Seekins Precision - Unrivaled Innovation

Today’s day and age of cheap and readily available goods makes you appreciate companies that prioritize uncompromised quality at the forefront of their products and ethos. Let’s put it this way–when you have a tool, you expect the tool to work when you’re using it. This is especially true in the world of precision rifles where dependability is crucial. For hunting, it can be the difference between a successful kill or eating your tag. For our military and law enforcement, it can be the difference between them being able to go home to see their families or not. 

Seekins Precision History

This idea of unwavering dependability was the impetus for Glen Seekins, the founder of Seekins Precision, to decide that he wanted to create American-made products that you could trust and depend on over 20 years ago. Glen was on a deer hunt and he had a set of scope rings fail him during his shot at a trophy-caliber buck. He couldn’t find a solution that he was happy with, so in 2004, he sat down and did what innovators do… he designed his own, and that’s how Seekins Precision was born.

While Seekins Precision started with precision rifle scope rings, over the last two decades of being in business, Glen has continued to innovate with high-quality precision rings, bases, rails, accessories, and his very own accurate gas and bolt action rifle systems. His emphasis on doing things the right way, no matter what, with his designs and in-house precision machining is inspiring in a world consumed by cutting corners.

One of their custom gas rifles built for duty use, the SP10M, was chosen by USASOC (United States Army Special Operations Command) in 2018 after extremely extensive testing of many different large-frame AR rifle companies and calibers. USASOC’s testing showed that the Seekins Precision rifles scored the best in accuracy, had the longest barrel life, and were the softest shooting by a commanding margin. During their testing process, they wanted to find the failure point of every rifle company they tested, and in that testing they also found the SP10M to have the fewest malfunctions and the fewest parts breaking.

They took all of that data, about 1200 pages worth, and gave it to Seekins Precision to improve the designs even further for the USASOC contract that Seekins Precision earned. For those of you who may not be familiar with USASOC, it’s comprised of the US Army Special Operations’ most elite unit. These are the highest level of snipers in the world across all branches of the military. Luckily for civilians, they make a production SP10 variant, so you have the option to purchase an accurate large-frame AR for yourself.

Their innovative bolt-action rifles have been favorites among hunters, competition rifle shooters, and LE/Military for many years. Their Havak bolt-action offerings currently range from their PH2, (the Havak flagship rifle), the PH2-NRL (specifically designed for the NRL competition shooter), the Element (extremely lightweight backcountry rifle), the HIT (designed to allow effortless barrel changing for PRS shooters), the HIT Pro, and their newest release which was unveiled at SHOT Show, the Havak SLAM rifle (hand-laid carbon fiber folding stock chassis). All of these rifles have high quality and innovation at their foundation.

Now, of course, all of these bolt-action and gas rifles provide much more in quality and useful features than I stated, but I would need to write an entire article going over those features to cover them all. I just wanted you to get an idea of how many purpose-driven options they have. What all of their bolt-action rifles have in common are the same trustworthy Havak bolts and actions. The Havak action is extremely smooth and the bolt was designed to feature toolless disassembly and assembly. So, if you run into any issues of getting dirt and debris in your bolt while in the field, you can easily take the bolt out, disassemble and clean it, put it back together, and it’s good to go!

American Made

Seekins Precision’s core values include family, faith, and patriotism for our great country, and they truly believe in doing things the right way or not doing them at all. 100% of Seekins Precision bolt and gas rifles, rings, parts, and accessories are not only made right here in America but also all under the same roof at their facility in Lewiston, Idaho. They use state-of-the-art machinery and robots to precisely machine every rifle, ring, and accessory.

The only two parts that they don’t make in-house are the rubber recoil pads that go on the end of their bolt action rifle stocks, and their triggers (they currently use TriggerTech). American manufacturing is one of the cornerstones of our country, as it puts money back into its local community and our economy, provides jobs for hard-working Americans, and is, overall, an undervalued principle. So, it’s nice to see Seekins Precision proudly building quality products with American hands.

This spring, myself and Chris Denham were very fortunate to be able to get an in-depth tour of their facility, meet a lot of the people behind the company, and see firsthand all of their machinery, intricate robotics, and quality control processes in person. We were given an incredible tour by Matty and Danny Nelson (brothers), who, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting them, are some of the nicest humans on the planet.

On this tour, they took us down to the office rooms and explained what each person does for the company, introduced us to their customer service department, and thoroughly went through each step-by-step process of their rifles, rings, and parts manufacturing on their ground floor. We spent hours seeing these processes in action, and being able to see all that goes into their rifles, rings, and parts was quite impressive, to say the least. We met and shook the hands of the workers who were hand-painting stocks, hand-bedding rifles, and hand-laying carbon fiber magazines, and each team member was an extension of Seekins Precision’s core principles. It’s no surprise to me that the demand for their rifles and rings is as high as it is.

