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This week we’re talking with Jason Schneider, owner of Rice Barrel Company. Rice barrels has been known in the muzzleloading world for fine barrels for many years now, and with interest in muzzleloading growing, we wanted to sit down with Jason and learn more about how the record setting Rice Barrels are made. 

Jason had a background in machining well before he picked up his first muzzleloader. While at work on day, Jason asked a couple of his coworkers about what they used to hunt with and muzzleloaders quickly came up as a topic of interest for them all. Wanting to know more, Jason was pushed to talk to the Rice brothers about getting started in muzzleloading. At the time, Rice Barrel company was a small side business for the Rice brothers and neither Jason or the Rice brothers knew what the future would hold for all of them. 

Jason quickly fell in love with muzzleloading after getting started with hunting season. At the time, he joined two local clubs and began traveling with them to matches across the Carolinas, Tennessee, and even to the NMLRA Nationals in Friendship, Indiana. Though he had experience in competitive shooting from his time as a highpower 1000 yard bench rest shooter, the challenge of muzzleloading sucked him in.  

Jason’s interest in hunting pulled him west, where he guided hunters in search of big game in the mountains. After the last hunt of the season, Jason’s first call east was to the Rice Barrel Company, where he hoped he could secure a job to help pay the bills, Rice obliged and offered him some part time work in the shop helping with barrel production. Over time, Jason moved up the ranks in the company and began to oversee production. When the Rice brothers began discussing retirement in the early 2000s, Jason stepped in and purchased the company he had fallen in love with many years before. 

Jason has now been running Rice Barrels for over 10 years now. The quality of Rice Barrels remains the same, but some of the technology has changed. Jason invested in several CNC machines to make the production of a variety of new barrel profiles easier, they no longer had to hand develop a pattern or master for each barrel. Expanding on this, Jason developed a set of CNC rifling machines, adding even more precision machining to the well known barrels. 

Over the course of the interview Jason and I cover a variety of topics, from muzzleloading to competitive shooting, hunting to plinking. It was great to sit down with Jason, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.