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The Hunting Stories Podcast
The Hunting Stories Podcast
Ep 115 The Hunting Stories Podcast: Brandon Maddox
Join us for an exhilarating episode of the Hunting Stories Podcast featuring Brandon Maddox, the visionary founder and CEO of Silencer Central. Discover Brandon's compelling journey from a pharmacy career to pioneering the world of silencers and hunting. He shares his personal narrative, recounting his late start in hunting influenced by family traditions, and his seamless transition from small game and bird hunting to the thrill of big game pursuits. Brandon also offers insights into the rich hunting culture of South Dakota and the remarkable experiences that have shaped his passion for the sport.
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Howdy folks and welcome to the Hunting Stories Podcast. I'm your host, Michael, and we got another good one for you today. Today we're actually connecting with Brandon Maddox. Brandon is the founder and CEO of Silencer Central, based out of South Dakota. They make an amazing product and they basically simplify the entire process of getting a silencer. So check him out for sure.
Speaker 1:But, brandon, thank you very much for jumping on the podcast. I know you're a very busy guy, but he's a newer hunter, but he still has some amazing adventures. So today he tells us a couple crazy stories from his most recent trip to Africa, involving hyenas, lions, giraffes, all sorts of crazy stuff. So, brandon, thank you very much To listeners again. Get out there, make sure you do vote, but more importantly actually not more importantly, but equally as important is, bring one person with you. Let's go ahead and kick this thing off now and let Brandon tell you his stories. Thank you All right, brandon.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Hunting Stories podcast. How are you doing, sir? Great Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, man, I'm of course, happy to have you here. I know we had a quick meeting of the minds before this, like a couple weeks back, and I'm excited to hear some of the stories that you kind of just sort of prefaced for me as we were setting that thing up. But let's do this. Let's take one step back, brandon. Why don't you introduce yourself so the folks know who they're going to be hearing some stories from today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Brandon Maddox, based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and I am the founder and CEO of Silencer Central. We have stores in 42 states and we're kind of famous for mailing the silencer to your front door once it's approved, so you can kind of buy it from your couch and have it shipped to your front door without ever leaving your house.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I actually have a buddy who, uh, he talked his dad into buying a couple from you guys, so, and actually I'm gonna, I got a new christiansen firearms, uh, ridgeline fft in uh 300 wind mag and he's got the silencer from you guys that I'm gonna put on there for an elk hunt. We're gonna go on in november, so I'm pretty excited to check your silencers out, man? Um, but uh, how long? How long you've been hunting? Is it your entire life, or or you know?
Speaker 2:what spurred this passion? Yeah, that's a good question. So, um, you know, my dad did not hunt, so growing up I would say I didn't have, um, probably a ton of opportunities to hunt. Um, I would say that it was in my genetic pool, though, because my uncle was a big hunter and also my, uh, my mom's dad. So my grandfather and, um, you know I would say, squirrel hunting in the yard and stuff like that, you know, at a young age, using the, you know, BB gun, um, for you know younger age, but I would say, like really really getting into hunting, to be honest with you, maybe like the last three or four years, just because I used to have a day job. I'm a pharmacist by trade and I would do my day job in this.
Speaker 2:I started Simulacra Central in 2005. So, you know, when I was doing the starting Simulacra Central and then also working in the pharmaceutical industry, I didn't have too much time. And then I had kids. But I'd say, as my kids have gotten older, I can easier to justify taking off time during the week if it's work-related, and then, of course, the benefit of being able to expense it through the business, because typically you're with other industry people. I've really gotten into it really in the last three or four years, really gotten into it really in the last three or four years. You know no one's complained at my house that I'm into it too much, but I've got a lot of totes as people send me free gear and shirts and all this other stuff in the industry. I've got totes that I'm convinced at some point my wife's going to say all right, this has got to go, yeah that's too funny.
Speaker 2:So I'd say mostly like the last three or four years. But I would say mostly in the last three or four years it's been big game. Before I would say it would have been smaller game. You know, basically high school dove hunting and, um, you know, then when I moved to South Dakota I did really get into pheasant hunting just to try to honestly get it get in better with the culture of my wife, and then I actually enjoyed it. So, um, you know, hang out with my wife's family and stuff like that. But I would say big game is more recently.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah, I'm an adult onset hunter too and I never thought about it saying it was in the gene pool. My mother's father he hunted a little bit, a little bit of white tail, a lot more of like quail and stuff like that, and pheasants in Kansas, so similar. And then I also. I went to school for pharmacy. I ended up, I ended up, uh, going through it and then deciding I didn't like biology enough to complete the path and ended up jumping over to a different major. But when I started at university of colorado I was like I'm gonna be a pharmacist, so that's. That's funny. We got a lot in common, brandon. Um, yeah, yeah, but let's uh, let's dive into it. People aren't here to hear about my educational background or yours. They want to hear some hunting stories. So you got a couple of years to pull from. Why don't you set the stage on the first story?
Speaker 2:You know, I would say, you know it's funny because they asked me to do this at lunch. I do a CEO lunch every month where people can kind of you know, there's no organizational structure there it's basically anyone in the organization has a birthday this month. They get to have, you know, lunch with me and they can ask whatever question they want. And yeah, one guy asked me about hyena hunting and I don't know why, but for some reason, you know, I I went wolf hunting in um january of this year up in canada and I shot like two wolves in the first 20 minutes in the blind. So it's not a really a great story, but it sort of primed me. It sort of primed me for wanting a hyena.
Speaker 2:I don't know why, but just like you see guys on facebook they shoot a hyena. I don't know why, but just like you see guys on Facebook they shoot a hyena, you're like, oh my God, it looks like so exotic and cool and crazy and spooky and just weird, like you know, a dinosaur type thing. So, um, yeah, I just got back from Africa a couple of weeks ago. I went to um Zimbabwe, okay, and um, the goal was to shoot a leopard and a lion and I didn't find any leopards big enough. I found two lions but in the interim of trying to get the leopard I decided I became obsessed with trying to get a hyena Just because there's a lot of other camps near us that were also trying to hunt hyena. It just kind of created this sort of top of mind like man that looks cool.
Speaker 1:They're a cool critter too, right? Don't they have like the most powerful jaws of like any land mammal or something? Like them in gators or something? Yeah, I guess, when I was reading about them.
