September 10, 2025 • 32 mins
How do you really know if you're a good shooter? In this episode of Gun Talk Nation, pro shooter Max Michel - of Team SIG Sauer - joins host Ryan Gresham to break down the truth about shooting skill, red dot optics, competitive performance, and firearms training.
Max shares practical insights on how new and experienced shooters alike can assess their skills, improve fundamentals, and take their shooting to the next level. Whether you're a civilian shooter, law enforcement, military, or a firearms instructor — this episode is packed with value.
Max also shares the story of his 200,000-round pistol barrel and how it still holds competition-grade accuracy.
This Gun Talk Nation is brought to you by First Person Defender, Safariland, Savage Arms, and Guns & Gear.
About Gun Talk Nation
Gun Talk Media's Gun Talk Nation with Ryan Gresham is a weekly multi-platform podcast that offers a fresh look at all things firearms-related. Featuring notable guests and a lot of laughs. Gun Talk Nation is available as an audio podcast or in video format.
For more content from Gun Talk Media, visit guntalk.com or subscribe on YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, Instagram, and X. Catch First Person Defender on the new Official FPD YouTube channel. Catch Gun Talk Hunt on the new dedicated YouTube Channel. Listen to all Gun Talk Podcasts with Spreaker, iHeart, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find podcasts.
Copyright ©2025 Freefire Media, LLC
Gun Talk Nation 09.10.25
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/gun-talk--6185159/support.
Max shares practical insights on how new and experienced shooters alike can assess their skills, improve fundamentals, and take their shooting to the next level. Whether you're a civilian shooter, law enforcement, military, or a firearms instructor — this episode is packed with value.
Max also shares the story of his 200,000-round pistol barrel and how it still holds competition-grade accuracy.
This Gun Talk Nation is brought to you by First Person Defender, Safariland, Savage Arms, and Guns & Gear.
About Gun Talk Nation
Gun Talk Media's Gun Talk Nation with Ryan Gresham is a weekly multi-platform podcast that offers a fresh look at all things firearms-related. Featuring notable guests and a lot of laughs. Gun Talk Nation is available as an audio podcast or in video format.
For more content from Gun Talk Media, visit guntalk.com or subscribe on YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, Instagram, and X. Catch First Person Defender on the new Official FPD YouTube channel. Catch Gun Talk Hunt on the new dedicated YouTube Channel. Listen to all Gun Talk Podcasts with Spreaker, iHeart, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find podcasts.
Copyright ©2025 Freefire Media, LLC
Gun Talk Nation 09.10.25
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/gun-talk--6185159/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, I'm a good shooter. And then they show up
and we're like, uh, well, I don't know what do
you mean by good? That's subjective? I mean, how do
you how do you even start to explain that?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, so I mean me, Like you said, the easy
answer is go shoot a competition, whether you're law enforcement, military,
competitive shooter, civilian, whatever out there. If you shoot a competition,
you found out what you suck at really quickly.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm Ryan Gresham and this this is gun Talk Nation.
Gun Talk Nation is brought to you by first Person
Defender Safari Land Savage and Guns and Gear, Max Michelle,
(00:51):
pro shooter. That's such a weird job, isn't it. It is?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
But it's a pretty cool job.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
When people say, like, you know, you're at like a
PTA meeting and they're like, so, Max, what do you
do for work?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It's always a conversation for sure. It's like wait, wait, what.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Do you do and how do you do that? Like
how many of you guys?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I didn't think that was a real thing.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I shoot pistols exactly for work, like you're a cop.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
So I started just saying, like, I'm an industry consultant
for the firearms industry or something. Basically, like I try
to dumb it down as easy as possible because it's
hard to explain what I really do. Yeah, pro shooter,
you know, so I can say like I run an
obstacle course or a handgun, and that usually connects with
some people that like, oh that's cool, but it's also
kind of weird. Yeah, So if I just say I'm
a consultant for the firearms industry, they're like, oh that's cool. Yeah,
(01:32):
tell me more, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Now, when you when you cause you probably have the
same thing I do. When people are like what do
you do? You're like, do I want to get into this?
And like what's the reaction going to be? There's a
little bit of that where you're like, it's gun stuff,
you know, in a in a regular setting. But I
would say ninety nine percent of the time people are
super positive and actually very interested, even if they're not
(01:56):
gun people.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, definitely. I mean, so I do have to be
careful full and cautious on an airplane or places like that,
because you know, I usually wear a lot of gun stuff,
whether it be you know, the companies that I work for, whatever,
and like, oh cool gun, I like that you know,
and then you get that kind of weird oh you want
of those guys. So you gotta be careful of who
you have around you. But for the most part, everybody
super super kind, especially where we're from in the South.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I think I was I was wearing one of our
T shirts, which you know, if you want to go
buy some merch from us listeners, you could do that.
I mean, we sell dozens of dollars worth of merch
every year. It's it's it's really picking up. But one
of our shirts, I think it says shall not be
infringed and it has this graphic on it, and it
(02:39):
was like one of those where I was like, it's
the last clean shirt I have going home, and like,
am I gonna wear this on the plane? Let me
just you know what, scrit I'm just gonna wear it.
And no one said anything to me except I was
walking off the plane and one of the flight attendts
is a lady. I was walking off the plane. She goes, hey,
I like your shirt, and I was like a cool,
(03:00):
n nice little just a little wink, you know, positive content, like.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Okay, cool, awesome, Get some of those.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
You never know, man, I've kind of gotten where I'm like,
just like whatever, I'm I'm just people are gonna ask me. Yeah,
we do gun stuff, and I think perhaps the people
who were maybe not thrilled about it just don't say anything.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
They're not gonna say anything to your face anyway. Maybe
on the internet, but yeah, usually to your face.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
It's weirdo not letting my kids sleep have a sleep exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Which, by the way, it's been super cool for me
in that regard to like all the dads and the
moms that we've met through school and all these other,
you know, organizations that we go through with the kids,
whether it be sports or church or whatever. But they've
all been super good to us. And yeah, super kind
and very understanding. And hey, can you take me to
the range too, I've never shot before. In fact, in
a couple of days, actually, I'm bringing somebody, you know,
one of the dads, a nice new shooter to the range.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
So you looking forward to it. So how's it going, man?
You've been shooting a lot and been shooting a lot
of matches.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
So matches hasn't been as much for me this year.
I wouldn't say I'm in a weird tre transitional phase,
but just kind of dealing with some injuries. The last
couple of years has been a struggle. Yeah, what you
do is physical, it is man. So I'm forty three,
which isn't old in my mind, but yeah, I mean
I'm competing against kids half my age and there's a
(04:15):
lot of things that you know, go through that. So
I've been competing at a high level for twenty seven
years now as a pro for you know, the Army,
and for six hours. I've been doing it for a
long time. And then you put that wear and tear
on your body. Yeah, one too many times going into
a low position or exploding out of a position. Something's
going to give. And I take care of my body.
I have trainers and physical therapy.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Oh yeah, you're a higher guy who trains.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I mean, I work hard, you know, at my craft.
I love what I do. I want to do it
for as long as I can at the highest level.
