Ward: Bringing the product to market was a very challenging task. It’s not like you’re making a normal product, right? I have a friend and she owns a company. I think it’s called Luxin Beauty. She makes this handheld thing that’s got little diamonds all over it for scruffing up your skin. Well, the women love this product. It’s something that they can use over and over and over and over again with the same results for the price of one skin treatment. The angle cosine indicator. It too can be used over and over and over again. In fact, it really is near unbreakable. But to market it took a 3D approach. It took my efforts. It took teaming up with another person in the industry that was making mounts, i.e. Badger Ordnance. And it took advertising. It took approaching this from every angle that I could possibly think of, and making it a win for the other participants. So without Badger ordnance, the equation theoretically dies. Badger Ordnance US Tactical Supply brownells. But Badger Ordnance is the one that manufactures the vehicle to mount the angle cosine indicator onto the weapon. And because of their presence in the industry, which is profound, they really assisted in putting it over the top and making it successful.

Wade: So it sounds, you know, if I’m hearing you correctly, the key was, is to find a strategic partner that the product complemented, right. Because obviously if you have the mount, like if it was a mount, Badger Ordnance is going to help you because you’re a direct competitor. But the but no one else had this product. You’re the only person that had this product and it is it complemented what they were already doing. So you could take all that infrastructure that they had already with the marketing and the fulfillment and all that, and then just kind of immediately take it to market once you persuaded them, okay, hey, this is going to be beneficial for both of us. Is that fair?

Ward: Yeah. You couldn’t have said it any better.

Wade: So that gets the that gets it to market. Did you have a lot of growth right away, or was it kind of slowly building over time to kind of educate the marketplace? Or how soon did you know? Oh, we have a home run here.

Ward: Oh, The home run effect came into play when it really took off in the military. It would have been wonderful if it would have taken off in the civilian marketplace, because the civilians need the part if they want to be as successful as possible and as accurate as possible. They need the part. But it was the military that saw the value of the product, how it fulfilled the need, how it eliminated other steps and hastened the use of it. How quickly you are to get on target. Do the math. Take your shot. Get out! So then every other military under the NATO umbrella started using it, and now it’s in very wide use globally.

Wade: Mhm. So and then how did you go about that in terms of approaching the military for that. Did you just go through the normal government procurement process? Or was did you do the same thing that you did with with the Badger Armaments is that you found a strategic partner in the military and said, hey, let me show this to you. How did that happen?

Ward: Well, back in before, when Afghanistan kicked off and OEF kicked off, I already had relationships that were developed with other soldiers and SSF guys that were created over the years. And I got a phone call from one of them at the time, an E-5 by the name of Michael Labonte. And Mike is a wonderful guy. I don’t know how tall he is, maybe five foot four, but he’s got approximately 8 or 9 tours under his belt back and forth to OIF and OEF, desert storm one, Desert Storm two and such like that. So he called me up and he said, we got a problem. We don’t have any weapons for designated marksman. And so if I remember right, I asked him, I said, well, what about the your M14. And he said, well, the scouts at the 505th Pir snapped them all up. I said, I see. I said, what do you got? He goes, we got 30 year old shot out A2’s M16 a2’s. And I said, well, let me think about this and I’ll get back to you in the morning. So I thought about it. I thought the only thing that he could do is to take to replace the uppers. You understand what the upper is, right? The upper barrel receivers from the old shot out a2’s and put new ones on. And so I made a couple of calls. I knew who to contact to acquire match grade uppers, and I called him the next morning. I said, well, the only thing you can do is replace the uppers. I’ve got a company that’ll build them, they’re willing to help you out and blah, blah, blah. And so he says, that’ll work. So two weeks later, we had all the uppers. My wife and I flew back to Fort Bragg on our own dime, replaced all the shot out uppers, and with the new ones, we got one of the first batches of the Black Hills 77 grain delta loads for the 556, which is what the twist rate of the barrel was designed for and took the guys out, spent four days with them, brought them up to speed extremely quickly and the rest is history.

