Where it started
I was the first grandkid of my generation, and my grandpa started a tradition with me: a .22 LR for every grandkid's first birthday. That little rifle handled population control on countless rabbits, prairie dogs and marmots growing up. By 9 or 10 I'd graduated to .223 and .22-250 bolt guns for coyotes and foxes, while still keeping the local prairie dog villages in check.
I spent a lot of time at the reloading bench with my dad and grandpa, learning to build ammunition at a young age (under careful adult supervision, of course). When I turned 12, my dad got me a Remington 700 short action chambered in the Lord's cartridge, .308. My grandpa and I worked up a Hornady load moving at respectable speeds, and I tagged my first cow elk with it. High school was early-morning waterfowl hunts in the winter and late nights at the reloading bench.
Finding my way back
College, a full-time job and bills pulled me away for a while. Sometimes responsibility makes you forget why you do it. I came back to it with a bow, taking a mature 4x4 mule deer in velvet and, the next year, a 6x6 bull elk here in western Colorado.
When my wife wanted to hunt elk during third rifle season, I pulled out the old .308 and ran straight into the limits of outdated scope technology. My dad had just built a new precision chassis rifle, so he loaned me his 26 Nosler in a Browning X-Bolt. I downloaded a ballistic app, learned to feed it real data, and realized what I'd been missing. Going from an old-school Rem 700 with a plain crosshair to a modern rifle, cartridge and optic, we were ringing steel at 700 yards with little effort. I was hooked.
Down the rabbit hole
The .308 was the perfect platform to build on: tons of parts, and I already had the dies and powder. It got an MDT chassis, a TriggerTech trigger and Athlon glass with turrets. After a summer of load work, it was shooting the 165 gr Tipped GameKing at 0.4 MOA at 100 yards, with dope trued out to 900. It's been all downhill (in the best way) from there.