But yeah, just kind of injuries have set me back
a little bit over the last handful of years. And
I've fought through those. But the last couple of years
has been tough, you know, I've It's just one of
those things. But I have been competing a little bit
not to the level that I would like. So because
(04:57):
of that, I've kind of switched gears a little bit
where I'm still because I think competing allows me to
stay sharp, allows me to stay current, and keeps my
name in people's minds when they think about who they
want to train with. And part of that is my
passion to give back. So I go to the competitions
to find out what I suck at so I can
get better. But that also helps me as an instructor
and a trainer. So now I go back and I
(05:18):
can train law enforcement, military, government units, government agencies, and
also competitive shooters and civilians out there who just are
passionate about shooting or the Second Amendment. I'm able to
now give back a lot more. So This year has
been some competing, but it's been a lot more focus
on developing product, working with marketing departments, consulting more in
the industry, and of course lots of training.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
It's interesting to talk about developing products. That's got to
be kind of fun, right, I Mean, people are always
having ideas for what would be neat, what would and
there's been quite a bit of innovation and changes over
several years of what's out there. We were just I
just had Chris on the podcast and we were talking
about he went up to SIG and did a class
(06:02):
and he was the only guy, I don't know how many,
it was maybe a dozen people in this class. He
was the only guy shooting iron sights. Only one person
out of a whole class of the weirdo. Yeah, he's
the weirdo and he knew it going in. He's deliberately
being the weirdo. I don't know, he's just he wants
to be contrary. And he said that for like a
few hours, he shot a gun with a dot on
(06:23):
it and was just crushing it. And of course the
instructors were like, why don't you shoot a dot all
the time? He's like, I'm an old man. I don't
like batteries. Okay, yeah, fine, fine, but what kind of
like where do you think we're headed with products and
innovation and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, I think it's really really neat. We're at a
really cool time where I started shooting red dots on
my optic in the mid nineties, So it's been thirty
years now I'm shooting a red dot. But we really
probably hadn't seen it on law enforcement military pistols for
probably maybe the last five to ten years, max, I mean,
and even now it's it's still there's still a lot
of folks at transitioning to that or giving them the
(07:01):
opportunity to carrier with a red dot if they want to.
So it's still not even you know, full time yet.
But I remember when I was the weirdo and all
the classes, the one guy with the red dot, And
now I go to all my classes that I'm teaching
and you might have one guy with ironsights sometimes never,
sometimes it's always red dots. So what I'm getting at is,
I think competition shooting drives innovation, and I've been fortunate
(07:23):
to be on that front end of it and now
get to reap the benefits of helping the companies that
I work for bring the best products to those who
protect our countries and the streets that we live in.
So it's a really neat opportunity. But I think innovation
is driven by the competition market. So because we're selfish,
we want to be fast, we want to be accurate,
we want to be the best, and that translates to
the war fighter, to the law enforcement folks out there,
(07:44):
or the self defense folks who are trying to protect
our loved ones. So I think it's a really neat
opportunity and unique time for us to be able to
continue to drive that innovation. And when I say that,
the competition drives innovation, but it now also brings the
opportunity of the SIGs and the LUAP or the trig
Coons and all these other companies out there that are
(08:04):
wanting to do optics and wanting to do them really well.
They can bring in guys like myself or whoever at
the highest level, who has been competing for a couple
of decades and say, what are you liking, why do
you like it, how do we make it better, how
do we fix it? What's the next step of it?
And they have the money to then put that innovation
into the right product, because early on the optics were
very big, very heavy. It didn't work half the time.
(08:26):
But now they're much lighter, much smaller, much more robust,
different radicals and they're super bright dots and you know,
fully enclosed and all the rest of it. But yeah,
so that's what's neat about it is I get to
help develop products and don't really pay a time to
do it, I just get to make some really cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
It'd be like, how do I get your job max? Well?
And what's also kind of neat is all the thinking
that goes into the products, but then also the shooting techniques.
Like I had a whole conversation with the folks from
night Vision where for a while we said, okay, trying
to convince people putting dots on pistols optics and then
(09:03):
a lot of people go oh yeah yeah, and they go,
but we need iron we need backups, and so we
have suppressor height sites and then you go to but
those are blocking a lot of the window, right, And
so we had a whole conversation about lower third, lower fifth,
like you know, just we're really getting into a little
bit of of the weeds as far as really thinking
(09:26):
through this stuff on what you're seeing. One of the
things that do you think that gear Do you think
that running a dot on a pistol is enough of
advantage that people just should start there?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Oh yeah, if you're going to start, I would most
definitely start on a red dot. For instance, my kids
started on a red dot. I started on irons because
we didn't have the red dots when I started, but
it was very early on, maybe a couple of years later,
when red dots started to become a thing, I switched
to it. So I would definitely recommend starting folks on
a dot if they are new to the game, which
is maybe a little different than what some other instructors
(10:03):
might say or other shooters might say, because they feel
like you got to kind of earn your stripes. Start
with the irons.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
You know that you can know how to use them,
exactly know how.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
To use them, but do you really I mean, I mean,
if you have a red dot, just.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Make it easier on the shooter. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Now, these red dots are working so well, and like
you said, you can get back up sites if you prefer.
But I think using a red dot it'll shorten the
learning curve quite a bit for a number of different things.
And a red dot is a self correcting tool. It's
a diagnostic tool. When you're shooting, you should be watching
or at least seeing what that red dot is doing.
As you're entering a position. You know, where is the
(10:38):
dot as it's stabilizing while you're shooting on the move.
Is it all over the place? Well, yeah, maybe get
a little lower bend your knees, roll your feet, heel
to toe, and get smaller steps and you'll see the
dot stabilize. That's the same thing your iron sights are doing.
You just can't see it. You know, when you see
that dot lift off of the target, you know exactly
where that rounds impacting without having to see bullet holes
its target. So there's a lot that can come from
(10:58):
it that you can learn that can then trans late
into the iron sights. But I'm with you on that
the fact that the cowitnessing or the suppressor height sites
can get in the way. So if you ever look
at some of the three twenty max products at SIG,
you're going to see there's no front site. And that's
for a reason.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
He just said that there's no front site.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It's for a real dare you. So when I did
that early on, gosh this was five seven years ago,
whenever we came out with the original Max Yeah, I
didn't want a sight on it. And they were like,
that's really weird, dude, this I don't know if this
is going to work. I'm like, well, I don't want
the site because it gets in my way. So that
was the whole thought process behind that. So the serious
competitive shooters with red dot optics, they don't want that,
(11:36):
and they're committed.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
They're committed take the breaks off of the BMX bike.
We're just doing this.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
They're just doing But you know, I'm starting to see
more and more companies Now Hi Viz has some smaller
sites that would co witness if you will, with your
red dot.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
So there's other.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Companies out there that are making that. Or for instance,
sig has the Romeo x optic which mounts super low,
so you have standard height sites can now co witness.
So I do enjoy that part of it. That again,
it goes back to the innovation of it and kind
of the development of it. Well, hey, the competition shooters
are doing this, so how can we make it still
work for your duty shooter but have some of the
(12:09):
same benefits of that competition theory?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
All right, how does Max Michelle site in a red dot?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Well, I think for me and the Sick Academy, we've
come up with a little formula, but I think everybody's
gonna be a little bit differently. I typically zero my
optic at fifteen yards and you can go into a
ballistic chart just like you could for long range rifle,
we go into the ballistic chart online somewhere and you
can type in you know, your grain bullet, the velocity
of your bullet, and you want to get a zero
at fifteen yards, and if you're zero at fifteen yards,
(12:38):
it'll show you where you're zero at again. So for instance,
if you're a zero at fifteen yards, maybe at point
blank you're a little less than an inch low, you know,
and then.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
It's not bad as far as an offset go is.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
So basically, so at the further you go back, maybe
at the three yard line, maybe you're a half inch low.
Now right at the seven yard line, maybe you're a
quarter inch low, And at the ten maybe you're tenth
of an inch. And at the fifteen you're dead on,
and then it's going to start to climb a little bit,
and then it's going to start to drop once again.