Speaker 2:What interested me too was that they could crush bones. So part of it was we had put some like bait out. So of course they started baiting for the lions and leopards before I got there and they'd use domestic animals, like they bought cows and they bought donkeys and they were putting them out there and as they had parts of stuff that was left over, they were throwing it out almost like as a side pile and the hyenas were getting into it and they were like crushing bones and stuff. And I'm like man, this is kind of cool. I kind of think I would almost rather do the hyena than the leopard.
Speaker 2:But it became a recession where, like every night we would go out after dark and we would call hyenas. And you know, the the hard part was I well, I downloaded the sounds off a YouTube video and I basically just cut it to just the sound and then we had to get a speaker made and like build this thing, because that wasn't the original plan. And then the the hard part was I had thermal binoculars but I didn't have a thermal scope, so it became a little bit like all right, so if we do see what we call it in, how are we actually going to kill it? And I think we had one spotlight that was a leopard spotlight that turned red, but somehow it fell off the truck, it got run over. So at this point we've got nothing but like a bright white, you know, uh, scope. So I'm thinking this, I'm thinking I'm spending this with this much money. It feels like a little ghetto. You know duct tape and I don't know.
Speaker 2:I was getting nervous, but so so we went out for like four or five nights in a row hunting, hunting, uh, hyenas, and uh, you know, you turn, you turn to call on. And the hard part is, like you're in a truck, so you're like, okay, do we stay in the truck? And the moon was kind of bright, so the problem is well, they come up and then they see the truck and then they disappear and, um, needless to say, every night we did something wrong, you know, know, first we started with bait, trying to bring them into bait. Yes, totally, totally. And then we brought the dead pile where you drag it around and do the drag, the dead drag, to try to bring them in. We had a bunch of intestines from other animals we had shot and we were dragging that around. That's usually what brought the hyenas in A couple nights. We called them in, got them close, could never really get a shot, could never really see them. That great you could hear them, so you knew they were responding to it.
Speaker 2:And the problem is at this point now we've got four or five different calls, so it's like okay, which one actually works Because they're coming in. But was it the first call we made? The second, the last, the combination of all of them? You put a gap in between. Too long of a gap, not long enough of a gap.
Speaker 2:So, um, finally, like after being frustrated all these days, I was like, okay, we need to find a new location, we need to find a new strategy, we need to find an open area, because a lot of times we were hunting in woods and we're trying to find an open place and just hope they'd pop out. So, um, we found another place that we could get permission to hunt on and they had tags for hyenas and um I I asked the ph. I was like, is there anything else that we could do that we're not doing? That potentially could work, because I feel like we've done the same thing every night with no success. He's like I got an idea. I'm like I'm all ears. He's like we got to buy a goat.
Speaker 1:I'm like really he goes, yep, so we went to the village like jurassic park right now we're like the little like thing late you know, lifts up and it goats chained to it and you just look at the water waiting for something to show up. The ripples in the water so we got a goat.
Speaker 2:it's like 120 bucks, which seems like a lot of money in africa, but anyway, we bought a goat, had a long uh, you know, like rope around them and the um, the guys that are helping us there, the trackers and all that they tie it to a big log so we can't get away. So the goal is we had a big open space of plenty of open land. We did have a lot of water there, so a lot of animals already come in at night. To that, we've been seeing a lot of hyena tracks there, so we know there's hyenas there. We did do the drag again is what they call it where basically it's the intestines and all the other stuff. You drag it all around that area with the goal that, like, a hyena would come to where the goats at. So you know it's funny watching the goat, cause it was a big grassy field. So I think at first he's like, wow, this is an upgrade. From where I came from, I've got a lot more grass.
Speaker 2:But after it started getting dark and we turned the call on, I could see those look in his eyes Like this is working out the way it holds. So I mean it was kind of a cool night with thermals because in um, like I said, there's water holes there and there's not many water holes um near that location and we're near a national park. So I mean we start seeing giraffes, we start seeing like elephants. I mean we're seeing all kind of cool stuff. We're seeing um like they have some kind of um like rare dogs or whatever I think they call them, like spotted dogs or something like that. They're extinct. So you have to make sure you don't shoot those. They have jackals.
Speaker 1:We had to make sure we didn't shoot them. You could have trained that in a hyena, yeah yeah, that sounds like a dangerous recipe.
Speaker 2:No, totally. It was helpful to have two guides there, because I had a South African guide and a Zimbabwe guide. But so I'll tell you one thing that I think is super funny. So I have a pair of I don't know $4,000 Swarovskis and I'm looking through them and I see nothing. It's like pitch black. And now, of course, you can see perfect through my Pulsar binoculars. But I'm telling you, those guides, the actual PHs. He's got a pair of binoculars that look like they cost maybe $30.
Speaker 2:I never heard of the name of them and he's like he's like there's a hyena right there and I'm like, oh my gosh, like how in the world? And so I get up with my you know my thermals and he's spot on. So you know, for that night we started seeing some hyenas come in and we could spot them and you could tell they were following the drag lines. And so you know, long story short is to come in that really pretty close, and they're really big, um, and they, they reminded me of the females, typically bigger. So the goal was to get the female Um. But the struggle I'm having at this point is I'm looking through these thermals, which, you know, it's like looking at the sun, and then when you put your thermals down and it's pitch black outside, you can't see anything.
Speaker 1:I've done some hog hunting just like that where you're like all right, hold on. I need about 30 seconds before I can even move because I'm going to trip. I can't see anything yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's just so hard to. So I'm like trying to talk to these guys. Okay, like, what's the strategy? Are we going to use the white light when he gets up closer to get spotlighted? And they said, well, I tell you what, we'll hold thermals, we'll keep playing the call.
Speaker 2:He's clearly coming closer to the goat. Make sure you don't shoot the goat, but try to find through your uh scope, see if you could find the, the hyena. And I'm like, guys, I can't see anything, it's like pitch black. And then finally I, as I got closer, I could see a black blob and it was just kind of moving. You could just, I was just I could see it moving. And then of course, I would check and make sure it's not the goat, cause I could tell the goat, cause he had a long rope on him, so he's got, you know, basically you could tell he's connected to it.
