Phillip Velayo

Phil will tell you he "accidentally became a sniper."

He grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, in an immigrant family that valued hard work. His mom worked as a chef, summers were spent fishing for reds. He played video games, pulled straight As, and had never touched a rifle until he joined the Marine Corps at 18. No hunting trips with dad, no squirrels shot out of trees.

Just a kid from a different world who scored high enough on his GT test and shot well enough at boot camp to get screened for the Scout Sniper community.

His parents begged him to pick anything but infantry. His sister, already serving in the Navy, gave him the advice that shaped his career: "Don't do anything that you'll wake up and regret in two to three years." So he chose infantry: 0311, rifleman. He shipped to boot camp on July 23, 2007.

At 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, he made it through the five-day Scout Sniper screener by being, in his words, "too stupid to quit." Not a physical specimen. Never ran faster than a 6:30 mile. Eighteen Marines started that week. Nine were left standing. He was one of them.

The road from there wasn't clean.

He deployed to Fallujah as his sniper team's radio operator with about 20 rounds of trigger time behind a sniper rifle, and became a father while he was overseas. His first run at Scout Sniper School, in 2009, ended before it began. He overslept after a hard night, missed the morning ruck, and was dropped on the spot.

"I was the lowest of low. I essentially had to start from ground zero, earning my respect with my platoon."

His team leader fought to keep him. He re-enlisted during a Pacific deployment just to get one more shot, and on October 11, 2011, he graduated Sniper School. From there he filled every role in the community: sniper team leader, Chief Scout. He graduated High Shooter from every follow-on course and deployed four times: Fallujah, Okinawa, Djibouti.

In January 2015 he picked up the role that changed everything: marksmanship instructor at 1st Marine Division Scout Sniper School. He taught roughly 350 snipers over three years and was nominated for Scout Sniper Instructor of the Year in 2016.

Then the sport found him.

That April, at the Winston P. Wilson competition, he got humbled. "I was just getting straight murdered on these courses." He learned two things that rerouted his life: civilians shoot precision rifles for fun, and there was a whole sport, the Precision Rifle Series, built around it.

He built his first personal rifle off Sniper's Hide forum advice: a trued Remington 700 in .308 Win. "Because that's just what I knew." Then he started turning the camera on himself at the range. "I wondered if I was doing the things I was yelling at my students about."

The competition itch became a track record: his first national-level PRS match in 2016, a national NRL win in April 2017, and the PRS Finale in December 2018, where he cleaned day two to take the title.

That same year, rather than re-enlist into orders that would put him thousands of miles from his daughter, he left active duty for an instructor job at Gunwerks in Cody, Wyoming. He went on to win the Rocky Mountain North Regional and earn national recognition on the NRL Hunter circuit.

In 2020 he co-founded Modern Day Sniper with Caylen Wojcik: roughly 40 classes and 200 students over four years, plus one of the first precision rifle podcasts. He stepped back when the road time got to be too much for a single father with a daughter in high school, spent his education credits on film school, and graduated in June 2025.

Then, in late 2023, the Marine Corps disbanded its Scout Sniper platoons and cut the 0317 MOS, the same four digits in Phil's social media handle.

The Cadre was born the next summer. Matt "Solo" Solowynsky and Jon Bumpus set out to build a team that could answer the call if and when snipers come back. Instructors who can teach the shooting and mentor the Marine behind the rifle, because they've been that Marine.

Today, Phil lives in Wyoming with his family, including a son born in January 2025.

In August 2025, a house fire devastated their home. The precision rifle community rallied. The Recon Sniper Foundation organized a raffle, industry partners donated, friends stepped up. That support meant everything.

He co-founded The Cadre and is building Path to Precision, an online program that takes you from beginner to competitor. His collection has grown from that first Sniper's Hide build to 20 precision rifles, each with its own story.

He teaches the "why" behind every technique, not just the "how." Understand why something works and you can diagnose your own shooting, fixing problems before they become habits.

"One thing a decade in this craft has taught me: you can't teach obsession. You either have it or you don't." — Phil