So typically, with a one forty seven grain bullet going
about nine hundred feet per second, you're probably dead on
at fifteen yards and you're back on again at thirty
(13:11):
five yards as a bullet starts. Wow, okay, and maybe
you're an inch low at fifty that's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
It's not bad, right, I mean, and then somewhere between
fifteen and thirty five it gets high. It gets a
lot an inch inch and a half do you think,
not even that much?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Not even You'll be really surprised to see it. It's
less than an inch. It goes up maybe like six
tenths of an inch, like a little over half of
an inch.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
All right. So then and if you go beyond you
said fifty, you're like an inch low.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, so fifty you're going to be about an inch
low again.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Okay, So zero to fifty you're somewhere between an inch
low and an inch high. Yeah, matty, at any point.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
At any point, So I like that fifteen yards that's
because of that. So now if you're using a one
twenty four grain bullet, well you might be on at
you know, fifteen, and might be back on again a
little sooner or a little. It just depends on the velocity, right,
bullet depends at the load. I would definitely, But that's
where I typically zero my guns. And how I zero
it is I just get an old school bench rest,
you know, just get get at a twenty five yard
(14:08):
line or a fifteen yard line to initially get kind
of where I'm at on paper, but I like to
see where I'm at twenty five just to do that.
But fifteen is where I really kind of sit down
on the bench, shoot four or five shot in group,
regardless of where those bullets impact on paper. Don't try
to chase those holes, yep. Just shoot four or five
good shots. When you're done, unload the gun, lock the
slide to the rear, walk down range, see where those
bullets are, kind of draw a circle around them, connecting
(14:31):
all the dots, if you will, and then really try
to find the center of that group. Once I find
the center of that group, then I'm going to measure
from that center of that group to the actual point
that I'm trying to.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Hit, because we're if you're siding in, then that's the
thing I mean we're talking about. This is the moment
to actually be precise in your game. Yes you're being accurate,
but you're kind of going fast, you're running your gunning.
But this is the moment to actually put that pistol
on a bench and really dial it in.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, take the user out of it.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
So, I mean, I'd like to think that I can
shoot a pistol pretty well, but at you know, even
at fifteen yards, if you're trying to shoot an inch
group or small I mean, you're trying to get the
most accuracy as possible because you're doing a couple of things. One,
you're zeroing your optic, but you're also checking your gear.
At some point you might have to change a barrel,
and I want to know that. Or at some point
I'm using different AMMO. How does that AMO, you know,
(15:21):
affect the accuracy in this barrel? Right, this grain bullet
or this particular bullet is different from the previous bullets
that I was using. Or maybe I'm using a different primer,
so the velocity is a little different. Now I'm using
a different powder. All these things matter. So I want
to check the group of my barrel, but also zeroing
my pistol at the same time, So I want to
take the user error out of it. So once you
get that four or five shot group your measure, find
(15:42):
the center of that group, and of course find the
center of exactly where you're trying to hit the X
ring or whatever it might be, the ten ring. And
I find out what that is, and I say, okay,
it's two and a half inches left and low so
then I would think about okay, typically with red dot
and not to sound too nerdy here, but typically.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
With the red dot optics, it's too late.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
We're there, yeah, we're they're in the weeds here now.
But when you know when you make an adjustment, every
click you make is going to be one ma, which
means it is going to move at one inch at
one hundred yards. We're not shooting at one hundred yards
right now, so that means four clicks would move in
an inch at twenty five yards, but we're zeroing at fifteen,
so it's probably seven or so clicks is going to
move it about an inch. So with that same data
(16:19):
as I mentioned, is okay, I'm two and a half
inches low left from where I'm sorry, I'm two and
a half inches high right. I want to go low left,
so I'm going to move it left maybe fourteen clicks
and down, you know, seven clicks or whatever it might be,
and then I would go shoot another five shot group,
do the whole process over again until I get to
where I'm within that X ring or bullseye, whatever you
(16:39):
might call it. You can shoot those shooting see targets
nowadays where you can see it really easily, so you
don't have to go downrange. You could kind of make
some adjustments, but that's how I typically zero fifteen yards
because I don't really have to think about holding off
or holding under. I just essentially just aim in the
center of every target I'm engaging. Because of that kind
of as we've talked about the data before, and then
the fifteen yard zero is a little bit easier for
(17:00):
some people to achieve. Twenty five it's more challenging. Fifty
is really tough.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah, well, it's it's hard to even be accurate enough
to really figure out where is it hitting right. And
also we're kind of skipping ahead a little bit too,
because I imagine you're testing out different AMO to figure
out what your gun likes. I mean, in your case,
you could kind of develop that, but for anybody who
they walk into their gun store and they buy three
(17:25):
or four different loads figure out what their gun likes.
And then you're also you're also thinking about like, okay,
we're talking about siding it in with your AMMO that
you're going to carry or your AMO that you're going
to shoot in a match. So it's don't where I know,
it sounds like me. I could go through a whole
back box of AMMO. Yeah you might, yeah for sure,
(17:46):
but don't site it in with your one hundred and
fifteen grain fmj's and then carry one forty seven hollow
points because it's technically going to be different. It may
not be enormously different, but it's going to be different.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, be different enough if you're trying to hit a
specific spot and don't get the access to that specific spot.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
All right, Max, here's what we're gonna do after the break.
We're gonna talk about how does someone know if they're
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(18:27):
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We've been talking a little bit off and on lately
about how does someone who shoots know if they're good
(20:40):
at shooting? And obviously you're a guy who shoots matches.
That's kind of one of the no brainer answers. We'll
go shoot a match, you'll see, are you you know
ninety ninth out of one hundred shooters? Are you number
two out of one hundred shooters? Right? That's easy to know.
But if you're a guy who just shoots on your
back forty, you go to the indoor range, you go
(21:02):
shoot targets. What is there a way to have expectations
or a drill or a gauge of Like someone says, oh,
we're going to come to range ready and take a
three day pistol class, and we say, you know, this
isn't a beginner class. You need to know how to shoot.
And I'm not picking on anybody, but people will say, oh,
I'm a good shooter, and then they show up and
(21:23):
we're like, uh, well, I don't know what do you
mean by good? That's subjective? I mean, how do you
even start to explain that?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Yeah, so I mean me like you said, the easy
answer is go shoot a competition. Whether you're a law enforcement, military,
competitive shooter, or civilian whatever out there, If you shoot
a competition, you find out what you suck at really quickly,
because when you're on the range with your buddies, you're
good at everything, because you're only going to practice where
you're good.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
At, and let's be honest, you have to be willing.
I think that's one of the hurdles for a lot
of us is you sign up for a match, you
have to be willing to suck in front of people.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
You do you really doing, and even at the highest level,
sometimes you suck in front of people and you're getting
paid to be there, so it happens.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
But I get it.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
It's it's very intimidating at times. So I would say
find some other smaller competitions out there at the local level.
Shoots SIG is a great one. We've done a couple
here at the place. So some smaller GSSF, some smaller
competitions like that that just kind of put you into
that uncomfortable situation. But even so, before you get there,
there are several drills. There are several standards that you
(22:24):
can hold yourself to. There's so many different ones out
there nowadays where it's like, you know, the Triple Nickel
and all these other ones that guys are creating and
coming up with. I have several different drills myself.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
So you have ones on like your website, correct.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Ye, So Max Michelle dot com, you can go check
out some information there. I also have a Patreon account
Patreon dot com slash train with Max, and there's tons
of different drills on there. I call them drills of
the month, but there's like.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Forty or fifty of them on Oh Wow Cool.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
So there's lots of different things people can check out,
but I would say a very easy one to go
and do is IDPA. The IDPA League or the organization
of IDPA, has a couple of different classifiers. One is
pretty detailed and intense of like lots of different movements
and lots of different courses in stages. But there's also
one that's very easy. You only need one target and
ten yards in distance, so you can do that in
(23:10):
any indoor range. And it's a fifty round drill, I believe,
and it goes through some a little bit of speed shooting,
a little bit of accuracy shooting, some reloads, some one
handed shooting, some transitions all on one target from the
body to the head kind of a thing. So it
covers a lot of basic skill sets of what I
call the fundamentals of speed shooting, being the recoil management,
the draw, the reload, and of course hitting what you're
(23:33):
aiming at. So you can do a lot with that
one target in fifty rounds and it'll give you a score.