Speaker 2:So they're basically coming up to the goat, yeah. And so they said, okay, as it gets closer, we'll use the spotlight. And I'm like, say, three or four rounds in him. He didn't go very far, but I wish that female never ran and I was not using a silencer, because Zimbabwe, they're illegal. The game warden actually has to be on the hunt with you if you're hunting for lion or leopard, and he was there and he's like dude, no one would care. We would have been fine with it, but I'm like no, I don't want a video of me, you know, shooting something in Zimbabwe with a silencer and then someone see it later and I'm in jail in Zimbabwe, jail which doesn't sound good.
Speaker 1:But anyway, not my top 10 jails I want to visit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, male, and if I'd paid attention I could have shot the female, because it's almost like she didn't want to go away because he was still there. But at that point I'm just so excited that you know, I shot a male and he's down and he's dead and um, so we all kind of go out there and check him out. He's like ginormous, he's huge. So they're like all right, they're like we're gonna keep him. I'm like oh yeah, we're gonna put him in a, you know a full body mount in the office kind of thing. It looks super cool.
Speaker 2:It's just hard to get a good picture of one at night and you don't have great lights and cameras, but I'll have to email it to you. It turned out pretty well. But so that was super, super fun. I mean even to the point that we got back up to where we were hunting, from where the call was, and at this point the call's off and the female is still so a little disappointed there. But, um, no, the, the hyena was super fun. I mean I highly recommend it. And, to clarify, it was a spotted hyena, which are the biggest. And, like I said, I shot a wolf in. Uh, I shot a large male wolf in Canada earlier this year and it was significantly bigger than that. I mean, they're just big.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, like you said, no, that was fun. I think the most fun is everybody else on the other groups, like I said, were trying to get one. It was kind of cool doing the whole calling to get them in Big challenge there. You can't even see anything in the scope except a blob, so you kind of trying to figure out right what's going on over here and probably have eaten domestic animals before and thought there's a. But you know, what's funny is when we left the goat's fine, I gave it to the.
Speaker 1:You know the pa, one of my questions.
Speaker 2:I was gonna ask yeah, he's excited to get a goat. So, um, I haven't told too many people that story because I could just. I could see my wife thinking okay, what's gonna happen to this goat, why did you do this? And I'm like yeah I mean goat was well protected. I was shooting a 375 h and h. I mean there's a little chance anything was going to happen to him, because anything that came big enough to kill him I was going to want to kill yeah, that's too funny.
Speaker 1:I was, I was gonna. I'm trying to figure out in this story whether you're the t-rex or the hyena. Is the t-rex? But a couple questions, um, why? Why were you looking for the female versus the male hyena? They just said the females are typically bigger.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting, we just couldn't get it to come in closer. You know, I read some articles that almost like they have the sex organs of a male and a female. I don't know, but the way I read it mostly was for whatever reason, there's some hormonal release and the females actually get bigger, and I don't know if it's defending the babies or what it is, but yeah, so it just didn't get as close as the male did and so, like I said, it was so dark. If I'd had a thermal scope, which definitely I'll spend the money for next time, I could have been able to differentiate it and I could have hit the female, you know, obviously further than that. That one probably was 50, 60 yards the male.
Speaker 1:Is there a way to differentiate them besides just size? Like is just? The females are bigger. Is there something like the male tail? Well, that's a good question.
Speaker 2:You know, and of course at night I don't know if I could have told. I mean it was really cool. I wish I could send you a video. I mean they almost have like this round shape on their head Like it's a true round, almost like a circle. It's a hyena. It's kind of cool. I I'm still sort of in shock how my professional hunter could use, you know, a $3 pair of binoculars and he could totally pick out, hyena, that I could see nothing through my binoculars.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it's just some guys. Some guys just have better eyes than other ones, and then also he does it every day, all day, right. You'd hope that he could figure that out Um a couple, a couple more things. So at night you started seeing giraffes and elephants.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So everything's moving around at night. I would guess that most things button down the hatches because of hyenas and cheetahs and lions out there, it's just everything wakes up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. I mean this is kind of an open area. It's right next to a national park, it's the closest water. I was surprised we had two different groups of elephants come in. I think the first one was three and the next one was four. There was like five drafts that came in.
Speaker 2:You know, it wasn't super hot. I mean it was actually cold at night. I mean I was putting as many layers on. I mean it sounds weird me being from South Dakota, I got cold, but, and especially in Africa. But yeah, it was getting in the high thirties, low forties, with a little bit of wind at night, and so it was getting colder. So I don't know if it was because of the heat. They didn't want to travel as much during the day and they just came out at night. But, um, that's a good question. On the lions, now the hyenas, it seems like I mean they cause that was the question I had with with the goat is okay well, the hyenas usually eat something that someone else killed or something that's been dead for a while.
Speaker 2:How does the goat fit in? But then the more I researched it, it's like no, they actually do do some of their own killing. So that was probably a good idea to bring the goat and maybe just all. Most of the elephants I saw were males together Giraffes, I think it was both male and female, so maybe they just figured there's power in numbers, a lot of them together, and they were less worried about predators at night.
Speaker 1:All right, I have one more last question. Then we'll move on to the next story, because this is all new to me. I've never done Africa. I've heard plenty of stories at this point, but none as unique as yours. You said that they bought cows and they were putting cows out. Were these live cows to attract the cheetahs and lions? At the beginning of the story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good question. So when I first got there, I mean I don't know that I researched it maybe as well as I should have, because I'm just glad I had enough ammunition. Because when I got there they're like, dude, all the bait's got to come from you and I'm like I'm supplying the bait and I tell you I've shot. I've been to South Africa twice and I love South Africa and I've shot a ton of animals there. And people will argue with me but it's basically high fence. Now I mean it's 20,000 acres. So you could argue it's not high fence, that's a lot of land. But at least they know proportionally where the zebras are and where the wildebeest are and where the sable are. This was like 100% free range.
Speaker 2:And those animals, when you shot them you didn't know where they were going. It was hard to find them. To me it was much more difficult. So when I was hunting Cape Buffalo and shot one in Limpopo, he was kind of there by himself, so it wasn't hard to track him. It wasn't hard to find him. But in Zimbabwe there was like 400 of them. I shot one. They trampled all the blood so I couldn't find him and he just kind of fit in with the herd and I never could find him. So it was a tough situation. It's much harder to me in a free range setting, but, yeah, the donkeys. So here's the way it was explained to me. So we paid for baiting before I arrived and with baiting they can use domestic animals.
