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Boss Shotshells

Unmuzzled

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WHO ARE BOSSMEN

Mad scientists. Hopelessly obsessed waterfowlers with serious turkey problems. Honest, pro 2A, red-blooded Americans who don’t hunt for likes and followers, we hunt because that’s all we’ve ever known. That’s the #unmuzzled Bossmen, in a nutshell.

EXPERIENCE SUPERIOR SHOTSHELLS.

SHOP SHELLS

The latest addition to our growing list of ultra-high performing shotshells.

BOSS TOM strikes the perfect balance of pattern density, down range performance and value.

SHOP TOM

 

BOSS LIFE.

  • THE MATH DON’T LIE.... A few weeks back the world traveling duck boss Ramsey Russell @ramseyrussellgetducks reported from Argentina that our Copper Plated Boss loads were laying down the law on the ducks. Lead shot is legal in Argentina and he decided to switch to our stuff and compare the results. It didn’t take long for his cameraman @jfeltovich311 and the Argentine guides to take notice of cleaner kills and harder hits. Some IG buzz ensued and drew the attention of fellow #Bossmen @cory_loeffler. He offered up some well received criticism about making such bold performance claims such as our albeit slightly lower density pellets delivering improved performance vs. lead. We went to work... Our initial thought was that the lead being used in Argentina could have been of sub par quality. That’s when we decided to pull out all the stops and go full old school.... @meg_at_the_shop ‘s grandfather Fagan had some vintage shotshells laying around his workshop and donated ‘em to us several months back, and after much consideration we decided to put those old shells to good use. Sacrilege it may be to destroy a 60+ year old shotshell and even worse to waste them by shooting into a chronograph to test their speed and consistency prior to shooting ballistic gel after resting dormant in their paper hulls for 6 decades. After proving that these old relics were still just as capable as they were back in the 1950’s we took these bad boys on the road with us to test alongside the @soknorth boys at their Southern Oak Kennels North Training Weekend in Three Rivers, MI. What better way to back up field reports from one of the most respected duck killers than to run our Copper Plated 4’s alongside old school lead 4’s in front of an audience of fellow duck hunters and prove it? The end result.... near identical performance to lead (actually a tick better) and 40% deeper penetration than UNPLATED BISMUTH. When we say that Copper Plated Boss is as good as the old school lead that the old cats used to shoot we mean it. Photo cred: @ejshaeff
  • OUR FLAG IS FLYING HIGH. First century Americans had it right. If you won’t give us a flag, we’ll make our own. Seems Betsy’s hard earned flag which is the symbol of the greatest country in the world has landed in the hole of another for-profit marketing manipulation by NIKE who claims to inspire athletes everywhere. Nike's decision not to release its Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July shoe reportedly came in response to objections from Colin Kaepernick, a former NFL star and company endorser, who made headlines during his football career for kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality. Now Kaepernick says he finds that version of the flag offensive and racist because of slavery during the period. I suppose Francis Scott Key was a racist because he glorified that flag while he watched Ft McHenry, from a British prison ship. If history repeats itself, Nike may well ride its latest politically charged and contrived controversy all the way to the bank. At the BOSS headquarters and all across America flags are flying high today! fu*kneeling #bossmen #america #usa
  • BECOMING BIONIC. The other day, we mentioned our buddy Dave Smith’s @davesmithdecoys diabolical ability to find the game within the game when collar hunting dark geese. Me and few #Bossmen got to marinating on that thought a bit and how pinpoint focus becomes a critical part of becoming a better waterfowler. Case in point: One of the boys used to shoot sporting clays competitively way back when hair metal still dominated the FM airwaves. Loved the practice, loved the camaraderie. But it was really just about becoming a more savage shooter when the duck season came and I dropped out of polite society for a few months. Early on, I remember a day when I whiffed on eight straight from a nasty left to right screamer that was