Ward: The only issue that we had with those weapon systems was, is they had the three round trigger burst groups in them, so it would go from the first trigger pull, which was maybe, I don’t know, £6, £7 pull to £10 pulls to 12, £12 pulls. I don’t know what the pull weight was, but it would just get heavier through the succession and then start over again. So they were on the range at the same time that the scouts were on the range. It was an 800 meter range and these kids, 18 year old kids with these weapons were just banging the targets and acquiring them and hitting them faster than the scouts were. So the scouts got a little upset. They wouldn’t have to change the command to their command sergeant major, and tried to commandeer the weapon systems away from the 504th. But because they were legitimately my uppers, they couldn’t. So the 504th kept them. And these young men did an incredible job overseas. Every one of them came home. And, uh, that really just gave the ASI just a little bit more of an edge. It still took time to roll it forward and, you know, roll it on. But it wasn’t easy, and it was just a part that I believed they needed to have. So I just I kept making it.

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Ward: Well, there was this crossover point where we’re where I’m teaching these Angelfire courses and and my courses, they’re not high speed. They don’t have a lot of testosterone assigned to them. These are courses where in one day you will fire maybe 50 rounds, and you will learn the different elements of what you’re going to encounter shooting in the mountains, which is tremendously different than shooting on a flat square range. So when you’re shooting on a flat square range, you usually have one, 2 or 3 different, let’s just say planes or wind vectors, but they’re flat. And when you shoot in the mountains, let’s say, well, when you first hit 8000ft and above. The density altitude tremendously changes for a 308 with 175 grain match king at sea level. That bullet will have a terminal velocity of 1000 yards of about 1000 1050ft per second, but when you jump at or above 8000ft, that same bullet with the same powder charge and everything now has a velocity that’s about 350ft per second faster, because you have less drag on the bullet. The air is thinner, the performance is increased, and so is the distance. So there’s things that are that nature that change. There’s the angle fire itself. What happens when you have a headwind and you’re shooting down at a target. The headwind is going to push the trajectory down and change it. There’s story after story I can tell you, but we get into more and I’ll give you one, one other example. And that’s what Snell’s law of refraction.

Ward: Now, Snell’s law of refraction isn’t. Snell’s law of refraction. After I worked with the Marine Corps, started to be taught at the Mountain Warfare Training Center. And what it is, it’s a law of science. If you throw your firearm at dawn, let’s say at 100m, you’re doing so in ambient light. There’s no direct sunlight coming in. Everything is neutral. But when that sun raises about five degrees in the sky and it’s a beam to your right, it’s going to push your point of impact. 2/10 of a mil to the left, holding your same zero. And as as that sunlight moves throughout your day, it’s going to move the point of impact and give you what’s called the wandering zero. So the wandering zero, if you were to take a piece of paper in your hand and put it behind the scope and shine the light in through the front. Objective of the scope. That scope is designed to create a very small, narrow beam of light that goes through the objective lens as it goes through the concave, and the convex lens as it goes through the reversal lenses, and out the ocular lens in the rear. And when you shine that light in there and you move that light around, you’ll see that little beam of light that’s designed to match the size of your pupil moves around. And that’s what it does throughout the day with the sunlight. And so just that one principle co-mingled with the wins or not makes a difference on your success.

Wade: So you’re in Colorado? Yes.

Ward: Yeah, but the Mountain Shooting Center is in southern Utah. Got it, got it.

Wade: So but take for example. So I taught horseback riding in Colorado and run it up by Winter Park. And just the change in going from like, say, there were so many, just as a normal human being of things, of how you lived was different depending upon where in the elevation you were of day to day activities on the mountains, because just the impact of altitude sickness or how much hydration you needed or whatever, because just those variations made a huge difference. And so when you’re talking about precision shooting, obviously you need to be able to take all those things into account and then even know that they exist. So I can see definitely the utility of having a school to help teach hunters that, because again, like let’s say, let’s say that you’ve been deer hunting your whole life. Well, I grew up in North Dakota’s flat. So if you’re shooting deer or long distances or whatever in North Dakota, that’s going to change. If you pay for a trip in Idaho or pay for a trip in Utah, and you go up in elevation for a bighorn sheep or something like it definitely is. There’s a lack of information about how to do that.