Speaker 2:But once I arrive I have to basically start shooting Zimbabwe animals. So they start making money. The government does. So they basically just bought. They would go to the village and buy old cows and old, you know donkeys and you know the one spot where I shot a lion.
Speaker 2:Later they put an entire cow and they put it up in the tree for a lion and typically the lion is not up as high Like they want the lion to be able to reach their arms, their paws up and grab it so that they're not like right on it. They have to work for it. So it lasts longer. Um, so maybe it's like, I don't know 15 feet off the ground, but they put an entire cow, so they killed it and just cut it up and you know messy and they put it up there.
Speaker 2:They showed me a video of it and that first night I bet it was 15 lions, one male and the rest of them were females. They ate that whole cow and then the next night they put a donkey out there. Same thing they ate the whole donkey. So typically they split it up, Like on the leopards, they use less, but for lions they put a whole lot out there just to, because the theory was sometimes if they aren't hungry they would come eat and then come back the next night and that's. Or even if they did finish it, they'll come back there because it's free, easy food for the next night.
Speaker 1:So you go back there, it's hard to turn down a sea meal. Yeah, yeah, no, totally. Well, that's awesome. Okay, I was curious if there was like the goat situation where they just like tied up a cow in a field or something.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, they did say, you know, because we were originally going to use the goat too, also for leopards.
Speaker 2:So if we found some bait that got hit, then we could potentially put the goat there and the goat would probably kill it and put it up in the tree and then it would kind of define it as its own Like.
Speaker 2:In other words, we had some places where leopards we could see tracks but we couldn't get them up in the tree high enough to eat the meat. So part of the theory was well, if the goat works in the hyena and we get successful there, then we can use it for leopard where we put it near a tree where we see tracks and then hopefully the leopard will kill it, put it up in the tree and then come back the next night and eat it. That was the problem was we weren't seeing any leopards eating on the bait for the three weeks I was there. So that's why I had so many nights to hunt the hyenas, because we really the theory was you're putting bait up during the day, they're hitting the bait, and then you're hunting them at night, and we just weren't getting any hits on the bait during the day or at night, so that the next night we could go out.
Speaker 1:Okay, man, that's interesting. Okay, very cool. It's also really cool. I, when doing free range like African hunting, I always assumed it was you know, fenced, whether it was giant fenced projects or just smaller ones. But that's cool that you were in a situation like that, especially near like a national park.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's cool. No, I'll tell you one thing that's super interesting I've never seen. So they had these huge power lines and it's like it looked like something out of like a big city. Like when you think of like Zimbabwe, africa, you don't think of very sophisticated electrical poles, but they had what you would see it coming into a major city as far as power lines and, um, like the huge infrastructure to put the power up on these lines and all the baboons would get on that at night because the leopards won't climb those metal poles. So you had thousands and thousands of baboons all over these electrical poles because they knew that the leopards wouldn't climb them. So I'm just thinking to myself okay, there's got to be an abundance of baboons here, because they typically get killed at night by leopards and that's not an issue here, because they're all bright enough to go up these metal things that the leopards can't climb. So it's just kind of an interesting thing. I enjoyed getting like a video of it and stuff like that. That's super cool.
Speaker 1:All right, Well, let's, let's move on. I was, I'm going to, otherwise I'll just keep asking questions. We won't get to more stories. So what else do you got Brandon, let's? Uh, you got another one for.
Speaker 2:You know, when I first signed up for this leopard hunt, I got a call saying hey, you know, someone canceled out on a leopard hunt. They've already put half a deposit. I'll let you use that towards your hunt. And I was like, so it's kind of an incentive for making me want to come, because I wasn't really going to travel this year because my daughter started college. But so he lured me in and I said well, hey, while I'm there can you give me a lion tag. And when I got there, lion tags in three different areas.
Speaker 2:So you know what I learned about this part of Africa is the tribes or the villages that own the land where you shoot the animal. They get the license fee. So it's a fairly significant fee that you pay to be able to shoot a lion and I shouldn't say to shoot, it's once you shoot it you pay this fee. It's kind of the license fee after you shot it. That money goes to the local village.
Speaker 2:So what that creates is everyone within a you know, say, 30 or 40 mile radius hears you're in town hunting and that you have a permit in their area. They're all calling and they're all saying, hey, we found an elephant here and an elephant killed this, oh sorry, a lion. So they'll say we have a lion here, we have a lion there. You know they're all calling trying to get you to come set up bait in their world because they want you to shoot a lion in their world so they get paid on it yeah, so the reason why I get more money from that, like in a year than they want anything else that they can do economically right.
Speaker 1:It's 100 these guys, yeah, 100.
Speaker 2:These guys are making a $2 a day, and that's if they're employed. I think they have an 85% unemployment rate. So I mean it's just poverty stricken. I mean I asked them hey, why are you guys not using a lawnmower to cut underneath these power lines? And they're like it would cost more gas than we're spending on labor. We could pay these guys $1 a day and they're out here chopping it with, you know, handheld, um things and whatnot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, but anyway, we, just we, we tell everyone we're hunting lion, we've got bait up. You know, I told you that the first night we had a pretty good hit on some bait. We struggled to get that lion to come back. Um, we hear lions at night. Literally three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning, we'd wake up to lions in the distance. Um, there was literally more lions there than there in my mind, leopards Cause we didn't see that many leopards. So that's when I said all right, I'm going to get a settle in on lions. So there was, honestly, there was so many lions, it was almost like gosh, we probably got 15 baits out. They're hitting almost every bait. We're getting called from every village, village. I mean, it was just at this point, it's like okay, what's the biggest lion?
Speaker 1:because that's the end goal obviously um, was it unsettling and to hear them in the middle of the night. Right, that sounds to me like maybe there's open walls or something like that, so you're not like in a hard building and you're hearing lions all night long how long? Of your three weeks before you were sleeping through the night yeah, good point.
Speaker 2:So we did have like brick walls for the building structure with the it was like a straw roofs. Oh yeah, it was a little bit unsettling, just because it is a rare. When I first heard it I'm like I wonder what that is. And then the next morning like wow, did you hear the lions? And I'm like wow, is that what that was?
Speaker 2:Um, and what was interesting is like I told you we had a bait pile because I'm having to kill, like draftaffes, and I'm killing, like I'm killing all kinds of stuff to create all the bait that we're putting out, because every bait I mean they basically told me the cheapest meat is going to be the giraffes.
