Travis Bader: I'm Travis Bader, and this is the Silvercore podcast.
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I'm joined today by a man who has hunted on nearly every continent in the world.
He is with Korth Group, deals closely with Leupold and Hornady, and he is a prolific,
avid hunter and a wealth of knowledge.
Welcome to the Silvercore podcast, Matt Siemens.
Thanks for having me here.
So we've been trying to line this one up for a little while now.
Um, it's been a good to finally make this one happen.
Last time we were chatting.
Man, you were blowing my mind with some of your stories about hunting
all over the world, African hunts, your knowledge on ballistics.
And I thought there's gotta be a way we can distill some of this information,
some of your background, some of the adventures that you've had into something
where others can learn from your successes and your failures and, and.
Where you're at.
So, uh, this is, this is going to be a fun one.
Yeah,
Matt Siemens: I'm looking forward to it.
I've been thinking about this for a while.
I've always been taught.
It's always cheaper to learn someone else's mistakes and make them yourself.
Right.
So if you can get some information from somebody who's
firsthand, it's always a good
Travis Bader: start.
I wish I could be like that, but for whatever reason, I've always been
the kind of guy who will look at somebody else's mistake and I got
to make it myself and learn from it.
Someone will say, Hey, don't touch that stove, it's hot as a child.
Right.
And I'd be.
Hot?
Like how hot?
Like, what do you mean by hot?
Like, can I touch it really quick and get my hand off?
Matt Siemens: Yeah, I think all, I think that's in the man manual though, isn't
Travis Bader: it?
Maybe that is.
It's just obstinate, stubborn ADHD.
So you've, uh, you've got a hunt in Africa lined up in a little bit, but
I guess what I'd be interested in is.
Your very first African hunt, lessons you learn from it, things that went
well, things that maybe you would advise other people to do differently.
Uh,
Matt Siemens: my first hunt wasn't really planned.
Uh, you always dreamt about going to Africa.
I never thought I'd ever get there myself, to be honest.
It was always something somebody else did.
We grew up, um, no extra money.
A lot of month led.
And, uh, I was living, we were living in Southern Michigan at the
time I was working with Cabela.
So I was in the gun library system and my boss called me up and said,
Hey, do you want to, do you think it's safe to go hunt in Zimbabwe?
This is when Mugabe was out of season, the farms and all the advisories.
I said, Hey, Phil, we live in Detroit.
It can't be any worse.
So three weeks later, we were in Africa and he had a deal, right?
Arranged.
I paid his airfare.
He paid my hunt.
And we went over there and, uh, my only regret is not
Travis Bader: going sooner.
How
Matt Siemens: old were you?
Uh, I would have been early thirties.
Travis Bader: Okay.
Yeah.
And you know, for me, I look at this and I say, man, you got to have pretty deep
pockets if you want to go hunt outside of, even just outside of British Columbia.
But I'm starting to learn that might not necessarily be the case.
No,
Matt Siemens: there's, it's much more affordable than people think it is.
The airfare is what's the burden nowadays.
That's all changed since our pandemic.
But, um, animal for animal, Africa is pretty cheap.
And then people will look at the high end countries that have are thousand dollars a
day to hunt and think it's all like that.
But no, you can go over there.
I had a guy from Aldergrove.
I sent him over.
He did a 15 animal hunt and it was under 5, 000 Canadian.
For a 15 animal,
Travis Bader: 10 day hunt.
But that wouldn't include airfare.
That didn't include
Matt Siemens: airfare, but at that time you could fly for 11, 500 bucks.
Wow.
Travis Bader: So.
I mean, 15 different animals, 5, 000.
Yeah.
In how long?
10 days.
So what's it like when you get over there?
I've heard, so a friend of mine, he was a pH and he's talks about, it's kind
of like being in the lap of luxury.
He says he came over.
And did a hunt with a guide in BC and he shows up and he's
like, okay, we're ready to hunt.
And they're like, uh, where's your sleeping bags?
Where's your kit?
Where's your gear?
And he's like, what do you mean?
Like, don't you guys supply all of this?
No.
Matt Siemens: Yeah.
It's a different world.
Like a lot of people, when I start talking about it and they go, I, my
friend went and they had servants and they had maids and they had a swimming
pool and they had this, they had that.
And I said, that's standard.
That that's basic rudimentary there.
Everybody has that.
Wow.
It's, it's a different way of life.
It's like spa for
Travis Bader: men.
Yes.
So, so walk me through it.
You arrive, what's it look like?
I was shocked
Matt Siemens: at how big and modern Johannesburg was.
I knew it was going to be big, but didn't quite comprehend
as big as it was flying in.
Um, the neat thing about there is when you get out of the city, you you're
out of the city, there is nothing.
Really?
And, uh, we flew in, uh.
I'm from Johannesburg, and the first ship we flew was the Belawayo,
Zimbabwe, and it was all the Mugabe era, and there was nothing.
There's all these big We went to the one version of Costco they
have there, I think it was called farmers, a big discount chain.
They had Coke and corn chips in the whole store, two racks.
That was it.
Uh, first time I was there, there was lineups for about two, three blocks
for, for fuel, uh, fuel stations.
The next time it was probably a mile long.
And my third trip there, there was simply no fuel.
Like you just couldn't get it.
They were out.
Travis Bader: You just don't consider that from over
Matt Siemens: here.
No.
Yeah.
Like the Africans always have that term.
You have to make a plan.
And if you can't plan ahead there, you aren't going to go very
Travis Bader: far.
So what do you do?
There's no fuel.
The pH will
Matt Siemens: have all that sorted.
He has all that.
But if you like, you couldn't do it, do it yourself hunt there.
Got it.
Just because logistics and legality anyways.
But, um, yeah, you have to plan for everything.
I remember he came across in Botswana with a load of stuff for the trip and
they tax the toilet paper as luxury items.
Travis Bader: Toilet paper is a luxury item.
So it's, it's third world.
Yeah, I guess.
Yeah.
So.
Are you using firearms down there?
Are you bringing your own over or how does that work?
I've done
Matt Siemens: it both ways.
Yeah.
Um, I always like using my own, but the more you travel with
them, the more hassles you have.
The trip I'm going on in March, I'm renting.
Okay.
Just, um, it's just so much easier.
Travis Bader: What are safety concerns like when you go over there?
Is it on the top of your mind?
Like I had one.
Matt Siemens: No, no, I I've hunted places where it wasn't on the top of my mind.
I couldn't sleep for the first couple of days.
But, um, we're actually flying in Johannesburg this time, then we're going
to drive four and a half, five hours across the country, my boss and myself.
So we'll see how that goes.
Um, talk to several people, four people say it's safe and they'll,
Fifth person says, absolutely not.
Do not even entertain the thought.
And it's all major highways and set the last 40 kilometers.
So I, I feel confident
Travis Bader: in it.
Otherwise I wouldn't do it.
He had a, uh, a friend.
He was over there with his brother and his brother is a U S army.
I think it was an A10 pilot.
And, um, anyways, they're, they're in Africa.
I don't know.
Uh, I think they're in South Africa and he was wearing a Casio watch.
He's like, you better take that watch off.
He's like, what do you mean?
He says your life.
Is worth less than what that Casio watch that you're wearing is, right?
Is that.
Matt Siemens: There, there's probably sections of that area like that.
And, uh, I plan the route pretty close, like stay in the
major highways best we can.
We have a doctor friend of ours, his family from South Africa.
They actually packed up and moved back, uh, two years
Travis Bader: ago.
Packed up, moved back to South Africa.
Back to South Africa from,
Matt Siemens: from Chilliwack.
Travis Bader: Because?
Well, that's a whole nother
Matt Siemens: conversation, but he just, like, we've had some pretty
candid talks and stuff and well, their families from there and
stuff, but they just felt there was.
Travis Bader: Isn't that telling
Matt Siemens: though?
That's very telling.
Right.
And if it was up to me.
When I'm, when we're done this, I get back in my truck and keep on
driving the sea island, get on a plane and not come back myself.
Really?
Yeah.
I'd be there, not South Africa, wouldn't be my first choice, but
I would definitely go to Namibia
Travis Bader: and not come back.
That'd be your first choice?
Yeah.
Namibia?
Namibia would be my first choice.
Really?
Yeah.
So, uh, property over there is.
Attainable?
Yeah.
Matt Siemens: There's some regulations of buying agricultural lands and,
and stuff, but it's attainable.
And I've looked at farms.
I've been looking at farms for a couple of years now, and I found
like 30, 000 acre farms for less than what you can buy a lot in Chilliwack
Travis Bader: for.
Really?
Well, do you have to worry about squatters or not having?
Property next time you go down there.
Matt Siemens: No, not, not in Namibia per se.
Okay.
It depends where you buy to, but, uh, the, the cheap land is cheap
for a reason and the water it's, it might sustain natural game, but
livestock and stuff may struggle on it.
Like here you talk about how many cows you can have on an acre.
There it's 40, 50 hectares per, per animal.
Like it changes.
It reverses quite dramatically.
I'm
Travis Bader: kidding.
How did you get into this line of work?
How did he get in?
So your, your Cabela's working in the gun, gun counter, gun library?
Well, this
Matt Siemens: goes way back.
Um, I started working in a local gun shop in Abbotsford in 86.
Just when I was in high school.
Which one was that?
Perfection Tackle and Guns.
Okay.
They're gone since, well, since I think 89.
But anyway, so I started that and then my goal was law enforcement, went to
university and stuff, and then I wanted to move to the U S for law enforcement.
So I, um, we're looking to my, we got married, my wife's born in
the U S we lived in Prince George.
We applied for my immigration.
We were told it would take years to come through.
Three months, it came through here.
You have to move.
So I just look for the first job I can.
I fired off her resume to Cabela's.
They flew me down for an interview three days later and, uh, the local law
enforcement agencies couldn't compete with what Cabela's paid and benefits.
Wow.
That was before they went public.
Right.
I actually had to work over them and they had two stores.
Really?
Yeah.
Dick and Mary and Jim would come in the store.
My wife started work there as well.
And she was working the back door once and Dick and Mary tried coming in without ID.
She wouldn't let him in.
She didn't recognize him when we just started.
So it was, it was, uh, they, they looked after employees very well.
Nothing like it is today.
Yeah, it's a little different now, isn't it?
Yeah, it's, uh, you have shareholders that changes everything.
It's the bottom line is,
Travis Bader: is what they look at.
Well, I guess you still deal with Cabela's now with Korth.
Yeah.
So, uh, and then from Cabela's you got on to Korth, is that, was there
a transition like that or what?
Yeah.
Matt Siemens: Cabela's, um.
I was in Idaho at the time with them at the Pulse Falls store,
been there almost 15 years.
They'd gone public, things were changing drastically and I was
looking for something else and I said, if the next real job that
comes along, I'm going to entertain.
And I was dealing with a deal with one of the guys from Leupold.
I worked in the Beaverton plant and I said, Hey, you
know, I'm looking for somebody.
Let me know.
Two days later, Korth flew me to Alberta for an interview and the rest is history.
Travis Bader: Right.
And I like, uh, we're going to have people chiming in, I'm sure they said,
no, it's not Leupold, it's Leopold.
No, that's Leupold.
Okay.
Yeah.
A
Matt Siemens: hundred percent.
Leupold.
A hundred percent Leupold.
If you call the plant, they're going to answer it Leupold and
Travis Bader: Stevens.
Leupold and Stevens.
Yeah.
My very first rifle was a Stevens.
Okay.
Little takedown, 22 Stevens favorite.
Uh, I could fit it into my backpack.
I'd go across the street from my school in a place that I called the desert
because they had a bunch of sand there.
And, uh, it's Joe Brown park out in Surrey.
They actually had a bit of a range there that the police would use.
And I'd shoot there same as a Delta watershed and same
as the Burns bog out here.
I got a sign over there, uh, they all had ranges in there and that's,
that's where I'd shoot growing up.
Yeah, it's a different Stevens though, completely.
Different Stevens.
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
It's loophole to Stevens, but nothing to do with the firearm company.
Nothing to do with the Chippewa Falls, Massachusetts, Stevens.
Got it.
Okay.
There we go.
Um, I probably should know that.
Shouldn't I?
You
Matt Siemens: know, the firearm industry and stuff, you can never say never, right?
So you never know it's, but it's a lot of people make that
Travis Bader: assumption.
Okay.
Well, Hey, I got to talk about my first firearm anyways, so
nothing wrong with that one.
