Drew McIntosh started by hand loading shotgun shells for himself and a few friends, and created one of the top performing shells on the market today with Migra Ammunition. (Photo courtesy of Migra Ammunition.)
February 05, 2026
By Ryan Barnes
When I opened my first box of Migra Ammunition , I admit I wasn’t sure what to expect. Shooting any new load for the first time is always an uneasy experience, but that worry was quickly dispelled as ducks died quick and hard. The 2/4 stacked load of steel I had bought the night before was working wonders on late season divers on a layout boat hunt on the Great Salt Lake. Before long my two friends and I left with a mixed back of canvasbacks, goldeneye, and a handful of teal which are always present on the Great Salt Lake. I was thoroughly impressed with this Migra Ammunition that hit devastatingly hard. It quickly became a staple in my blind bag.
What was even more impressive was the fact that it was easy to find in sporting goods stores, well-priced, and performed like shotshells priced at twice the cost. Then I was presented with an opportunity to meet and interview the owner and president of the brand—Drew McIntosh. From Gaffney, South Carolina, McIntosh is a man powered by a desire to help hunters across the nation kill more ducks, with a shell tailored to duck hunters without bleeding out the bank.
The man behind Migra “I started this whole thing after I saw some guys making some exotic shotgun shells while I was working for a material handling business. I got really infatuated with shotgun shells and how they’re made,” says McIntosh.
“When I saw what these guys were doing, and I saw what went into it, I thought, ‘Well, I could at least load a few cases for myself’. Then I started thinking, ‘If I get good at this, and these work well, maybe I can start to sell these and get out of my job.’ Even though Drew was good at what he did at the time, it wasn’t something he enjoyed, nor what he wanted to spend his time doing.
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Despite some difficulties early on, Drew was able to take Migra and scale it to the point where it became large enough to sell to box stores, and maintain the ability to create custom ammo. (Photo courtesy of Migra.) The loads that Drew saw being made were for personal and home-defense, but he wanted something for hunting. “They showed me components, and how to load shells. Then after about two years, I had developed my own shotgun shell. Through a lot of trial and error, and a lot of different hulls, wads; trying different things and tweaking stuff and shooting my own ammo, I started to figure out what worked and what didn’t.”
This wasn’t just something that was a spur-of-the moment idea. Drew was (and still is) a huge duck hunter, who wanted a shotgun shell that could meet the demands that he felt were necessary of someone who wants the optimum performance out of every shell they shoot. And because he’s an avid duck hunter, he knew what’s required to make a successful waterfowling load.When asked about the role that hunting played in creating Migra, Drew notes that it was the main factor for him, and he even has friends that he introduced to duck hunting at an early age now working for him at Migra. Noting that he’s loved the sport since an early age. Even coming from South Carolina, a state not particularly known for its duck hunting.
When asked about when he knew he might have a product worth selling, McIntosh says that he had started selling cases of shells to his friends and outfitters who were guiding throughout Texas and Oklahoma who then provided those shells to clients. “After they shot them, they were like, ‘These shells are legit! We’ll buy a case each for the season!’ They ended up buying like 20 cases and selling them to their clients. That’s when I knew I had something. Especially because we were shooting them against everything else, all the other brands. It kind of turned into one of those things where people were like, ‘whatever you’ve got, I want more of it!’”
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After receiving that initial feedback on his shells, Drew started making phone calls. He needed to know how to get into the manufacturing game. He notes, “I knew manufacturing. I had been around manufacturing.” Drew just needed to know how to make this project scalable, and he adds that after all the handloading he had done, he didn’t want to go through that process again if he was going to try to create something big. That’s when Jay Menefee took Drew under his wing and gave him some guidance on what would be required to manufacture shotgun shells. “Jay showed me in his manufacturing plant that he could take a machine and retrofit parts to make the first ever stacked shotgun load ever made on a machine.” This led to Drew learning how to make and develop a brand.