Speaker 2:So I shot two giraffes just to get enough meat to put out all these bait stations. So they're throwing the legs out, the parts that we don't need in a pile, and we actually one morning went out and the lions were down there eating like don't know 50 yards from where we're actually staying um, which, like you said, it's a bit unsettling. Um, so we we got a call about, we kept getting a call about two lions that were walking together and that there was a a bit of a blood trail from one of them, and so we called around and no one had a license to hunt lion in the recent time and, honestly, looking at these people, they're poor. I can't see them wanting to shoot a lion or even having the money to buy the bullets or the guns to shoot them. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And do they eat lion, or what would be the purpose? Right yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'll tell you that later what happens to that lion after I shot it.
Speaker 2:Okay, you that later.
Speaker 2:What happens that line? Okay. So, um, so we finally got a call and we and so we started tracking two lions. So we started seeing the good thing about this soil type is that the roads are all sand so you can see when they cross the road. It's perfect. And in places where there's not vegetation or leaves because there was winter, so you had leaves falling down even a couple weeks ago was winter. The reverse of us.
Speaker 2:Typically, you could still track animals, but the good thing or I guess the bad thing is one of them was bleeding. You could tell his paw was bleeding. So we surmised. We didn't think it was a snare, because there's just not that many snares around there that's more for poachers and there's just not a ton there. So we thought maybe he fought with another lion. But so we spent a couple days so this is during the day tracking this set of lions. We're following them all over the place and you know you have to be careful because the concern is okay, the lion's obviously hurt. It was a fair amount of blood, so he's not going to be in a happy mood when you catch up with him.
Speaker 2:And the other premise is they don't travel as much during the day, so if you can follow their tracks during the day you have a better chance of catching up with them. We did that for like three days. We could never really catch up with them, but I remember that. You know we usually got up really early in the morning to check the bait stations. We had cameras on all of them. We just had to kind of there's not a good enough cell coverage, so you had to go check the actual SD cards on a laptop every morning and that would give you kind of direction on what the rest of the day you're going to do.
Speaker 2:So I remember I was getting up early one morning, go checking baits not a whole lot of luck. And then I decided, hey, let's just take a nap after getting up at four in the morning. And then someone knocked on my door and they said hey, we got a call that somebody has seen two lions, and it's like recently, like within the last last 20 minutes, and we know they don't travel as much during the day, so we think we can actually go get them. So we get there and we find out it was the one that was bleeding, because we can see the blood marks, uh, where it's been stepping. So, um, this guy was from another camp, uh, he was a worker there, and he kind of showed us where he'd seen them last, and we're a little scared, obviously, so we're kind of walking up looking for them.
Speaker 2:And then my ears I I mean I'm 52, I don't feel like they're horrible, but some of the older guys could actually hear the lion. I mean actually because I couldn't use the silencer. I had, um, you know, ear things on that actually enhanced the sound to me.
Speaker 2:So I I was shocked, but the other guys are like, um, I, I can hear the lions, they're like growling, like we must be close to them so that at that point it's kind of jungly. So at that point we're like, okay, hurt, lion growling, they can hear it, we're getting closer to them. Maybe this isn't a good situation. So we went and got back in the truck and, you know, oddly enough, they got within maybe I don't know 10 or 15 feet of us on the trail that we drove by.
Speaker 2:Because the good thing about where they were, they were kind of in an area where there was a perpendicular road that connected. And the perpendicular part is they were kind of in the middle of that, you know sort of 90 degree angle, okay, and there was, it was sand, it was sand roads on both ways so you could tell if they'd been crossing, if they left that area. So we went down another area and we got like super close to them. But the PH had told me earlier that if you shoot a female it's like a $30,000 fine and you lose your tag for the male. So his heads up was we got to make sure you're shooting the male male. So just because you see a lion doesn't mean you start, you know, sending lead down, you know down down range.
Speaker 1:So did they explain that at all? Is that just because if you shoot the girls, it's harder for them to maintain the population which is their economy, or is there more to it than that? I think so.
Speaker 2:I think that was the main thing. It did a good job of scaring me. So, needless to say, needless to say, I'm on top of the jeep, the Jeep it was in a stereotypical safari Jeep and I'm up top and my PH is driving and of course, he's on the other side of the road, or on the other side of the vehicle, because they have the same as the UK. We're on the other side of the road, but he's looking at me like dude, why are you not shooting? What the hell's your problem? And I see two lions, but I can only see a small patch of them because it was so jungly, but literally like he could almost reach out and touch them. I mean, you know, 10 yards away or something, um, and I could see one.
Speaker 2:I could see. I could see one that was sort of like tan colored and I could see one that was more almost like a white tail deer, a little bit darker. It was sort of like almost brownish, tannish, um. So one was much darker than the other and I had no idea which one was which, because it was such a small surface area. I was seeing on both of them and um, so unfortunately I didn't get a shot.
Speaker 2:I kind of got yelled at by the guys in the front seat who were down lower because they had a perfect view of them and they're like why did you not shoot? I'm just like, well, I couldn't tell what I was shooting at, what part of the body. I couldn't tell which was the male, which was the female. So at this point I'm feeling super disappointed, like, okay, what human being can say? They got within 10 feet of a lion and didn't even pull the trigger. I mean, you're here hunting lions. You didn't even pull the trigger. So I was super, super disappointed in myself and kind of kicking myself. And then we kept playing this cat and mouse with them. We kind of kept driving, get out and walk a little bit, drive, get out and walk and, like I said, we had sand on both sides of the road so we knew that they hadn't traveled out.
Speaker 2:And then, in a different place, but a similar scenario. I look up and I see the female traveling, like I can see her going down a path and I can tell it's the female. So I get my gun ready freehand. So again, this is Gunwerks. They let me borrow it. So thanks to Gunwerks.
Speaker 2:But they let me borrow their 375 H&H. They have like a corporate one for industry executives or whatever, so they let me borrow that. So I'm shooting it freehand and I'm watching through the scope as the female walks, knowing the male's probably behind her, and soon as he walks by I hit him in the shoulder and that's about all I see is. I know I hit him in the shoulder and, like I said, zimbabwe. After that, cecil, the lion got shot. Now you're required to have an employee from the government there and he's a super tall guy, he's carrying an AK-57, which seemed worthless where we were at, but he told me after that shot. He said that lion did a complete spin all the way around, like it hit him that hard, it being that close, that he spun all the way around.