Yeah, I had a, um, custom made stock on it for my small frame
and the shorter barrel on it.
And it came off of a, uh, I think it was some old Cooey that was kind of cut down.
And I, I remember even at five years old, trying to hold that thing up.
It was the heaviest thing in the world and arched back and that, um, yeah, started
shooting at four first gun at five.
That was that one.
And there you go.
But you're, uh, you're pretty heavy into the ballistics as well, too.
Matt Siemens: Yeah.
I've always found it fascinating.
Yeah.
I couldn't do math to save my life in high school, but all the.
You and me both.
And even before all the apps came out and ballistic calculators came
out, I could sit down and figure stuff out with your basic algebra
and cause I had interest in it.
And, uh, it's been great.
Um, I still am very keen on terminal ballistics and I should
say keen interested in it.
Yeah, you always searching for that perfect bullet and stuff and,
and, and being the Hornady rep, a lot of conversations of people
with quote unquote, bullet failure.
And that's, that's
Travis Bader: a.
Tell me about
Matt Siemens: that.
As soon as someone recovers a bullet that doesn't perform the way they want
to try claiming the bullet failed.
Well, I always, where would you get the bullet from?
Well, the animal, well, was it dead?
Well, yeah.
Well then, okay.
How has it failed?
Right.
But I had an, be careful.
I don't want to mention names.
I had an account.
Contact me once, they had a bunch of bullet failures with the ELDX in Africa.
Okay.
Had to shoot a Gemsbuck nine times.
It didn't die and all this stuff.
And so, well, I said, doesn't sound right.
Send me pictures.
Well, they were literally, there wasn't a shot in the vitals.
It was all got shot, shot in that.
It was just by North American standards, they may have been in
the vitals, but the African tropical games vitals located differently.
Really?
Yeah.
And, uh, quite a, quite enough, like, like some animals you tuck behind the
front, right behind the front leg.
Yeah.
That's a gut shot.
There's nothing
Travis Bader: there.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'll, I'll use you like right behind the front leg or if
they're walking, I'll split the
Matt Siemens: V, go up.
A little dramatic, but the giraffe.
Okay.
All the vitals are in front of the front leg.
If you, if you tuck it in, tuck it in behind the rear shoulder,
you're just going through gut.
Travis Bader: Interesting.
Yeah.
So they're gut shooting.
They're shooting these things in tails and hooves and saying the bullet's not working
Matt Siemens: right.
Blaming the bullet.
When the ELDX first came out, I was really keen to try it.
Not a real good bear hunting spot.
We could watch this one bank at 700 yards, 707.
It ranged across and we were all set up for this.
So we loaded a bunch, we couldn't even get the bullets yet.
So I had to buy.
Factory ammo, pull it out and load it into the cartridges we were shooting.
And we shot three bears that trip.
All total, the yardage didn't total a hundred yards.
So we were all, we're all equipped to shoot long range and
everything was right in front of
Travis Bader: us.
So, yeah, I did, um, I like that ELDX.
I've used it in, uh, uh, 6.
5 Creep War with great success and then, uh, 280 Ackley improved.
You know, I took a, uh, a moose at a much further distance than I probably should
have with the, uh, ELDX in hindsight, who was, uh, poor arranging and few errors,
everything went as it ought to, went down, but that was, uh, almost 800 meters away.
And, um, uh, it performed, performed as it ought to,
Matt Siemens: it's a, it's a good bullet.
It's, you can't have a bullet soft enough to expand at low velocities
and then overexpand, not overexpand when you're real close from
personal at extreme velocities.
It's softer.
So it expands at lower velocity.
So if it separates up front, if you shoot something at 10 yards, well,
it wasn't really designed for that.
You're just, you're just, you're pushing it beyond its limit, its impact velocity.
Another trend now is fast twist rifles.
Right.
I'm seeing that.
And, uh, you need the fast twist to spin the bullet to stabilize it, but
you can also overstate over spin it.
Now your RPM jumps, you start getting RPM over 300, 000 RPM, 320, 350, and
the bullets aren't designed for that.
Travis Bader: Burst apart.
Matt Siemens: Centrifugal force will pull them apart.
Right.
Okay.
And is it the bullet that a bullet come apart?
Yeah.
Well, it just didn't work, but then people, people say it doesn't
work, but no, it did because you just be on this limits.
Like I always say, you can haul bags of manure in your Corvette,
but a pickup truck's better.
Everything has its purpose, right?
Right.
Travis Bader: There really isn't one be all end all for everything.
No,
Matt Siemens: there's a lot of great products out there.
There's some great competitors out there.
And, uh, but everything has its limits.
Travis Bader: So the faster twist rate, I've always been of the assumption
that if you over twist a bullet as better than under twisting a bullet.
Yes.
For accuracy.
Yeah.
Uh, but you start.
Twisting a little too fast, pushing them out a little too hot, too fast.
You're going to end up having centripetal force and centrifugal force, uh, failure.
Well, you
Matt Siemens: start thinking if you, if you do the math and there's
a formula and it slips in my mind right now, I was remembering
on the way in, but now I can't.
Um, like there's some of the stuff, some of the rifle, there's a rifle company out
there that's twisted their six, five PRCs, a whole inch faster than Sammy's spec
and that's pushing it at 320, 000 RPM.
That that's spinning.
Yeah.
And it's.
Travis Bader: So why would they do that outside semi spec
just for marketing purposes?
Matt Siemens: Well, I think the general, general topic is, and I've always had it
too, when in Dell, it's spinning faster.
Right.
But I, I, with my thinking of that was back when I was building dangerous
game guns and you want to be able to get to the vitals from any angle.
And if it's too slow, it veers off.
So when in Dell, it's spinning faster.
But when you're shooting solids, it's a different story than shooting cup and core
bullets, expanding bullets, I should say.
Cause some non expanding solids will be cup and core as well, just reversed.
Travis Bader: Right.
So for me, I'm used to primarily hunting within BC.
I've done a little bit in the U S, uh, what are some of the biggest differences
that I'm going to find for my style of hunting over here for North American
game than I would over in Africa?
The amount of
Matt Siemens: game you're going to see.
Yeah.
And, uh, this is going to sound terrible, but spotlighting.
Okay.
Yeah.
I've done it in New Zealand, Australia, Pakistan, Africa, and
it's an acceptable way to hunt.
It's a different way to hunt.
Travis Bader: Um, so are you just doing that to see where the glare comes back
off of eyes or you try to freeze them or.
It's going out to,
Matt Siemens: uh, some animals are more nocturnal, so you should
look for the nocturnal species.
It's just, you should do it one day at one, I bring a group over, we'll do
one night at one day and night hunting.
Okay.
It's just a different experience that you can't do here legally.
And it's a hundred percent legal there.
You're not, you're not shooting your impala and your stuff.
You're shooting the night species, like honey badger, stuff like that.
And jackal and all that fun stuff.
Travis Bader: I remember I was in, um, an area here in BC and we're
coming back from our hunt for the day, you know, sun's going down.
We've got, uh, one hour after sunset for legal shooting.
And as we're heading.
We see a truck going up and people sitting on the back of it and they
got their big spotlight and like, hold on a second, what's going on here.
Right.
And so I get on the report, oppose your polluter line and get a hold of,
just let them know what's going on.
And I, and I get a, um, uh, someone come back.
Got back to me afterwards and says, well, uh, certain people are allowed to do that.
Like, what do you mean?
Right.
And indigenous groups, they say, we're, we're not going to touch it.
So I researched a little bit further and I guess there was a court case
here in British Columbia and there's an indigenous group over on the
island and they were successful.
And they said back in, um, ancestral hunting time, we'd go with torches
and they made their case that way.
But it only applies to that one area.
And I guess it took a while for conservation officers to kind of get
the grounding and know what's allowed and what's permitted and what isn't.
Now it's pretty well accepted that, no, you can't do that.
And, you know, we work with a lot of different indigenous groups and
like, yeah, no, we don't do that.
You can't, this is just a rogue group of people.
There's always a few
Matt Siemens: bad apples.
Always going to be that way.
And we're, we're dealing with that stuff now in the province with,
with, with some of the first nations.
Are trying to do, and they have, they're trying to, they're trying
to manage it as a resource.
And then you have other groups that, from my point of view,
you're trying to eliminate it because there's no sustainability.
Yeah, but that's, that's another rabbit hole.
Travis Bader: Yeah.
You know, it's a friend of mine.
He was, uh, on the podcast before conservation officer Ojibwe bear
clan is his background and the bear clan is they're the protectors of the
environment and the people in the, um, Very interesting talking to him about
that subject and talking to, uh, cause he approaches it both from the indigenous
side, as well as the conservation officer side, man, I learned a lot, like just
the sheer number of different groups that we have here in British Columbia and
the number of groups that are going well above and beyond what, uh, non indigenous
folks are doing to help conserve and to protect what's going on there.
It was.
There's a really encouraging conversation, actually.
Yeah.
Matt Siemens: Like I said, there's some guys out there
trying to do the right thing.
And there's some guys out there with, with no, not looking
for the future, unfortunately.
Travis Bader: Yeah.
There's always going to be those bad apples.
Um, you know, speaking of that, part of the reason I thought this would be kind
of interesting is because you bring that background and that wealth of experience
and you're, you're, uh, dealing in an area that most people from North
America don't have familiarity with.
You know, you look at how the news will portray African hunting and how
social media can portray it, but there's a whole other side to that as well.
And this is something that, uh, my friend who's a PH was getting into is like, you
know, the amount of good that comes out of the African hunting, the amount of
conservation efforts and money that's put back into the society and species that
are only around because of the hunting.
And that's something that, uh, hunters will talk about, but I don't think
the, uh, the general populace is, is aware of, of all of those ins and
Matt Siemens: outs.
No.
And how much of the animals actually used in Africa would blow people's mind.
Really?
Yeah.
Like I'm, it would be funny if BC conservation would enforce the
edible meat law to African standards.
What's their
Travis Bader: standards?
Matt Siemens: If it's made of protein, it can rot.
You can eat it.
Travis Bader: Really?
Yeah.
We don't, uh, you know, BC conservation has got to, and we've got a good standard
over here, but not to the same degree.
In Namibia,
Matt Siemens: when you shoot a Gamsbok, they clean the colon out and then they.
Barbecue it till it's crispy and they think it tastes great.
Well, have you tried it?
Oh, it's like eating crispy rubber bands.
Okay.
But, uh, it's, I'd rather have a Reese's peanut butter cup.
Right.
But it's, um, they, they swear by it.
I mean, I always try everything just be part of it, but no, they eat like
they'll clean the poncho, everything.
And if they don't eat it, their dogs eat it.
I've seen them take stomach contents in buckets.
Back to the house for fertilizer in the garden.
It
Travis Bader: totally makes sense.
Matt Siemens: Yep.
It's nothing goes
Travis Bader: to waste.
We had a, a butcher on the podcast and he's talking about how he uses every
part of the animals through his abattoir.
Yeah.
And he's watching how making compost out of it and the, the
effects that it's having on, uh, the orchards that he's putting it in.
Matt Siemens: I mean, the North Americans got it.
We got it pretty, pretty down pat with pigs.
Mm.
You know, the only thing they don't use in the pig.
Right.
Travis Bader: Well, what's that the toenails and the snout?
The squeal.
The squeal,
Matt Siemens: okay.
Everything, everything else is used, but Africa, everything is treated that way.
Absolutely everything.
I was shocked, like shooting hyenas and jackals, they eat that.
Okay.
Yeah.
Some of the, like I've shot cats there and they eat them like,
like nothing goes to waste.
So I
Travis Bader: had, um, I've had cougar here.
Yeah.
I've never hunted cougar.
Um, last SCI dinner I was at, uh, I think it was Tammy, she was doing the,
the cooking out there and cook some up.
That's fantastic.
Yeah.
Yeah, she did.
Uh, and you don't think, I don't know, I don't think most people would normally
think eating cougar would actually be a good meat, but yeah, it was amazing.
Matt Siemens: You know, and there's been a big push.
Like you see some of the guys now trying to push eating coyotes and stuff.
Well, okay.
I'll draw a line there, but, um, I'll, I'll try most things, but.
Travis Bader: Yeah, I can't see.
I'd be too keen on that.
And I don't know if that's because we have a, an emotional
connection to our own dogs.
And you look at that or you look at what these things eat and the amount
of bugs that they have in their body.
Um,
Matt Siemens: yeah, it's something, no harm.