When you get that score, then you can look on
the and this isn't perfect science, right, but you can
look on the score card and say, okay, if I am,
if I did this in twenty seven point six two
seconds in total time, with all my hits added up
and everything, I can look on the scorecard and say, well,
I'm a master class shooter or I'm not. You know,
(23:54):
so it'll tell you what level you're at within the
country for that organization. So that's probably a good starting
point in very very easy to do at home.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
That's great. I mean that stuff does exist out there,
those kind of benchmarks of where you're at. I mean,
it's funny because what you do is a sport. You're
a professional athlete. And in a lot of professional sports,
we're all about the stats. We know, if somebody is
as a four hundred batting average, they're a really good hitter.
And if somebody throws for four thousand yards as a quarterback,
(24:24):
they're a really good quarterback. But in shooting, there's so
many people that like we kind of do it for fun.
I hit some, I miss some whatever, But to just
kind of know and maybe it's it doesn't even matter,
like I don't care. I'm not going to go shoot
a match and I'm not trying to win anything, but
then you can maybe improve you kind of shoot that
same course of fire. You keep scoring, you go, oh,
(24:46):
I need to do better with that, or I'm the
faster I go. My shots start spreading out. Now it's
specific things I could work on, recoil management or whatever
that might be. Put a dot on it'll fix everything
for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
But I think it comes down to you know, personal
pref and personalities as well, because some people just go
to the range and they don't really care if they
just want to go shoot. But there's others out.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
There that want to get better.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And if you do want to get better, I would
say do that. Find some sort of a standard and
just run that standard cold every time you go to
the range. If you go to the range once a
month or twice a month, just fifty round drill cold.
This is what I'm doing, and just take quick notes
of what you can improve upon next time, what you
did well, and keep a log of that. Every month
you go to the range. You can take a look
at it and see, I mean, you can get you know,
even deeper into it and dry fire and preparation and
(25:28):
mental management and all these other things, but just go
and run the drill and look at your score. That
IDPA one's a very easy one. Just run the drill,
look at your score, and then say, hey, what did
I do well? Where did I lose time? What can
improve upon? And then kind of take some micro drills
based off of that and say, Okay, like you said,
you know, I'm really struggling with my recool management because
my hits are getting all over the place. So let
me go watch a YouTube video on some of these
(25:50):
top guys what they're doing to better control of the
gun and get the sites to come back to the
target faster. And you can work on that and then
go back and take the test.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Do you use the apps for that?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
So there's one out there now and I don't really
know and I haven't seen it in a long time,
but there's one app that I really thought was pretty
cool called live Fire l I V F I R E.
Just live fire in the app store. I hope there's
still a thing, because they're pretty neat.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, I think I've seen that.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Mike Sieglander, yeah, friend of the show as well.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
He Slander is great. He's a really good shooter and
a good trainer.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
He is amazing. So you can go on that app
and he has several different drills on there and several
videos of how to. But the other cool part of
it is it's kind of like social media for gun people.
It's it's like you're never gonna get get kicked off
because you posted a gun pick right right. So it's
just a bunch of buddies on there kind of sharing
their drill, sharing their story, sharing what they've done at
(26:39):
the range. But it's really neat because you can also
keep a logbook. So I've used it before training for
matches where I can look through that log book and say, okay,
I shot five hundred rounds today through this gun. This
was the temperature. Here's a picture of the drills that
I did. Here's the three things I think I did well.
Here's the three things I can improve upon. And it
keeps that in your app, keeps that in your phone forever,
and then you can share that if you want to
(27:00):
with your buddies, or you can share it online so
people can see kind of what you did. But seek
Lander and a couple of other people are on there,
and that's a really cool app if you're looking for
something that's easy to go through. I think they might
be a fee associated with it, but there is a
free portion.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Of it, okay, that allows people to access that to Yeah,
it's worth I mean there are apps that are shot
timer apps and things like that. The live fly one
is pretty neat. I think. I think I still have
it on my phone. I think Mike sends me notifications. Yeah,
Mike's live.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
He is, He's always live, that guy.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Going back to something you said earlier, because I'm curious
you talked about but if I was gonna check a
barrel for accuracy, like pistols aren't, I mean, pistol round
aren't known for being like barrel burners. But can a
barrel get shot out on a pistol? And how do
you know?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Yeah, I mean I think it could. I doubt that
anybody would probably ever shoot it out, but there are
guys out there who are watching this that might shoot,
you know, five thousand rounds a month, ten thousand rounds
a month. There's people out there who do shoot a lot.
I've personally only had to change a couple of batrels
here and there, but it's been very rare I've seen
because I guess the velocity that I'm shooting now is
(28:07):
much lower than these one forty seven grand bullets. I'm
not just seeing it as much, but what I prefer
to do. And this might make people cringe at home, thinking,
you know, long range rifle guys, like what the heck
is he think talking about? But if I can hold
a two inch group at fifteen yards or three inch
at twenty five yards, that gun's probably gonna shoot better
than I can shoot. Okay, right, So, and I know
some people are trying to get you know, less than
(28:28):
an in different standards.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
We're talking about pistol versus rifle.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah, so, I mean, but I'm talking a production style gun.
You know, give me a glock and M and p
a three twenty, you know, a production style gun. Can
I physically hold that pistol and shoot a production gun
with match Ammo or Stockham or whatever am I'm running?
And if I can get it under three inches at
twenty five yards under four inches at twenty five yards,
(28:51):
I can still probably be really competitive with it.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
And let's be honest, twenty five yards is kind of
far when you when you twenty five yards is not far,
but then when you go okay, but we're trying to
hit a two inch group with a pistol. It's twenty
five yards. That's it's tough.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
But I would say most of my guns are shooting
less than two inches at twenty five yards or in
that two inch range at twenty five yards. With the
AMMO that I'm running, it's very very good. You know,
full match AMMO from Sig it's great stuff. But if
you're at home loading your own AMMO, I would say, look,
if you can get the costs down and you can shoot,
you know, that two inch group at fifteen yards, you're
going to be competitive anywhere you.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Go with a pistol. Okay, all right, And obviously a
barrel swap is like the easiest thing ever for on
a pistol.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, nowadays with the production style guns exactly. I keep
saying production style guns because what I'm getting at is
I used to shoot custom guns back in the day. Right,
he's custom twenty elevens and nineteen eleven. People would hand
fit the barrel and the slide, and you know, they
would just be amazing. Funny story on that. I have
one gun. It's a nineteen eleven. It's actually a SIG
ninets and eleven. My custom gunsmith built up in New York,
(29:58):
Dan Bodell. He built it many years ago for me
to compete in the Steal Challenge with. So you're using
a one fifteen grain bullet going one thousand feet per second,
which is just one hundred and fifteen power factor, and
it's really really light shooting. It's awesome. I have over
two hundred thousand rounds in that barrel, no kidding, and
it's still the most accurate gun.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
That I own. Okay, all right, Because we were gonna say,
I was gonna say, you know, like, is there a
round count? You're like, well, so far, two hundred thousand
rounds through a pistol.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
It's in the Sig Museum right now. Because that gun
is so incredible. I want to get it back at
some point.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
But yeah, that's just to be clear, Sig, that's a loaner.
It's a loaner, all right. So that's awesome, man, Well,
good deal. Tell them how they can see what you're doing.
I know. The Patreon thing's a big deal for you.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, So I have a Patreon account, Patreon dot com,
slash train with Max. That's just the way that I
started connecting with people during COVID. So it's been about
five years now and we've we've had a couple thousand
members kind of coming go off and on. But we
have a good group of folks there now that are
you know, all sharing the same passion with one another.