Speaker 1:Oh, I thought his feet spun him around. Okay, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So he's like that was a serious. So we all at that point are like, okay, that was a serious hit, there's a potential that he's dead or getting close to dead. And the PH again, I have two PHs I say, one's black, zimbabwean and one's white South African, and they both said you know what, let's just wait about 20 or 30 minutes and just see what happens. And we still obviously can check the road to see if they exit.
Speaker 2:So we're traveling up and down the road, we see that the male hasn't exited. They said the female ran off, so she's gone. The male, at that point the male lion hasn't exited the highway and didn't run in the other direction. We couldn't really see or find him. So after 30 minutes I mean the assumption is, assumption is okay, maybe he's dead, because normally when you shoot an animal and they're in pain, they're making a noise or you know they've got some kind of reaction who were like, well, maybe he was already in so much pain from, um, that paw being cut that I don't know. So we're kind of like I'm always impatient, that's just my nature.
Speaker 1:So I'm like let's go figure it out so patient with lions brandon, come on come on I understand the impatience thing. I'm there too, but you throw some predators at me. I become much more patient. That's what I'll say you know what?
Speaker 2:and honestly, like I felt sorry for the trackers. So the tractor, the trackers, I mean this is their job. I mean these trackers are supposed to figure out where that lion went and they got great eyes and they're able to follow tracks, but of course they got no gun.
Speaker 1:Why not Just regulations Like why wouldn't they have a gun?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. Usually only the professional hunter has a gun and the actual hunter themselves has a gun. Okay, so we start getting out there and trying to track and find this lion, and the honest truth is we had too big of a crew. I bet there was 10 people with us.
Speaker 1:And they all wanted to come.
Speaker 2:So at this point I'm like you know it almost makes you more nervous because you don't know what's happening around you and I don't know. I felt uncomfortable because there were too many people. You know, if it was you and one person, that's good, with a gun and maybe a tracker who knows where they're at, to me that's enough. But anyway, we got a lot of people. So we're walking around maybe 15, 20 minutes. I mean almost like, almost like you're tiptoeing, like you're afraid something's going to hear you. But it's because you're scared, not you want to be able to react if you hear something. And it wasn't because you know we had to be, it's just. I think just deep down we're like this could be bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Not dead Totally. So I see his name is Jan. He is the South African, a pH African guy, black guy. He said I see him talking and they speak Africano. He's talking to the South African and I see him pointing like this and I hear him saying he's right underneath the tree, right there in front of us. And I'm telling you, before he finished it, I heard and that thing came out running and I'll send you the video. It came running right at me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah. So at this point I'm thinking about okay, what do we got going on? So I've got a .375 H&H, fully loaded. I've got four rounds in it, one in the chamber, three in the mag. I've got two other professional hunters here, one shooting a .375 H&H, the other shooting a .458. I can't remember the lot, I think is what it's called. So we're
Speaker 2:all fully loaded. I'm shooting soft points. Federal, so federal kind of sponsors me. We partner with them. So I've got federal soft points. They've got solids. So technically I probably would have wanted solids. At this point I'm the only guy with a scope. So I'm thinking I would have probably wished I didn't have a scope. So at this point I'm so I use the scope, which I know has probably slowed me down, but I sort of lean into it and I shoot and I hit him right in the chest and then I hear two more shots, just like right after that, just boom, boom. So I'm like, okay, perfect, like this thing's got to be dead. But what happened is, as soon as I hit him in the chest, it was enough because he was super close. It was enough for him to turn and start going in the other direction.
Speaker 1:So 180 or like 90 degrees, yeah, 90 degrees.
Speaker 2:So he's like running at me. And then he basically takes a right hand, turn hard right after I hit him. He almost rolls him when I hit him right in the chest, and so at this point I'm like, okay, all three of us put a round in him. This dude has got to be dead. That's what I'm thinking. And of course he took off again. And then, you know, long story short, we end up finding him behind a tree, like we keep thinking, all right, we're going to walk on him, he's going to come out again. But we finally get up to him and he was. He was a big lion, older, missing one of his larger canines. I think they figured he to be 14, 15 years old, so he's older. Um, by him having a female with him, just one. He wasn't in his own pride is what they call it, so he'd been pushed out. So he probably uh, they typically the, the, the strongest fight, whoever is the strongest becomes like the one only man of that pride, and so he had been pushed out.
Speaker 1:But I talked to. The bleeding is that? Am I getting ahead of myself?
Speaker 2:I should explain that now. Yeah, so, um, we look at him and he did hit a snare and it did get on his paw and his paw had got infected and it had squeezed his paw so much that it had gotten so infected and so bloody. And the reason why we are getting calls about this one is because he couldn't kill his own game. He was killing livestock in these villages because typically, I guess they fight and they also reach up off their back paws. It was his back right when it was cut, so he just couldn't fight and he couldn't attack and he couldn't eat as well. So that's why he was killing a lot of local livestock. Um, so, yes, he had a, a rather large cut in his leg and they said he would not have lived much longer. It probably happened a week or two ago and that you know he was going downhill from there. So it was. It was actually a good thing, but okay, so here's what's interesting. So the tracker, jan, he's the one who also does the skinning.
Speaker 2:I said how many bullets hit him in the chest? Like how many bullets did we get in that line when he was charging us? And he's like only one. And I'm like whose bullet was it? And I'm thinking to myself I've only been hunting big game for a few years.
Speaker 2:These other two guys are professionals and they're older, um, and he's like the only bullet that went in his chest was yours and I was like, how do you know what he said, because it's a soft point. And he handed me the bullet and I was like, wow, I'm like what happened? And I didn't. I couldn't tell until I saw the video later, which I'll send you. We hired a videographer with us but in the video, one of the one of the bullets actually hits in front of the lion by I I don't know 10 yards and bounces up and nicks his face. And the other one I don't know what happened, but he was nowhere near didn't even hit it. So I was the only guy to hit that lion and basically took him down. I might've been dead, I don't know. You saved your own life. You didn't even know it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, totally I mean after counting yourself out too, you're like nope, I'm just going to fire one because I feel like I should. I'm being charged by a lion, and there you go. You saved your own life.