falling as it quartering away in a hurry. Didn’t even get a piece. Pretty embarrassing, but humility’s how you earn your good. An old cat at the range saw me bagel on those eight and how pissed I was at myself. He must’ve took pity on a guy, offering me one of the most insightful nuggets of shooting advice ever to grace my ear holes . Aside from helping me drastically cut down my swing and get into a proper body position, he told me to look for the leading edge of each clay and mentally make that my entire world. Soon after, I no longer saw a spinning disk of orange as a whole. All I cared about was that thin black edge. The idea’s no different then when my beloved Minnesota Twin Rod Carew talked about reading a pitch. Said he could snapshot time enough to literally see how red laces on white leather came off the pitchers hand. That told him whether he was being served a slider, a fastball, change up or whatever. The focus is what turned Carew into a champion. Now translate that to a duck blind. This season, don’t go out just looking for green heads. Go bigger, ‘cause it’s in you. Stop time. Find the yellow in the mallard’s bill. Now push yourself to do better. Try to see the little black tip on the bill’s nail. That’s your entire universe right there. It’s all that matters and focusing every shot right on the bean is how you go from a waterfowler to a stone cold killer. #knowtheshot #nocripples
  • ATOMIC #29 GOES BALLISTIC 15% denser patterns, on top of the original BOSS loads’ already-crushing baseline density.  We see dudes are seeing 100% patterns with full chokes. That’s 100% no.5 pellets inside a 30” circle at 30 yards. 80% pellets at 40.  15% deeper penetration too. Fact: the new copper-plated BOSS shells are hitting legendary status, so a wad of folks want the story. For good reason. It adds more expense to a BOSS load’s pure devastation. But even after switching to 100% copper plating, we didn’t up your cost despite the added materials and labor. We’re beyond stoked folks have questions, ‘cause a true #Bossman questions everything. Flashback a few months, #Bossman Numero Uno @bcerecke and I were on a late-night call talking about the best old-school lead shells. We both agreed: The Winchester XX lead #6’s. Simple reason: Lead’s weight encased in hard copper made pattern density and uniformity phenomenal, paired with crushing penetration. But like all-things-lead, those shells were ghosts.  Brandon’s far more of metal magician then he is polite, so within seconds the phone went dead. He’s immediately in the shop dumping bismuth #5’s into one if his plating lines. Uno didn’t stop until he had a case pressed. By then it was morning. Nothing left to do but put it all on paper, then into ballistics gelblock. What came of Uno’s all-nighter was game changing. On paper, his new loads outperformed the already-killer original BOSS loads by 15%. In the gel, every pellet moved 15% deeper. Brandon knew that morning he had an even better shell. Once he sees numbers that massive there’s no turning back.  Moving forward, every BOSS Bismuth pellet will feature copper-plating. True, that’s gonna cost us some cash. But thing is, it’s not gonna cost you a penny more. We’ll eat that cost, ‘cause we’re 100% all about the word ‘better.’ For us, and for you as shooters. You have our word that this proudly American-made company is gonna keep pushing a better product forward at a better, more honest price. Even if it costs us some flesh. We’ll back it up it with the best info we can slide your way.  That’s our promise. The proof’s encased in copper.
  • THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UNFORGIVABLY UGLY  Fifteen hour solo drive south from the last white goose meltdown up in Sask gives a #Bossman plenty of windshield time to reflect. My pup Cap at my side, all six Allman Brothers pegged at ten and my thoughts on warpdrive. One quote, from a dear friend, the 100lb. load on my otherwise-satisfied mind: “I’ve never felt more ashamed.” Those words crushed me harder than a Boss #5 at 20 yards.  