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all right hunter welcome to the show do me a favor tell everybody a little bit
about yourself all right everybody my name's hunter covert I am the social media
marketing pro staff it really does there's not really a title for it kind of
jack-of-all trades for Kent cartridge been with the company for just about
five years now born and raised in west by god Virginia and I am sorry in
advance for the pack of wild animals making noise in the background for the
next hour you got you got three on your bed and I do as well so it's all good
my friend we're gonna it'll be a rodeo yeah it's a dog podcast talkos did
you you're from west where Virginia west by god Virginia west by god I mean
that's a holy land if I've ever heard it mm-hmm yes sir or about what what
part of Virginia is that give us a little geographic I'm actually so west
Virginia little different than that really not fun state to the south of me but
I am on the tip so I could hop in my truck right now three minutes I'm in
Maryland 10 minutes I'm in Virginia I well really technically probably about
40 minutes and I'm in Pennsylvania there I mean I'm in kind of the hub
everything right right here very cool very cool yeah how did you get started
with Kent family friend ran into my current boss at a social event for
west Virginia manufacturers right after I was about a year after I got out of
college with a criminology degree so it kind of lines up to get into marketing
and meeting him like I'm once later at a bar and they hit it off from there
and it's just been been a blast ever since very cool well you've been really
fun to work with and you and Kevin have been the main contacts for each other
so tell me because maybe Kevin knows more than I do and and our listeners
were want to know more but like how did you get into the outdoors you know
growing up in that area what was it like what's waterfowl hunting like etc.
Waterfowl hunting in west Virginia could best be described as mergansers I'm not
scared oh no hey I will go out and shoot mergs with the best of them it's a lot
of fun I was built up or I grew up in the white tail woods turkey hunting came
second and his act turkey hunting is actually my favorite thing not to do but
white tail woods is where I was born and raised it's not it's gotten a lot better
recently the guys are starting to not shoot button bucks bikes all that they're
actually letting stuff go so you're starting to see bigger and bigger deer come
out of west Virginia have a couple buddies that have been able to kill 150 160
class bucks right around this area so it's been it's been cool to see
everything grow but yeah anybody needs hooded mergansers killed for whatever
reason I can put you on a spot or two I'm looking at a dual hooded merganser
mount from my first dog buck it was his first double in my first double so I
shot two birds two shots maybe three I don't really remember anymore but I shot on
those I missed yeah legendary Kevin yeah I know we didn't have business back then
baby that's true that's true but that was wild the look at his face was like I
did I really hit him I can't believe I hit both of them can't believe I hit both of them and
and it was a memorable memorable retrieve for me because we were hunting a river and
and so he you know goes and gets the first one and by the time he gets back the
second one is moving with the current and kick him loose and he's fading with the
current fading with the duck picks up on it and it's just like a foot race with the
current and he caught up and we're hooting and hollering and so long story short I do
have a hooded merganser mount in my office from bucks first double that was probably ten years
ago dude I bet it's long I mean he's thirteen and a half now so I mean I don't
remember what season it was I don't remember what year it was but it could have been
anywhere between 12 years ago and now so but no it was a while ago it was memorable and honestly
they are a cool bird so oh no they're super super super cool looking yeah and they come in fast
and fun to shoot and when you don't have a limit and you just scratch a couple extra off
I mean what about wood ducks you think super early super super early we get them pretty good
mallards depending on so when we had that cold did you guys get a real bad cold snap right at Christmas
dude I don't remember what I had for breakfast see stealing my lines already um so we got
it was like Christmas we had a cold cold front hit us at like nine o'clock in the morning
it was either the day before the day or two before Christmas and we had mallards out here
like it was Arkansas it was insane I mean but it dropped like 30 degrees from five a.m.
