Bosslog

Greetings Bossmen,

The time has come again for my annual address -  The State of Boss. Historically the SOB’s as we call them have been a mix of looking back, being honest about where we are, and trying to give you a sense of where things are going next, and more often than not they included some level of bad news along the way. This year is different. Not because everything suddenly became easy, but because what started as one of the more destabilizing moments in our history forced us into the biggest technological shift we’ve made since Boss started — and one that fundamentally changes how we approach mid-density (Bismuth, Copper) non-toxic performance. 

Last year I talked about the looming issues with bismuth pricing and supply as trade tensions between the U.S. and China were ramping up. Within weeks of sending that message our supply of bismuth essentially disappeared. Prices reached historic highs, availability dropped to record lows, and it became clear very quickly that waiting for things to stabilize wasn’t a real option. We could either react to the market or start building our way out of the problem. Anyone who has followed Boss for more than five minutes probably knows which path we chose.

When we pivoted to copper, we didn’t have a roadmap. We didn’t have a production system designed, we didn’t have extra time, and we didn’t know if copper would ultimately meet the expectations you guys associate with the Boss name. What we did know was that if it was going to work, we had to control the process ourselves — make the shot here, keep it lean, avoid tariff headaches, and engineer it to our standards instead of relying on someone else’s. The early days were messy. Failures stacked up fast, and progress felt more like controlled chaos than forward momentum, but by early September we had production-ready material and started seeing something important. Pattern boards were right. Gel numbers were right. Field reports confirmed what we were seeing — copper matched bismuth in real-world conditions. From our perspective about 98% of you were happy with what you saw.

That should have been enough. It wasn’t.

Matching performance is survival, not progress, and I had no interest in spending the next decade explaining why copper was “almost as good.” If we were going to make this move, copper needed to become better — not just acceptable — and that mindset led directly to what is now CuProX.

Earlier this year the Boss skunkworks crew — Greve, Tyler and myself — set out to test an assumption the industry (myself included) has treated as obvious for decades: that perfectly round and perfectly smooth pellets represent optimal flight. We went into the test fully expecting a surface altered pellet not to work. Everything conventional suggested surface texture on something this small and dense would have minimal effect. We tested it anyway.

The first pattern shocked us enough that we assumed something went wrong, so we ran it again. And again. Patterns tightened significantly and pellet distribution became noticeably more uniform. We expected surface texture to increase drag and reduce energy downrange. The gel data didn’t agree. Penetration improved. At that point it was clear we weren’t looking at a fluke — we were seeing physics behave differently than we had assumed.

What followed was refinement, testing, and a lot of data collection. This was never about randomly denting pellets or making them look rough. The performance window is narrow and small details matter. Something as simple as polishing away naturally formed oxides from annealing reduced performance. Through repeated testing we isolated a specific surface condition that changes how the pellet moves through air in flight. Drag models aligned with real-world gel results within a couple percent across multiple tests, confirming that the behavior was repeatable and predictable.

That discovery became CuProX.

Density matters, and we understand why hunters instinctively compare copper to bismuth or lead based on density alone. Density, however, is only part of the equation. Two things kill birds — pattern density and pellet energy — and changing how a pellet behaves aerodynamically directly affects both. We didn’t break the rules; we applied them correctly. Under heavier late-season air conditions the performance gap between smooth copper and CuProX widens, reinforcing what the complex math equations also showed. What we did was simple. We shot patterns and gel, gathered the data and ran math calcs separately and compared real life results to the math. We used that data to assign drag values to various grades of shot and even developed quality control programs that would predict the pellet behavior before it was even loaded into a shell. 

Once we understood what CuProX was doing, the decision was straightforward. CuProX is now integrated across all Boss copper offerings. Legacy patterns now resemble what Warchief used to be, and Warchief has moved into an entirely different performance category. Testing consistently shows that a 12ga 3” 1-1/4 oz load at 1500 fps represents the optimal balance beyond 40 yards with real capability extending to 60, while Legacy at 1350 fps remains more than sufficient inside typical hunting ranges without unnecessary payload weight.  Not to worry, heavy payloads are still available albeit with more expense. You guys can shoot the same shot sizes as bismuth but now with tighter pattern densities you can either loosen the choke or go up a size and see a significant boost in both forgiveness and lethality. All of our field testing was done using the exact shot sizes as bismuth and making direct comparisons. 

The process that produces CuProX is no longer experimental — it’s controlled, repeatable, and built to support the full scale production demands at Boss. 

Along the way we also picked up where a long since idled choke company, Timber Ridge left off with choke design, partnering with a local machine shop with decades of experience to produce Boss chokes engineered around our CuProX system. They aren’t mandatory, but they were built with CuProX in mind and perform exactly as intended.  They also work damn good with bismuth, steel and tungsten. We missed the window to roll out a turkey tube in time for the season (which is actually what drew us to Timber Ridge in the first place) but plan on doing that in time for next year. 

Looking back, what felt like a crisis forced us to rethink everything about mid-density non-toxic performance. Copper provides stability in supply, domestic control over production, and the ability to continue advancing performance without being tied to the volatility we experienced with bismuth. We still maintain our bismuth equipment and will produce it again if economics and demand make sense, but CuProX represents the new baseline moving forward.

Ammo prices across the industry remain high, but the move to copper has allowed us to stabilize costs while delivering measurable performance gains, even with copper trading at record highs. Warchief has never been more capable, and we’ve worked hard to keep pricing moving in the right direction.

We’ll be releasing tons of content including performance data, testing and insightful information throughout the spring and summer for those who want to dive deeper into the science. For guys that only care about dead birds and ammo that works, just know that we’ve spent the last year obsessing over making copper better, and none of it happens without your trust and support.

Here’s to a great 2026–27 season.

Brandon

P.S. The Hugo Boss litigation is finally behind us. Branded apparel and USA-made hoodies are coming back soon.