Speaker 2:Because I asked my PH. I'm like did you know that my round hit him? He goes oh yeah, I could tell by the impact. Dude, you freaking hit solid. And I didn't have the follow-up question of did you know you missed? Because at that point I didn't know. Yeah, but I do the other. And then when the other guy missed, I didn't ever really talk to him about it either. But so to go back to your question about the lions, so the village that owned the land where we shot it, they got the license fee. It was like $30,000. They got Okay. And then they get to determine what happens with the meat and they wanted it. So they boil the fat and they make some kind of lathering cream or something. It makes them feel more powerful, like it gives them whatever the lion had inside them. But they literally understand that.
Speaker 1:That would make me feel I think yeah.
Speaker 2:They took that whole line, man. I mean of course we, we caped it and we'll I'll get a full body mount and one day it'll probably be here at silencer central headquarters. But um, yeah it, uh they, they took the whole thing and they said they eat 100 of it. I mean, just being there for the three weeks, even the giraffes I shot, they were eating their intestines. I mean they would hang it up on clothesline so it could dry out. I mean they literally eat. The only thing that I shot all week that they would not eat was the hyena. Everything else we mostly use for bait, but any leftover parts they would a hundred percent eat, which surprised me. But hey, it's each their own right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I've heard that, that in general you can't bring the meat home, so most of the time it goes to the local tribes. I didn't think that that would be the case for like a predator or something like that. But do you know if they have? I don't know. Do you know if they have? I don't know why they wouldn't, but I think it's trichinosis, right, that's what predators have here.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I don't know, I didn't even think about it. They call me off guard and they go yeah, they want it. I'm like, what do they want it for? They're like, dude, they'll eat it. I'm like, all right, fair enough, they want it. Then they're not having their livestock killed anymore. And then they also got the meat. And yeah, I think the problem was there's a pretty big village. I think they're fighting over how we're gonna split this lion up right, yeah, yeah, did you get a jar of that lion cream?
Speaker 2:no, you don't say it that way, but uh, I'd be interested I know that jan the um the the tracker, he asked for some of it too. So, um, I know they brought some of the extra fat home and they were going to make some themselves when they got back to South Africa. So yeah, it's just interesting sort of the different cultural norms there. But I get it If it's truly poverty stricken and there's meat there, hey, let's find a way to figure out how to eat it, you know.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, man, Absolutely. Especially there's so much wild game. But it does make more sense to sell that wild game to Westerners who are willing to pay for it and get some of that money, because I bet they don't have any other form of you know, economic stimulus out there. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:A lot of non-hunters don't realize the benefits to these things. They just hear I paid money, I shot an exotic animal, but there's so many benefits to the local, I don't know. Ecosystem or whatever you want to call it, oh yeah, I mean there was probably 30 people on the camp.
Speaker 2:They were all there kind of on my dollar, I mean it wasn't expensive because they don't make that much, but still that was a job for them. Like I said, I think it's 85% unemployment rate. So you had, you know, a lady doing the laundry, a lady doing the cooking, a guy helping with the cooking. You know they were chopping woods so we had fires cause it was cold at night and I mean there's people skinning them and you know, yeah, it was pretty involved. There's a lot of people. It was too many people, but I get it. If it's only ads, an extra a hundred bucks for three weeks, then bring them on, or you know a 30 bucks or whatever. You know yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well, man, that that sounds like an amazing trip from all the different things. I really do want to see the picture. You said you have a video of that lion charging.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah. So I had a videographer. There Is it on.
Speaker 1:YouTube, or do you have to send it to me?
Speaker 2:I'll have to send it to you. Okay, you know I'm trying to think. You know I paid this guy and I do think one thing that was impressive is the PH I went with from South Africa Ranchero is the name of their place in Limpopo but he said that's one of the first because he does a lot of Cape Buffalo hunts and he said normally that when you have that many people in a group and you go on a Cape Buffalo hunt it starts charging. About half of them or a quarter of them run or you can tell they're out of there. But he's like man. Even though we had like eight to ten people out there with that line that charged us, nobody backed down. The camera guy was right on the whole thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's because everyone there was like, oh, brandon's getting eaten, I'm fine you don't have to be the fastest. You just got to be faster than at least one other person.
Speaker 2:And that was you. Another person and that was you. Yeah, that's what I told them. I said, hey, I grew up in the south. They didn't ask the white guys to run so and I'm surrounded by these black guys and I know they're quick oh, that's too funny, man, that's too funny.
Speaker 1:Well, brandon, I know you have limited time with you um 10 or so more minutes before. I'm sure you have plenty of other things to do. Do you have any more stories you want to tell us, or? Uh, we can always save them for another day and get you back on here. It's your call, sir, I'll listen all day, yeah no, interesting, maybe I'll set one up for you.
Speaker 2:So what I didn't tell you is, every night that we would, you know, go out and try to get these hyenas, we would also turn on the call for the lions to see if we could bring some lions in. And you know, the last night I was there we had been to this property before and we would typically call for a few hours and then just kind of out of curiosity, see if anything would come up. And so the last night, you know, we didn't bring the call and we just thought, well, we've been calling here for the last few nights hyenas, and at the end we would turn on the lion call and we kept hearing the landowner saying that lions were coming. So that night we went out there with uh, a spotlight and I found a second lion. It was a ginormous lion and they uh measured it. Like I guess the game fish and parks has to take the measurements and all the paperwork to the to the game fish and parks office. They called it the man camp. It was the largest lion shot in Zimbabwe this year. It was over 10 feet from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail. No way. Yeah, it was pretty amazing. I mean it did honestly help to obviously have thermal to see, you know, because we used a spotlight to find them, but then able to have the thermal to kind of see, okay, where's he going. And kind of see, okay, where's he going and have we scared him off and which direction is it going. And it's kind of weird, like in that stock mode too, when you're going after a lion, because they could easily turn around. I mean I read some stats they can run a hundred yard football field in nine seconds, so if they got a problem they're coming after you.