Anybody wants to try it, but it's not
Travis Bader: my cup of tea.
I think Ranella said that he tried, uh, Eaton, Eaton Coyote at one
Matt Siemens: point.
Yeah.
I've seen one of his, uh, shows on it.
Okay.
And I guess you can put enough spice on anything to make it taste what
you want, but it's, it's just the
Travis Bader: thought of it.
Right.
Remember that guy in the States, I think he was a dentist, maybe a doctor and
he, uh, shot a lion over and after it.
I think he, from what I understand, everything was done above board legally.
Matt Siemens: 100 percent legal.
Travis Bader: And he posted it on social media and he was getting death threats.
Dr.
Matt Siemens: Walter Palmer.
Okay.
He came, he used to come to the Cabela store I used to work
Travis Bader: at.
Okay.
Matt Siemens: Yeah.
And, uh, he had even guilty of what they accused him of, and
then they found out he wasn't.
Right.
It would have been a 300 fine.
Like it wasn't even a, it was breaking the law is breaking the law.
So it's not right, but they hadn't.
Right.
And, uh, it's an area I've hunted real close to where he shot that lion.
Okay.
And the national park boundary, they come and go all the time.
And that's all it was.
It came out of the park and they shot the lion.
Okay.
And the big thing, funny thing there is they called it Cecil the lion.
Oh, you name it.
Yeah, you name it.
And that's the first thing, but.
No self respecting Zimbabwean is going to name a lion after
the big oppressor Cecil Rhodes.
So it was fabrication right from the start.
And they played on heartstrings, people who didn't know.
And, and when I talked to people over there about it, cause I hunted
there since and like the locals would never name something Cecil.
No kidding.
Travis Bader: Yeah.
We'll just watch a watch.
It keeps, oh, there we go.
Not, not in positive
Matt Siemens: light anyways.
Right,
Travis Bader: right.
Yes.
Um, so is that something that, uh, you've had to deal with is people, uh, I don't,
I don't see you posting a whole bunch of, uh, stuff that would be controversial
on social media, but if you had to deal with, uh, Uh, individuals who are
just adamantly against us who might not have the background or knowledge of,
Matt Siemens: of what you're doing.
Yeah.
I've had death threats.
Uh, the first one we thought was kind of comical, uh, was back when I
was in Michigan in the gun library, we put pictures up of stuff we'd
shot, credibility to gun library.
And I put a picture up of a giraffe I shot.
Okay.
And, um, one of the guys from work sent me a link.
Hey, check out this link.
And here, here was this blog and they were going to find the guy who
killed this giraffe and come get him.
And my picture was on the blog.
I thought it was comical.
So I jumped on the blog and asked the guys where they wanted to meet.
And of course no one piped up.
I don't think it's those.
It is a dangerous situation.
Some of these people are quite fanatical and with the family and
stuff, it's any death threat I get now, I deal with it accordingly.
I have contact authorities and, and, um, try getting it dealt with because
it is, what I'm doing is legal.
Science, conservation based, and there's a reason I do it.
I, I enjoy it for one, but it's money back in the environment, it's things
working, it's managing the herd, right?
Travis Bader: Yeah.
If somebody is going to threaten you, whether it's a death threat
or just a threat in any way, shape or form, one thing I've learned
is you never laugh them off.
Nope.
You always take it seriously.
Worst case scenario, you're wrong.
The other way around, worst case scenario.
I'd rather be wrong acting accordingly than treating it as if it was
Matt Siemens: a joke.
Yeah.
The whole hunting thing draws very heavy emotions from both sides.
And you get fanaticals on both sides too.
And like I said earlier, bad apples, but it seems like the anti hunting
movement is based on a whole lot of things on emotion without any scientific,
very little science behind it.
Travis Bader: And that's one thing we see over and over again.
I mean, when we're talking about, uh, uh, wolf culling over here and
we're talking about caribou herds and, uh, everyone talks about,
oh, this is, there's no science.
This is all emotion.
Then you're reacting to it.
And then people will pull out or cherry pick their science
or cherry pick their stats.
And I don't know if it was Disraeli that said it, but someone attributed it to him.
He says, you know, there's liars, damn liars and statisticians, right?
You can make that look any way you want.
Um, how do you start separating that emotion to be able to, uh, articulate
what it is that you're doing, or do you bother, like, do you just let
people have their emotions and you say, look at what I'm doing is legal.
It's helping the environment.
It's based on conservation.
Like, where do you fall in that?
Matt Siemens: You have to kind of take it and, um, try to weigh your
audience to see, see if you have any chance of making any headway.
And it's, I've seen it.
I've converted a few people, but there are some people you can't convert.
When I lived in the States, it's a little, little different topic, but very similar.
Gun control and the classic word machine gun.
One of my good friend I worked with, he had his class three, he
had a bunch of neat stuff and he had an old original Tommy gun.
Right.
And we would take people out who were anti gun, anti machine
gun, nobody should own this.
Nobody knows what it takes to own them, the cost of them and all the licensing.
You could take the biggest anti gun person and give them that Tommy
gun and you couldn't remove their smile with a jackhammer after.
They might not be pro gun, right, but they come out with a different point
of view, especially when they start talking and asking questions about how
much it costs to get a gun, legal gun and the paperwork and the background
checks and all your tax stamps and stuff.
And they realize that these things aren't for sale in the street corners.
No, they're a heavy investment.
Travis Bader: Well, how is, cause of course we've been under a liberal
government for the last number of years, looks like things might be changing based
on polling and where things are at, people are getting tired of the same old, same
old, and where that's been leading them.
But one of the big pushes that you've been seeing is obviously on the
firearm side and trying to restrict or eliminate classes of firearms.
How has that been?
Impacting your livelihood and the business that you work with.
Have you been seeing that as a, uh, significant threat?
Matt Siemens: Substantial downturn with loss of handguns, handgun sales,
ammunition sales and handgun calibers are.
I've slowed down as well.
You don't sell as much two, two, three as you used to.
Travis Bader: No.
Matt Siemens: And it's, it's definitely a threat.
They're not going to stop with what they have now.
Travis Bader: I think we made that pretty darn clear.
Matt Siemens: It's if they were based on actual science and crime reports
and listening to chief of police and all that kind of stuff, we wouldn't
even be having this conversation.
It's not you and me causing the problems.
Travis Bader: Well, the police don't even.
They used to have, Hey, you know, chief of police, you union of police officers,
and, uh, they're, they're backing this.
They don't even have that.
Matt Siemens: No, it won't make any difference because it's not the legal guy.
That's the problem.
Yes.
A handful of guns get stolen every year and it shouldn't happen,
but in the courts, the guys get caught stealing a gun in there.
They're out before the paperwork's finished.
Travis Bader: They're in, they're out.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah, it's, uh, it's funny, the tie between the firearm side that we see, the
emotions involved there, as well as on the hunting side, the second you name the
animal, a second, it's furry and fuzzy.
You don't see, you see, um, Uh, seals, they're cute and big eyes
and baby seals and all the rest.
And so there'll be the poster child on a, on an anti hunting, uh, campaign.
You don't see slugs and eels and, uh, the, the ugly critters out there.
No, it's only the, only the cute ones.
Yeah.
Is there a case to be made, uh, for hunting, uh, that can,
uh, elicit similar emotions?
In what way?
Well, I mean, if anti hunters, cause we were talking about this before,
and you're saying, you know, if, if the, uh, hunting community could
get together and work together as a team in the same way that the anti
hunting community will get together.
Um, and we'd be an unstoppable force.
Matt Siemens: Yeah.
If the, if the hunting community would be a cohesive as the
antis, we'd be unstoppable.
Right.
But here you have the bow hunters against these people,
Oh, you hunt with a crossbow.
You're not a real archer.
And it's, it's, this goes down that road.
Right.
It's never ending.
It's global.
Uh, we're this industry or just sport is full of A type personalities
and everybody wants, wants to have their, their voice heard.
And they're the most important way of hunting.
SCI fights for all hunting doesn't make a difference.
And I use the term sport and I don't even like using that when I talk about hunting.
Sport hunting term came from my research on it came way back when they
actually, actually have market hunting.
Okay.
So the guy would say, I'm going hunting.
Why are you, is that for your job?
No, it's my sport.
I'm going out for my own enjoyment.
It's not a sport like football is, but it was a recreational activity where
the guy could fill his freezer and do that kind of, he wasn't going out to
sell the meat, he's going out for his
Travis Bader: own, own use.
I, I heard a Ron Spomer recently come up and he's like, you know
why it's called sport hunting?
He says, because there are rules and regulations and limits to
what you're like any other sport.
It's not just go out there and.
And kill whatever is out there.
There's very strict protocol that needs to be cut followed,
which is why they call it sports.
So that was, that was his take on it.
I thought, you know, that's very well said.
I thought so as well.
And the, I know in the province here, everyone talks about,
you look in our provincial.
Uh, websites and legislation and everything that they
talk about sport hunting.
And everyone says, we got to get rid of that term.
It's such a bad term.
Well, do we need to get rid of the term or do people need to
understand, need to educate, right?
We it's a sport, not in the same way.
Like, ha ha, this is a fun sport.
It's go and kill something.
No.
There are strict protocol that we have to follow.
We need to be able to harvest only within certain times of the day,
certain times of the year, certain species, certain, uh, age groups.
And we need to use all, all of the animal.
And it's all done in conjunction with, uh, biologists who are looking
at, uh, reproduction rates and, uh, what's going to be the best
Matt Siemens: for the environment.
Caring capacity, the land and all that stuff.
That's right.
Another one that's real bad connotations is trophy hunting.
And if people look at me and I say, I'm a trophy hunter and they just go off irate.
So let me give you an example.
You have a field of 14 deer out there, seven or bucks, you have seven
trophy hunters, you have six bucks left in the field when the hunt's
over, you have seven meat hunters.
They're all gone.
Right.
It's, I haven't shot.
I've not shot game before, cause it was raining and I didn't want to
deal with a wet animal in the rain.
I mean, it's, I enjoy being out there.
Yep.
It was nice and a whole lot, but it wasn't.
I didn't have to take it.
I didn't have to feel the freezer, but anything I do take, everything is used.
Not that African standard, but everything, everything's used.
Travis Bader: I, you're not deep frying up the, uh, the colon
Matt Siemens: and.
No, I, I do a lot of, I make a lot of bill tongue and drawer wars.
I love bill tongue.
The South African dried meat and dried sausage.
What was the other one you
Travis Bader: said?
Drawer wars.
Drawer wars, dried sausage.
Okay.
Yeah.
I didn't know that's what it's called, but I quite like that.
I make
Matt Siemens: quite a bit of it.
And a lot of times I'm running to the store when they have ground beef
on sale, I'm making it with that.
But otherwise I'm using loose term venison, all this stuff.
I, all the stuff I shoot, whether it's antelope or moose or
Travis Bader: elk, it's.
I find it's got to have a good fat cap on it for the biltong just to be.
Matt Siemens: Yeah, it's, I was on a hunt in Africa and it was probably, I
posted a picture and it's three, four times, three or four times more fat
than there is, than there is meat.
But it's, it's the, it absorbs the flavor differently, the texture.
If people look at me and I say, well, try it first and then try it.
It's like, Oh, I didn't think it'd be like that.
You know, it's, it's
Travis Bader: good.
Yeah.
And it's an excellent energy source.
Like if I'm doing a fly in hunt, I'll have Biltong
Matt Siemens: with me.
Is this basically a little bit of vinegar on it?
Um, with some coriander and salt and pepper and dried.
That's all it
Travis Bader: is.
That's all it is.
But over in Africa, don't they just dry it out on rocks?
Is that.
Matt Siemens: Yeah, they still use vinegar.
Okay.
Just as an antibacterial.
I believe I could be wrong on that.
It adds flavor as well.
Right.
And I've done, we went on a tuna fishing trip.
So I made a bunch up and I had all the different types of vinegar
and it did make a difference
Travis Bader: in flavor.
So what's the best vinegar to use?
Matt Siemens: Malt, brown malt vinegar is my favorite.
But I use like, uh.
Red wine, apple cider, white, and brown malt.
And brown malt I found was the best.
Do you
Travis Bader: put it in a dehydrator or what do you do?
How do you?
Matt Siemens: I built my own, just, just pulling warm air over it.
That's it.
And then you always that thing, how, how dry.
Some guys like it moist.
Some guys like it bone dry, three or four days, and then it's done for me.