Ward: Yeah. That’s right. Absolutely. Imagine I had two hunters a couple years ago come up and they were from the Cedar City area. Father and son. Both of them are retired from their jobs. Both are just straight up good guys and we’re on top of the mountain. We’re running through the yard lines. So in other words, we eliminated the handheld software completely for them. These men are hunters. Most hunters will never take a shot past 300 yards. But after they took my class, they’re comfortable. Comfortable out to 800. And I remember when we first started this and I would talk to other shooters or hunters, like at CCI about this stuff. They would look at me and they had such disgust because they thought that there was no way that an accurate, legitimate shot could be taken on an animal without wounding it at 800 yards. And they would say things like, how in the world are you going to teach people to take a shot like that? Well, if they just go through step one. Step two. Step three. Step four. It’s just like taking a picture with a camera. It makes it so easy that at those distances, at the success of hitting small ten inch targets at very great distances is a complete reality. And I’ll tell you a story. The story is about a guy, a very enthusiastic young man. He’s become very successful on YouTube. We had a falling out at one period. Just happens. But his name is Trey Sprinkle. Trey owns a YouTube channel, I think, called The Last American Outlaw. It’s a very entertaining YouTube channel. If you want to enjoy something and get a good laugh, go watch it.

Ward: He’s phenomenal. Nominal. He’s excellent at what he does. He’s matured very well. Trey was with me when we taught a class. He helped me move targets, but he also was a great liaison interface in between me and the 10th mountain guys that I trained up. And we were shooting at the North Point at our ranges, like at the Mountain Shooting Center. If you went to the Mountain Shooting Center and not the Butt Mountain Shooting center.com, you would see the layout of the ranges and it’s a phenomenal facility. We sit on 200 acres of land at the end of the class. Wanted to take a shot on one of the steel targets that was a one meter tall steel target, crossed the top of the head and shoulders and and I looked at him. I said, that’s not a good idea. We talked about this, but the other men said, no, let them take the shot. So I said, all right, let’s do it. So you want to shoot the one at 1200 meters at the end of the field there, and we’re shooting down on an angle. And he says, no, I want to shoot the one across the canyon. And I just looked at him and it was 2320m across the canyon, and he was shooting A65 Psalm. So he’s shooting 142 grain Sierra match King at that distance. And so, you know, I validated the wind. I used the software that I have, which you can’t get, which is the only software on the planet that works and works extraordinarily well.

Ward: And you have to there’s tips and tricks you learn when you take my course. If there’s a wind in the middle of the canyon, how do you see it? How do you cancel it out? How do you know it’s there? Well, we know how to do it. So I got the wind down. I gave him two different holds for two different winds, just in case the one wind changed In effect because the wind changes every 3 to 6 seconds. And so I gave him the first hole and I told him what it was. I gave him the second hole, told him what it was. I got him in standby, told him to send it. It was a five and a half, six seconds, easy to the target as we all watched the projectile. The first projectile hit right here on the target. I don’t know, I’m sorry. Right here on the collarbone. The second target, the second follow on shot was right here. And so was it a killer round. If it would have hit him in the head, maybe. But the fact of the matter is that there’s ways, easy ways. If you’re if you’re if I had a friend tell me once and I don’t want to put anybody down. But he said, Ward, be thankful when you get to work with people who are sixes and sevens because most aren’t tens, their twos and threes. And if I get people that come out to my class that are sixes and sevens or tens, we’re going to have a phenomenal class. And you’re going to learn how to just be super effective.

Wade: I can hear from your voice that you really do enjoy the class aspect of it. When you started the company and started with Sniper Tools design, did you think that you were going to eventually teach a class like that, or is that something that the class just kind of came organically after you started the company?

Ward: I started teaching the classes right away. It was like the angle cosine indicator, and going to work with the 504 was just happened at the same time. And so at the time I was living in Southern California and I would hold little weekend classes at like Angela shooting range or at a place to shoot in Valencia.

Wade: I’ve been there. I lived in Valencia. Oh. Did you? Yeah, I lived in Valencia and I’ve been to Angela shooting range.

