The Precision of Faith & Hard Work: Bryan Morgan of Hat Creek Training [ZEROED IN]

It’s a cold morning in Idaho, about 3 hours north of Boise. The crisp frigid air clings to your skin like a wet shirt, as a small fire crackles nearby and fights to spread a little bit of warmth to the men huddled around it. Behind you is a stack of shipping containers, arranged like LEGOs with ladders, shooting ports, and railings. In front of you is mountainous terrain that drops away quickly then climbs back up to a crest in the distance, dotted with steel targets as far as you can see. 

A man stands before you and your fellow students for a high-angle precision shooting course — today all civilians but more typically hard-charging, snake-eating, freedom-defending Tier 1 operators. He’s tall, with a carefully trimmed beard and clear voice. His pants are standard-issue cool-guy Fjallravens, but they’re heavily worn from kneeling on and scrambling over rocks and mountaintops. 

He’s explaining how to use body position, bags, bipods, and other techniques to manage recoil while shooting a rifle off a barricade. He demonstrates by launching 300 Norma Magnum rounds downrange without shouldering the gun, so you can clearly see how much it moves under recoil with each successive technique. You’re focusing so intently on his instruction that you don’t initially realize with over 1.5 seconds of flight time before hearing steel ring each time that he’s casually hammering targets at 1,200 meters in shifting 15 mph crosswinds without even looking through the scope when he presses the trigger.

That man is Bryan Morgan, and you’re training in his backyard — and by “backyard” we mean 10,000 acres of rugged wilderness in west central Idaho. 

FOUNDATIONS

Building an effective and durable shooting position requires a strong foundation. The same applies to a young man making his way in the world.

Born in 1972, Morgan grew up in east Tennessee, near Knoxville. His father was an enlisted man in the Army, primarily running heavy equipment. Once he separated, he transitioned naturally into construction.

Morgan’s childhood and upbringing was that of the traditional hardworking American family. His father worked long hours, spending a lot of time away from home building a construction business while his mother held down the fort at home with him and his brother and sisters.

Morgan explained, “I had a great father that just worked tirelessly to provide for us. He worked out of town a lot so when he was home on the weekend, we would be able to spend time with him then quite a bit.”

His parents had an unshakable relationship that set the standard for him. “My wife once asked my older sister, ‘Look, Bryan always says that your mom and dad never argued. Is that true? And she said, ‘Yeah, pretty much. I’ve never seen them argue.’ So they had a very unique relationship. Mom had ultimate respect for my dad. He didn’t demand it; he earned it. But he also had ultimate respect for her. When I got home from school, she was there. My mom was always there for us; she would make sure all the kids were taken care of. We got everything we needed for school. Football games, karate classes, music classes. We weren’t wealthy at all; it was meager at times. But she made sure we were good. It was a different time, and I think we miss some of that. A good mother is more important than any CEO in my opinion.”

Morgan attributes his work ethic to his father. “He set the example. He’s just the type that put his head down and figured things out. I don’t know if it’s a healthy obsession that I have sometimes. I do get a little too focused. I’m comfortable when exhausted, with long days, with challenges. I don’t know what it is, even in my construction years, sometimes the harder the project, the more I enjoyed it.”

HARD WORK

With some wild years behind him, Morgan spent his high school years in Tennessee. He was a good student but got bored easily. Morgan admitted, “I got a little bit of OCD tendencies, I guess. I get a little compulsive on pretty much anything that I get involved in and that kind of showed through my life. After growing up with baseball and football, I got into fighting and kickboxing as a teenager. I ran with that until I got married.”

After graduating high school, he jumped straight into the family business and worked with his father. They were known for tunneling and boring. “It was difficult and unique work, not your average company would do it. We’d subcontract for other companies and put tunnels underneath interstates and roadways and whatnot. We’d work in North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, wherever the work was.” 

Morgan learned a great deal from his father. “He was the type of guy that allowed you to fail. He allowed you to struggle and gave you the time to try to figure something out. If you couldn’t figure it out, then he would step in and help you with it. But he didn’t mind allowing you to kind of waste some time because it would be a good learning lesson. I still kind of teach this way myself.”

Having started in east Tennessee, Morgan, his father, and his brother then stood up a new company in Florida. The three of them ran the business, growing it and also pursuing land development, even building an aviation community.

Unfortunately, his father passed away relatively young. Morgan was just 27 years old at the time, and it was a huge shock and a very difficult time for him, but the two brothers continued to push the business forward. Their hard work and dedication paid off, with offices in Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, and Minnesota. In his late 30s at this point, he and his brother sold a stake in the business.

