Ep. 14: Shotguns with Luke Thorkildsen
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When you think of Weatherby, you think of flat shooting Magnums, you think of the Vanguard rifle, the Mark V rifle, and the long tradition of American gun manufacturing since Roy Weatherby founded the company back in 1945. But today, we aren't here to talk about any of that. We are here to talk about their shotgun lineup. I'm joined by Luke Thorkelson. He is their Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Product Development. How's everything going, Luke? Fantastic, Jason. How you doing, man? Good.

How's everything going over there at Weatherby? Man, the last couple years have been a wild ride. It's really, really good. Business is good. We can't complain. There's definitely been a number of, let's just say, challenges in this post-COVID world that we all are enduring. But business is good, so I really can't complain too much.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. How do you like the... Were you with Weatherby when you guys were in California or have you only been with the company since Wyoming? Just since Wyoming. I was one of the very first hired as part of the transition from California to Wyoming. I don't think I could have ever been a California resident. Sorry to anybody that is, but I just...

It was tough. I was from the industry. I actually joined Weatherby from Walther Arms in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I figured I knew what your answer was going to be if you did move that you were enjoying Wyoming better, but since you started there, your answer kind of confirmed what your answer would have been if you started in California. No, I appreciate having you on. I've been able to shoot the Weatherby Element both last waterfowl season and this year for turkeys, so we're going to

Definitely have a little bit of experience that I can weigh in there, but we're going to start like every other episode. We're going to take some questions that you guys get asked a lot from social, from people emailing us, and if you have any questions of your own, please email us at ctd.com.

At phelpsgamecalls.com and we'll make sure to to pitch your questions to some of these experts in the field So the first one I have for you luke is why are the element and 18i? Shotguns, why did you guys decide to go with inertia driven? Mechanics there great question. Um

So we actually used to have some gas shotguns in our line and, and pretty much every gas shotgun on the market. You, you need multiple pistons, I guess, for lighter and heavier loads.

And it became kind of a customer service issue, not to mention a gas gun shoots a lot dirtier. You need to clean it more often. And so for a lot of reasons, we just gravitated towards the inertia system. Our sales kind of started moving that way as well. And so we just kind of took that as customer feedback and we put a lot more effort into the inertia system.

uh because it's cleaner it's uh you're gonna shoot a wider range of shells with more reliability and uh for those reasons we just overall felt it was a better fit for our line do you find that the inertia shotguns so regardless of you know being cleaner are they just more repeatable there's less breakdowns less issues with the with the inertia than than with gas

Yeah, I think so. I mean, really the benefit on an inertia shotgun is that, you know, shot shell and shot shell powder, they're just, they're inherently dirty. And so when you're using that dirtiness to cycle the action, you just get a lot of buildup inside. And so you need to clean more frequently on a gas gun. On an inertia gun,

pretty much a hundred percent of the stuff that's, you know, firing the shot is leaving out the front of the barrel and not coming back into the receiver where all the moving parts are. So it just leads to a cleaner, more repeatable system. For sure. And so, uh,

knowing how I clean my shotguns and there's just definitely for me, cause I don't like to break them down and clean, clean them very often. So that's a bonus. Yep. And then I, I'm, I always jump on the, you know, the, the turkey hunting forums, you know, all of that. And people talk about changing out spring. So that kind of leads me to my next question that we're still on inertia. You know, you guys are trying to design a spring or use a spring rate that, you know, a

accompanies either a two and three quarter inch low base all the way up to your three and a half inch turkey magnums. Have you guys found that you're able to find a spring that works fairly well from everything or does weather be promote finding a spring that works better for the loads that you intend to shoot out of the gun? There's all this hopping up, but there's also just buying a gun like I do and shooting the thing and it's performing well no matter what I throw at it.

So from the factory, our guns are set up to run mostly everything. So I think I would say there's two exceptions to that. If you're a shooter that's going to go grab a gun and just go run nothing but low base, like 7.8 shot, like lightweight stuff, you might benefit by getting a slightly lighter spring rate if you have no intention on shooting a heavier magnum load.