They all want to be better. It's kind of a
commune of shooters. But it gives me an opportunity to
(31:02):
have nearly five hundred videos out there right now that
if you join and you know that All Access member,
you can get access to all of those videos. And
then there's another level of that for nine ninety nine
a month where you can become what we call a
Goal member, and those Goal members they get access to
exclusive videos each month that what we call collections. So
for instance, this month's collection is Movements, So you can
(31:24):
go on there and you say, okay, I'm joining this
month's collection for Movements, and you might have six to
eight videos based on Movements that you can go through.
But if you're an All Access member, you get you
get that content plus all the other movement drills and
every other you know drill or or every other video
that we have on there. So it's a great way
for people to connect and to get better and progress
in their shooting, in their journey. But another easy way
(31:45):
to reach me is just Max Michelle dot com m
Ax m I C h e l dot com. That's
where you can find out about classes and sponsors, about
the Patreon account, about my big experience in Las Vegas
we do each year, which is a kind of fun
of VIP experience metal. Super cool. But yeah, what's going
on and I'd love to see anybody out there.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Awesome, Well, thanks for being all of this man. All right, guys,
I hope that's a little motivation. Go do a little training,
challenge yourself, improve your shooting. It'll pay off. We'll see
you next time on guntag Nation.
Oh, I'm a good shooter. And then they show up
and we're like, uh, well, I don't know what do
you mean by good? That's subjective? I mean, how do
you how do you even start to explain that?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, so I mean me, Like you said, the easy
answer is go shoot a competition, whether you're law enforcement, military,
competitive shooter, civilian, whatever out there. If you shoot a competition,
you found out what you suck at really quickly.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm Ryan Gresham and this this is gun Talk Nation.
Gun Talk Nation is brought to you by first Person
Defender Safari Land Savage and Guns and Gear, Max Michelle,
(00:51):
pro shooter. That's such a weird job, isn't it. It is?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
But it's a pretty cool job.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
When people say, like, you know, you're at like a
PTA meeting and they're like, so, Max, what do you
do for work?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It's always a conversation for sure. It's like wait, wait, what.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Do you do and how do you do that? Like
how many of you guys?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I didn't think that was a real thing.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I shoot pistols exactly for work, like you're a cop.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
So I started just saying, like, I'm an industry consultant
for the firearms industry or something. Basically, like I try
to dumb it down as easy as possible because it's
hard to explain what I really do. Yeah, pro shooter,
you know, so I can say like I run an
obstacle course or a handgun, and that usually connects with
some people that like, oh that's cool, but it's also
kind of weird. Yeah, So if I just say I'm
a consultant for the firearms industry, they're like, oh that's cool. Yeah,
(01:32):
tell me more, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Now, when you when you cause you probably have the
same thing I do. When people are like what do
you do? You're like, do I want to get into this?
And like what's the reaction going to be? There's a
little bit of that where you're like, it's gun stuff,
you know, in a in a regular setting. But I
would say ninety nine percent of the time people are
super positive and actually very interested, even if they're not
(01:56):
gun people.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, definitely. I mean, so I do have to be
careful full and cautious on an airplane or places like that,
because you know, I usually wear a lot of gun stuff,
whether it be you know, the companies that I work for, whatever,
and like, oh cool gun, I like that you know,
and then you get that kind of weird oh you want
of those guys. So you gotta be careful of who
you have around you. But for the most part, everybody
super super kind, especially where we're from in the South.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I think I was I was wearing one of our
T shirts, which you know, if you want to go
buy some merch from us listeners, you could do that.
I mean, we sell dozens of dollars worth of merch
every year. It's it's it's really picking up. But one
of our shirts, I think it says shall not be
infringed and it has this graphic on it, and it
(02:39):
was like one of those where I was like, it's
the last clean shirt I have going home, and like,
am I gonna wear this on the plane? Let me
just you know what, scrit I'm just gonna wear it.
And no one said anything to me except I was
walking off the plane and one of the flight attendts
is a lady. I was walking off the plane. She goes, hey,
I like your shirt, and I was like a cool,
(03:00):
n nice little just a little wink, you know, positive content, like.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Okay, cool, awesome, Get some of those.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
You never know, man, I've kind of gotten where I'm like,
just like whatever, I'm I'm just people are gonna ask me. Yeah,
we do gun stuff, and I think perhaps the people
who were maybe not thrilled about it just don't say anything.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
They're not gonna say anything to your face anyway. Maybe
on the internet, but yeah, usually to your face.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
It's weirdo not letting my kids sleep have a sleep exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Which, by the way, it's been super cool for me
in that regard to like all the dads and the
moms that we've met through school and all these other,
you know, organizations that we go through with the kids,
whether it be sports or church or whatever. But they've
all been super good to us. And yeah, super kind
and very understanding. And hey, can you take me to
the range too, I've never shot before. In fact, in
a couple of days, actually, I'm bringing somebody, you know,
one of the dads, a nice new shooter to the range.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
So you looking forward to it. So how's it going, man?
You've been shooting a lot and been shooting a lot
of matches.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
So matches hasn't been as much for me this year.
I wouldn't say I'm in a weird tre transitional phase,
but just kind of dealing with some injuries. The last
couple of years has been a struggle. Yeah, what you
do is physical, it is man. So I'm forty three,
which isn't old in my mind, but yeah, I mean
I'm competing against kids half my age and there's a
(04:15):
lot of things that you know, go through that. So
I've been competing at a high level for twenty seven
years now as a pro for you know, the Army,
and for six hours. I've been doing it for a
long time. And then you put that wear and tear
on your body. Yeah, one too many times going into
a low position or exploding out of a position. Something's
going to give. And I take care of my body.
I have trainers and physical therapy.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Oh yeah, you're a higher guy who trains.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I mean, I work hard, you know, at my craft.
I love what I do. I want to do it
for as long as I can at the highest level.
But yeah, just kind of injuries have set me back
a little bit over the last handful of years. And
I've fought through those. But the last couple of years
has been tough, you know, I've It's just one of
those things. But I have been competing a little bit
not to the level that I would like. So because
(04:57):
of that, I've kind of switched gears a little bit
where I'm still because I think competing allows me to
stay sharp, allows me to stay current, and keeps my
name in people's minds when they think about who they
want to train with. And part of that is my
passion to give back. So I go to the competitions
to find out what I suck at so I can
get better. But that also helps me as an instructor
and a trainer. So now I go back and I
(05:18):
can train law enforcement, military, government units, government agencies, and
also competitive shooters and civilians out there who just are
passionate about shooting or the Second Amendment. I'm able to
now give back a lot more. So This year has
been some competing, but it's been a lot more focus
on developing product, working with marketing departments, consulting more in
the industry, and of course lots of training.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
It's interesting to talk about developing products. That's got to
be kind of fun, right, I Mean, people are always
having ideas for what would be neat, what would and
there's been quite a bit of innovation and changes over
several years of what's out there. We were just I
just had Chris on the podcast and we were talking
about he went up to SIG and did a class
(06:02):
and he was the only guy, I don't know how many,
it was maybe a dozen people in this class. He
was the only guy shooting iron sights. Only one person
out of a whole class of the weirdo. Yeah, he's
the weirdo and he knew it going in. He's deliberately
being the weirdo. I don't know, he's just he wants
to be contrary. And he said that for like a
few hours, he shot a gun with a dot on
(06:23):
it and was just crushing it. And of course the
instructors were like, why don't you shoot a dot all
the time? He's like, I'm an old man. I don't
like batteries. Okay, yeah, fine, fine, but what kind of
like where do you think we're headed with products and
innovation and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, I think it's really really neat. We're at a
really cool time where I started shooting red dots on
my optic in the mid nineties, So it's been thirty
years now I'm shooting a red dot. But we really
probably hadn't seen it on law enforcement military pistols for
probably maybe the last five to ten years, max, I mean,
and even now it's it's still there's still a lot
of folks at transitioning to that or giving them the
(07:01):
opportunity to carrier with a red dot if they want to.