it was cold or it was like 48 degrees and raining at 4 a.m. when I got up and by 8 30 it was like
15 degrees and snowing it was the weirdest and they just pushed down with it yep I mean it
was chaos and we only have two mallard limits so I have two two guys that were dumb enough to come
out with me that morning to I mean we were done in 20 minutes and it was just but it was
nuts I was calling I was face climbing guys standing in the middle of the river like you need to
get down here right now I like there's no birds down there and they could hear the freaking
hail calls coming down in from up to I was it was chaotic that's that's super that's super
cool so with uh let's dive back a little bit into the Kent you know you've been there five years
over the last five years what's what's it been like working in the outdoor industry and seeing it
develop it from the outside perspective the outdoor industry looks so big and so like I guess
the best way like scary all my intimidating but once you get in it you're it's a very tight-knit
small community that you don't really expect I mean I grew up watching all like the bone collector
Michael Wadell Bill Jordan all those guys and my first year my first shot show I'm sitting in Vegas
kind of just taking everything and sit down at a slot machine waiting to go to dinner and I look
to my right and freaking Michael Wadell was sitting right beside me it was like this the most surreal
I guess is everything about it's just been surreal it's been insane to watch the brand grow
um start I mean five years ago looking at the trade show stuff we're going out I mean we had
like a ten-foot pop-up banner a couple catalog stands and they're like some shot on the table
and now which I don't want to I'll send you guys a picture of it the mock-up of it but we got a new
booth coming that's gonna it'll probably be released at the Delta waterfowl show that is it's
like a state not state-of-the-art but it is a very very nice setup now and it just goes to show
that we're reinvesting in everything making the in-user experience that much better we don't grow
unless we can get in front of people and show them that we're real people that actually use the
stuff and can back it up so it's been it's been I guess that's kind of a long-winded answer but
it's been kind of a trip to watch everything grow and really progress the way that it has
and you get to travel quite a bit too like you get to go to all these cool trade shows
and different stuff is there one that you and you like look forward to going to every year um
I would be lying to you if I there's two of them for different reasons
the craziest experience you can get from an outdoor show and what would be coming up in 2024
would be NWTF and Nashville that is shoulder to shoulder end users for three straight days
it's absurd the amount of exposure you can get from that event um but another one that's been
that has grown on me a lot is the east and waterfall festival in Maryland oh yeah that one's
up I mean they got dogs she's not in here at the moment but Cougar our little silver lab which I
know you guys love so much um I'm going to try to get her into the dock jump in contest which
it's not really contest if you go later in the day it's more long the lines of just getting
them do it um but just going to see that all the different dogs all the different people it's
that's a really cool one too that's awesome yeah that one is on my bucket list to go and see
because I hear it's a blast and it's not that far from us no and it's gotten so much bigger like
this this year what it so the the tricky thing with that one is it's all that first I think it's
the first full weekend in November every year so it kills me's grown up in the white tail woods
sitting in this booth talking to people and my cameras are going berserk all my buddies are laying
down big bucks and I'm just sitting there talking to people about duck hunting so it it is what it is
but it over the past four years I would say that that event is probably doubled if not tripled in
size weather permitting is a big thing it's typically always a day of rain
but it's it's a wet sloppy mess with a lot of beer
doesn't sound like a bad time sounds like college yeah not far off at all that's awesome there's
a lot of like hunting history down there too like that's a pretty cool place to be
yeah it's like the goose hunting they call it like the goose hunting capillars something like
I mean there's geese everywhere but you can only shoot one of them so it's kind of a mey point
yes now go bring them back up hopefully but it's great I mean the and they're everything around
there's where the event is is just water so there's geese at tree top level coming all hours of
the day it's it's a super cool thing walk out of the big tent have a huge 30 pack of geese just
dumping in right on top of you it's it's nuts that's awesome that's awesome talk to me a little
bit about because you know everybody knows about that right and it got a little
lot I feel sort of bad but it got a little out of control with our podcast with how
much I love shooting it talk to me about the engineering and the process of coming up with a
shot like that and then we're gonna you know I'll take it into the new new stuff but
talk to me about this bismuth craze this crazy high-end you know $50 for 25 shots you know
whatever the price is but you know that revelation or revolution in our industry
can we take it back even even more so I guess to be like for someone who's just getting into
their first hunting dog just kind of getting into water fowling like
why bismuth what what is it what's so different about it sure you know so bismuth is 24%
denser than steel so automatically you can jump two shot sizes really on anything you could so
if you normally shoot number two's on geese and you feel comfortable with steel on shoot and
twos you can jump all the way to fours that's effectively doubling your pellet count
right off the bat I mean it's plain as dead warpods down range equals more birds in the bucket yep
think of it as as funny as it is think about the craze of turkey hunting those guys shoot freaking
like TSS nines I mean it's not now granted bismuth isn't the same density as TSS but more pellets
on contact the better point blank period that's that's gonna be where it is if you could put one
in its wing one of its head one of its neck you're you're good but having something that
