Original subtitles

Are you the best NRL shooter in the world, yes or no?

My personality wouldn't allow me to say yeah.

Impact.

Impact!

Up!

From the outside looking in, it's loud,

obnoxious, big boom, muzzle break.

To me, it's an art.

It's very methodical, very relaxed.

You can't have other thoughts going on. You've got one job to do.

I think a lot of the art comes in, into the wind.

You feel it. It's intangible. It's always changing.

I've shot a lot of rounds, and you will never master wind.

Close the bolt.

Huge breath in.

The wind's ripping and you just, and that bullet curves around, hits the

of the plate, dust comes off.

Up there was 945 yards where we were shooting from a little bit ago.

When everything's good, it's good.

It's therapy.

It's good.

Who is Jonathan?

I feel very normal, and I feel like I shouldn't be getting videoed. So I grew

in Washington, a small town, running around like a bunch of people do, BB

.22s, outdoors, barefoot, baseball, fishing, shooting, over and over and

and over and over.

I love it. I love it. I love it.

I moved from Washington to Oregon when I was 15.

My grandpa had like a landscape kind of customers, and I started doing that when

I was like 16.

literally mowed grass for thousands of hours.

Went to college for a little bit, got, like, associates in business.

That's how we dated. Through college, we, like, stayed up on this little

mountain up here and spent a lot of time just outside, like, playing together.

I've been outside all day, every day for pretty much my whole life. I never had

an office job.

Work is beautiful. I think we were made to work. I think... Work for humans is

healthy.

Kept doing landscaping for a long time.

You see a nice green lawn with perfect lines in it. There's something pretty

cool about that.

It's blue -collar work, you know.

I love it.

I want to get done here and get my lawn picked up.

John just, I mean, he's special in a lot of ways. I mean, but, like, I don't

know. Like, he's just different.

He is different than a lot of guys.

He does things different. He does it to, like, a high level.

He goes all out, and he works hard and puts everything into it.

This just sizes.

bumps the shoulder back, necks the neck down.

When I do big batches, I can spray them with case lube, and I put them in the

tumbler and take them off that way. But when I just do a few for testing, I can

just use this, just H -Wax, and then just wipe them off the hand.

So this is decapping it.

I have no idea how many times I've done this, but a lot.

I feel second nature asking me to slow down. It's like, I don't know, I got one

speed. It's like, get it done because my whole life of being here could go so

fast.

Priming when I push down.

These are all brush dyes.

Just brush the neck.

You don't have to do that.

Just try.

I just touched this on the chamfer.

I just made sure I don't have any burrs on that.

I don't need to do so many steps, but.

This is a lab scale.

I've been doing 41 grains in these.

I did not start with scales like this, but I love them.

Each kernel weighs 0 .02.

So at this point, we have a case that's full of powder. We're primed.

We bumped the shoulder back and the sides of the neck down. Put this in the

feeder. I've got Creed up here, so this is 135, and then here we go.

Ready to go.

I remember the first time I set up clay pigeons on a 400 -yard berm, which

seemed insane.

And it was. I didn't hit them for a while. I was playing around, trying to

figure out my holdovers and my duplex reticle, and Walter going all over this

berm. And every 20 shots, I hit a clay pigeon.

I mean, now we can hit the center of the clay pigeon every time, right? And so

you keep pushing and pushing, and the same goes for competition.

I started competing a lot in around 2014, 2015.

That reignited my competitive outlet like crazy.

I know I'm capable, but you don't. It's hard to believe that when you go to your

first shoot. Like, oh, you get humbled, right?

I remember winning my first big two -day, like, national shoot.

It's like a glass ceiling kind of, you break it, and you're just like, okay.

They've been pretty hard since then. The last 10 years has been pretty crazy.

I had never really traveled, never really been on a plane much, and then

flown about every state all over North America, South America, Mexico, just

hunting and shooting. So life took this weird turn and done a lot of crazy stuff

since then.

We bought this place when our kids were really little, thinking that we wanted

land for the kids, you know, which we did.

That was, like, our main purpose. But then it's been, like, awesome for John

me, too, being able to just be out here in the quiet. And John can just, like,

run up the hill and shoot.