So it's still not even you know, full time yet.
But I remember when I was the weirdo and all
the classes, the one guy with the red dot, And
now I go to all my classes that I'm teaching
and you might have one guy with ironsights sometimes never,
sometimes it's always red dots. So what I'm getting at is,
I think competition shooting drives innovation, and I've been fortunate
(07:23):
to be on that front end of it and now
get to reap the benefits of helping the companies that
I work for bring the best products to those who
protect our countries and the streets that we live in.
So it's a really neat opportunity. But I think innovation
is driven by the competition market. So because we're selfish,
we want to be fast, we want to be accurate,
we want to be the best, and that translates to
the war fighter, to the law enforcement folks out there,
(07:44):
or the self defense folks who are trying to protect
our loved ones. So I think it's a really neat
opportunity and unique time for us to be able to
continue to drive that innovation. And when I say that,
the competition drives innovation, but it now also brings the
opportunity of the SIGs and the LUAP or the trig
Coons and all these other companies out there that are
(08:04):
wanting to do optics and wanting to do them really well.
They can bring in guys like myself or whoever at
the highest level, who has been competing for a couple
of decades and say, what are you liking, why do
you like it, how do we make it better, how
do we fix it? What's the next step of it?
And they have the money to then put that innovation
into the right product, because early on the optics were
very big, very heavy. It didn't work half the time.
(08:26):
But now they're much lighter, much smaller, much more robust,
different radicals and they're super bright dots and you know,
fully enclosed and all the rest of it. But yeah,
so that's what's neat about it is I get to
help develop products and don't really pay a time to
do it, I just get to make some really cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
It'd be like, how do I get your job max? Well?
And what's also kind of neat is all the thinking
that goes into the products, but then also the shooting techniques.
Like I had a whole conversation with the folks from
night Vision where for a while we said, okay, trying
to convince people putting dots on pistols optics and then
(09:03):
a lot of people go oh yeah yeah, and they go,
but we need iron we need backups, and so we
have suppressor height sites and then you go to but
those are blocking a lot of the window, right, And
so we had a whole conversation about lower third, lower fifth,
like you know, just we're really getting into a little
bit of of the weeds as far as really thinking
(09:26):
through this stuff on what you're seeing. One of the
things that do you think that gear Do you think
that running a dot on a pistol is enough of
advantage that people just should start there?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Oh yeah, if you're going to start, I would most
definitely start on a red dot. For instance, my kids
started on a red dot. I started on irons because
we didn't have the red dots when I started, but
it was very early on, maybe a couple of years later,
when red dots started to become a thing, I switched
to it. So I would definitely recommend starting folks on
a dot if they are new to the game, which
is maybe a little different than what some other instructors
(10:03):
might say or other shooters might say, because they feel
like you got to kind of earn your stripes. Start
with the irons.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
You know that you can know how to use them,
exactly know how.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
To use them, but do you really I mean, I mean,
if you have a red dot, just.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Make it easier on the shooter. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Now, these red dots are working so well, and like
you said, you can get back up sites if you prefer.
But I think using a red dot it'll shorten the
learning curve quite a bit for a number of different things.
And a red dot is a self correcting tool. It's
a diagnostic tool. When you're shooting, you should be watching
or at least seeing what that red dot is doing.
As you're entering a position. You know, where is the
(10:38):
dot as it's stabilizing while you're shooting on the move.
Is it all over the place? Well, yeah, maybe get
a little lower bend your knees, roll your feet, heel
to toe, and get smaller steps and you'll see the
dot stabilize. That's the same thing your iron sights are doing.
You just can't see it. You know, when you see
that dot lift off of the target, you know exactly
where that rounds impacting without having to see bullet holes
its target. So there's a lot that can come from
(10:58):
it that you can learn that can then trans late
into the iron sights. But I'm with you on that
the fact that the cowitnessing or the suppressor height sites
can get in the way. So if you ever look
at some of the three twenty max products at SIG,
you're going to see there's no front site. And that's
for a reason.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
He just said that there's no front site.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It's for a real dare you. So when I did
that early on, gosh this was five seven years ago,
whenever we came out with the original Max Yeah, I
didn't want a sight on it. And they were like,
that's really weird, dude, this I don't know if this
is going to work. I'm like, well, I don't want
the site because it gets in my way. So that
was the whole thought process behind that. So the serious
competitive shooters with red dot optics, they don't want that,
(11:36):
and they're committed.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
They're committed take the breaks off of the BMX bike.
We're just doing this.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
They're just doing But you know, I'm starting to see
more and more companies Now Hi Viz has some smaller
sites that would co witness if you will, with your
red dot.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
So there's other.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Companies out there that are making that. Or for instance,
sig has the Romeo x optic which mounts super low,
so you have standard height sites can now co witness.
So I do enjoy that part of it. That again,
it goes back to the innovation of it and kind
of the development of it. Well, hey, the competition shooters
are doing this, so how can we make it still
work for your duty shooter but have some of the
(12:09):
same benefits of that competition theory?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
All right, how does Max Michelle site in a red dot?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Well, I think for me and the Sick Academy, we've
come up with a little formula, but I think everybody's
gonna be a little bit differently. I typically zero my
optic at fifteen yards and you can go into a
ballistic chart just like you could for long range rifle,
we go into the ballistic chart online somewhere and you
can type in you know, your grain bullet, the velocity
of your bullet, and you want to get a zero
at fifteen yards, and if you're zero at fifteen yards,
(12:38):
it'll show you where you're zero at again. So for instance,
if you're a zero at fifteen yards, maybe at point
blank you're a little less than an inch low, you know,
and then.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
It's not bad as far as an offset go is.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
So basically, so at the further you go back, maybe
at the three yard line, maybe you're a half inch low.
Now right at the seven yard line, maybe you're a
quarter inch low, And at the ten maybe you're tenth
of an inch. And at the fifteen you're dead on,
and then it's going to start to climb a little bit,
and then it's going to start to drop once again.
So typically, with a one forty seven grain bullet going
about nine hundred feet per second, you're probably dead on
at fifteen yards and you're back on again at thirty
(13:11):
five yards as a bullet starts. Wow, okay, and maybe
you're an inch low at fifty that's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
It's not bad, right, I mean, and then somewhere between
fifteen and thirty five it gets high. It gets a
lot an inch inch and a half do you think,
not even that much?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Not even You'll be really surprised to see it. It's
less than an inch. It goes up maybe like six
tenths of an inch, like a little over half of
an inch.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
All right. So then and if you go beyond you
said fifty, you're like an inch low.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, so fifty you're going to be about an inch
low again.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Okay, So zero to fifty you're somewhere between an inch
low and an inch high. Yeah, matty, at any point.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
At any point, So I like that fifteen yards that's
because of that. So now if you're using a one
twenty four grain bullet, well you might be on at
you know, fifteen, and might be back on again a
little sooner or a little. It just depends on the velocity, right,
bullet depends at the load. I would definitely, But that's
where I typically zero my guns. And how I zero
it is I just get an old school bench rest,
you know, just get get at a twenty five yard
(14:08):
line or a fifteen yard line to initially get kind
of where I'm at on paper, but I like to
see where I'm at twenty five just to do that.
But fifteen is where I really kind of sit down
on the bench, shoot four or five shot in group,
regardless of where those bullets impact on paper. Don't try
to chase those holes, yep. Just shoot four or five
good shots. When you're done, unload the gun, lock the
slide to the rear, walk down range, see where those
bullets are, kind of draw a circle around them, connecting
(14:31):
all the dots, if you will, and then really try
to find the center of that group. Once I find
the center of that group, then I'm going to measure
from that center of that group to the actual point
that I'm trying to.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Hit, because we're if you're siding in, then that's the
thing I mean we're talking about. This is the moment
to actually be precise in your game. Yes you're being accurate,
but you're kind of going fast, you're running your gunning.