dumps all of its energy upon impact is another big thing and it will fours will crush geese I've seen
guys be completely baffled when I show up to the blind and I have I mean even 20 gauge number fours
on geese I'm not really worried about it at all and guys you still I mean you still have guys
shooting three and a half inch two and a quarter ounce bbs at geese and it's like that's the only
thing you could shoot and 10 gauge at that that's the only thing that you could shoot it's the only
thing that could kill big geese it's like buddy I'm I see dudes do it with 28 gauges like it's not
I get it but I mean at the same time there's still guys that think high brass is beneficial
there's it's all too gazing at this point it's there does nothing to the components it's just
how it looks really at this point but a bismuth bismuth is good the for guys that are just getting
into it find something in your price point that you feel comfortable with that's another thing
that really helps is once you get confident with something everything else falls into place
yeah so I shot I shot for a long time and probably at those mergansers all kidding aside was the
original OG fast deal because it was at that like it was like 14 bucks a box um and then both I
shot and people who've listened to this podcast for years like the first few episodes I have a
browning satory and I was shooting heavy metal three inch threes anything else I wasn't hitting good
those three inch threes just patterned well or whatever as soon as we switched to the Kent bismuth
it was like what I thought was good shooting turned into and maybe I got better
mate like and I'm just being honest maybe I got better at shooting maybe I relaxed and took my time
and whatever but the knock down power you either hit them or you mess them and when you hit them
it was like yeah yeah hit them and so it was a very evident difference um switching to bismuth and
I agree with you I you you can do a smaller shot size so the larger number just if someone's
new to this and does understand a two sized BB in the shotgun shell is bigger than a five
so a five is a smaller BB therefore they can pack more fives in the shotgun shell compared to two's
so I'm hoping everybody's envisioning what I'm envisioning yeah yeah yeah no it makes sense like
so like so let's go back to my heavy metal comparison three inch threes and now I can shoot three
inch fives with bismuth or sixes with bismuth so I'm getting way more pellets going down range
towards that duck with more knock down power because it's a denser material so like when it
basically punches that duck it's got more um not gonna say more velocity but I'm not yeah
velocity is not the right term but like you're hitting the baseball energy right like that concussion
of hitting the bird is more damage which means less cripples which means more birds in the bag
which means your dog gets more retrieves which is what we're in it for and the way another way
that you can look at it if guys are saying steel is half the price of bismuth you take half the
trigger pulls I mean here's the kicker you still got to hit him just because it's good doesn't mean
you could hit the brawl side of a barn you can't shoot you can't shoot right that's how that is
yeah there's not I feel like I'm gonna I'm taking that personally honor that seemed like a shot
but I mean that that's like that's a big part right like it's still you need to kind of pattern
your gun and the choke you use which Kevin right make a note like patterning a gun let's let's
talk about that in a minute but practicing shooting and you guys you know you've got your seven
and a halfs and eights for clay bird and target shooting um which we've Kevin and I have and we've
been using to get better for dog season but the difference between hitting a duck crippling a
duck and killing a duck if you're in that zone the bismuth is gonna kill it and that that's what
was like a major selling point to me was I would cripple like we kidded around back in the day
on the podcast cripple king I'd knock them down and my dog was gonna go and get it now it's
knocking them down and they're down um so it's it's it's definitely important um but now I guess I
don't need Kevin to jump in but let's with a certain gun and certain choke tubes do you find
the the Kent works better with certain things like is there any kind of method behind that
no that's one that's a super interesting thing I went so grown up in the white toe woods you take
when you're citing a rifle at the beginning of the season it's three shots and you think you're good
that's what I thought it was gonna be like coming into shot gunning
when I tell you you could take shells from the same box put in three different guns and you would
get a very different pattern same gun like if you take three of the same gun same modified choke put
them side by side by side they're more than likely not gonna like the patterns are gonna be
drastically different throughout the three it is the weird every the quite literally every gun and
choke combination you can imagine is very different I got lucky with my personal gun I'm wish
this isn't even crazier thing to say I don't have a sight on my gun my front bead fell off some
place in Arkansas and I've been shooting better without it yeah it's kind of like a recurve though
almost that's what I tell everybody and it's it works but you gotta just once again find something
that you're comfortable with that you like and just shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot just when
you think shoot enough should go shoot some more I mean it's what kind of gun do you like to take
duck hunting um so I have my trusty this is probably gonna be a first um it's a rake britey
massimara oh no yeah yep yep I have one of my first friends that I had in the hunting industry
was Jesse Highling if you've ever heard of him um he's kind of the top dog over at the
breetay and he he hooked me up pretty good and it's I've treated that thing like a $2 steak
I mean I've used it as a boat paddle I it fell on the river and froze up on me one morning
and I put it on the grill on the front of the boat and thawed it out tossed three shells in it
blasted away on him um but and then I run a Carlson's mid-range and it done the only time it comes
out of my gun is when it's turkey season and a turkey tube goes in it that's only the difference
in it now you mentioned that like when you're shooting your personal shotgun the fact that you