If you do that, though, you're probably going to have issues with heavier Magnum loads. The spring we ship with

I believe is like the most, uh, forgiving across the range. That said, like if, you know, you get a brand new shotgun out of the box in your first hundred rounds, you, you potentially might have a few, uh, if you're shooting like light field loads, you might have a few that fail to cycle fully until you kind of wear in the gun just a little bit. But typically after you get to a hundred rounds, it's going to eat pretty much everything. And I, I,

I don't really recommend you play with the spring rate unless it's for a purpose-built shotgun, like competition shooting. Or if you're going to shoot nothing but heavy magnums, going to a heavier spring rate to soften the recoil a little bit is an option. But if you call our customer service, they're just going to tell you to not mess with it. I like that answer. And I noticed that when I was first shooting the Element, just to get my red dot sighted in, I was shooting a lot of just low base 7.8s loads.

And, you know, it was funny. You could literally watch how far the shotgun I was shooting from the same location. Like the first shell kicked a couple of feet away from me. And then that, and that next shell kicked, you know, six or seven. And by the time I got to the, you know, the Turkey loads, we were kicking them out there away. So yeah, that, that spring, you know, and as you mentioned in that first hundred shots is definitely kind of getting broken in and, and, and fitting in. So a great, great information on why, whether B went with those inertia shotguns and, and, and,

lieu of using gas operated shotguns. I would add just in, you know, in full transparency and fairness to that, like typically that, that first hundred shots is not necessarily something that you have to do in a, in a gas shotgun, but, but that's your trade-off is like a gas gun is going to, you know, from the first shot probably give you the same performance as it does in the last shot, assuming that you clean it well all the way through. Uh,

but the inertia guns, it doesn't matter whose it is. A little bit of break in period is, is, is beneficial. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. So the next question, which doesn't really apply to me cause I'm not necessarily an upland hunter, but, um, how does the Orion compared to the other over and unders out there in the market and where's it placed? Uh, that is, that is one of the top questions we get. Um,

The Orion, which is our over-under, is kind of in a magical price point. So the over-under market's unique. So you get some of the upland guys. Like, I sometimes joke that upland hunters are like the cosplayers of hunters. Like, they like to get, you know, the wax cotton stuff and almost like

play dress up a little more. I mean, all of us hunters play dress up a little bit, right. With the camo and whatnot, but like some of the over under guys take that to the next level. And what that can lead to is like a competition to see who has the most expensive gun. I think there's a lot of diminishing returns with, with some of the game on the, on the shotgun side. So on the Orion specifically, we're around a thousand to 1100 bucks at retail.

And I would put the Orion up against your Silver Pigeons and White Onyx and Satoris all day long, but those are all $2,000 plus guns. So for basically half the price, you get the same level of performance. We have some pretty good looking wood on the Orions as well. And the metalwork and the lockup is really, really solid. And so you get substantially more than you would get out of like

some of the guns that are in that like, you know, three to $600 price point. And there's just really a gap in the over under market from like that $600 to the Orion at a thousand. And so what we're seeing is that people want to be taken seriously and not show up with like, you know, just a kind of a junkie over under and they show up and like, you know, can hang with with the 2000 and $2,500 shotguns all day long. And then they can spend more money on their wax cotton.

Perfect, perfect. You got to look the part, you got to feel the part, but if those guys are like me, it comes down to performance and you want that gun to perform, which it sounds like that gun, talking with Cal and he shoots, I think the 20 gauge Orion had great luck and really likes that gun for all the upland stuff he does.

I think I was talking to Callahan right after we sent him the 20 gauge Orion and he goes, dude, there's something magical about this gun. Like I've been hunting for a long time. I'm out there with snort and my, my first three shots are three kills. He's like, I'm not that good of a shooter, but,

So it must be the gun. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. So I really appreciate you taking those two questions. Once again, if you have any questions for any of our guests you want answered, feel free to hit us up on social or email us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com. We'll do our best to kind of put them into the podcast. So thanks.

So now we're going to jump into some of the questions I had for you and just kind of go through your lineup. What's there? What each gun's good at? And we'll walk through that. So my first question for you is, can you walk us through those models? We actually already mentioned them all, but the 18i, the Element, the Orion, kind of the differences in them. And as we were talking before the podcast, it's kind of a step up in nature. You know, you got different levels to the shotgun. So if you can explain that a little bit.