Ward: Yeah, Angela was off the Foothill Freeway there, but I did teach classes. I had people come out and I was traveling to teach classes, and it is something that I have held on to over the years because it’s something that that I was born to do. I think that I have the mantle given to me to be an instructor. I enjoy the instructing, and what I enjoy the most is watching these guys go from zero to hero in four days.

Wade: That’s one of the things too, I think that’s really starting to or that has maybe transformed precision shooting over the last whatever number of years, is that the manufacturing of firearms at every level has really increased, right? So it used to be you’d have to spend you still have to spend a lot of money on a good if you’re going to compete or whatever, but you can get some decent long range rifles now for it’s not going to break the bank and be a very accurate shooter at a long distance, right? If you kind of deploy the type of, um, type of tools that you’re talking about, is that something that you’re seeing, or is everybody that’s coming up in your classes has like this gear, right? Or is that or is it the other way.

Ward: Though? Well, it depends on the class usually. Number one, I usually start off charging a lot of money for the class. I’ll I’ll tell the people that want to come out. It’s $1,000 a day with a four day minimum. And that puts the class just over the top for most of them. Do I want to do that? I only want to do it to weed out the people. How badly do they really want to learn how to shoot? And if they don’t want to learn, then I got the wrong guy or the wrong group of guys. The second thing I do. And I’ll negotiate that price. If they’re really interested and they really start talking to me, we spent an hour or two on the telephone. I’ll negotiate that price down. However, I set it up so that they have to put their group together because I don’t want somebody that’s very advanced, that’s ready to learn the really the real information with someone that’s just starting off. It just ruins the continuity of the class. So I’ll tell a guy, you put four students together, I’ll come out and meet you in Utah, I’ll teach the class. And and so some guys will show up with hunting rifles. And what I mean by hunting rifle is they’ll have a hunting weight. Hunting weight. Barrel. That’s super light. A super light McMillan stock. I just had a friend of mine here who’s a former, very high ranking officer in the military, and we had built I built a firearm, had a rifle, a firearm built for him when he retired, and it’s a hunting rifle. The Night force, two and a half to ten. Power scope on it. Minute of angle radical because that’s what he’s used to working in. And every year since he’s had that rival, he’s come back with an elk or a deer or what have you.

Ward: He’s been very successful with it. The more sniper ish the rifles get, the heavier they get, the heavier the barrels are. And what that theoretically means is that every barrel, when you when that bullet comes out of the muzzle, it has a tiny bit of whip rate to it and metal or steel, depending on the stainless or chromoly. It has a thermal expansion and contraction rate and a memory like an elephant. And so when you get these really lightweight barrels, it’ll be good for 2 or 3 rounds, and then it’ll start heating up. So it’s not good for anything more than a few rounds. The heavier barrels they don’t whip as much and they stay more static. And there’s stuff. There’s there’s optical stuff that happens with these barrels. Also, if you’re shooting in the wintertime with snow on the ground and let’s say it’s let’s say you’re in Craig, Colorado, and let’s say it’s four degrees outside, you’re on an elk hunt and you shake one shot. If you’re 600 yards or further away from that animal, you can take several shots. You’re not going to spook the animal. Right? So you take that, take the one shot the barrel. Still cool. You take the second shot. Now the barrel is going to start to heat up. And what comes off of that barrel? You’ve got that that mirage, that heat signature. And what does that doing when it’s co-mingled with your optics? It’s going to throw that group off. So if you were to shoot with a slight breeze, you’re going to counter that mirage coming off the top of the barrel. So there’s different things you learn with different barrel weights, different types of of weapons.

Wade: It’s a rabbit hole for sure. And that’s the benefit of of you don’t know what you don’t know right. You don’t know even what factors that you have to deal with in taking a class from someone like you or in a four day course, you’re going to get that all figured out for whatever you bring. So I wanted to ask you, so where do you see your business going and what are the plans for, let’s say, the next 3 to 5 years? Is it so you’re going to keep doing what you’re doing, or do you have any sort of other new plans or initiatives that you’re launching? Or are you just, hey, I’ve got my system down, I’m doing the class, I’ve got the Sniper Tools design company going well, so where do you see yourself in the next 3 to 5 years?