But this is the moment to actually put that pistol
on a bench and really dial it in.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, take the user out of it.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
So, I mean, I'd like to think that I can
shoot a pistol pretty well, but at you know, even
at fifteen yards, if you're trying to shoot an inch
group or small I mean, you're trying to get the
most accuracy as possible because you're doing a couple of things. One,
you're zeroing your optic, but you're also checking your gear.
At some point you might have to change a barrel,
and I want to know that. Or at some point
I'm using different AMMO. How does that AMO, you know,
(15:21):
affect the accuracy in this barrel? Right, this grain bullet
or this particular bullet is different from the previous bullets
that I was using. Or maybe I'm using a different primer,
so the velocity is a little different. Now I'm using
a different powder. All these things matter. So I want
to check the group of my barrel, but also zeroing
my pistol at the same time, So I want to
take the user error out of it. So once you
get that four or five shot group your measure, find
(15:42):
the center of that group, and of course find the
center of exactly where you're trying to hit the X
ring or whatever it might be, the ten ring. And
I find out what that is, and I say, okay,
it's two and a half inches left and low so
then I would think about okay, typically with red dot
and not to sound too nerdy here, but typically.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
With the red dot optics, it's too late.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
We're there, yeah, we're they're in the weeds here now.
But when you know when you make an adjustment, every
click you make is going to be one ma, which
means it is going to move at one inch at
one hundred yards. We're not shooting at one hundred yards
right now, so that means four clicks would move in
an inch at twenty five yards, but we're zeroing at fifteen,
so it's probably seven or so clicks is going to
move it about an inch. So with that same data
(16:19):
as I mentioned, is okay, I'm two and a half
inches low left from where I'm sorry, I'm two and
a half inches high right. I want to go low left,
so I'm going to move it left maybe fourteen clicks
and down, you know, seven clicks or whatever it might be,
and then I would go shoot another five shot group,
do the whole process over again until I get to
where I'm within that X ring or bullseye, whatever you
(16:39):
might call it. You can shoot those shooting see targets
nowadays where you can see it really easily, so you
don't have to go downrange. You could kind of make
some adjustments, but that's how I typically zero fifteen yards
because I don't really have to think about holding off
or holding under. I just essentially just aim in the
center of every target I'm engaging. Because of that kind
of as we've talked about the data before, and then
the fifteen yard zero is a little bit easier for
(17:00):
some people to achieve. Twenty five it's more challenging. Fifty
is really tough.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah, well, it's it's hard to even be accurate enough
to really figure out where is it hitting right. And
also we're kind of skipping ahead a little bit too,
because I imagine you're testing out different AMO to figure
out what your gun likes. I mean, in your case,
you could kind of develop that, but for anybody who
they walk into their gun store and they buy three
(17:25):
or four different loads figure out what their gun likes.
And then you're also you're also thinking about like, okay,
we're talking about siding it in with your AMMO that
you're going to carry or your AMO that you're going
to shoot in a match. So it's don't where I know,
it sounds like me. I could go through a whole
back box of AMMO. Yeah you might, yeah for sure,
(17:46):
but don't site it in with your one hundred and
fifteen grain fmj's and then carry one forty seven hollow
points because it's technically going to be different. It may
not be enormously different, but it's going to be different.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, be different enough if you're trying to hit a
specific spot and don't get the access to that specific spot.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
All right, Max, here's what we're gonna do after the break.
We're gonna talk about how does someone know if they're
good at shooting? Big news from First Person Defender there's
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launching a brand new YouTube channel dedicated entirely to FPD.
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(18:27):
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We test it all, we interview experts, and we showcase
it to you. The latest and the greatest. A new
season of guns and Gear out now. All right, Max,
We've been talking a little bit off and on lately
about how does someone who shoots know if they're good
(20:40):
at shooting? And obviously you're a guy who shoots matches.
That's kind of one of the no brainer answers. We'll
go shoot a match, you'll see, are you you know
ninety ninth out of one hundred shooters? Are you number
two out of one hundred shooters? Right? That's easy to know.
But if you're a guy who just shoots on your
back forty, you go to the indoor range, you go
(21:02):
shoot targets. What is there a way to have expectations
or a drill or a gauge of Like someone says, oh,
we're going to come to range ready and take a
three day pistol class, and we say, you know, this
isn't a beginner class. You need to know how to shoot.
And I'm not picking on anybody, but people will say, oh,
I'm a good shooter, and then they show up and
(21:23):
we're like, uh, well, I don't know what do you
mean by good? That's subjective? I mean, how do you
even start to explain that?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Yeah, so I mean me like you said, the easy
answer is go shoot a competition. Whether you're a law enforcement, military,
competitive shooter, or civilian whatever out there, If you shoot
a competition, you find out what you suck at really quickly,
because when you're on the range with your buddies, you're
good at everything, because you're only going to practice where
you're good.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
At, and let's be honest, you have to be willing.
I think that's one of the hurdles for a lot
of us is you sign up for a match, you
have to be willing to suck in front of people.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
You do you really doing, and even at the highest level,
sometimes you suck in front of people and you're getting
paid to be there, so it happens.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
But I get it.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
It's it's very intimidating at times. So I would say
find some other smaller competitions out there at the local level.
Shoots SIG is a great one. We've done a couple
here at the place. So some smaller GSSF, some smaller
competitions like that that just kind of put you into
that uncomfortable situation. But even so, before you get there,
there are several drills. There are several standards that you
(22:24):
can hold yourself to. There's so many different ones out
there nowadays where it's like, you know, the Triple Nickel
and all these other ones that guys are creating and
coming up with. I have several different drills myself.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
So you have ones on like your website, correct.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Ye, So Max Michelle dot com, you can go check
out some information there. I also have a Patreon account
Patreon dot com slash train with Max, and there's tons
of different drills on there. I call them drills of
the month, but there's like.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Forty or fifty of them on Oh Wow Cool.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
So there's lots of different things people can check out,
but I would say a very easy one to go
and do is IDPA. The IDPA League or the organization
of IDPA, has a couple of different classifiers. One is
pretty detailed and intense of like lots of different movements
and lots of different courses in stages. But there's also
one that's very easy. You only need one target and
ten yards in distance, so you can do that in
(23:10):
any indoor range. And it's a fifty round drill, I believe,
and it goes through some a little bit of speed shooting,
a little bit of accuracy shooting, some reloads, some one
handed shooting, some transitions all on one target from the
body to the head kind of a thing. So it
covers a lot of basic skill sets of what I
call the fundamentals of speed shooting, being the recoil management,
the draw, the reload, and of course hitting what you're
(23:33):
aiming at. So you can do a lot with that
one target in fifty rounds and it'll give you a score.
When you get that score, then you can look on
the and this isn't perfect science, right, but you can
look on the score card and say, okay, if I am,
if I did this in twenty seven point six two
seconds in total time, with all my hits added up
and everything, I can look on the scorecard and say, well,
I'm a master class shooter or I'm not. You know,
(23:54):
so it'll tell you what level you're at within the
country for that organization. So that's probably a good starting
point in very very easy to do at home.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
That's great. I mean that stuff does exist out there,
those kind of benchmarks of where you're at. I mean,
it's funny because what you do is a sport. You're
a professional athlete. And in a lot of professional sports,
we're all about the stats. We know, if somebody is
as a four hundred batting average, they're a really good hitter.
And if somebody throws for four thousand yards as a quarterback,
(24:24):
they're a really good quarterback. But in shooting, there's so
many people that like we kind of do it for fun.