Yeah. So we'll talk about kind of the Element, then the 18i, then the Orion. So the Element family is, it's inertia driven, as we talked about. We import those shotguns out of Turkey and there's multiple models. So we've got the base model, which is the Element synthetic. And pretty much all of these, all of the Elements are available in four varieties. So you got a 20 gauge with a

26 and 28 inch barrel. And then you got a 12 gauge with a 26 and 28 inch barrel. And then all of the elements are going to be a three inch chamber. So we got the base model, which is the element synthetic, and then kind of moving up in the line. Then you've got the element upland, which is like a matte finish walnut with a glossy finish.

metalwork. It's a gloss blued metalwork. So if you're going to do waterfowl duty, that's probably not the best option. Then we have the Element Waterfowl that is a camo dipped. It's available in a couple different patterns. And then my personal favorite is the Element Tungsten, which is a black polymer stock with tungsten Cerakote on all the metalwork. It really looks good and has a ton of corrosion resistance from the Cerakote.

Um, so on all of those, um, I don't know every single price point off the top of my head, but prices basically roughly start at retail up from like 600 to about 800, you know, as you kind of step up and model. And then on the 18, I family, we have the water Fowler, um, the 18, I synthetic, which is just an all black with, uh,

blued metalwork and then we've got the 18i deluxe which is like a semi-fancy walnut there's some really amazing pieces of wood in the 18i deluxe and then it has a nickel finished aluminum receiver and the deluxe is a 3 inch chamber and then all the other models of the 18i are 3.5 and so that's part of that step up strategy the element's 3 inch chamber the 18i except for the deluxe is a 3.5 and

And additionally, the receiver on the 18i has a dovetail. If you want to mount an optic, you can do that easily. You could also mount an optic to an element, but it's going to require a little bit of gunsmith attention to drill and tap some holes for you. It's doable. We just don't ship it that way. It would add costs that most people don't.

are not mounting optics to shotguns today. So there's a reason why we do that, but then we put the cost into the 18 eyes so that if people really did want to do that, they could step up. 18 eyes are going to be going from, uh,

Basically, right at $999 to $1199 on the synthetic models and the waterfowl model. And then the deluxe is kind of a bigger step up. You're up about $1,800 for the deluxe because you get that nice wood, the high-gloss metalwork. They really look nice.

Yeah, yeah, look really good. I did have a question for you, Luke. Are you guys still making the turkey-specific Element with that short 22-inch barrel? We are, yes. Thank you. I kind of glossed over that. So we actually have a family on our website that we just call the Element Turkey that has a 22-inch barrel that we offer in both a 12 and a 20 barrel.

So, and that comes with an extended choke, uh, from the factory. It'll be an extended full. So, uh, yeah, it's, thank you for the reminder on that. Yeah. And, and, um, you know, I want to talk a little bit about, I'm going to go on a little tangent here on your Luke, but, um, you know, we, with TSS coming on board and the big changes like these 20 gauges and 22 inch, it's so nice to be able to pack a gun around that weighs, you know, sub seven pounds. Um,

and you're shooting 20 gauges and the things you're throwing patterns like our, you know, our three and a half inch Magnums were, you know, 10 years ago with old lead shot. And so these 20 gauges, I think we're going to continue to just see growing popularity more and more so as, you know, youth turkey hunters or even grownups that just, you know, adults that don't want to pack a big heavy 12 gauge around, you know, those little short guns with TSS are just, man, they're impressive.

That TSS is mean stuff. I can't, uh, yeah, it's unless you've seen it, you know, perform it's people think you're lying when you talk about how good it is, but it's amazing. Yeah. We, we had a, a Turkey in Kansas this year, a 20 gauge, my buddy shoots a 20 gauge, um,

And it hung up. It came in to 27, didn't have a good shot, and then kind of hung up out there at 40. And the thing never even moved. I mean, and that's just the 20 gauge with TSS. It's incredible stuff. But starting to make some of these smaller sub gauges or smaller gauged shotguns really, really good turkey medicine. Can I tell you a real quick story about that? So my son, I was hunting with him in South Dakota this year.