Travis Bader: Okay.
And it lasts pretty long.
Never
Matt Siemens: goes rotten cause you're eating it, right?
That's what I thought.
It doesn't last that long.
I mean, never tried it that way.
Cause it doesn't last long enough.
Travis Bader: So.
With the difficulties that firearms businesses are facing under the current
legislation and our current government, uh, are there, is Korth Group hiring?
Are they, uh, are they kind of holding, holding the pattern right now?
We're
Matt Siemens: holding the pattern.
The warehouse is always looking for good people to, to work.
Yeah.
In Okotoks there.
The rep group, we've got a pretty solid group.
Everybody.
It's not just a bunch of salesmen, and I'm proud to say that I was
lucky when I started with Korth, I didn't know what to expect and,
um, they had basically everything I was using already, so I didn't have
to sell myself short on anything, everything that the, all the lines we
had and stuff I had at home already.
Perfect.
I've been diehard loophole for a long time.
Yeah.
When I graduated high school, I bought myself Webby Mark five, and I put a
loophole on it, , and then when I got done with university, I went and bought
myself a high-end European scope.
Okay.
Wouldn't hold zero really?
When I was guiding my particular one, I'd have to check my rifles
with new clients all the time.
Went back to loophole.
Never had that happen.
Interesting.
They're man made, anything can happen.
Sure.
They have a warranty.
We can fix them right in Okotoks.
Generally speaking, they'll spend more time with Canada
Post than they'll spend with us.
Really?
And I've never had one lose zero.
On one African hunt, I had an adjustment.
I had to make some adjustments on my gun and the O ring.
The seal on the adjustment came out.
Didn't affect performance.
Sure.
If, if hunting coastal Alaska might be a different thing, but.
It'd be an issue.
I was hunting Matezi in Zimbabwe and it was dry.
Yeah.
It wasn't an issue.
Sent it back,
Travis Bader: had it back in a week.
Well, don't you guys have a range in your basement as well?
Yeah, we have a
Matt Siemens: 425 yard pistol base and 200 yard rifle base.
So we can go down there and check zeros and, uh, We had a guy come
in once, uh, send a scope back.
Wouldn't hold zero and they had, he's on a 378 Weatherby.
So the tech came to me and this is when I was working there.
He goes, Hey, what's the biggest gun you have at home?
He put a scope on.
I got a 500 A square.
We'll bring it in.
We got to test it.
Well, I shot literally three, three holes touching with it.
The scope held zero.
It's just the guy was afraid of his gun.
Mm.
Travis Bader: How often do you find that?
Matt Siemens: Most of the time.
Really?
Yeah.
The, the, this stat goes back a few years, but I believe it was loophole made
more scopes in three months than all the European companies did in a year combined.
Holy crow.
Out of those, out of those scopes, did I say scopes and guns?
Any scopes?
Yeah.
Out of those scopes, 3% would come back for warranty.
Okay.
Outta that 3%, one third of 1% was actually defective.
The rest was user error.
Travis Bader: And it was kind of like websites or technology
versus like, it's not working.
And so the person, have you reset your computer?
Oh, it works now.
Okay.
Or are you clicking on the right thing?
Right.
Oh, okay.
So there's gotta be a heavy education piece in there as well.
We'd have people
Matt Siemens: send them back.
I put my scope in the safe and now I take it out, it's reset
itself to factory defaults.
Oh yeah.
Travis Bader: That's.
It doesn't do that.
Like.
Totally, totally
Matt Siemens: happens.
It's, people's a betting issue.
The biggest thing is a lot of people think all these rifles
we're shooting are square.
But like you have all these different accesses.
So you have the line of the board to the line of the action.
And is it threaded straight?
Is the barrel threaded straight?
The action threaded straight?
I used to have some long 648 screws, probably six, eight inches long.
Okay.
I used to screw them into the action holes and look, look back and show people.
And they, they didn't line up.
They were close, but you don't see it when it's short, but when you have them
long, you could see how far they were out.
Travis Bader: Totally.
Oh, that's an interesting, I've never thought about doing that.
Yeah,
Matt Siemens: it's, we live in a world of tolerance.
There's not absolutes and making a base square is easy, but the
first thing that gets blamed is the optic and it's the ammunition.
And it's never the nut behind the trigger, which is usually the problem.
Travis Bader: Yeah.
You know, I, I remember there is, so prior to being, uh, silver core
outdoors was silver core training and it was silver core gunworks and would
do firearms repair and maintenance for the general public, as well as for, uh,
different law enforcement groups who do extended work, um, armor car companies.
There's one government group that, um, we're doing all of their, their
handguns, all of their pistols.
And, um, I would get called on down to where they're training on a training
day with a bunch of fresh recruits.
And they like the gun's not working and you got to get this fixed.
You got to get it right for us.
And I said, well.
Have you, and this would be the instructors, right?
Well, have you shot it?
Well, no, but the student, it was all over the place.
And they said, and so, okay, well, let me see.
And then they got the whole class.
They're watching me and the instructors.
They're watching me and I take it out and they run the target
all the way to the end for me.
This is how you got to test your accuracy.
I'm like, okay, here we go.
Right.
I better, better make sure I do my part.
Everybody here is watching all the bullets go exactly where they're
supposed to go and it comes back.
Oh, what'd you do?
I'm like, Oh, you know, in front of everyone.
Oh, I made a few tweaks on it.
It shouldn't be a problem anymore.
And then separately aside with the instructor, next time you call up,
make sure you get a second person to take some shots on it, and that
should be the number one thing I would think that any, any company would say.
It wasn't performing for you.
Did you give it to somebody else who, you know, to be proficient
that it wasn't performing for?
Matt Siemens: I always tell people, if you keep your eyes
open, your accuracy improves too.
There was another case when I was out of the office in Okotoks, a tech said, Hey,
I got to test some scopes for an agency.
So we had two Kimber rifles at that point, the 308, I'm going to use police tactic.
I can't remember exactly what your model it was, but there were no one shooters.
So we had them all in rings.
We went up to the Rosebud range and we sat a hundred yards and we shot
groups and just Cut them out and attach them to the scope and sent them back.
Then the agency contacted him wanting to know what rests we were using,
because they wanted to buy the same so they could test it themselves.
And he went back, no, no, they were shot off sandbags.
They'll burn, I was a burner at the time.
It was a burner up in myself.
We just shot him off sandbags and they couldn't believe it.
And this is ERT stuff.
Yeah.
There's a lot of qualified ERT people out there, but there's.
Travis Bader: Sometimes ego gets in the way too, right?
Something's not going
Matt Siemens: right.
Can't be me.
Back to A type personalities, right?
Well,
Travis Bader: that's it.
You know, we are a group of individuals, people who find solace
in the outdoors typically don't want to be surrounding themselves with a
whole bunch of other people, right?
Yeah.
Um, people who want to.
Uh, hunt or fish, or they're typically people who are self sufficient
and they have their way of doing things as work for them in the past.
Uh, even just in the firearms community, there are some social
aspects to that, but even in there, there's a lot of aid type, uh,
individualistic type, uh, personalities, and I think that's probably.
The number one thing that the, uh, hunting community and the firearms community
has to recognize and square themselves with if they want to all work together.
Yeah.
Matt Siemens: I find a lot of the old wives tales from 40 years ago,
aren't dying or even 50 or 60 years ago, like which ones, uh, how a
bullet flies through the air and, and.
A scope gathering light, nothing gathers light.
It transmits light.
It doesn't gather light.
Tell me
Travis Bader: about that.
Matt Siemens: Well, people think it's gathers light because we, when you
look through the scope, if you're low light situation, like last
light, you're out and you look and it looks brighter through your scope.
Well, now it's focused to your eye.
Right.
And it's coming right back to your pupil.
Because, well, I need a bigger lens.
We'll gather, gather more light.
No, your erector system inside the scopes the same size,
the transmission is the same.
It will affect your exit pupil, right?
But a lot of that times when you get to our age, our eyes, our pupils aren't
expanding that much anymore, anymore.
Doesn't help anything.
Right.
Within reason.
There's always, some of the higher power scopes are huge.
Like when I was culling in, in New Zealand, I had a three
and a half, 10 on my rifle.
I was doing quite good, but I went back to next season and
I was going to be the bad guy.
I was, I was going to rack up numbers.
I put a six and a half, a 20 on my, on my gun.
Target dot, and I had it dialed, cranked it up to 20 power and
just made a fool of myself.
Cause early morning you couldn't, it wasn't a knife,
exit people wasn't big enough.
Right.
Then you feel the view was so small, you're trying to find these goats running.
And then I ended up cranking it back down to 10 and left it there.
I've got my numbers back up.
Travis Bader: That's usually, it's amazing how that works.
Matt Siemens: Yeah.
It's would have been cheaper keeping it.
Right.
But it's one of the things that it's all this stuff, like the, my culling
in the South Pacific really taught me a lot old, like testing his old wives,
tails with different bullets and stuff.
Cause you go down and you're shooting quantities, animals.
You could shoot in a day, what you couldn't shoot in several lifetimes here.
Really?
And so with different bullets and stuff, it really taught me
what worked and what didn't.
Travis Bader: So this, the whole culling aspect, they take a look,
it's usually with invasive species.
And they say they're overrunning, it's going to cause damage to the
environment and to the other species in here, carrying capacities diminished.
Yeah.
Now we had a, um, a cull here over in BC, uh, one of the local little islands here.
And they will bring people in.
You were going to New Zealand and these guys were New Zealand fellows that were
coming over here, coming over here.
Matt Siemens: I was, I helped him out with that little bit in the beginning
as the loophole horny rep, I tried talking to them and they wouldn't listen.
And their second purchase was more geared to what I, what I told.
But I think the whole thing was wrong.
You're paying a company, come in, come in here, kill deer when you
and I would have done it for free.
You could have had a draw.
Sure.
Yeah.
It's a national park.
Okay.
We'll have it a draw basis.
When I lived in Detroit, we used to, we always talked about guarding piles of corn
in the Metro parks in downtown Detroit.
Okay.
They would stack corn up and get all the deer coming in.
And then in middle of winter, we would guard the pile of corn.
And shoot any deer.
I tried to eat it and all, all the, all the meat went right back to It was all
processed through Whitetails Unlimited.
Yeah.
But I mean, that wasn't invasive, but it was just the Metro parks, you
couldn't control it any other way.
You can't, you couldn't open it up in the cities.
Right.
I feel if we did a call like that in a metropolitan area in
Canada, there'd be such outcry.
Down there, I'm not sure if they're still doing it.
This goes back 20 some years now.
But it was always, it was always interesting.
And then that was muzzleloader only.
And we would try different bullets and that's a, my terminal ballistics
fascination is always, I'd go to New Zealand, I'd have my, so
much of my regular go to bullet.
And I try a few new ones that were on the market and see how they worked.
And when you can try.
A bullet on 50 different animals in a day.
It's not, it's a much broader snapshot than just that focus.
Well, you tried it once, it didn't work.
It didn't, maybe that was the one off, but came pretty apparent what worked and what
Travis Bader: didn't.
What do you find works for you?
Most of my killing
Matt Siemens: bullet was the Hornady interlock, even
before I worked for Hornady.
Okay.
And it was performed very good.
Yeah.
And they were economical when you're shooting that kind of volumes.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I'm talking hundreds of rounds a day, right?
Like it's, and it made a difference if you were shooting some of the stuff
that was four or five times the price.
And when we experimented with them and I found the best bang
for the buck was that Hornady
Travis Bader: Interlock.
Interesting.
So what I heard back from the, the local culling that was over here, um,
They said, well, why are you bringing people in from New Zealand to do this?
I said, well, they're the ones with the expertise and they're going to be
shooting from helicopters and they're going to blah, blah, blah, blah.
But he, a mighty flies helicopter.
He's like, you know, we train the New Zealanders how to shoot from helicopters.
I, uh, Canadians know how to do this.
Matt Siemens: I've shot from helicopter in New Zealand.
Yeah.
I'm a hundred percent success rate in helicopter.
Okay.
Never missed a shot.
Okay.
I've only taken one.
That
Travis Bader: was going to be my next question.
That was going to be my next question.
Cause that'd be a pretty darn impressive shooting from a moving helicopter.
It
Matt Siemens: was, um.
We were, we were culling tar and, uh, it ran into the bullet.
Okay.
Like it, it, it's, I act like it was all me, but it's, do you want to try again?
Nope.