Flashback a decade or two, I’d heard about this Oregon badass. Goose mercenary, mostly solo. Seldom needed more than a dozen dekes, but man, those dekes. Handcarved. He ground through weeks of scouting. Got permissions no one else could. Glassed hundreds of flocks. Called impeccably. Picked every shot. Earned thousands of collars the hard way. Yes thousands. The real way, through a drive that came from a deliberate honesty of purpose; possible only because he could slow down time and find the game within the game. In my mind, Dave Smith @davesmithdecoys still stands among a select few alive who made this obsession an unquestionable art and elevated today’s goose hunting to a purity most can only dream of. That’s the good. The good will forever be earned. The bad came years later when a friend had a lanyard of bands stolen at the Anoka Game Fair. Those bands stood testament to decades of work, gone by the hands of envy. Thought it couldn’t get any lower until a few weeks ago and straight up, a small part of me died when the truth came to light. Scene set: Spent my last hunt among five friends and one guy I’d never met. A day of legend, paid off on a snow goose backshoot I can still relive in my mind’s eye. We’d done the work. All things DYI. Everything was right. Last group ate it and it rained wings. Dogs were called and the clean up was on. One came back banded. No one could lay claim to the kill, so we cut cards for the band. Gotta admit I was bummed I didn’t win, cause I had plans on giving that metal to my buddy’s pup. 200 yard mark and a longer retrieve, that old girl was in the water for thirty minutes if it was one, it was that dog’s bird if it was anyone’s. That dog earned her good. [Story continues in comments]
  • By now the white geese are starting to settle in on their hallowed breeding grounds which officially brings to an end the 2018-19 waterfowl season, but not for the Bossmen. When you’re a waterfowler there are no days off and it’s a 24-7-365 way of life and we’d have it no other way. Therefore, the next order of business is taking inventory of gear. What made it thru a season, what didn’t. What needs maintenance. What we need to buy. What we need to get rid of yada-yada-yada. When you get down to brass tacks there’s no sport tougher on gear than waterfowling and if you’re like us you know I mean. There’s very few products that endure years of abuse in marsh and field. While going thru all these gadgets, gizmos and wingdings one product stood out above all the rest that day and it took a yellow lab named Cap to bring it to our attention. Through all the suffering madness of broken parts, failed zippers, broken buckles, bad thread and cheap fabric or what-have-ya there stood @iramomarsh original InvisaLab. Thru mud, ice, snow, cattail's, corn stubble and pea straw this go-to piece of gear has been unfailing. Now we’re not ones for shilling or peddling goods and by no means are we modern-day influencers (still not sure what the hell they are or do) but when we think there’s something of value that makes your life better we’re damn sure going to pass it on. I asked Ira the other day when he came up with that idea? This is straight from the OG himself: “2011, to me it was as plain as the nose on my face. Our layout boats (FatBoys) allowed us to be comfortable, mobile, concealed and absurdly effective. I wanted to expand on those concepts and develop a modular line of products for both dogs and people. It was also very important to me that they were storable and affordable.” The mother of invention" is an old English-language proverb that goes something like this. If you really need to do something, you will think of a way of doing it, and when the need for something becomes imperative, you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it." Well, that about sums up our friend Ira McCauley of legendary MoMarsh fame. Veterinarian... REST OF STORY IN COMMENTS.
  • “All Heart”. Wing-tipped birds unfortunately are part of the game but unilaterally what we despise most. Cripples flat-out suck and losing birds hurts. At BOSS we aim to bring awareness, knowledge, and best quality shells to help reduce crippling and lost game. Our goal is clean kills or clean misses. There’s no shame in a clean miss, we all whiff. The Bossmen are also big-league advocates of hunting with trained retrievers. There’s no substitute for them and they make great company on long road trips to boot. That said, let me introduce to you “Briley” Marie. Briley belongs to longtime guide and badass waterfowler @the_dustybrown or more appropriately he belongs to her. A black beauty she is and as easy as a Sunday morning. Watching Dusty’s every move even with eyes closed. Always ready when called and on a recent spring snow goose hunt the Bossmen witnessed a retrieve that can only be described only as legendary. While back-shooting big water sailed birds come into play, there’s no way around it. There’s no dry land to help recover birds and a winged white goose can