Speaker 2:But no, I mean I would encourage people to go to Africa. I mean I'd say I got hooked on it by going to South Africa, where you could get a lot of different you know species and a lot of different you know experiences, and then sort of transition to something that's a little bit more free range after that, whether it be Zimbabwe or Botswana or even Tanzania, and yeah, I'm ready to go back for leopards. So that's the next thing I got to figure out how to do is get leopards I've been looking at should I do dogs where you can kind of pick and say, okay, no, that one's too small. Let's get the dogs on something bigger. Or do you keep doing the thing I did this time, where you keep baiting and hope you finally catch up with one? You know most of my friends have to go four or five times before they shoot a leopard and survived the lion attack.
Speaker 1:Totally Like I told you.
Speaker 2:I shot two wolves in January within 20 minutes of being in the blinds, because you get two attacks in Ontario and they're like you're the luckiest guy ever. So of course I'm thinking I'm going to be the lucky guy on the leopards, but unfortunately I wasn't, but I'll have to go back. But no, I would encourage everyone to think about going on some of these uh kind of crazy hunts. I some people in my office think I'm crazy, but it's quite a adrenaline rush there and um, just just it creates a scenario where you've got to be 100 confident in yourself and believe in yourself, even if, uh, deep down, you have doubts. You can't show it, you gotta yeah, that's the truth you gotta be.
Speaker 2:Think. Bill Soont said you got to be 100%. All in, like dude, you're not going to win this. This 375 H&H is not going to feel good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gosh man, I believe you All right, brandon. Well, thank you, man, it was wonderful to hear your stories. I don't know if you want to share any of your social media, your company's social media, maybe just sort of anything cool. You guys got coming down the pipe and share that with my listeners. Yeah, absolutely totally so.
Speaker 2:You know Silencer Central we're the largest silencer dealer in the country. I got stores in 42 states, which allows me to mail a silencer to your front door. So look on our website, call our team, it's just silencercentralcom. You know we're shipping 2,000 to 3,000 silencers a day out of here to every state in the country where they're legal. So 42 states is where they're legal.
Speaker 2:We make it easy for people. We do all the paperwork for them and we just send it to them digitally to kind of docu-sign. So we spent the last 20 years sort of fine-tuning it, making it easy. My insight for working gun shows over the last 20 years was people are willing to buy a silencer if you make it easy for them. And I would say the big news on silencers that is almost like hard for me to comprehend, even though it's been happening since about March or April the turnaround time on silencers. The turnaround time has gone from nine to 10 months to we're actually getting them real time. So my staff is submitting people's request for a silencer to be transferred to them and we're getting them approved the same day. Our average time is about two to three days.
Speaker 1:No way.
Speaker 2:I always just assumed it was a year long thing.
Speaker 1:What do you think is the reasoning behind why it's dropped so drastically?
Speaker 2:You know, I went and met with the ATF to figure the answer to that question. Cause, of course, that impacts my business, cause if this is sustainable, then I need to build a bigger building, and if it's not sustainable, I need to, you know, not spend any money and put a lot in the bank.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just wait for it to go back to where it normally is. So yeah, Totally.
Speaker 2:So I went up there and met with them and you know I I'm convinced they spent a lot of time preparing for this over the years and then what they figured out worked is they do your background checks as soon as they get your background information from us. They submit it to FBI and if it comes back approved like 71% of all applicants get an approval instantly. So if you get an instant approval, they approve it instantly. There's 29% that if you've ever been arrested before, they typically have to look and see why. And if there's a felon with a similar same name and a similar date of birth, then they have to check it out manually and that's what slows it down. But basically they just you know, it's one of those things that they used to get the applications in and they would say, hey, it's going to be nine months before we review it, so let's not do a background check until then and it just. It kind of. The analogy they used for me is if you go to a fast food restaurant and you say, hey, I want extra pickles and mayo and double lettuce and two tomatoes, you know, the ATF the previous ATF was making you sit in line and then everyone in line was backing up behind you and that just became years of, you know months worth of waiting. Now what they do is they tell that customer hey, you're a special order, so that means you need to go park over in the parking lot in this space, and then they work. All the others that are behind them, that are easy. So they're focusing on oh, you got a double cheeseburger, you got fries, I mean whatever, those are easy. They just do those instantly and then the one that's taken a little bit longer they have to do manually. They put them off to the side so they don't let the slow ones slow down everybody. They're processing the real time. So, hey, it's been a huge boom for Silencer Central.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think it reduces an obstacle. Consumers hate to pay for something, have to wait to get it. So to get a scenario where I mean we let people pay while they wait, and that was a good sales pitch, because we let people pay while they wait, and that was a good sales pitch because, hey, no interest nothing, we'll let you pay while you wait because we get it. It sucks to have to pay in advance, but now it's almost real time where we're getting approved average of two to three days. But I do think it's sustainable because they didn't add any additional headcount to make that happen and I feel like they've set the bar showing, because for years they said we're going to do a 90-day turnaround and now they're, you know, significantly beating that without any additional funds. So how do you go to you know congress or the senate and say, hey, um, you know, we were able to do without any additional headcount, we were able to get turnarounds in a few days, and now we can't do it anymore because we need more money.
Speaker 1:It's like, okay, well, welcome to that a little bit more, you know, yeah I was hoping maybe they took some of those 30,000 IRS agents that they're hiring and a couple over there, but I guess not so.
Speaker 2:No, true, I keep reading about that. They're having a hard time finding those folks to come work for them, which is good. Yeah, they'll probably end up auditing themselves if you hire that many.
Speaker 1:Well, sir, it was a pleasure meeting you. It was great to hear your stories. I really do appreciate it. Maybe we'll have you back on again here in the future and hear about your next aftertrip.
Speaker 2:All right, yeah, I love it. That sounds great. Thanks for the opportunity, of course. Thank you.
Speaker 1:All right, guys, that's it. Another couple of stories in the books. Again, brandon, thank you for coming on the podcast man, it was a pleasure to meet you. I do plan on going up and visiting. Hopefully I'll be with you soon. But to the listeners, guys. Thank you guys for tuning in. Do check out the show links. I got a link to Silencer Central most of their socials, everything you need to know there. They do again make a really cool product and then of hear from you, hear the stories that you have and share them with my listeners. And then again, one last time. Beyond that, guys, please do get out and vote. November's coming up quick. Take a friend who doesn't typically vote I'm assuming they align roughly with what you're going to vote for and let's make sure that everything goes right here in November for this country. So that's it, guys. Thank you so much, brandon. Thank you again. Now, guys, get out there, make some stories of your own. Thank you.