I'm fine.
Yeah.
Travis Bader: Yeah.
Just rest of
Matt Siemens: my laurels here.
No, it was.
It was a lucky shot, but I mean, I always tell people I'm a hundred percent
from helicopter, which isn't a lie, but that's another one of those stats things.
Right.
Like statistically, I'm not telling them.
I'm just physically, I'm telling the truth, but it's, it's a
very, very small cross section.
Travis Bader: Well, I heard there is no, um, No Canadians, uh, put
in for the, uh, for the call.
I don't know if that's true or not, or if that was just something
that was, uh, said afterwards, but.
I'd never, I'd never
Matt Siemens: heard it being offered to anybody.
Travis Bader: I never did either.
Because when
Matt Siemens: I, when we were involved with it, it was Parks
Canada trying to do it themselves.
Travis Bader: Gotcha.
Yeah.
Interesting anyways.
I mean, you know, they've got a reason they've got a.
They've gone through, they've looked at the science.
They've looked at why they need to do this, but the next step
seemed a little ridiculous.
The amount of money that's spent in the, uh.
Didn't it work
Matt Siemens: out like 83, 000 a deer?
I
Travis Bader: think it was something like that.
It's just brutal.
Yeah.
I don't understand that, but, um, interesting.
Matt Siemens: I hunted on the, on the islands there a couple of years
back and we weren't welcome there.
No, by most of the people, it was clear they didn't want us there.
A few, a few guys were fine, but so now they have the problem of the deer.
It's everybody wants their cake and eat it too.
Right?
Travis Bader: Yeah.
Well, I mean, they're, they're cute and they, they're little guys and they're,
they're like little pets and they come by all the time, but you can't stick
your finger into the bowl of water and not expect to see some ripples.
There's going to be a consequence one way or the other.
And I guess we come to a point where you either say.
Okay.
The consequence is, is the environment's changed completely,
or you get in there and you try and make some changes to, to correct
some of the mistakes that were made.
Well, it's a
Matt Siemens: textbook example of how managing herds and hunting can help not
only the herd, but the, but the landscape and the carrying capacity of the land.
Mm hmm.
Keep it healthy.
Mm hmm.
And people have to realize that people, biggest thing that aunties don't
understand are animal rights people.
Well, you're killing an animal.
Yeah.
You're not managing for an individual.
You're managing for the herd long term.
Mm hmm.
And you have to give some stuff up for it to be viable long term.
Travis Bader: Yeah, because the consequence otherwise is
they'll, they starved to death.
Yeah.
Matt Siemens: Disease comes in, wipes them out and.
Right.
You take a look, what's happening in the prairies and in the States with CWD
now is, and that was from supposedly coming from the deer farming, crowded
pens and it disease wipe stuff out.
Is that where it
Travis Bader: came from?
That's the story I heard.
CWD, chronic wasting disease for anyone who's listening, who doesn't quite.
Um, and that's, I think it's in Alberta now.
Any reported cases in British Columbia?
Not that I'm aware of.
I don't think there is yet.
Do you think it's coming?
Matt Siemens: I don't know.
I sure hope not.
Travis Bader: Yeah, that's, um, just, it's decimating populations and I, I
never, I never heard about where they were speculating where he came from.
So that's
Matt Siemens: interesting.
I hunted Alberta this fall for antelope and in what was once a prime mule deer
area, there wasn't a mule deer left.
They wiped them out.
Not that they purposely culled them all out.
It's my understanding.
Just so the disease wouldn't spread.
Now that what comes back should be healthy.
But you have to manage that too.
I know every deer you shoot in Alberta, when, once I've shot, you submit a head
for testing and then if it comes back positive, they give you another tag
and they don't recommend eating it.
They say it can't jump to the human, but you don't want to be that.
Travis Bader: Case number one.
Didn't realize they gave another tag.
I thought you just, maybe that.
Maybe
Matt Siemens: that stopped, but I know at first it was guys I was
hunting with when I lived there were getting replacement tags.
One year we we got, you got drawn and you go buy your tag and you get two tags.
Next year.
Next year it's three.
I heard one year being six.
They're trying to get rid of them.
They're quite aggressive on managing it there.
Travis Bader: So I gotta ask right now, shot show's on.
How did you manage to get outta that one?
Like for me, I have a hard time at shot.
It is too many people, too busy, too much stuff.
I'd rather be in the ocean, up a mountain, in the woods, shot's a tough place for me.
Yeah.
Shot
Matt Siemens: opens tomorrow.
It is to go and work.
It is one thing to go and visit it as a consumer, or I guess it's not consumers
and industry related, but to go there as a guest is a different thing.
It was lots of fun the first couple of years.
If I had to be there, I'd be there, put my best foot forward, but it is.
It is four days of grinding it out nonstop.
You can barely walk while halls are so full, thousands of people,
tens of thousands of people.
And I'm just not a crowd person, but no, I, it's half the crews there.
I'll be there next year.
Okay.
And it's, it's a phenomenal place.
Like you realize how small the Canadian market really is
Travis Bader: when you walk through Shaw.
I got to wonder why they even care, even listen to us, honestly.
I mean, it's, we are so small.
Matt Siemens: Yeah.
We're.
If anywhere from three to 7%, depends who you talk
Travis Bader: to.
And we make their life difficult by having all these weird
import export laws and yeah.
Matt Siemens: Yeah.
And magazine restrictions.
And now that, yeah, it's just brutal.
You, they can't just ship a gun up by changing, throwing a mag out.
They got to do so many, a lot of a hundred or whatever, and it just changes
Travis Bader: things.
And have you been keeping up on the, uh, the newer magazine laws that
they're talking about here in Canada?
Matt Siemens: I know enough to be dangerous.
Um, I've been trying to keep up with it.
What's actually, once it passes, I will, I will educate myself a hundred
percent on it, but there's so much speculation out there and stuff I want it.
I don't want to get myself confused.
I've lived in enough places and hunted enough places that naturally
I'm getting stuff mixed up.
Well, where was this?
How do I, just because I've lived in different places and things have changed.
Travis Bader: From what I understand, they're looking at, uh, pinned
magazines and magazine capacities and.
They say they keep bringing in new regulations and legislation
as to the number of rounds that you can have in a magazine.
And well, if a restricted firearm, you can have 10, but if it's a
non restricted center fire, semi auto, you can only have five.
But if it's a restricted, that's kind of looks like a
non restricted it's five again.
But if it takes a pistol mags and it's 10, they said, tell you what, anything
that's pinned, uh, it's going to be made prohibited is what I'm hearing.
I
Matt Siemens: heard the same thing.
And then like.
We get stuff up from Ruger.
Mm-Hmm.
. And they won't be pinned to be dimpled.
Right.
And 'cause pending is not legal in some states.
Mm.
'cause it could be removed.
Right.
So they dimple the mag and they sim simply with a hammer.
They probably have a jig, they put it in the hammer and a
punch and it deforms the mag.
Mm-Hmm.
And then they get people upset with that because the mags deformed.
Well, you know, P'S not legal, so this is what it is and we aren't
big enough for them to to, to do it.
Travis Bader: Yeah, I remember back in the day when, uh, Vancouver police,
you know, they transitioned from their Breda's to their Sig's and it was my
job to dimple thousands of magazines.
And that's exactly what I did.
Made a little jig, slide the thing in, get the torch just to heat it and
then give it a smack, bring it out.
So they all have a little bit of discoloration from the torch and
a little bit of a dimple, but they're all in the same place.
Made them legal again for them to be able to sell it prior to them, uh, enforcing
some, uh, legislation or regulations that were on the books about law enforcement,
being able to recoup costs through the
Matt Siemens: city of Margaret.
My understanding, they can't anymore.
Travis Bader: They can and they can't.
I mean, the legislation was on the books, um, but they just weren't enacting it.
Some stuff happened.
They decided they're going to enact it.
And from what I understand, there is a little bit of a, um.
It's a bit of a gray area.
I think they came down really hard and said, you can't.
The same reason why, let's say safety course instructors in Canada, they used
to get all of their firearms through seized guns from the police stations.
And they'd in BC, they'd either come over to, at the time it was, uh, Murray
Charlton, who was doing it or myself.
And we would be, um, Deactivating or the, now they call it disabling a
firearm so that it'll still click and it'll still do what it's got to do.
And, but it'll never go bang again.
And we get it all from the.
And then they said, you can't do that anymore.
And I think that's certain to lax up a bit.
I've certain areas.
I still hear instructors saying, Oh, I went to my local RCMP
and they put some aside for me.
So there's a lot
Matt Siemens: of officer discretion involved.
Yes.
And it depends where you are.
I have some friends who are members and, uh, they're night
and day how they interpret things.
Travis Bader: Sure.
Yeah.
It's like calling up the firearms program.
Yeah.
You can call five different times and get eight different answers.
Yeah.
Interesting world that we try and navigate, create, make sure that like
operating a business, I got to imagine it's got to be incredibly difficult
for a company as large as the one you work with to, uh, operate under
the auspices of certain rules and regulations only to have somebody else
interpreted differently the next day.
And
Matt Siemens: this is why we draw the company makes policies are
black and white and people want to see, well, can't you help me?
No, we're black and white.
We have to be, there's too many variables involved and we've been advised or we, the
company feels that this is what it means.
So we stick to that and we don't
Travis Bader: deviate from it.
Do you guys seek permission or do you seek, um, do you
say this is what we're doing?
Does it meet, do you look for tacit approval?
Do you look for it?
Because if you want to get everything in writing?
You're going to be waiting years.
Yeah.
That's
Matt Siemens: above my pay grade.
Okay.
It comes down to me and I just follow what I'm told.
Sure.
Fair enough.
I I've, yeah, I don't need to put that responsibility on myself.
If someone else is going to do it, I'll listen and do exactly what I'm told.
Travis Bader: Right.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
Where do you see the future of, uh, of firearms in, in Canada and, and hunting?
That's
Matt Siemens: a tough one.
If something doesn't change now, it's not going to be a good future.
And that, that can be interpreted in many ways.
And that's just how I feel though.
It's brutal what we're going through as history repeats itself.
You can draw all these parallels from other regimes and stuff.
And some of the stuff's word for word.
Travis Bader: You talk to some people and they say, you know,
the writing's on the wall.
I mean, it's just a matter of time.
Um, I got to wonder what would have to happen in order for
that not to go down that course.
Matt Siemens: There has to be a change in government.
I mean, that that's, that's the first, but can the Canadian with a Canadian
public allow the next government, give them enough leeway and time to fix.
What it is, where most Canadians can't buy green bananas to plan ahead.
And then they aren't, they aren't going to be able to sit here and wait
for the cons, if say the conservative party is going to be our saviour,
they aren't going to give them two terms to fix what the last guys did.
Right.
They're going to, Oh, this is soon as soon as they start tightening
the belt and stuff, they're going to, Oh, it was better the other way.
And it's just, they can't see the future.
Travis Bader: Well, I look at COVID all of a sudden, there's a resurgence
in people wanting to be able to be self reliant to get outside.
Obviously, uh, self protection was another one.
They kind of brought it to the forefront.
And I guess if I'm to be pessimistic, I'd say that's probably the only
thing that will course correct, even different governments coming in
might slow or bait these different, uh, the course that we're on.
But it's going to take either natural disaster, war, something catastrophic
in order for people to reevaluate, um, what they find important.
I,
Matt Siemens: I've been saying that for a while.
It's going to take an act of God or a catastrophic event to get the country
back on, on, on the right course.
Especially if we get another liberal government in.
And I say, I'm not picking on the liberals here because Mulroney's
conservatives and Kim Campbell brought a bunch of this crap in.
Sure.
Yeah.
So it's the best way to look at it.
They're, they're, they're all in the same party.
It's just different money wings.
Travis Bader: Right.
Well, I, I look at it and I know, you know, the macro politics are going to
be different from the micro politics, but I remember, And there were years
ago, here we are in the incorporation of Delta, which is now the city of
Delta and at the time of the corporation of Delta says, we don't want any more
firearms related businesses in Delta.
Similar to what Syria has done.
If you're in there, you're grandfathered, but, uh, that's it no more.
Right.
And so I went in there and I had myself all prepared and got my suit on and
I've got all my notes and I'm in there and I'm talking, given all my different
points and you know, that there was one.
Um, firearm business that thought this was the greatest thing in the
world because they were close to retirement and this was just making,
um, it was a short sighted approach.
And, um, I didn't see eye to eye with that individual on that one point.