However, the buyer encountered great difficulties and challenges effectively managing the business, and after five or six years, the Morgan brothers got the company back. His brother and nephew took over, turned it around, and Bryan finally bowed out of the construction industry.

SHOOTING

Shooting has always been a part of Morgan’s life. Growing up in a small town in the country, he shot all the time — shotgun, rifle, pistol. “When I was 10 or 12, we’d float down the river in a canoe with a 22 pistol for snakes. But there wasn’t any organized shooting, and I didn’t hunt much. It was mostly recreation. Typical country boy kind of thing. This is pre-internet so we didn’t know much about what was going on elsewhere.”

As he got older, he shot more pistol, carbine, and — notably — long range. He loved it. In east Tennessee, they had mountains behind them, so they could shoot there, and with a few hundred acres in Florida, they set up ranges. “Me and my brother had a lot of fun shooting. There’s always competition in life, and it was like that with me and my brother.” 

He always enjoyed shooting long range, setting up a myriad of targets on his range. “My first precision rifle was a Remington 700. But then I got an Accuracy International chassis, and I met guys like Terry Cross, Bennie Cooley, and Mike Voight.” In the second half of the 2000s, Morgan got really serious about it. That obsessive focus of his kicked in, and he started participating in organized competitions. “You get challenged through competition, having to solve problems on the clock with your equipment. You start learning your weaknesses. And every time I found a weakness, I wanted to turn it into a strength. If someone was better than me at something, I keep working on it until I figure out how to overcome it.”

His wife would get up at 5:30 in the morning and cook breakfast for him. Then, he’d load up and go to his range to practice. He’d train for at least an hour, then head to the office. He’d get home at 6 or 7 at night, reload ammo, and make adjustments based on learnings from the morning. Then, he’d return to the range the next day, about three to four times per week. “It’s burning it at both ends for sure, but that dedication pays off in the matches. You see the difference in people that are doing well in matches. It comes down to dedication. I want to win. I want to perform. It’s not a hobby; it becomes a way of life.”

The Precision Rifle Series kicked off in 2012, organizing local, regional, and national matches for practical, long-range precision rifle shooting. Morgan didn’t immediately win PRS matches but quickly climbed the ranks, finally clinching the PRS National Championship in 2014. “Matches were validation for me — that the things I’m doing are working.”

In 2010, Morgan and his wife developed another property in Florida that was dedicated for training and matches. This was when he truly began training others in earnest, crystallizing and articulating his skills and knowledge in order to transfer it to others, from civilians to military and law enforcement. This would lead to his second career and calling.

FAMILY AND FAITH

Morgan met his wife, Misty, in Florida. Her father had a trucking business just down the road from his house. They got married right after graduation — over 32 years ago at this point. “My dad demonstrated to me how to be a good husband. I tried to mirror that as much as I could with Misty. I just wanted to make sure I was as good of a person as I could be. And she’s always been as good of a woman to me as I could ask for her.”

Their relationship is a truly loving partnership. “We get some wonderful emails that really melt our heart. For example, someone spent a week with us training and sent us an email after that he went home and recommitted himself to his wife. They were on their way to divorce, but they worked on it and now have the best relationship they ever had — he said because of seeing how Misty and me were around each other and deciding that’s what he wanted for his marriage. So, he went back and made changes. That’s amazing and means so much to us.”

Morgan oversees training, and Misty runs the business.

They have a daughter who lives in Tennessee with her husband, a high school football coach, and their three kids. Misty frequently travels there to spend time with them and the grandchildren.

As for faith, Morgan’s mother grew up Primitive Baptist. His older brother Timothy tragically passed away when he was a baby. “She just wanted to know, you know, what are the beliefs in religion of where Timothy went? Where did he go? And a lot of religions don’t really speak too much of after death. She ended up finding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So, I’ve been LDS pretty much since birth, but I really didn’t gain a testimony until struggles later in life. I always had faith and belief, but until it’s really tested, you don’t really know. So, it’s a really important part of my life now. Where I really found joy is more selfless things and compassion for others. You know, I’ve never done something good for someone and then felt bad afterward.”

HAT CREEK TRAINING

After winning the PRS Championship in 2014, Morgan really wanted to make a change and move out West, so they began keeping an eye out for a property. In 2016, he was asked to be the match director for the SilencerCo Quiet Riot match in Utah. He flew out with Misty to Utah; while he was working on preparations, she went to an art retreat in McCall, Idaho. After his work was done, he had a few days to kill and drove out to meet up with her. He’d never been in Idaho before, and they had been searching for land in Montana. However, Misty came across a listing for the Hat Creek property. They drove by and fell in love with it. But it was a lot of land with a hefty price tag. So, they waffled and put it on the back burner.