added a caveat there that it's your personal one does that mean that you have like a work one
because I have like a personal email and a work email do you have like a workshop gun that'd be
awesome well technically speaking I have like 150 workshop guns all right that's a pretty cool
job Burke yeah really I could just go into the go into the lab yell at Mr. Jimmy grab whatever for
Ari I want to out of the safe take it to my destination another awesome caveat of the job I go
to some pretty ignorant places and some pretty ignorant duck holes um that being said if the like
we have a show or sponsorship that shoots this shotgun or that shotgun or this camo that's just
what I take with me on that trip and it it gets to be pretty pretty crazy not gonna lie that's
off where'd you go did you go any cool places last year um you got to hunt out of a hundred-year-old
duck blind in Corpus Christi that was that like ignorant I don't know it was that was another
awesome time that lined up for me got to hit a cold front down there and there were ducks everywhere
killed two Mexican mallards or modeled ducks yeah with the same same thing same shot one shot
pulled the trigger two of them fell and I don't have them back yet but they will be going on my
wall here but then the next I would imagine I'd get those back over the next two three months
cool but they're super cool little bird um and it that was that was a super fun whistling ducks
yeah that was uh there was a bunch of 40 50 yeah it's uh it's called the port bay
port bay club uh I've never been able to hunt a whistling duck but uh there's a few different kinds
so like forgive me anybody from like the Florida Texas area Louisiana but it's like a black
belly whistling tree duck herbalist or some some with an f I don't know what it I don't
either well I got a moment trying to make him a Google it um but those are on a bucket list for me
they're they don't even look like a duck they're they're pretty wild looking so yeah he was very
confused while they yeah loveless f f u l v o u s whistling duck volvus there you go volvus
whistling duck that's what it is sexual bud this is like the ladies out there um I've got a
model duck in his kitchen I do have a model duck yep South Carolina rice field model duck
break in kind yeah so that's cool um where else did you get to go um last year was I've stayed
pretty close to home um didn't get a lot of travel in had some uh some weird family stuff going on
so I decided to stay close but normally you can find me an Arkansas Tennessee bounce around
them bounce around a fair amount there in the year you do real foot lake by any chance I do not know
that's uh so that's in Tennessee that's like a bucket list place for me to go I don't know why
I think I saw it on a tv show and I was like 15 and like that place looks badass yeah we should
buy it one time remember seeing science for it when we were driving south we like a 20-hour car ride
and you're right huh look at that there it is you're right Kevin um cool so all right
we talked about the difference between Bismuth we talked about shotguns and shot gunning a bit
what is Kent got that is just come out that we're exploding into the world and now I need a new tag
line to make up for this so I know we just kind of honk the Bismuth horn pretty good so I don't
know how I'm gonna backtrack into that but so for the past two years I've gotten to shoot this
stuff really walked it from its baby steps I mean when I tell you to go through the R&D
process we turned there was no stone left unturned with it um and then we launched it it has been
out for just under a week at this point got a lot of great feedback but it is fast steel plus
which is a layered steel on steel load so all the Bismuth guys I'm sorry um but I have shot it
more than I shoot Bismuth anymore it is something that you want to talk so best of both worlds
fantastic patterns and the pellet count on it is pretty gnarly as well um it's offered in
BBs 2s 2s 4s and 4s and 6s so when he's saying layered it's BBs uh and then 2s are on top
yep then what's the next one 2s 4s 2s and 4s and so again essentially you're getting more pellets
in that shotgun shell going down range yep we're carrying the energy so you're matching so what
what it has is you'll have the 4s on the box using 2s and 4s as an example you'll have the
4s on the bottom 2s on top you're gonna get you're not gonna get the full pattern that you would
with carrying normal 4s but you're having a pattern filled with 2s that carry a pretty hefty
amount of energy the same energy that Bismuth number 4 carries the steel 2s carry they don't
transfer it as well but that's why the 4s are behind it and they will clean up everything that
the 2s bust up so you will still get those nasty thump shots where you kind of like chuckling
to yourself like oh that was pretty brutal um I'm hitting shots going back to hunting really
interesting get out of here um really interesting river conditions taken shots with buddies that
for the sake of R&D I'll squeeze one off see how it goes I hit a buffle head this year a passing
shot on a buffle head it probably the better side of 60 yards and crunched it
no yeah it's I have buddies I'm sure everybody has it um that show up with anything other than
Kent the blonde just to kind of bust my balls do what they got their friends for a reason yeah yeah
I have a friend that says if you feel if you don't feel like less of a man after hanging out with
your friends they're not really your friends my friends live up to that um but every single guy
that I took hunting with that fits that criteria this year asked for a box of this it was yeah
they never did that with Bismuth I could tell you that much and it was it's it's it's gnarly stuff
and I would not be talking about it if I didn't fully back it so I will say all my friends came
out of the woodworks asking for bisman guys that are at the opposite of factors like yeah we had
the opposite of that what's going over here hey I hear you're with Kent can I get can I get a
couple boxes of my man I haven't talked to you in seven years sir you're just getting gas next
to me I don't even know you yeah exact uh but that's awesome so hey how about that Kent cartridge baby
they got that fast steel 2.0 if you're not in the market for bismuth I get it but fast steel 2.0
is a great option for you and and your dog to get more ducks in the bag strap them up strap
them in Kent fast steel 2.0 let's go