Great person, but just that one point, I didn't see eye to eye on.
Anyways, I'm given my spiel and one of the guys stands up.
One of the politicians says, Travis.
Like, how, how much longer are you going to go here?
And it's cause he sees all my notes.
And I says, well, I don't know.
I got this much more to go through.
And he's like, let me just stop you short.
I agree with everything you're saying.
This has got nothing to do with what makes sense and it's got everything to
do with what we think that people want.
Oh, I didn't know how to respond to that.
He says, yeah, no, you're right.
Nothing here really makes sense, but this is what we think the
constituents who elected us in want.
And I.
Look at that more on the macro side.
Is this what people actually want?
I think people want safety.
They want security, but I think the story that's being told over and
over again, either through either inadvertently through let's say
media, which glorifies firearms and in a certain way, or through, um.
Like legacy media and social media and all the rest that may be objective driven
to, to paint a picture in a certain way.
They'll say, you know, firearms are bad or hunting is bad.
And majority of people say, well, yeah, you know, I want to be safe.
I don't want to walk out and see everybody carrying around a gun.
Cause that doesn't make me feel safe.
I don't want to see people out there hurting these poor animals because,
you know, I'd rather just get it from the abattoir and don't, don't
you just get meat from Safeway.
And I think there's an education piece in here that can bridge the gap of.
What people actually want, because they want safety and security and
they want their environment to thrive and the animals to do well.
And how we get there.
And I think there's, there's a, a divide in there that we aren't
adequately bridging at the moment.
No,
Matt Siemens: and it's uphill battle because like you say, the media
is giving people what they want.
Right.
And, and it's the politician, all the politician wants is another term
and it's keeps on going that way.
If it was all based on science and common sense and all that
kind of stuff, it wouldn't be an
Travis Bader: issue.
It's based on money.
Follow the money.
Right.
Media doesn't sell stories.
They sell advertising, right?
They want eyes on so they can convert that.
And there's going to be money involved, or there's going to be money back through
the government, if certain governments are in power that are favorable to the media.
And I think people are starting to wake up to that, you know, just all the.
Um, fake news, all the, like what Trump, Trump would go on about.
I think people are waking up to the amount of bias that's out there, but it
also creates a very dangerous category where people just can't believe anything.
They don't know what to believe.
And
Matt Siemens: it's something comes across as plausible.
Well, if you look at how many of these tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.
Mm.
Have the, have been proven correct and actually exist in the last three years.
Like
Travis Bader: it's, it's just brutal.
I actually got my tinfoil hat back there.
You can just see it up behind me.
I haven't had a chance to wear it yet.
I'm just waiting for some guests to come on with some real tinfoil stuff.
And I put my hat on.
Matt Siemens: I was in Africa when COVID hit and I flew back through
four or five major airports around the world after the lockdown.
Yeah.
And all I can say is my firsthand experience for what that's
worth, this and two bucks will get you a coffee at Timmy's.
It's how they were talking about the lockdown being handled in all these
countries and all these wasn't the case.
I, I, I seen it myself completely different.
Did it change right after I left or was it like that before I came?
I don't know, but I went through these places and it wasn't, wasn't with
anything, anything the news was reporting.
It was definitely agenda driven and a lot of fear
Travis Bader: mongering going on.
I likened it to fog that whole thing, because I'd talk to people and no
fellow in Spain, he was doing some work on one of our websites and he's
in Valencia there and COVID first hit.
He's like, Oh, it's bad.
Okay.
Tell me about this.
Right?
Like we don't, I'm, I'm learning here.
Oh, you know, the lockdowns are going to happen and people are going
to start dying and this and that.
Are you seeing that in your area there in Valencia?
Well, no, no, but it's, it's over in these other areas and just like fog, right?
Are you, is it really foggy right where you are?
Well, no, I can see all around me, but it's really foggy over there.
You walk over there and you look around, it's the same thing, right?
There's a
Matt Siemens: European vendor we were dealing with and the
conversation was, how's it going?
And they go, this is great.
There's no tourists.
And I'll leave it at that, right?
Right.
Like
Travis Bader: it was.
Well, it also had an effect of, on firearms businesses, which was positive
in the short term, it's not a sustainable sort of model, but I mean, it got
everybody wanting to learn to hunt, wanting to learn to garden, wanting to
purchase firearms and you couldn't keep them on the shelves for quite some time.
Yeah.
There was
Matt Siemens: that time where you had this happening and political
stuff happening around the world.
It was a perfect storm for the industry, but not, not sustainable.
And we're going through the correction now.
It's still, there's still strong sales, but it's, well, even if we went back to
quote unquote, normal, people would think is the bottoms dropped out because it was
Travis Bader: just so, so busy for those few years.
Yeah.
That was, uh, it was interesting.
Uh, you're not seeing people wanting to go outside in the same way anymore.
It's funny how quickly people can just go back to, well, this is normal.
This is, this is easy.
The easy path, I guess that's why we have game trails because we are
animals, just like anything else.
This is an easy way.
And I can, I was go back and forth kind of on autopilot.
Yeah.
Path least resistance.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Um, any other, any inside scoops from the industry that we should be, uh,
chatting about any up and coming things?
That you're allowed to talk about?
Well, it's not the real
Matt Siemens: secret now.
Everything will be released at SHOT Show, that type of thing.
Right.
Um, on the, on the loophole side of things, they brought the Mark IV back.
Okay.
And it seemed that Mark IV HD.
Yeah.
And it looks like they've done a great job on it.
Nice.
Hit it out of the park.
Nice.
We'll, we'll see how the sales translate to that.
And Hornet is always coming out with these new cartridges and what
a lot of them are designed for.
Military application and then released to the public as a secondary thing.
But a lot of that stuff is AR driven and we've lost that market here.
It'll still work in a bolt gun, but.
For the, for the Americans and their ARs.
It's some
Travis Bader: neat stuff out there.
Do you think, do you think ARs are coming back?
I sure hope so.
Yeah.
I, um, cause they're talking about a complete rewrite of the firearms act.
It's so patchwork together as it is right now, and it's so open to interpretation.
It's, um, it's a little ridiculous, you know, people will call up and
they'll say, you know, I got this issue.
Do you know a good firearms lawyer?
And I always tell them the same thing.
You don't need a firearms lawyer.
You just need a good lawyer.
Somebody knows who's got a sharp head, who knows procedural law and everything else.
Because that, that's not where these things are going
to be won or lost for you.
Yeah.
Matt Siemens: But it comes back to our talk there about educating,
educating people, like so many people, all the semi auto, the auto, uh,
automatic is everything that's, they have no place in the sporting field.
Well, actually they were made for the sportsmen long before the military,
when Chester came out with that.
Self, self loading rifle, Remington model eight.
And that's where Kalashnikov, Kalashnikov got his safety for the
AK off the Remington model eight.
They were built for the Hunter that at early in the early part
of the century, last century.
And the military didn't start using them successfully until the grand World War II.
But, but the semi auto rifle was made.
Travis Bader: And most people don't think about it like that.
No, no.
Interesting.
So, you know, SHOT Show, the one thing I did like about it, they'd send us media
passes, so I don't have to pay to get in.
I get to go down to the range days ahead of time, and that was always a fun thing.
You get to go in, shoot all the new things for free, meet all
the people that are out there.
Um, is that something that you guys would Uh,
Matt Siemens: the LE guys would be down there with our various
vendors on the line and stuff.
Yeah.
As we'd separated, uh, I used to do LEN commercial.
Now I just do the commercial side of things.
So I'm not dealing with that nearly as much.
I'll pick up some slack once in a while, but I never went down there and shot that.
I've done it before in previous life and played with all that kind of stuff.
It's fun.
And I'll let someone else go.
I've not had a chance yet.
Travis Bader: Yeah, makes sense.
I just like free food, free, free shuttle
Matt Siemens: down.
Anytime you can shoot a full auto on someone else's animal
bill, that's the way to do it.
Travis Bader: Yes.
Um, what else?
Um, so looking at these African hunts, um, you're saying before, you know, caviar
tastes on a, on a peanut butter budget.
Um, what advice would you have to somebody else who's looking to, to do
the same thing, go on an African hunt?
It's achievable.
Matt Siemens: That's, that's the bottom line.
If you go to vacation, if you go on vacation to Hawaii, Mexico,
if you do a cruise, you can do an African hunt if you want to.
It's, um, I'm very lucky that the, my key thing that gets me to Africa is my wife.
She's a hundred percent supportive.
Okay.
And that changes it that I know people who wives aren't quite as
encouraging as when it comes to hunting.
My wife's a hundred percent behind it.
And actually on the hunt I'm going on now, I was going to go shoot a female lion
Travis Bader: on a management hunt.
That's going to raise some eyebrows
Matt Siemens: and get some people upset.
And, uh, I, because the price was, uh, In my budget and my wife,
no, they're going to close this.
It's not going to be something you can do again.
Go, go, go shoot a male, go shoot the big main lions.
Well, go hunt for me.
Whether you get one or not, it's a different story.
Right.
And so he twisted my arm and that's what I signed up for now.
Like I'm not.
I don't have the money.
I'm just financially irresponsible.
Right.
So.
Travis Bader: You got the perseverance.
Yeah.
Matt Siemens: It's, it's one of the things it's, I wanted something
I never thought I'd ever do.
Travis Bader: Well, there's also the aspect of, uh, the hunter can
be hunted with these things too.
Matt Siemens: Yeah.
It's called dangerous game for a reason.
And then it's part of the big five.
And I, if you had told me 15 years ago, I'd be talking about hunting the big five.
I would've thought you were nuts.
Like there's no way someone in my income.
And if I'm successful in the lion hunt, it'll be my number four of the big five.
Wow.
So, and it's something I've, and it's just chasing things down.
The buddy came to me a couple of years ago, asked me if
I want to shoot a leopard.
And of course I want to shoot a leopard, but that's not my income bracket.
That's.
A quarter of my annual salary or more, I can't do that kind of stuff.
And he, he, well, yeah, you give me this, I'll give you a lion as a leopard.
And so, well, what am I missing here?
The numbers don't add up.
He's no, I'll just, you help me.
I'll help you out.
So the right place at the right time.
And when I hunted Pakistan back when, uh, I had my friend from Georgia up here,
we're hunting the, the bison in Alberta when they were concealed, considered
pests, when they didn't need a license or anything, that's just a few years ago.
Right.
And we were way back up hunting bison and his cell phone rings.
There's no cell phone service, but the phone rang.
It must've been, I don't know what they call it, skip or whatever.
And sure.
And it was one of his pro staff.
Was canceling the Pakistan hunt for that January.
Okay.
This is in the September.
And so he ended up the phone and he goes, Siemens, do you want to go to Pakistan?
What's it going to cost me?
He goes, the hunt's free.
So you got to get there.
I said, well, sign me up.
And that's how I got the
Travis Bader: Pakistan hunt.
And he works all on board with this.
Yeah.
We're going to lose you for.
Matt Siemens: Yeah.
Well, I, I flew, uh, I flew over Pakistan.
I landed the 13th of January and shot show started the 15th.
So I did a quick turnaround and going back to us customs after
visiting Pakistan was interesting.
Yeah.
I should imagine, but it was one of the things that's, that's,
that's I run everything down.
Someone offers me a hunt, I'll run it down and see if it's legit or
if the guy's just blowing smoke and if I can do it and then more off
the beaten path is more enjoyable.
Right.
Travis Bader: Are there many scams out there?
Many people, uh, run, run and scam hunts.
Matt Siemens: Yeah, but not as bad as other industries, I'd say.
I mean, there's people not reading the fine print.
Like, like a lot of people, these hunting and conservation
groups, we have fundraisers.
Like SCI, we have a fundraiser on April 13th.
And we have some African auction hunts there.
And you can save some money by buying a hunt there.
Now.
Is the hunt going to be pennies in the dollar?
Not if you do it right.
Like you're going to save a little bit of money.
It's still going to cost you.
Instead of spending 10, 000, you're going to spend eight.
Right.
But it's, and you can do it for less than that too, but you just have
to, you just have to run them down.
Like my first trip to New Zealand was guy made me an offer and I
kind of lost contact with him.
I didn't think he was legit.
Then I found them and send him an email and, Oh no, the offer stands.
Let's do this.
And that was my first of nine trips down there.
Right.
And it was just, but I pursue everything.
And a lot of times it's.
You're spinning your wheels for nothing, but when it does come
true, it's, it's, it's brilliant.