Um, and I gave him a rifle that had a red dot on it. Um, and it, not a rifle. It was my shotgun with a red dot on it. We had turkeys that hung up at like 30 yards and he pulls up on them and he shoots and I'm watching the bird. Nothing happens. And he's like, I nailed it. I'm like, what are you talking about? Well, there was another bird at 60 yards. He didn't see the one at 30. He saw the one at 60 and absolutely crushed a bird at 60 yards. Um,

with that tss and i'm like holy cow that stuff's mean it i mean it was dead in its tracks yep yeah it's it's impressive i i shot my turkey this year at under 30 with the 12 gauge and you know the element and and three inch tss and i felt bad for it because it was it wasn't pretty but uh no incredible stuff that you know out of your guys's guns um you know great results so

I have to ask why we're here, and maybe you're not at the liberty to say yet, but is there any talks in smaller shotguns? I know out west right now, there's a lot of groups of guys. You can only bring a 410 to camp now with TSS. Yeah, the sub-gauge guys are definitely growing in number. And I guess I would just say, strategically,

Stay tuned. We do have some sub-gauge stuff in the works. So no specific timeline right now, but yeah, we're not ignorant to the fact that they're growing in popularity.

Yeah. I think they're more purist. It's to maintain the sport of turkey hunting and happen to get things that 30 or 35 yards versus, as we just said, TSS out of a 20 or 12. It's almost like turning the game on to cheat mode a little bit if you want to. If you don't have the restraint to not pull the trigger.

So, yeah, that's good to hear. On the turkey model that you brought up, a full disclosure, I'm like a hardcore waterfowl guy. And so that was like my main entry into all of hunting was waterfowl. And so I was kind of a guy that like always wanted to have one shotgun to rule them all.

And just like in the last couple of years, I've been carrying a turkey, you know, turkey length barrel in the field and like a light bulb went off for me on why the, why the shorter barrel was such a huge benefit. I didn't hit any branches on trees anymore with a 28 inch barrel. You've got quite a bit of barrel when you've got the shotgun over your shoulder, that's hanging up out there and you're just hanging up on trees left and right. And on a shorter, like 20 or 22 inch barrel, you,

You know, it's only six inches, but man, it makes a huge difference just when you're kind of picking your way through the woods when you're trying to make a stock on some turkeys. And I'm like, oh, light bulb. That's why this is a thing. And so now I'm okay with being a multiple shotgun guy. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, no, I there's something to be said for, you know, packability and not getting hung up on everything for sure. And, you know, I always back in the old days, you know, Mossberg 835 with a long, but it was just a pain. And so these these shorter barrels are definitely nicer to pack around the woods, regardless of what what you're hunting.

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So my introduction to Weatherby, and I'm completely honest, like last year I showed up for the duck lure episode. I'm not a big waterfowl hunter. I've shot some traps, some skeet and stuff before, fairly comfortable at swinging and shooting, and it's a little bit second nature. So we show up with Sean there in the potholes of Washington for a duck lure episode, and he hands me Weatherby Element.

And I'm like, all right. And this gun had already been through, I don't know, four or five stops. It's not anybody's personal gun, so people are beating it around, throwing it around. It's obvious that the gun had been used a lot to this point. And I think we're shooting – I was shooting federal black cloud that day in Washington.

We get our scouting all done, get down into the setup and that first morning, you know, get to start shooting. And I can't say because I'm not a waterfowl hunter. I don't know what to expect out of a shotgun shooter.

But man, the thing shot well, it tracked well, it cycled everything I threw at it. Um, and, uh, on, on that episode also, I, I have to say that these, these elements make a heck of a, uh, a boat or, um, if you need to row back to, to, to, to dock, uh, after your boat breaks down. So, you know, the gun was just, how far did you have to row? Uh,

We're guessing 800 to 1,000 yards. And the way we got lucky is it was supposed to be we were checking the wind, you know, like every good duck hunter should. We were supposed to have a wind that would have never let us row back. But thankfully, you know, hour and a half before daylight, the wind was blowing the wrong way and actually was helping us out a little bit. Otherwise, we would have had to – we would have made the call of shame to get a tow or come get picked up. Oh, no. Oh, no.