Meanwhile, Nightforce was working on a new product launch and came down to Morgan’s range in Florida for a media event. Ray Dennis, the owner of Nightforce, flew in for the festivities. Coincidentally, the realtor in Idaho had showed them the boundaries of the Hat Creek property, which was adjacent to land owned by Dennis. It occurred to Morgan that perhaps Dennis might want to buy it himself to expand his holdings, but he went ahead and told Dennis that he was looking at moving out there. “Ray said, ‘Before you buy anything, you should look at the property my neighbors are selling.’ I said, ‘Well, Ray, that’s exactly the one I’m looking at.’ Then, Ray said, ‘You should buy it!’ I talked to Misty. So many things were falling in line for this property, so we made an offer the very next week and the rest is history.”

Morgan put out his shingle as Hat Creek Training, and it’s now the mecca of long-range and high-angle shooting. They bought additional land and leased other neighboring areas for a total of roughly 10,000 acres of uncompromising, steep mountainous terrain. It’s unique for the ability to shoot extreme long range and crazy angles both upward and down, with very challenging wind and weather conditions. 

They built the main house, then a bunkhouse, then a second bunkhouse. Now, they’re finally building themselves a separate home for some long-deserved privacy. Morgan built roads, shooting positions, and props. He hiked all over the property, scattering over 600 steel targets all throughout.

His very first training contract at Hat Creek came in May 2017, with construction just underway. They posted a total of 10 weeks of training that year. In 2018, it climbed to 24 weeks, then 35 weeks in 2019. In 2020 and ever since, Hat Creek has booked 42 to 45 weeks of training each year. 

Morgan and his cadre teach the best of the best military and law enforcement units, with occasional open enrollment classes when a gap in the schedule presents itself. They’re mostly domestic, but international units come out to train as well. Hat Creek works with each unit to determine what they need to focus on, from long-range and high-angle shooting to pistol and carbine to mobility classes such as vehicles, motorcycles, and navigation. They also cover night operations and drones, always flexing to meet customer needs.

“We have non-mil guys on the mobility side. Currently, I’m the only non-mil instructor on the shooting side. It’s a pretty important piece for the guys that come through here. You can be a great shooter; that doesn’t mean you’re a great teacher. You can be a great teacher, but certain things that we teach need to come from a place of honesty. And that place of honesty is ‘I went and did it.’ There’s things that even if I know the tactic, the technique, and I can teach it flawlessly, it’s still better to be relayed by someone that’s been down there and done it for real and can speak to it on a different level.”

Up to two to three teams might come to train each week. Hat Creek’s essentially maxed out — between SHOT Show burning another week, weather, and upkeep, they mostly only take Christmas off. 

Morgan explains, “I have a hard time saying no to military teams. If you had one week to prepare your own child to deploy, how hard would you work to get them ready? Every waking hour. Give them everything we can to prepare them to do whatever they’re asked to do. That’s why I’m here.”

Every other year, Hat Creek organizes and hosts the North American Sniper Team Invitational, or NASTI. It’s a competition and training event for advanced long-range shooting skills, with military snipers invited from various branches to participate. Teams navigate across extremely difficult terrain and engage targets out to 2,000 meters. It takes place over four days, with a night stage as well. It’s the ultimate test of skill, endurance, and commitment.

Employing prior service members is another priority for Morgan. His cadre of instructors, all at the top of their game, can sign up to work as much as they’d like or need. “They’re handpicked for their ability to socialize and work and teach, and for their passion. It’s not about me or any single individual. It’s Hat Creek Training, not Morgan Training.”

Hat Creek cultivates a family atmosphere, with everyone training, eating, and decompressing together around the bonfire and in the saunas. “We call it the Hat Creek family. Everybody that comes through here is family to us.”

More broadly, Morgan cares very much about the guys who come to train with him. “These guys do such hard things. Their job is so important, and they make such a big difference that they can get lost in the work. When that job ends, they can lose their purpose.” 

In the future, Morgan wants to add family based events for operators and their entire families to provide some “Hat Creek therapy” for those who sorely need it.

This is clearly a calling for Morgan, and he’s all-in with it, like everything else he’s done. His previous life was in construction; those in that line of work are fortunate to be able to look back at the buildings and structures they’ve built as a legacy to be proud of. But what he’s doing now with Hat Creek and everyone it touches promises to be his greatest legacy.

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