Travis Bader: I did a hunt over in Molokai.
And yeah, you know, trying to figure this thing out, hunting
in the States and access deer, I can bring all the meat back home.
This is fantastic.
And, um, met some great people over there.
I don't know if I'd do that hunt again.
Um, Just from my perspective, cause I met with the, um, uh, some other
locals and they said, if you want to hunt, you just let, let me know next
time we'll, we'll go out together.
That was the hunt that I want to do is with the locals is, uh, I, I
did a recce of the area beforehand.
I'm looking around and getting things kind of sorted and, uh, met
with the, uh, the fellow there.
And, uh, he said, okay, well, let's get in this, uh, great big, it wasn't an
Argo, but it was a multi seater side by side and we'll drive around and so,
okay, well, how would I get out here?
I'm going to hike over the next hillside and I, the wrecking I've been doing,
he said, no, no, no, just sit here.
We'll drive you around.
And it was, it was a different style of hunt that I've ever hunted before.
It was interesting for the experience.
Got to keep all the meat.
It was, uh, uh, used.
Everything on it, got the hides, all the rest, um, made me feel good about
myself, but I wanted to put some more legwork in and I wanted to make it a,
um, uh, a different type of a hunt.
So definitely a hundred percent, I'd do access to area again,
uh, just in a different way.
Do you have that sort of, uh, freedom, uh, if you're doing an African hunt or do you?
Well,
Matt Siemens: absolutely.
Like I know, like in place I hunt in Namibia, If you want to walk from the
lodge, you can walk from the lodge.
If you want to drive out, you can drive out and get out in stock.
Um, I know I avoided hunting in South Africa for quite a few years.
Cause I heard horror stories about South Africa.
So have I.
And then I went last year in March with an outfit there and I was very impressed.
I took my son and a friend and the outfitter really, the outfitter really.
Spent time with my son and it was brilliant.
And it was, there was, there was a fence around the place.
It was a huge, huge
Travis Bader: farm.
Like how big?
Uh,
Matt Siemens: 15, 000 acres.
That's pretty big.
And you know, the animals didn't know the fence was there, but they knew where
every rock was, every tree, every bush.
And I've had many free range, true free range BC hunts here, much
easier than that South Africa hunt.
It's that high fence.
It isn't my first choice.
I'm never going to say it is.
Right.
But the hunt is still a spirit of fair chase and it can be challenging.
Right.
But then you hear stories of guys go up and they're hunting a very small
pool table type thing, like, like this, this go out and shoot and stuff.
And that's not for
Travis Bader: me.
No, me neither.
Yeah.
Um, anytime it became dangerous when you're out there, anytime
you've been concerned about, uh, either the environment or the game.
Matt Siemens: In Africa.
Yeah.
My elephant hunt.
I have never been more scared in my life.
Yeah.
But never felt more alive at the same time.
Travis Bader: Well, you never feel quite as alive when you're almost dead, right?
Matt Siemens: It's, uh, and it was truly the most addictive thing I've ever done.
Yeah.
It's, I'd never be able to do it again, just because the costs and stuff.
And I just happened to be at the right place again and had a thing.
And I first seen a wild elephant on my first trip to Zimbabwe and I thought, wow.
And you see him in, in the zoo and stuff.
I had no interest.
Didn't interest me at all.
Yeah,
Travis Bader: I
Matt Siemens: agree.
But, but in the wild, it's a different thing.
Yeah.
And it's a whole lot more level playing field than people think.
If you screw up.
Someone's getting hurt, getting stomped.
Yeah.
And it's, it's not for everybody.
Like my pH told me when you shoot an elephant, you're going to have a very
emotional response one way or the other.
And everything is going to be, you're going to not regret doing it, but,
but you will never do it again.
Interesting.
Or everything else you do after this is rats and mice.
He said his term.
And I had the expensive reaction, of course.
And it was most.
Amazing thing.
We looked over my first hunt.
I did a hunt was unsuccessful.
My first time they let me come back in a second.
And we looked at, we're probably 400 elephant.
We probably walked 10, 15 miles a day.
And it was incredibly challenging.
I couldn't believe the fact that there could be elephants standing
in trees, 20 yards in front of you and you couldn't see them.
Really?
Yeah.
Like it was just like.
20 yards.
We were driving on the road and there's some elephant tracks across, I can't even
tell which way they're headed because it's just this round disc in the sand.
The tracker looks at it and says, 20 minutes.
They're 20 minutes in front of us.
And I'm like, yeah, this guy's.
Travis Bader: Like crocodile Dundee
Matt Siemens: type?
Drinking all that rotten corn maize, corn drink that they drink.
And so we jumped out and 20 minutes later, we were in the herd.
Wow.
And I say in the herd, like you're 10 yards from him
sometimes, you're right there.
It's up close and personal.
You're, you're, when I first booked the hunt, I asked him, well, what do you want?
How do you want me to sight my rifle in?
He goes, well, zero at 25 yards.
I said, 25 yards.
Yeah, don't worry.
We won't shoot that far.
And, and it was, no, year right up, personal, if something goes
wrong, it goes wrong in a hurry.
No kidding.
And, um, what people don't understand, there's not as many elephants as there
used to be, but based on carrying capacity to land, they're overpopulated.
That has to do with geopolitical stuff and farming and all that kind of stuff.
And they have to manage to hurt.
Interesting.
And then you get the bad apples again.
Like there are some fish and game guys in one of the countries,
they're poised on the water holes.
And then it went and found all the ivory.
They killed hundreds.
Well, that doesn't help anybody.
That's not conservation.
I
Travis Bader: was having sushi with a, uh, a friend and.
He's, um, uh, British individual has a family over in, um, Zimbabwe and
anyways, or he gets a text coming through and looks, it makes a bit of
a face and like, Oh, what's going on?
Say, Oh, you don't want to see this.
Okay.
Yeah.
You know what we do with poachers over there?
Anyways, they, they deal with them rather harshly.
Yeah.
When I was
Matt Siemens: both elephant trips to the Zimbabwe, when
I was there the week before.
There were poachers shot in the area by PHs and stuff.
Just line
Travis Bader: them up and take
Matt Siemens: care of them.
But Fish and Game have no problem with that.
National parks, what they're called over there.
But the police department has serious issues with it.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And even though that they, the one, the one time that they were shot
at first, they returned fire, but it's, they, they don't deal with it.
I have signs when we're going through an area, don't get out of your vehicle
because there's no hunting in the area.
Travis Bader: You get out, they're going to think
Matt Siemens: you're a poacher.
And it says right there, if you, if you're out of your vehicle, you'd be
dealt with as a poacher and shot in sight.
Yeah.
Travis Bader: Yeah.
It's just a different world than what we're used to over here.
And poaching
Matt Siemens: there is what's killing African wildlife.
It's not the hunters.
Travis Bader: Well, what's driving the poaching, obviously
there's a market for it, right?
Matt Siemens: There is.
Yeah.
If there was no market for it, they wouldn't be going after,
they wouldn't be doing it.
Right.
Travis Bader: Huh.
Well, um, what else?
Anything else we should be talking about?
Matt Siemens: Oh, there's so much stuff that we start going down these rabbit
holes and stuff and Cape Buffalo.
Travis Bader: There's, uh, uh, they're on the big five, aren't they?
Yep.
Matt Siemens: I shot a Cape Buffalo in March.
Okay.
Past March with my son and distance on that, uh, about 70 yards.
And it was, I practice, I'm on it, shoot as fast as I can, but everything
in Africa bites you, the bugs, the trees, and I got tangled up in the
bush right in front of me and it grabs onto your skin and incredibly painful.
And the time I got cleared, the Buffalo had run 10 yards,
turned back, I'd run another way.
So I hit him on the other side, almost.
Exactly mirror image of the other side.
And he went into this real thick stuff and piled up.
So then he, I was, we were walking up to him and I see his tail was still moving.
So then I gave him two more with a 458 and that was all she wrote.
And that's a hunt that was great to do with, with my son, but it's a hunt.
And another one of my hunts, I never thought I'd be able to do on my income.
Right.
So that hunt, like trying to run things down.
I was serious.
I had a budget.
I reached out to three people I knew in the industry.
Hey, I want to do a Cape Buffalo hunt.
What can you do it for me?
Two guys came back with, what's your budget?
And the next guy came back with a price.
So I went, I
Travis Bader: went.
I'm not giving you my budget.
No, because whatever, whatever it is, it'll be more.
Yeah.
It'll be at or more.
Yeah.
So you're in luck.
It's exactly that amount.
Matt Siemens: Yeah.
It's just like, I remember watching one of the duck commander guy and
Phil Robertson was talking about when he bought his first lathe, he went
to the lathe shop and I got 30, 000.
Well, you're in luck.
I have one here for 30, 000.
So I am.
I did that and it was a great hunt, great memories.
My son shot two head, shot an ostrich and a warthog and
he had to hunt hard for them.
And even this quote unquote high fence, I didn't think he was going to get them.
Really?
Yeah.
Like it
Travis Bader: was.
So what would happen if they got rid of that hunting?
Matt Siemens: All the game has to be euthanized.
Like it doesn't get let go.
So like with, if South Africa finally shuts down their lion hunting, they have
all these lions behind the Hiawatha wire.
And some of these farms are 75, 000 acres plus, and people think the anti
hunters, well, we're going to show the hunting and save these lions.
Yeah.
No, they're going to kill the lions.
The lions have to be euthanized.
So you're not saving
Travis Bader: anything.
They just can't put the captive lions out into the wild?
No.
Matt Siemens: Even though there has been cases where they will
survive and we'll, we'll breed.
No, they have to be euthanized for case in point, uh, the guy was hunting with
us in March, his, the property next door sold, and there were 75 bounty buck on it.
And bounty buck looks very close to a Blesbuck, but there are sighties,
endangered animals, dangerous species.
So the other property owner said to my buddy, you can have them for free.
You had to pay to catch them and you can put them on your farm.
The government said no one killed them all.
Really?
Yeah.
So like, like there's no rhyme, no reason to it.
And why would you just kill and bury 75 of these?
No kidding.
Even if they weren't endangered.
Travis Bader: Well, what would the economic outcome be if
they got rid of these hunts?
Oh, it'd be
Matt Siemens: for the South African farmer and hunter.
Huge.
Like it's some of these guys only, it's such an industry
down there that it's, it's huge.
And the vast majority of outfitters are doing it, right?
Some guys are doing it for pretty small pieces of property, like we talked about.
It's not my cup of tea, but there's some places.
For instance, my buddy in Namibia, where I hunt, he has his farm separated
to North and South across the highway.
His property, his fence line, I think is 13 kilometers by 17 kilometers.
Like we aren't talking 40 acre plots.
Right.
It's big enough there.
If you walked onto there and you didn't have water and you got
lost, you'd be in serious trouble.
Travis Bader: Right.
Decent
Matt Siemens: size.
Yeah.
It's like I said, I, I, I'm not a high fence guy, but the spirit of fair
chase does come into play down there.
Travis Bader: So do you get to go hunting with other people from work?
Matt Siemens: Yeah, I'm on the lion hunt in March.
Um, my boss is coming with me.
Nice.
So.
Travis Bader: Nice.
So full support for why you're not going to be at work.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Matt Siemens: So he's looking for, he's looking for a good male lion too.
We'll see, we'll see what we can come across.
Travis Bader: Right.
Interesting.
Oh, it'd be interesting to see how that, uh, that works out.
Love to hear the story on that.
Um, yeah.
What else, anything else?
Trying to think of the list we discussed.
Oh, we got some stuff about, uh, you got SCI, uh, First Safari, um,
um,
yeah, you know, talk, you've talked about ballistics there a little bit and
you're, you're, um, and that, that's something that you, you're dealing
with the general public mostly with your, uh, with Korth group there or.
Yeah.
Matt Siemens: Well, I generally deal with accounts directly, but
the consumers would get ahold of me sometimes and I steer them in the right.
Right direction and get them looked after if they have issues
and try to educate people.
But the biggest thing is like, we can do a whole, whole talk just on this is
what people consider a bullet failure.
And you killed the animal, you shot in the right place.
It died.
The bullet came apart while, okay, did it really fail?
It's, I mean, when you go back to the.
Weatherby cartridges, which were developed long time ago and they're still
holding their edge, like velocity wise.
And they're still right up in the top, even with today's standards.
Roy Weatherby wanted that bullet to blow up.