So yeah, it was, we, we started with, uh, you know, stomp seats, you know, as our row and they weren't working well. So we took the shotguns in their cases and use the butts. And, you know, we went and finished it off with a goose hunt the following day where we didn't need the boat and then, um, went and walked in and the gun performed well. So tell us a little bit, you know, on your waterfowl hunting, you know, that we've already talked about the element, but is there anything else you want to go into or, or choke setups or, or, or stuff that, you know, you think you want to talk about as far

regarding your guys' shotguns and waterfowling.

Yeah, so I guess on a choke setup perspective, all of our shotguns are going to ship with multiple chokes. So it's going to have a cylinder, a modified improved cylinder, and a full across the board. The difference in the Element and the 18i choke system is that the Element uses the IMC choke system, and then the 18i uses the Cryo Plus, which is kind of what the newer Benzene

and Berettas are using. So you can absolutely run an aftermarket choke in both, but you just need to note the difference in the IMC and the cryo plus from the element and the 18I. Um, I typically just shoot our standard modified choke. I'm probably not that great of a shooter that I can tell a massive difference in my pattern. Um, but I feel like I hit more birds than most of the guys that I hunt with at the same time. So, uh,

Um, I just like to, I just like to leave a standard setup with a modified and, um, I run black cloud a lot and some other loads as well. But, um, man, I think, I think, uh, the big thing is just go do it, get time in the field. That's the number one, the number one tip is do it more. Yeah.

Yep. Yep. Um, you know, same thing. And then, so then I get, I'm getting ready for Turkey season and really want to shoot, you know, like, as I mentioned, I've been a, an old pump guy, eight 35. I had the gun kind of all set up for Turkey. It was great, but I had seen what was available through, you know, your guys' guns through some of the meat eater team that were already shooting them with TSS. And I'm like, man, I'm, I'm getting dumped to put up a pattern that's half as good as that with some of the new stuff. So, um,

We get an element ordered up, and I've got a loophole red dot ready. I got an Indian Creek choke ready, and we throw some number nine TSS down it, and man, am I impressed. But one of the things right out of the gate, I can't let you off the podcast without giving you a little bit of grief. So I'm sitting here already. Me being me, everything's late. It's getting close to season. I think I emailed you right off the bat, Luke, that, hey...

Because I think I was looking at the 18i and I seen that you guys had the dovetail on it and that there were adapters. I could go right to a rail. And I guess that's my own fault. I wasn't looking. So I had ordered a system that was ready for the 18i and wasn't ready to mount to the Element. Do you guys have any plans to drill and tap that receiver in the future? But...

I was able to quickly get a rail, 15 minutes, a little bit of gunsmithing, and the back end of that receiver, and I'm just going to pass on, this is not Weatherby saying this, this is me and my own gunsmithing. The back of the receiver has a whole bunch of metal, and we were able to get the entire receiver

set and then the other ones we did, we were able to get set with at least three threads and then we had to do just a little bit of a grinding on the inside, but a real simple process. Weatherby's not promoting this, but it's what we knew we had to do to get that red dot mounted. Is there any future plans for maybe drilling and tapping that element or as you had mentioned, is it more of a point and shoot or you guys just feel that enough people aren't putting optics on those?

No, I definitely think that there's more optics coming. There's no doubt there's more optics available from, you know, Vortex and Leupold and others coming into the space. So it's absolutely something that we're aware of. And in the Element family, I will say that on some future models, I think you can look forward to some abilities to mount optics easier than today.

Yeah, there were, you know, there are options out there. I was just looking, I wanted drilled and tapped. I didn't want a saddle mount. I didn't want like a rib mount, which companies out there do have. So, so we were able to get that gun all set up. The one thing I noticed once I had got, you know, all of my, and I've got a pretty high mount for my red dot from, from loophole.

is my cheek was really low and I love the idea that you know a red dot just can be pointed you can actually float your head off of the cheek piece you know I did end up adding a adjustable cheek piece on that shotgun just to make it feel more comfortable when I shouldered it my head was you know I could see the red dot versus having to search for it a little bit or lift my head up but

man, I threw the standard Indian Creek choke in that gun. As you had mentioned, it takes the IMP choke, not the plus, which when I was doing some searching, I actually had to get educated on. I'm like, all right, that's the one that like the Winchester, some of the old Winchester shotgun, some of the old Mossberg and then some of the old Browning. So you kind of figure out what choke you need. But

