USA --(Ammoland.com)- AARON SPULER: Let's talk about your shooting background. I don't know if you grew up shooting or if that was something you got in to later on in life, or maybe military or police or something like that. What was your introduction to shooting?

MIKE HUGHES: I got in to shooting after playing college football, just for a competitive outlet actually. I first started Bullseye shooting, NRA Bullseye, which I enjoy quite a bit because I get to see progress each week. One time I heard the chiming in the back bay, the steel. You know the bing-bing-bing, and I was drawn to speed steel which I thought was a tremendous shooting sport. And finally I rolled in to USPSA IPSC because I was infatuated with the athleticism of it. You had to run, decelerate, reload -- the full gamut of skill sets and all the challenges that are wrapped up in that sport.

AS: Yeah, that's really a lot different than just standing solitary and shooting some targets or paper or whatnot.

MH: Well, the combination of speed, power, and accuracy -- in particular speed and accuracy -- is what I really find fascinating, and it is a never-ending endeavor. You can always get faster, and you can always get more accurate, and it doesn't seem to be totally youth based, even though foot speed and hand speed are so heavily rated in that sport.

AS: It's a good thing, too. Because otherwise the young guys would just run us out of town.

MH: Yep.

AS: I kind of have a special connection to Washington state. I know you're from Washington state. I have family up there, I have an uncle that was the one who taught me to shoot when I was little. It was kind of like summer camp up there, going up to Stevens pass and Blewett pass to go shooting. I have good memories of Washington state.

MH: We live rural, so I have my own little private range just a few hundred yards from my house, which is really nice.

AS: That's been a goal of mine for a while now, but I don't know when that's going to be able to happen. I would like to be able to go out and shoot on my own land whenever I wanted to. With a two year old, I don't have as much time to get to the range as I'd like.

MH: I hear ya.

AS: Do you have a favorite gun that you like to take out to the range with you, that you find yourself using quite often, or do you just kind of like them all?

MH: I used to shoot Glock, but I switched over now to the M&P, Smith & Wesson, 9mm. I think I might be able to squeeze a little bit more performance out of that platform. But I don't have a huge preference over any one gun I think. If anyone picks a gun, and just simply trains, they're going to be well off. On the same token too, I think when you really get in to shooting, even though we may squeeze an extra 5% just by getting really honed in with one particular system, I think a good shooter should be able to pick up any gun and be able to go to work with it.

AS: If you get way too used to just one gun, you get in to a specialist role, and don't really have the adaptability that you really need. It kind of limits you.

MH: Exactly. I see that issue sometimes with some 1911 shooters that are just shooting the 1911, which has of course its very sweet single-action, low poundage, low over-travel, short resetting trigger. But, that can mask trigger mechanics deficiencies. With my SIRT guns -- my training guns -- I'll actually jack those up to a lot heavier, like 7 pounds, for a lot of my training, with a little extra over-travel.

AS: I was actually going to bring up the SIRT guns a little later on, but we can talk about those now. That looks like a pretty impressive product you've got there.

MH: Oh, thanks. Well, basically when I first started shooting, I noticed that shooters didn't really train that much. Compare that to a high school basketball kid making hundreds of thousands of baskets a year. With the various barriers getting to the range for the live fire, I don't think that we handle the gun enough honestly. And the skill sets to really be a good shooter is not only recoil management, but draws, reloads, target transitions, sight acquisition, all the fundamentals of grip and stance, sight picture, and probably above all I think the grand daddy is trigger control.

AS: Definitely. I've actually found a lot of good use out of some laser trainers myself. It helps with point shooting, and the basic fundamentals. It really makes a difference to have that trigger time. Then when you get to the range, you can worry about recoil and other aspects. But you don't have to worry about your basic fundamentals that you're able to practice whenever and wherever you need to.

MH: Exactly, exactly. My philosophy is to train all these skill sets in high volume and bring it to the range, and integrate recoil management. It's working out really well. It's worked out extremely well for my training. I was motivated by a lot of trainers who saw the concept to start Next Level Training (www.nextleveltraining.com) and make a full-blown startup out of it.

AS: I'm surprised that the idea hadn't really caught on before this.

MH: The number one question I got from investors when I started the company was 'Why hasn't someone done this before?' I think one issue, one barrier to entry was that we started out with the Glock platform. And to really make an effective laser training tool, you have to have an auto-resetting trigger so you're not wasting time racking the slide.

AS: Correct.

MH: And an adjustable trigger. The powerful green laser makes a huge difference because it's visible outside.

AS: The difference between the green and red is really night and day.

MH: Yep, totally. And then I think another key feature that we put in there is the take up indicator, because trigger take up is such a key fundamental aspect of trigger control. Having the take up indicator gives us a lot of information of when we're shooting off the reset, when we're prepping the trigger, when we're coming in to a target with a hot gun with the trigger fully pressed, and so forth. And seeing when we over transition or do high speed transitions which killed me in nationals by coming in too hot and not decelerating, over transitioning the target, and doing the tuning fork.

AS: Just the repetition of it is what you can build and train your muscle memory for those skills, so you can get so much better when you're actually out there on the range. It just strikes me as odd that nobody really thought of it and found a way to get it working well before this. So my hat's off to you.

MH: It took a lot of time and engineering, time and money, to get it right. We're pretty pleased, especially with the new models we're putting out -- the M9 and the M&P -- here very shortly.

AS: In regards to Top Shot... how'd you find out about the show? What made you want to apply for it?

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