Ward: Yeah, that’s a very interesting question because the angle cosine indicator is an absolute necessity. People don’t understand it, but when they go through their military classes, they learn it’s really an invaluable tool that is nowhere near the price of electronics. So I see the possibility of the angle, cosine indicator and sniper tools growing in the hunting community. If the hunters would simply learn how to use this, and if they were focused, and if they were educated with it. And when I say education, it immediately throws the hunters over the top because they want to go out on their once a year vacation, they want to shoot their elk or their deer or what have you, and come home and have a great time. Then you have the real professionals. I’ll say Brian Martin, Brian Martin, Pete Martin, Pete Martins, a retired fire assistant fire chief, or Darrell Nobis out of Lawton, Oklahoma. And these guys, they just love to hunt and they use the angle cosine indicator. It’s incorporated into their whole program. They’ve taken the classes. It just takes that kind of a person that can just put their feet forward to learn how to just just learn the the principles behind Success. Everything has an equation. They just have to learn a few things.

Ward: It’s not hard to learn as far as the Mountain Shooting Center goes. That’s a very tough question because I’m dealing with the same field of genre that I always have. Will the military come out and take more classes from me? I don’t know why, because so calm has a hole on their training. It has a hold on who runs and facilitates and contracts for that training. And then there’s other elements involved where it may be or it is self beneficial for whoever the sniper SM is. It’s so calm to put those courses together. So will they ever get the real training that they ever need? Probably not. Probably not. But if there are, I’ll tell you a quick story about the Mountain Shooting Center. A time when I thought I cracked the code. I had the instructors come out from the Marine Corps. These men were absolutely solid educated. They were intellectuals. They had questions. They had a very difficult time hitting their targets at certain distances. On day 3 or 4, they’re hitting on their cold bore shots 18 inch tall. Targets 1200m. All of a sudden, when they eliminated the things that were baloney that had been taught to them, like the the sniper program right now across all branches of our military are completely broken.

Ward: These men deserve respect for doing the work of war, and they’ve got the guts and the backbone to do it, but they haven’t been taught what they need to be taught for this, for their success, for their mission success. So when these Marines came out and they took this course for me at the end of the course, they said a couple of things with smiles on their faces. They said it was the best class they ever took. It was the best time they’ve ever had since they were in the Marine Corps. They were failing over 50% of their students and now they know why. And these men were hitting everything that they could hit out to one mile with 308 and eights in the mountains. And when you go back to the weapon systems, a savage tactical m110 the bolt guns in 308. What a phenomenal gun that bolt action rifle is. But because they don’t have the right people on the board of directors and selling to the military. They’re not a military sales item in this country, but a great rifle, which savage. It’s the I think it’s called the tactical M110 or tactical 110.

Wade: 110 and 308.

Ward: And 308. You shoot that 175 match. King threw it in the mountains. It’s a solid 1500 solid 1200 meter gun. That’ll go 1500 easy.

Wade: Yeah. You know, if you can extend the range of a gun like that from its factory specs, you’re doing something right.

Ward: Absolutely.

Wade: Well, Ward, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you today. We’re kind of up against time. How do people find you? So, SniperTools.com is a website for sniper tools design or sniper tools design company. Snipertools.Com is the website. How do people get Ahold of you directly and go ahead and give the any socials or the website for the school as well.

Ward: Sure. The school website is MountainShootingCenter.com. The phone number for both sniper tools and MSC is (818) 359-0512. They can call anytime.

Wade: That’s amazing. And do you have an email? Someone can shoot if they want to shoot you an email.

Ward: Email is info@SniperTools.com.

Wade: Amazing. Well, again, I could talk for another two hours. I’m going down that precision shooting rabbit hole. So I’m really enjoying talking to you. And I’d love to have you on the show again in 6 to 8 months so we can kind of see kind of the growth and where things are going. And hang on. After I stop the recording, I want to get a quick question for you. Okay. Sure. All right. Thanks again for coming on today. I really appreciate it. We’ll see you. You’ve been listening to the Tactical Business Show by TacticalPay.com. Join us again next episode as we explore what it takes to be a business success in the firearms industry.