That’s where McIntosh found Russel Branson. Someone who can make boring products into an interesting brand. “Shotgun shells just in and of themselves are boring. That’s where I wanted to make a brand. So, when I found these white hulls, and printed black on them it looked so good. And I knew I wanted to use white hulls, because no one else was doing that. It was totally a branding thing. Remington green, Winchester was red. I wanted to be white.” Which has proven to work for Drew and the Migra brand, as the white hull is now an easily identifiable mark of those shooting Migra.
After Jay had helped McIntosh learn the manufacturing process, he knew he was on to something great. He also knew it was time to develop a brand to help push these shotgun shells he was making. “One of the hardest things to do was make a name. It took me like a year to make name. I swear,” McIntosh says, half laughing.
Stacking up Something that came as a surprise to me was learning that Migra was the first load to come in a stack . “Migra is based off a Rhodesian Jungle Load,” says McIntosh. “It’s totally different than a duplex load. A duplex load is 20 percent smaller shot over 80 percent bigger shot. I figured out that you could reverse engineer that and put a certain percentage of bigger pellets over a certain percentage of smaller pellets and it got a tighter pattern at 40-60 percent ratio.”
Drew's passion growing up as a hunter is what fueled his desire to create a duck hunting load that would allow him to kill more birds, and be more successful. That later grew into one of the biggest custom ammo brands on the market today. (Photo courtesy of Migra.) While Drew was in the process of making these shells, he was also in the process of getting the Migra name out into the world of duck hunting. Luckily, for those who began to see and shoot the shells, word spread of how well they performed, and the world of duck hunting started to turn their attention to Migra. But it wasn’t after a lot of dead ends and grueling work for Drew. “I spent a lot of time getting my ass kicked trying to get things started,” he says.
Bigger than you could imagine With a team of top-level talent around him, McIntosh is able to keep Migra growing, and also able to keep innovating and staying on top of the ammunition game. (Photo courtesy of Migra.) After a few bad breaks, Drew turned to the Lord in a prayer asking what he should do. “I just had this voice come to me and say, ‘If you do this, I’ll make it bigger than you can imagine.’ And then it was just quiet,” Drew says. So that’s what he did. Putting his faith in the Lord and his chips down on Migra, he began talking to everyone he could.
“I remember I had made over 150 calls one day, just trying to talk to everyone I could, trying to market whatever I could. I had my entire life savings into this, and I was losing money.” But when a friend came in and invested in the company, it gave Drew the chance to really take things to new heights. And to new heights they climbed, because not long after they began selling pallets of ammo across the nation. Landing in box stores, and becoming a recognized brand of ammo across the country.
Finally, Drew says his I made it moment is when he landed in Sportsman’s Warehouse. That happened in just Migra’s second year of business. “I still have a picture of a whole wall of the Columbia Sportsman’s Warehouse stacked with Migra Ammo.” Drew also notes that while Covid had it’s many pitfalls, it allowed them to get into any store they wanted, and they played things smart which allowed them to distribute evenly, and get their shells to even more people while other brands couldn’t. “We literally used Covid to start our marketing on Instagram. Our marketing budget that first year was only $20,000, and we still were able to get into any store we wanted.”
A Plus Talent, A Plus Brand Now that Migra is well on the map and a top performer in the waterfowl shotshell industry, Drew says that now it’s a matter of making sure they stay on top of that game. Making sure they provide the best performing shells, made by the best talent they can find.
“We custom manufacture, at scale,” says Drew, when talking about why Migra Ammunition performs so well when waterfowl hunting, highlighting the fact that they can see what’s needed by duck hunters, and adjust accordingly. “We have the newest machinery in the country. It’s hard to maneuver in this industry, but we’re able to do so just by some of the things we’ve invested in.”
The white hulls of Migra were a branding idea from Drew, which proved to be a brilliant idea as they're now well recognized and even sought after by hunters. (Photo courtesy of Migra.) Now, Drew and the rest of the team at Migra are planning to keep growing and keep making the best possible shells for duck hunters, so that way the Migra brand stays in the forefront of waterfowler’s minds as something you use when you want to fill straps. So that white hull is seen as something that when you load it into your gun, you know you’re going to have a good day!