From the rifling, contouring, fluting, and chambering of the barrels to the precision machining of the extractor, receivers, bolt bodies, bolt heads and handles, shrouds, barrel nuts, actions, rings (this robot was crazy cool), and literally every other part and aspect – all of it is done in-house with extremely tight tolerances. Big blocks of high-quality aluminum and steel are precisely turned into specific parts through a series of three operations.

For me, it was really neat to see and hold a part from all stages of the process that started with chunks of raw material. Each operation is properly managed, measured, and tested both by human hands and by machine before going to the next operation. One of their machines has a massive slab of granite weighing somewhere around 3000 pounds, and it’s so sensitive that it’s able to measure the manufactured parts within 20 microns during the testing process. To put that into perspective, the average piece of human hair is 70 microns…

The efficiency with which their processes are set up is impressive both in terms of time management and in terms of material waste. Their scrap rate is about 2% which is unheard of not only in their industry, but in any industry. This is all due to their extensive quality control department that has every step down to a literal science. For example, for their gas guns, one in four actions, one in six upper receivers, and one in four lower receivers go through rigorous quality control inspection and testing.

All of them are from the same lot numbers, so if they catch an issue, they are immediately able to act on it and drastically reduce any chance for waste. These well-thought-out quality control processes are critical and save a lot of time, especially when all of the parts are made under the same roof which makes the chance for error even smaller. When you’re making tens of thousands of rifles and nearly a hundred thousand rings a year, great designs and parts paired with great quality control is a recipe for success.

To cap off an incredible tour, we went out to the range and had a private range day with Matty and Danny. We shot several different Seekins Precision gas and bolt guns with specific instruction and in-depth explanations. For those of you who may not know, Matty Nelson is an instructor at the legendary Hat Creek Training, which is where the most elite snipers in the world go to train.

Matty has an extensive background as a Special Forces Veteran from his time as a Green Beret Sniper for many years, and wears a lot of hats within Seekins Precision, from being the Director of Business Development to being an expert in precision shooting. Matty and Danny have shot together for many years, and their ability to teach and explain the how and why behind it all to us was just as impressive to me as the 20-micron machine!

Customer Service/ Lifetime Warranty

One of the most important things a company can do is to support the very people who support them–the customers. To paraphrase a famous quote, “People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Many companies may make a good product, but many are out of touch with their customers and want nothing to do with them after a purchase is made. It’s not common to find companies that prioritize both the quality product AND the quality customer service to go with it.

Well, Seekins Precision excels in this because every Seekins product comes with a lifetime, no-questions-asked, repair-or-replace warranty. They even offer a “shooter’s satisfaction guarantee” which means their rifles will shoot with the acceptable accuracy level determined by you, the shooter, guaranteed. They’ll pay for their rifle to be sent to them, test it themselves, and provide the results to you. In the unlikely event that you’re not happy with the results, they will do anything at no cost to you, including rebuilding a rifle from the ground up, to make you happy with a rifle that shoots to your standards. Seekins is a company that makes products that are 100% backed up by the people who created them.

Not only do they back up their products, but if you ever have any questions, you can email or call them and talk to a real human being who’s physically in their facility–no outsourced customer service. When you contact them and talk to someone, you’re speaking to a person who genuinely wants to help you and make your experience a great one. There are several Seekins Precision user groups on social media that are extremely active with positive feedback and questions, and you will very regularly see Seekins team members actively responding to questions during and after working hours, and this includes Glen Seekins himself.

How do I know? I’ve been a part of these pages for a long time, and it’s something I’ve consistently seen that takes customer service and support to a whole new level. In my opinion, quality products will intrigue a customer, but a company that has quality products AND truly cares about its customers will always have my business.

My Experience

I’ve had the pleasure of shooting every rifle Seekins Precision makes at various times and places, all of which accompanied by the extensive knowledge, experience, and in-person instruction of Matty and Danny Nelson. I’ve personally been using a Havak Element for one season now, and have had great success practicing well beyond distances I would ever shoot at game animals. I used this Havak Element with Seekins Precision scope rings on my recent Idaho Spring bear hunt and had absolutely zero issues. In fact, through all the rain, snow, and a couple of slips and falls, the rifle came out completely unscathed, and I was able to kill a beautiful color phase boar!

My experience with the people of Seekins Precision is just as good as my experience shooting their rifles. They have some really good people who are a part of something they truly care about, and I must say it shows through how they interact with their customers. Whether it’s on forums, at trade shows, in person, or even on social media user group pages, Glen Seekins and Seekins Precision have built something really special in Lewiston, Idaho, and I highly recommend you look into them for yourself!

To learn more about Seekins Precision, visit their website: Seekinsprecision.com