I hit some, I miss some whatever, But to just
kind of know and maybe it's it doesn't even matter,
like I don't care. I'm not going to go shoot
a match and I'm not trying to win anything, but
then you can maybe improve you kind of shoot that
same course of fire. You keep scoring, you go, oh,
(24:46):
I need to do better with that, or I'm the
faster I go. My shots start spreading out. Now it's
specific things I could work on, recoil management or whatever
that might be. Put a dot on it'll fix everything
for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
But I think it comes down to you know, personal
pref and personalities as well, because some people just go
to the range and they don't really care if they
just want to go shoot. But there's others out.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
There that want to get better.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And if you do want to get better, I would
say do that. Find some sort of a standard and
just run that standard cold every time you go to
the range. If you go to the range once a
month or twice a month, just fifty round drill cold.
This is what I'm doing, and just take quick notes
of what you can improve upon next time, what you
did well, and keep a log of that. Every month
you go to the range. You can take a look
at it and see, I mean, you can get you know,
even deeper into it and dry fire and preparation and
(25:28):
mental management and all these other things, but just go
and run the drill and look at your score. That
IDPA one's a very easy one. Just run the drill,
look at your score, and then say, hey, what did
I do well? Where did I lose time? What can
improve upon? And then kind of take some micro drills
based off of that and say, Okay, like you said,
you know, I'm really struggling with my recool management because
my hits are getting all over the place. So let
me go watch a YouTube video on some of these
(25:50):
top guys what they're doing to better control of the
gun and get the sites to come back to the
target faster. And you can work on that and then
go back and take the test.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Do you use the apps for that?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
So there's one out there now and I don't really
know and I haven't seen it in a long time,
but there's one app that I really thought was pretty
cool called live Fire l I V F I R E.
Just live fire in the app store. I hope there's
still a thing, because they're pretty neat.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, I think I've seen that.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Mike Sieglander, yeah, friend of the show as well.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
He Slander is great. He's a really good shooter and
a good trainer.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
He is amazing. So you can go on that app
and he has several different drills on there and several
videos of how to. But the other cool part of
it is it's kind of like social media for gun people.
It's it's like you're never gonna get get kicked off
because you posted a gun pick right right. So it's
just a bunch of buddies on there kind of sharing
their drill, sharing their story, sharing what they've done at
(26:39):
the range. But it's really neat because you can also
keep a logbook. So I've used it before training for
matches where I can look through that log book and say, okay,
I shot five hundred rounds today through this gun. This
was the temperature. Here's a picture of the drills that
I did. Here's the three things I think I did well.
Here's the three things I can improve upon. And it
keeps that in your app, keeps that in your phone forever,
and then you can share that if you want to
(27:00):
with your buddies, or you can share it online so
people can see kind of what you did. But seek
Lander and a couple of other people are on there,
and that's a really cool app if you're looking for
something that's easy to go through. I think they might
be a fee associated with it, but there is a
free portion.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Of it, okay, that allows people to access that to Yeah,
it's worth I mean there are apps that are shot
timer apps and things like that. The live fly one
is pretty neat. I think. I think I still have
it on my phone. I think Mike sends me notifications. Yeah,
Mike's live.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
He is, He's always live, that guy.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Going back to something you said earlier, because I'm curious
you talked about but if I was gonna check a
barrel for accuracy, like pistols aren't, I mean, pistol round
aren't known for being like barrel burners. But can a
barrel get shot out on a pistol? And how do
you know?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Yeah, I mean I think it could. I doubt that
anybody would probably ever shoot it out, but there are
guys out there who are watching this that might shoot,
you know, five thousand rounds a month, ten thousand rounds
a month. There's people out there who do shoot a lot.
I've personally only had to change a couple of batrels
here and there, but it's been very rare I've seen
because I guess the velocity that I'm shooting now is
(28:07):
much lower than these one forty seven grand bullets. I'm
not just seeing it as much, but what I prefer
to do. And this might make people cringe at home, thinking,
you know, long range rifle guys, like what the heck
is he think talking about? But if I can hold
a two inch group at fifteen yards or three inch
at twenty five yards, that gun's probably gonna shoot better
than I can shoot. Okay, right, So, and I know
some people are trying to get you know, less than
(28:28):
an in different standards.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
We're talking about pistol versus rifle.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah, so, I mean, but I'm talking a production style gun.
You know, give me a glock and M and p
a three twenty, you know, a production style gun. Can
I physically hold that pistol and shoot a production gun
with match Ammo or Stockham or whatever am I'm running?
And if I can get it under three inches at
twenty five yards under four inches at twenty five yards,
(28:51):
I can still probably be really competitive with it.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
And let's be honest, twenty five yards is kind of
far when you when you twenty five yards is not far,
but then when you go okay, but we're trying to
hit a two inch group with a pistol. It's twenty
five yards. That's it's tough.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
But I would say most of my guns are shooting
less than two inches at twenty five yards or in
that two inch range at twenty five yards. With the
AMMO that I'm running, it's very very good. You know,
full match AMMO from Sig it's great stuff. But if
you're at home loading your own AMMO, I would say, look,
if you can get the costs down and you can shoot,
you know, that two inch group at fifteen yards, you're
going to be competitive anywhere you.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Go with a pistol. Okay, all right, And obviously a
barrel swap is like the easiest thing ever for on
a pistol.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, nowadays with the production style guns exactly. I keep
saying production style guns because what I'm getting at is
I used to shoot custom guns back in the day. Right,
he's custom twenty elevens and nineteen eleven. People would hand
fit the barrel and the slide, and you know, they
would just be amazing. Funny story on that. I have
one gun. It's a nineteen eleven. It's actually a SIG
ninets and eleven. My custom gunsmith built up in New York,
(29:58):
Dan Bodell. He built it many years ago for me
to compete in the Steal Challenge with. So you're using
a one fifteen grain bullet going one thousand feet per second,
which is just one hundred and fifteen power factor, and
it's really really light shooting. It's awesome. I have over
two hundred thousand rounds in that barrel, no kidding, and
it's still the most accurate gun.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
That I own. Okay, all right, Because we were gonna say,
I was gonna say, you know, like, is there a
round count? You're like, well, so far, two hundred thousand
rounds through a pistol.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
It's in the Sig Museum right now. Because that gun
is so incredible. I want to get it back at
some point.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
But yeah, that's just to be clear, Sig, that's a loaner.
It's a loaner, all right. So that's awesome, man, Well,
good deal. Tell them how they can see what you're doing.
I know. The Patreon thing's a big deal for you.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, So I have a Patreon account, Patreon dot com,
slash train with Max. That's just the way that I
started connecting with people during COVID. So it's been about
five years now and we've we've had a couple thousand
members kind of coming go off and on. But we
have a good group of folks there now that are
you know, all sharing the same passion with one another.
They all want to be better. It's kind of a
commune of shooters. But it gives me an opportunity to
(31:02):
have nearly five hundred videos out there right now that
if you join and you know that All Access member,
you can get access to all of those videos. And
then there's another level of that for nine ninety nine
a month where you can become what we call a
Goal member, and those Goal members they get access to
exclusive videos each month that what we call collections. So
for instance, this month's collection is Movements, So you can
(31:24):
go on there and you say, okay, I'm joining this
month's collection for Movements, and you might have six to
eight videos based on Movements that you can go through.
But if you're an All Access member, you get you
get that content plus all the other movement drills and
every other you know drill or or every other video
that we have on there. So it's a great way
for people to connect and to get better and progress
in their shooting, in their journey. But another easy way
(31:45):
to reach me is just Max Michelle dot com m
Ax m I C h e l dot com. That's
where you can find out about classes and sponsors, about
the Patreon account, about my big experience in Las Vegas
we do each year, which is a kind of fun
of VIP experience metal. Super cool. But yeah, what's going
on and I'd love to see anybody out there.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Awesome, Well, thanks for being all of this man. All right, guys,
I hope that's a little motivation. Go do a little training,
challenge yourself, improve your shooting. It'll pay off. We'll see
you next time on guntag Nation.
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