You know, I don't, this is where I don't know what to give credit to, whether it's a choke or the shotgun, whatever it is. All I can say is that whether it be paired up with the Indian Creek number nines, like, and I patterned out to 60, I can see why your son flat level to Turkey at 60 yards. Like I, I didn't, I don't want to shoot one there. I I'm, you know, being running game calls and trying to get things, you know, somewhat close and get them closer. Right. Yeah. Get them on camera. But I love having that, that,

that confidence that if anything does run out there crippled or for some reason, I usually don't get too that mad at the turkeys, but if I get mad enough at the turkeys, um, no, I shouldn't say that. I still would rather call them in, but you know, you have the ability to, um, like I say, my, my old 40 yard group with the old Mossberg is now equivalent to a 60, you know, my 60 yard groups better. Um, so whatever combination that is, it's, it's really, really good. And, um,

I have to throw Dirk under the bus a little bit, my buddy here. I know your guys' gun will cycle three-inch TSS all day long because he doesn't go on any turkey hunt and only expect to shoot at that thing once. He always jokes. I didn't go all the way to Kansas to just shoot once. And I think on multiple birds, he had multiple quick follow-ups. But...

We can vouch for the cycling of the shotgun because he's had to do it multiple times. He's ready for a quick follow-up. That's awesome. Yeah. One thing I'd say about the patterning and just kind of the shotguns in general is sometimes –

The Element series we import from Turkey, right? There's obviously a lot of other Turkish import shotguns. And so people will say, what's the difference between a Weatherby and some other Turkish import? And I think it's the work that we do up front

to make sure that you're going to get a really good bore, a really good choke-to-bore mating, which leads to a better pattern. All of our shotguns do pattern very well. I think that's the difference. We stand behind our product. We've got our customer service team. We've been in business for 77 years, and we've just got...

We've gotten pretty good at this and we've got a good system. And so I firmly believe that we probably have the best Turkish shotgun on the market and the element. It's really solid and it's priced really competitively. And it all kind of leads just to what you're talking about, which is a great patterning shotgun that cycles really well, that's just going to perform day in and day out.

Gotcha. I have to ask, and I know, I know you're from the manufacturer, so you're going to maybe, uh, but, but it's a question I get asked a lot. Um, I did an article way back when on polishing, you know, barrels and, and, you know, not letting your, not letting your wad kind of slow down all of this crazy stuff. Yeah. Do,

Do you guys get asked a lot about lengthening the forcing cone or polishing the barrel? You know, there's guys out there like Roy Roberts and some of these, you know, Turkey shotgun gurus that work these things over even, you know, the, the other brands, you know, they're taking the way more expensive inertia driven shotguns and they feel like they need to rework them to, and I'm not, I know you'll, you're never going to recommend that you do this, but what, what's your take on, you know, forcing cone lengthening, you know, polishing the barrel, uh,

So is it overkill? Is it not needed? As I mentioned, I shot my gun out of the box, but give us a little bit of insight on what you guys feel, you know, good, bad, you know, voiding warranties, all that sort of stuff as far as starting to modify and polish these guns and lengthening forcing cones and whatnot.

I think if you, I mean, from just to answer the last part of your question first, like if you just polish your barrel or polish your forcing cone a little more, there's no issue with a warranty from that point. But if you start to like talk about lengthening the forcing cone, which if people aren't familiar, that's the portion of the barrel right in front of the shot shell itself, where it tapers from the diameter of the shot shell down just a little bit for some constriction, which is forcing the shot to be tighter, right?

If you start to mess with the actual material removal and the forcing cone, then that's where you're going to have like, you know, our customer service team is going to be like, yeah, we can't really stand behind that anymore because you've materially altered the firearm. Yeah. From an actual just performance standpoint, I would say...