He doesn't have to go a long ways away to practice.

One of the things I like about NRL, hunter, you can bring out your hunting

Like some of the other sports, you need pretty purpose -built rifles.

This is a gun that I would take hunting, so it's great. You can come out and

shoot less rounds than some of the other sports, and it's a lot of fun. So I'm

just out here laying in the dirt. We're shooting at 600 yards.

This is a Kessler weather meter. It takes in from environmental, your

altitude, temperature, and angle, different things like that.

Back in the day, there wasn't any of this technology, right? You would go out

one day and you'd shoot a 600 and you'd write how much you had to dial up to hit

a 600.

And you'd go out the next day and you'd think, oh, I'm low or high, and you'd

just take an average.

You'd try to figure out how temperature and pressure, different things would

change your bullet because there wasn't all the technology we have now to do it

for you.

Instead of getting a fancy weather meter, you can run off of an app that's

You don't need all the fancy stuff to learn a lot.

I'm going to put it at 603 yards. My dope is 3 .38.

Then around up to 3 .4.

Spin that to 3 .4. Take a shot.

I want hunters to be more ethical, right? And I think NRL is a great

push an average hunter to the next level.

If you're middle pack at a lot of these competitions, you're better than 95 % of

the hunters out there, I believe.

I think your pair's on that far side.

Oh, it might be in your backpack.

There you go.

Yeah, let's go to that 500 meter. Let's double check the range on it. Okay,

we're 550 there.

You want to load mega?

Okay, you're going to be three, four.

Is it that closest board?

Yeah, yep. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Okay. I'll bet you need to hold about a half a mil left.

You want me to send one?

Okay.

Boom. Great shot.

You want to go straight to 1 ,000 now?

Yeah. Okay.

Okay, 1 ,031. You're going to dial 8 -8.

Needless to say.

Mert, Matt's son, my business partner.

Matt and I do Mountain Forge together. Mert's his youngest son.

I don't know what he weighs, 60 pounds. He's tiny.

Left -handed, gets behind a right -handed gun, can barely reach

I mean, he represents the next generation.

He's me 30 years ago, whatever it was.

A little tall for you.

I don't know. I could describe Matt in one word. He needs a few.

Go half a mil left on it.

Here we go.

Oh, did you see where that went?

Yeah. He's an absolute killer.

He's hit it hard, like real hard. He's going to every stinking match, and he's

been dominating.

Click down.

So a click down.

Okay. And now go, let's go three -quarter on that wind hold, huh?

The very first Inter -100 Championship season finale, we actually tied for

overall win.

And then from then on, it was a race.

Oh, right in the center, buddy. That's a dead center hit. You want to go

further?

All right, let's go further.

Okay, 1 ,308 yards.

You're going to hold a mil and a half left.

Just squeeze a good shot.

Impact.

Good shot, dude.

Did you see it hit?

We're at the NRL Hunter Relentless Rifleman. It's our title sponsor match,

loophole match.

We've got a beautiful venue here, some private property with some really tricky

winds, some tricky terrain, a lot of aggressive lava rock, a lot of scraped

knees, scraped egos.

Shooter ready?

Engage. I'm ROing. The RO is conducting the stage. So they're bringing the

shooters through.

They're making sure the shooter is good to go. And then they're making sure

there's no safety violations on the clock.

And are they near the park?

Correct. The stages are blind, so when you get to the stage, you know what

animal targets you're going to be searching for, and you know how many of

there are and how many positions, but you don't know where that stuff is.

So when you get up to the start point, you're going to have to come around the

corner, and you're going to have to figure it out. Remember, you can ask yes

no questions.

Okay. All right. Shooter ready? Yes.

Engage. Four minutes to get on the sighting position, find the targets,

them, get your dope, your data, write that down, and then get to the shooting

position to engage those targets.

Four minutes sounds like a lot, but it goes really, really fast.

Impact.

Next target.

Waiting in line for stage two. I just shot stage one this morning. It went

really well.

The next stage coming up is two wolves.

So all we know is there's two wolves, and they are near to far. So once you

the first one, the only other hint you have is the second wolf is now going to

be further.