go a long way for a long time but none of us had no idea what was about to go down. It’s wasn’t a massive rain out but it was efficient as one thru six were all bangers. All dead birds but one. One lone sailer going away and someone yells “get on that bird”. Thing is, Briley always watched the long bird never the easy go bird. While two other labs were cleaning house on layups @the_dustybrown eased his girl to the edge of the big water like the line on the tenth series of the National Field Trial Championship. Dusty barks “BAAAAACK” and off she goes. Minutes later we realized the goose had way more life in her than normal and silently we all started to worry. She’s a long ways away and if I said she was in the water for thirty minutes or better and I ain’t lyin’. I asked Dusty “can you call her off”? he replied, “no way dude, not now”. We all held our breath - Dusty more than most - and finally after dozens of dives, escapes and near misses she came up with that damn goose. Relieved fist pumps and high fives went around the shooters like a walk-off homer... More in comments.
  • A couple of weeks back one of the Bossmen and the ridiculously nice and talented @jake_latendresse were in NW Nebraska hunting ol’ skinhead and fumbling our way thru what is now referred to as content creation. That’s what we creatives do now. Sure as hell can't just go hunting for huntings sake now can we? Oh we got our work done alright and the usual amount of non-sense but not as scripted. When you’re at the mercy of Mother Nature nothing rarely or ever goes as planned or expected. Therefore, be ready for the unexpected especially in nature. One mellow afternoon as Jake and I are set up in the Boneyard (home of the Ghost) waiting for the boss to show himself we see this pair of honkers coming thru the tops of these massive cottonwoods. Clucking, double-clucking and carrying on like their headed to a street fight - now remember we’re in a quiet turkey woods at the time as unwanted intruders and this pair is loud. Jake yells at me “did you just see that”? The pair of honkers is attempting to land in what we thought was an abandoned eagles nest some fifty feet up in an ol’ cottonwood tree. Weird right? Oh it gets weirder. Inside the nest was a momma goose sitting on eggs and she was one pissed-off girl. She fought the intruders off like it was life or death and to her I’m sure it was. I put down my turkey gun and started running. Jake says “where you goin’? I replied “Goin’ to get my camera gear bro”. Can’t miss this. I phoned home and text pics to my wife about what we had just saw and captured on film. She looked at pictures and said “Oh she’s mad”. Her thinking is she’s sick and tired of predators getting destroying her nest and eggs and we think she’s right. Now that’s a mother and that’s what makes moms so special. Our guess is by now she’s had the little buggers and safely talked them to ground and is swimming proudly with her brood in some warm water spring in NW Nebraska today. Happy Mother’s Day Mother Goose. #mothersday #bossmen 📷 @jake_latendresse @prairierockoutfitters
  • Cast iron pan-fried Axis deer burger with fresh sautéed morels and blue cheese drizzle. Rare. Field to Table, Field to Plate, Field to Fork what have you, pick one. All worthy hashtags today we’re sure, but why? The bossmen aren’t clear what year it was when those became movements or even a thing but to an older generation of hunters and gatherers it was never anything but. We always ate what we killed, we taught woodsmanship skills at an early age and no other path was acceptable. What other reason could there possibly be for taking one of mother nature’s lives. Hunting has always been the original sport and that’s something they can’t take away from us. If you’re like us we’re still not sure who they are but I’m quite sure we’ll stand united when the day comes, and if it does, we have to defend what we love. In regards to the hunt, we think it’s more primal than for the food. Brother and fellow hunter @schoby375 said it best, “It isn't that hunting is so damned important it is that everything else is so damned trivial.” Dig this, in 1956 there was over one million more Waterfowlers than there is today. Declining hunter recruitment for decades has been an alarming and legit issue and if real food is what gets you back or into hunting and gathering, let it be. We’re all in it brothers and sisters for personal reasons, what’s important is that we’re in it together. @pineapplebrotherslanai #eatwhatyoukill #bossmen