I have never messed with that. I've polished some forcing cones and tried to get a better shine out of a barrel, but I think there's such a law of diminishing returns there that for 99.9% of shooters, you're going to see basically no improvement. I think it's pretty...

darn good as it is. And you, you, you might get like one or two more pellets inside of your, like whatever six inch circle at 30, then you would otherwise. I mean, it's kind of like, uh, like I used to be a really good golfer. I just don't have the time anymore. Um, if I went to the range today to like practice, um,

I could put the time into doing that and shave a single stroke off of my game. But so what? Does that really matter? Yeah, yeah. And that's where I'm coming. I read the forums all the time. I'm always looking for any advantage that at least has a good return. But I feel that's one of those modifications of diminishing returns. And people may argue with me. There's guys with their super shotguns all done up. But I just look at my pattern right out of the gate.

with stock ammo, no custom loaded, federal TSS number nines and three inch and a choke that I screwed on and I went and shot the gun and it's like, what more do I need? How much deader can that turkey be with what I'm already doing? There's

only the opportunity to make some of that worse if you go and start modifying stuff that'd be my fear is yeah i we stand behind our product if for some reason you've got a shotgun from us that's not uh having a good pattern like call our customer service team and let us take care of that issue for you before you start fixing it for yourself you know what i mean yep yep

Is there anything else you want to cover on your guys' shotgun line? Anything that people might not know? Give us anything we might not have covered on the shotgun lineup. Really, I think probably our best-kept secret is the 18i. We launched that, the 18. It launched at the end of 2018. That's where the 18 came from. It's essentially...

a really, really darn good inertia shotgun. So if you want a three and a half inch gun that's capable of shooting and pretty much eating anything you can throw at it, the 18i is probably our best kept shotgun secret. If you want a gun that is a little more friendly on the wallet that can do anything and everything, Element's for you. They're both great. I shoot them both a lot.

And yeah, other than that, there's really no secrets behind them. We've been in the shotgun business for a whole lot of years, not all 77 years of our history, probably only about 50 years have we been doing shotguns. But I think Weatherby is guilty ourselves of

forgetting that we have shotguns sometimes. It's not necessarily our primary focus from a marketing perspective, but a little known fact is that in 2021, we shipped more shotguns than we did rifles. We're big time in the shotgun game and we have a really good system. So

Yeah. Good, good. I, I know we were, I, I preface this, we were going to talk shotguns, but I have to ask why I'm here. Is there anything new on the rifle side that, that you can talk about or, or that's coming, coming our way? I was, uh, I was thinking that you might try to sneak in a question about some other things, but, uh,

Yeah. As a matter of fact, there is. So we have a new cartridge. Our latest cartridge introduction is going to be the Weatherby 338 RPM, which is our 6.5 Weatherby RPM necked up to 338. We're currently doing our final...

uh, load development, uh, with production brass. Um, there's already public knowledge out there. Um, Sammy, which is kind of like the governing body for cartridges and firearms, uh, published the cartridge drawings back in January. Uh, and we've just had a hard time getting brass, but we have production brass. We're doing final development and sometime, uh,

early August, just a couple weeks away, we will be shipping the .338 RPM. So why .338 RPM? Well, I think there's kind of a gap in the market for an ultra-lightweight, shorter barrel. We're going to have probably somewhere between an 18-inch and a 20-inch barrel in the production rifle line that's shooting a 225-grain .338

projectile somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,800 feet per second. So that's a lot of energy.

And a lot of performance with a big hole and a really lightweight five pound rifle package, which is pretty awesome. Now it does bark a little bit like it's, you're going to feel a little, a little, a little jumpy. Yeah. But like, it's a awesome bear gun. It's an awesome elk gun. But yeah, for anybody that wants to punch a big hole with, and not carry a lot of weight, this is, this is the thing for you. And like I said, it'll be ready to hunt with this fall.