A clean stage is eight points. If you shoot four rounds and you hit every

first round, that's worth two points apiece, so the max score is eight. So

ideal stage would be to shoot four rounds and hit every target on your

round. I've had a good match. I've shot 11 stages, and I've cleaned 10 of them.

I'm winning the war right now. He's for sure winning this battle, though.

We definitely both want to win. Like, there's not like, oh, you know, I'm

to win and he's there to win.

Sometimes you're the jackal and sometimes you're the lion.

He's the lion this weekend.

I'm just a jackal nipping at him. We have nine stages left, so I got to keep

up. A match is a weird range of emotions. You go from hurry up and wait,

up and wait, and it's go.

Vince, you're up next. I'm up next.

James, you are in the hole.

And I still get nervous, so some of it's just like, okay.

Trying to relax, trying not to think too much about stuff, keep tabs on wind a

little bit, just make sure everything's staying consistent.

Calm down, chill out, here we go.

That's where you get nervous and you hope you can find the target. Because if

you don't find the target, you lose points real fast.

But I still get pretty fired up every single time, which makes it fun. I think

if you lose that, then maybe it's time to stop. I don't know. I like it.

I've done this for way too long to be nervous at every stage.

All right.

I'm thirsty, Beth. I want to play. All right.

I got 2B. Wolf just left of the tree.

Yes.

Second one right over that split stump.

838 yards.

you're always worried when you get the wind going like a little elevation

doesn't take hardly anything to shoot over the back or under the belly that's

the shots i missed yesterday were on the stage just like this so pretty stoked

about that one

Next target. Oh boy.

The biggest fear out here is not finding a target.

I'm almost going to find both of those.

So what I know, there's four bears here and we're shooting from one position.

Right below the tree.

Okay.

So shooting position from here also.

Impact. Next target.

Impact. Next target.

Impact. Next target.

Impact.

How'd it do? The man's a machine.

He's crazy, dude.

That was awesome.

See you in a minute.

Thanks, bud.

Impact. Next target.

Impact. Next target.

One minute.

Impact. Next target.

Impact.

Damn. Threw the limb on $5.

We got you clean.

Didn't go well.

Couldn't find anything. Couldn't find the plaque or anything. So I didn't

I just didn't find that second target, which Matt came up.

It took a little bit, but he found it. They showed me afterwards. It's tucked

away in this, like, really hard shadow, hard to see. And so he got four up on me

on that stage.

I mean, I know you wanted to win, but just, like, Matt likes winning, too.

There you go. Yeah, we can tie.

I don't think that's going to fly.

I want to go shoot good. I'm competitive, right?

I want to beat Matt. I want to beat K .O. I want to beat all these guys that

killers out there.

yeah it's close it's coming out of the wire we got we'll get two more so four

pigs left to right nine delta is your placard okay whenever you step forward

we'll start this bad boy okay so one

two three hold on

Next target.

Impact.

Impact.

Impact. Yes.

Good shooting.

Are you the best NRL shooter in the world? Yes or no?

My personality wouldn't allow me to say yes.

It just won't.

I think I can hang with anybody out there, and I beat them a lot.

Impact. Nice clean. If you're competitive, it's fun. Fun competition.

That was a fun one. Good job, bud.

If you're a hunter, the learning curve is steep, but I will guarantee you will

be a much, much, much more efficient, ethical, proficient in the field when it

comes to harvesting your animal.

A lot of ace. When you see a lot of ace in your car, you're pretty stoked. Yeah.

I mean, this is not an easy environment.

If a top -level shooter and top -level hunter is happy with the product, I know

that it's going to be good for everyone else.

If it can survive here, it can survive anywhere.

My thoughts on Loop Holder, I love the culture. I love their work ethic. I love

their desire to push the limits.

It's special when you get a company that feels a little bit like family.

I don't mind being remembered as a good shooter, but I also want to be

remembered as a good dad, good friend, hard worker.

The shooting, the competitive thing, you keep pushing yourself, you know, how

far you can go.

And the hunting is definitely like that.

pushes you further and further and further. And so it expands your

lot.

We can all do a lot more than we think we can always.

I know I've still got limits on myself. I want to keep expanding those

boundaries. I think outdoors has kind of taught me that that's possible.