Okay.
He believed in the hydrostatic shock theory, goes in and comes
apart, massive damage, shock power.
Right.
And that's what he believed in way back then.
And so guys are shooting the modern Weatherby cartridges or the Weatherby
cartridges, the 300 Weatherby, and which came out in the forties, I believe.
And they're putting these controlled round controlled expansion bullets
in them and having great success, but that's contrary what Roy wanted.
But there's, well, what I'm trying to say there, it's there's two schools
of thought and they both work.
Travis Bader: What are the biggest education pieces that
you typically have to deal with?
And how do you guys tackle that?
You educating consumers, you educating the, uh, uh, the retailers.
We'll, we start with
Matt Siemens: the retailers, but we will do.
Like we've been at some, at some of the trade shows and hunting
shows with our booth there.
And we're there to talk to people firsthand.
And we love video displays sometimes, depending what the comments and we'll
have people from the factory come up.
It's funny, you can have a guy who works at Hornady in Nebraska, come
up and tell a person something.
And they'll means a whole lot more coming from him than me.
Sure.
Even though that guy sits behind a desk.
Sure.
But it's just because of the credibility thing.
Right.
Yeah.
And so that always helps, but no, we'll, we'll get with the, with
the dealer, try to educate them and we'll do events with them.
I'll what we call PK product knowledge sessions.
I'll go in.
Usually right time to close and go over with employees and
have a chat and go over stuff.
And they'll ask questions and we'll explain why we do this,
why it's this and how it competes with our competitors or, and
Travis Bader: that kind of stuff.
Right.
You know, there's never going to be an end to people modifying or
doing things differently than what the manufacturer intended it to.
Yeah.
I haven't been through a number of the different manufacturers
courses and programs.
It's always neat.
The things that you pick up that you thought were maybe, uh,
they didn't realize are actually design features because he didn't
know the proper way to use it.
Um, I can see the education piece being a very valuable, both sales
tool, as well as, uh, uh, ensuring that people are getting the most
out of whatever product they
Matt Siemens: have.
Yeah.
I was shocked at how many people don't focus binoculars
Travis Bader: properly.
Okay.
Talk me through it.
Matt Siemens: Well, you have your, your main focus, then you have your
diopter, which adjusts the one eye.
And, um, so when you're looking through, you, you pick up, pick out
an object, uh, you're in a store.
So obviously pick up that stop sign across the street, put the lens cap on.
The right eye focused your left eye with the main focus.
Close that one, open the right.
Now adjust the diopter and the same thing.
And, uh, so you're focusing each eye individual, but you have your diopter
you're focusing, and then your focus, your course focus are set up the same.
Most people have both eyes open and they're focusing, oh,
sorry, focusing, hitting that.
Or they squint with one eye, but when you squint, your body changes.
Travis Bader: What if he, what if he said the diopter first?
Well, it doesn't matter, probably your way is better because then,
you know, at least you've got a,
Matt Siemens: I, I, maybe the way I do it is backwards supposed to do the diopter
first, but along as, long as you're doing it both individually with the lens
cap on the, on the optic or covered.
So you're not squinting with both eyes open.
It's going to give you the
Travis Bader: best performance.
Awesome.
Okay.
So diopter first and the other side, but I might try the, try it doing, okay.
I mean,
Matt Siemens: and it's, I was taught, the guy who taught me.
Well, sitting in a PK, he said, this is how you do it.
And you know, human nature, that's what I was told.
So that's the right way.
It doesn't
Travis Bader: mean it was.
Well, if that's what the manufacturer designed it, you might as well
try using it the intended way.
Matt Siemens: Yeah.
Like as a rep, I get things wrong sometimes too.
Right.
So he could have had it backwards too.
And, and, but it, it makes a huge difference on focusing it that
Travis Bader: way.
No kidding.
What about, uh, scopes?
If you put too much, you know, a lot of PRS shooters will put their hand over top
of the scope and when they're shooting.
I've watched videos that, uh, MDT has put out about pressure testing on barrels.
What if you press on the scope?
Is that going to make a big difference?
Matt Siemens: Maybe in laboratory conditions, but
I can't see it in the field.
Okay.
Um, I know when you're resting your, resting your rifle on something, you
want it on the forearm, not the barrel.
That's going to affect harmonics.
And all these things, I know what drives me nuts when you see guys carrying their
rifle by their scope, like a handle.
It's not a handle.
It's don't use it as such.
Note to
Travis Bader: self, stop carrying rifle by scope.
It's, uh, it's
Matt Siemens: yeah, there's so much stuff out there that.
I still will find myself using incorrect terms, even though.
Like I'll be talking to people and I start talking, I use the term
gather light, like we spoke earlier.
Sure.
It's not, it's, it's transmit and it focus lights and all that kind of stuff.
But Leupold's put a lot of stuff, money into training us.
They have a range out down in central Oregon.
I can't remember if it's 2, 300 meters or 2, 600 meters, but it's a ways.
It's well, well past the mile.
And, uh, they have us lined up there.
With all our competitor scopes and our line.
And then you get there before sunup.
And as soon as you can start, as soon as you can start, you
can see, you can start shooting.
And then the same thing in the evening when you shoot till you can't see.
Right.
And there's two optics that are consistently the first one shooting and
consisting of the last two shooting.
Interesting.
And Leupold's one of them with their new light system with the
new lenses and they've put stuff.
And there's some, we've got some great competitors out there and we've got
some competitors that aren't so great.
Travis Bader: I think the biggest thing that makes her
company is the people behind it.
Yeah.
Matt Siemens: And it's still a family owned business, fifth
generation, fifth generation.
And when we do these tests and when they do the, the punisher
test, the impact test, they don't go take a scope off the floor.
They run down to the local sports shop and buy everything.
Even the loophole product they buy off the shelf.
Yeah.
So it is a true test.
Very cool.
Travis Bader: I was just thinking of, uh, you know, if there's education
pieces, maybe we, uh, create little, uh, short education content that'll get
people out there using products properly and, uh, or maybe that's something
that, uh, Korth is interested in doing.
Matt Siemens: Yeah, we, we've talked about that.
And it's always, always intend to do it.
And then the next thing you know, a year's past, right?
Yeah,
Travis Bader: shot again.
And everyone's ramping up for that and then dealing.
Matt Siemens: But it's funny, like this industry back to A type personalities.
Um, I was at a event with Rob Furlong and he was talking to a guy about
shooting and about shooting down here, uphill and how the range finder.
And this guy looked at Rob, he goes, well, obviously you haven't shot very much.
He goes, because the bullets defy gravity.
Nothing happens.
And Rob, Rob goes, yeah, I'm just new.
I'm just learning.
And I, I always thought like, why didn't you put that person in his place?
He goes, what's it going to change?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So here's a guy at this time, at this point, I think Rob was still number
two in the world for, for length.
Here's a guy, Talking to him, like doesn't have, uh, doesn't have
a clue what he's talking about.
Yeah.
Talking down to him.
And if you only knew, if you only knew who he was talking to, but you can't,
Travis Bader: you can't help some people.
You know, sometimes it doesn't rise to the dignity of a response,
Matt Siemens: right?
And it's no matter what you tell people, people, some people just want to complain,
want to find something to argue about.
Yep.
And they don't quite listen to what was said, or they take it as a absolutely
every scenario, this is how it works.
And it doesn't, there's too many variables
Travis Bader: in this stuff.
Yeah, you know, I've spent some time with Rob in the past and,
um, you know, good, good fellow.
Definitely knows what he's talking about when it comes to, uh, shooting.
I remember I was at SHOT Show one time and I'm at the, um, uh, AI booth
and there's a fellow there who's really looked like he was dyed black
hair, really dark hair, looked like.
You could smell it on him.
He was giving her the night before tattoos up one arm down the other.
He's just standing there in the AI booth.
And I'm looking at, I think there is some, uh, packs, maybe
they're ever, ever really sock.
Maybe I forget what it was.
And he comes up, he's like, Oh, I'm doing some, um, uh, pack design.
Oh, okay.
And he's like, yeah, no, they, they wanted my input on this stuff.
Oh, are you with these people here?
Well, no, no, I'm not with them.
Okay.
Right.
And we had this little conference, very awkward conversation.
Basically he's like, don't you know who I am?
Right.
So the guy who was Craig Harrison, who took the, he took the, right.
And, um, and, You know, he was, he was looking rough, maybe from the
last night in Vegas, probably going out with all the other, uh, industry
reps and then taking them out.
But I had no clue.
I've seen pictures of him, like he's fully, he had shirts on,
his beret and everything else.
And he looked to this guy was like, like, okay.
So, and he was talking about the rifles a little bit and like,
oh, so you're, you're, you're in the manufacturing of these.
Oh no, no, no, no.
And he skated all around the issue.
Yeah.
If he said, Hey, I'm Craig Harrison, I would have known who he was, but
we just had this probably about a 10 minute long, very awkward conversation
where he left like, Oh, I guys.
So probably maybe similar to the whole Rob for a long one.
Well, it's
Matt Siemens: one of the things that's like most things when the people.
People have to tell you what they've done.
They probably haven't done
Travis Bader: it.
Yeah.
Or maybe they're just, you know, surrounding themselves
with the wrong type of people.
I clearly didn't recognize him out of uniform and all the
rest and not diminishing what he's done or his achievements.
And, you know, he's had a rough go as well.
Afterwards, there's some pretty difficult things that he had to, uh, work through.
And that's, um, but, uh, Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, sometimes it's better just to keep your mouth shut and be thought a
fool and to open it and remove all doubt.
And
Matt Siemens: that's just like, sometimes like when I'm in a
situation, someone's talking, I'll.
Sit there and think, should I interject?
And I don't, and I regret doing it, but then when I do,
it's like I shouldn't have.
And then you really regret it, right?
Yeah.
It's like, so it's keeping your mouth shut, like you say, just Mm-Hmm.
it goes a long way sometimes.
So I like to sit and listen and, um, hear people talk and social media's
and thing out, watch these chat rooms and stuff and people discussing
stuff and it's like, yeah, I know.
You dunno what you're talking about.
Yeah.
But it's, you get in there and try correcting it.
It just, it goes nowhere.
And it just digresses and this raises your blood pressure.
Nothing else seems to happen.
Right.
Travis Bader: It's all about finding the right group of people
that you're going to surround yourself with, who value your time.
And you don't have to get into the, the convincing, you know, I, I guess it's
difficult when you're really passionate about something and you see things.
The consequence of not stepping in and saying something would just be the
continuance of that ignorance, or at least less openness to that way of thinking.
But generally
Matt Siemens: speaking, no matter how well versed you are in this,
you learn something every day.
Even from people who don't know a fraction of what you know, but they might know
something that you don't, and you listen to them and it can go a long ways.
Travis Bader: There's always something that you can pick out.
And even if you think it's a little offside, go give it a shot or
do your own research and find it out before jumping on the person.
Nice.
Well, why don't we take a look at wrapping it up here?
We can, we can, um, uh, look at future, future educational type things.
Absolutely.
As we work through, because I think that's, I think that's
a really important part.
I mean, we're not going to convince people listening to this at
Africanadu is great or terrible.
We're not going to convince people of, uh, different politics that they're already
set in a certain way, but Hey, maybe some people are going to be able to use it.
Their, uh, binoculars a bit better moving forward, right?
Or understand the high twist rate on their, um.
ELDX bullets and what's happening there.
Matt Siemens: You know, I mean, long people listen to each other and, and
we start working together as that's, I mean, that gets beat like a dead
horse, but it's, we still have the same
Travis Bader: issues.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think that just comes down to what you're saying before, maybe keep our mouth
shut a little bit, take a listen, see where it's at and we find the correct way
or the correct audience that we, I mean,
Matt Siemens: everybody has their passion.
And like living in the States for as long as I did.
A lot of people like sitting in a tree stand with a bull
waiting for a deer to walk by.
I can't think of a bigger waste of time personally, but I will
fight for their right to do that.
Right.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
I mean, it's what they have, it's what they do.
And they love it.
And yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Some people get the sheep bug.
Yep.
I, I've shot sheep, but I never got the sheep bug.
Yeah.
So.
Yeah, that's nothing wrong with it.
It's everybody has their own passions and you've got to follow
Travis Bader: those whole different world.
And is looking down at the other ones who are doing the exact same thing as you just
in a different way is not helping anybody.
No.
Well, Matt, thank you so much for having me.
Matt Siemens: Really enjoyed this.