Yeah. Hearing you describe the barrel length and some of the ballistics, like instantly I'm out here in Southwest Washington, like we hunt a lot of elk in the timber. Like it's the perfect gun. Like, um,

I'm leaving the 26 inch barreled seven mag in the truck. I'm going to grab the three 38 with an 18 or 20 inch barrel. Seems like a lot better, uh, option. Um, for those that don't know Luke, where, so those ballistics that you mentioned off, like me trying to quickly, you know, compute it to what it would be in a 20, where does that put it? Like with the three 38 wind mag, or is it more case capacity, more performance, or like, where does it sit amongst the other three 38s out there? It's going to be a little bit faster than a three 38 wind mag. Uh,

Uh, we've got like the, the fastest production three 38 with a three 38, three 78 Weatherby. Uh, but the difference is, um, in that three 38, three 78, you have to use our nine lug, our big heavy action. Um,

In this 338 RPM, it uses our smaller, more svelte six lug action. So you save a pound in the action itself. And then because we just don't have 100 and whatever, 120 grains of powder to burn, it's more like 90. And then we can use such a shorter barrel. And it's proving to be a pretty efficient round. So that's where we start getting...

start being able to chop the barrel length down. So originally we thought we were going to be launching with a 24 inch barrel and through our testing, we're like, man, we can, we can really get this down, which, you know, historically, whether it be as big on velocity, we still are. But that usually comes to mean you got to shoot a longer barrel as well. So we're, we're really happy to have this three 38 added to the line where we've got a short barrel and

Magnum performance rifle in a lightweight package. Cause I don't think there's anything else like it in this weight class, our titanium action with a carbon fiber stock and the back country 2.0 is going to tip the scale, like almost exactly five pounds.

Jeez, that'd be nice to carry. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like a good round. Maybe, I don't want to speculate because I shoot heavy magnums as well, but maybe not super fun to shoot, but I'll trade off packability sometimes for, you know, you don't ever feel the shot when you're shooting at a critter anyways.

Yeah, I think the trade-off on the new 338 RPM is that we do have some magazine length restrictions. So you're not going to have much room unless you single feed the

to shoot a projectile more than 250 grains. Yep. Yep. I shoot a custom made 338 edge, which is all single feed, which most of the time if we do hard jobs, a good thing, but there's been some times where it's been a very bad thing. So yeah, keeping those in like I'm shooting a 300 grain out of it. So it's,

It's definitely single feed. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's a really long loaded cartridge then. Yeah. But no, instantly you started to describe that and like I say, perfect brush gun, one little extra thump in the backcountry in a super lightweight package. It sounds like it's going to fit that bill and check that box.

Yeah. Yeah. We're excited to bring that to market. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that, that new information. So we'll, we'll roll back to shotguns here and we'll kind of close up. So with everything we've talked about shotguns, if you were a new user, just looking to get a multipurpose shotgun that you can go out and, you know, shoot a limited ducks, go out and Turkey hunt with all spring and then, you know, want to maybe go do some upland, like what would be your shotgun choice and maybe explain why.

I personally would probably choose our Element Tungsten. There's no camo pattern on the gun. It's a black synthetic stock with the tungsten Cerakote, so it's basically fully weatherproof. If your camo changes over time, you're not going to have clashiness with your camo pattern. It can do duty well.

as a waterfowl gun as a turkey gun i would choose the 26 inch barrel over the 28 just so it's a little shorter a little more friendly for doing double duty if it was purely a waterfowl gun i'd go for a 28 but if you want something that just run uh running gun no matter what and where i think that 26 inch barrel is the way to go in the element tungsten

Perfect. Well, thanks for that information, Luke. And thanks for coming on the Cutting Distance podcast. We really appreciate it. Like I say, I don't have a lot of experience waterfowl hunting with it, but it performed perfect. And then me and Dirk are real happy with our turkey setups and they did well. How can people find more out about Weatherby? How do they reach you guys? I know you guys are all over social, but give yourself a plug and really appreciate having you on here.

Yeah. Weatherby.com. You can find, you know, all of the information on everything that we talked about and more there at Weatherby Inc. on Instagram. And then, you know, Facebook and other places as well, just as Weatherby. So,

uh, we'd love to have you come follow us. Probably the best thing to do is to sign up for our newsletter on weatherby.com. Uh, we definitely get throttled a little bit by social media. So even if you follow us, you might not see everything we post every time, but, um, we're not a company that sends out, you know, like six emails a day or like kind of like one a week or one every other week. And we try to make them meaningful. So, uh,

yeah join our join our email newsletter it's probably the single best way to stay in tune with what we've got going on yeah yep well thanks a lot luke thanks for uh joining and uh good luck this fall or uh any of your uh shotgunning trips you have coming up thanks jason

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