Entries Tagged From HR magazine

It’s not as simple as grabbing a box of .270 off the shelf. Today, you need to be able to educate customers on the different projectile options in factory ammo.

In the ever-changing world of marketing, several current trends could have a positive impact on your business.

How we handle money — or don’t handle it at all — has changed tremendously in the past decade. Have you kept up?

Antler King Everything But the Kitchen Sink Premium Feed For a healthy herd and optimal antler growth, deer need comprehensive nutrition. That’s why Antler King developed a premium feed that features just about everything — Everything But the Kitchen Sink. With an expertly crafted blend of high-quality oats, wheat, corn, barley, protein pellets and more, it provides the essential nutrients for nurturing deer populations. This product enhances antler growth, supports functions such as muscle development, immune system function and healthy digestion, boosts energy throughout all seasons and contributes to a lustrous coat. Everything But the Kitchen Sink attracts deer and keeps them coming back for more. MSRP: $34.99/40-pound bag antlerking.com Bushnell LPX650 Two-Way RadiosBushnell has announced the introduction of a new line of two-way radios under a brand license partnership with Shine Flex. These radios are ideal for hunters, campers, hikers or anyone else who wants to stay connected while off the grid. Bushnell Two-Way Radios have been designed to deliver the best performance. With the maximum power output allowed by the FCC, users get extended range and secure communication with up to 70 channels to choose from, with 121 privacy codes per channel. The top of the line LPX650 model features 2-watt power output, up to 42-mile range, IPX67 waterproof rating, built-in LED flashlight, five-level VOX, vibration alert, NOAA weather alerts, rechargeable batteries, charging dock, USB-C cables and belt clips. MSRP: $99.99/Two-packbushnell.comCrosman Prospect Air RifleThe Prospect PCP Air Rifle was designed for shooters who demand power and precision — whether they’re plinking in the backyard or competing in target shooting events. Its barrel has a built-in suppressor and 1/2-20 muzzle threads to accept an external moderator for even quieter operation. Available in .177- and .22-calibers, the Prospect delivers up to 1,000 fps (.177) or 900 fps (.22) of muzzle velocity, and its rotary magazine holds 12 shots in .177-caliber and 10 shots in .22-caliber. It is equipped with an all-weather stock and is built to withstand the elements. A Picatinny rail on top of the receiver makes it easy to mount optics, and the Prospect’s regulator ensures shot-to-shot consistency. MSRP: Starting at $369.99www.crosman.comGarmont T8 Falcon BootA tactical/hunting boot with a sporty design, the T8 Falcon from Garmont is made from sturdy materials, such as leather, with more flexible ones, such as nylon, offering unparalleled support in this lightweight design. The soft Magnet sole offers a responsive feel when speeding across the terrain, performing activities that require control and agility, while the inner shank provides support during long hikes. The boots are a standard 8-inch height sporting a 1.8mm suede leather upper with polyester inserts, speed lacing with anchoring loops and closed-hook eyelets. An Ortholite Ultra footbed provides cushioning and breathability. The T8 Falcon is well suited for mavericks wishing to break with conventions when navigating the outdoors. MSRP: $104www.garmonttactical.comHevi-Shot 28-gauge Turkey LoadsHevi-Shot Ammunition is now manufacturing 3-inch, 28-gauge turkey loads in its Hevi-18 TSS and Magnum Blend product lines. Hevi-18 Tungsten Super Shot (TSS) Turkey uses high-density 18g/cc pellets and friction-reducing spherical buffer to extend effective range, allowing hunters to drop three shot sizes from common lead payloads and get higher pellet counts and denser patterns. The new 3-inch, 28-gauge loads are available in shot sizes Nos. 7 and 9. Magnum Blend offers three shot sizes (Nos. 5, 6 and 7) in a single shell. The 12g/cc cast tungsten lets hunters drop one shot size from lead for the same lethality. Hevi-Shot’s Magnum Blend Turkey line now consists of five load options. MSRP: $61.99/Hevi-18/Box of five; $39.99/Magnum/Box of fivewww.hevishot.comIrish Setter Fifty BootThe 6-inch leather Setter Fifty Boot from Irish Setter delivers a powerful combination of classic styling and modern features that provides a comfortable fit for after work or after the hunt. Updated for a new generation, this boot takes its cues from the original Irish Setter boot, including the iconic white wedge sole, pinched moc stitching detail and a timeless silhouette. Full-grain leather is sustainably sourced, and the outsole is constructed from 51 percent recycled content. The CuShin comfort tongue reduces pressure on the shin and a highly breathable stretch nylon collar adds ankle comfort. Setter Fifty boots also have a pull loop that makes them easy to get on and off. MSRP: $169.99www.irishsetterboots.comRavin R50X CrossbowThe all-new Ravin R50X Crossbow was designed to enhance and extend the overall user experience — its DuoMax Cam System combining technological advancements that revolutionized the crossbow hunting experience. The DuoMax cam collaborates seamlessly with advanced string technology to achieve an impressive 360-degree rotation, transferring massive amounts of harnessed energy with maximum rotational stabilization. The R50X delivers a staggering velocity of 505 fps with a 400-grain arrow and boasts a sleek axle-to-axle width of 4 inches when cocked (8 inches when un-cocked). Other key features include the Versa-draw Cocking System, with a minimal 12 pounds of cocking force, Trac-trigger Firing System, allowing for straight-line nock travel, Frictionless Flight System and a Silent Cocking System. MSRP: $2,449.99www.ravincrossbows.comRemington Premier AccuTip Muzzleloader BulletsRemington Ammunition has announced a new bullet exclusively engineered for muzzleloaders, the Premier AccuTip MZ. Designed for muzzleloader hunting with both modern or traditional .50-caliber rifles, it provides exceptional accuracy and dramatic performance on big game. The Premier AccuTip MZ’s bonded 260-grain bullet is guided by the innovative Power Port tip, the same technology used in Remington’s popular Premier AccuTip rifled shotgun slugs. On impact, the tip enables quick expansion for deadly energy transfer while the bonded bullet provides optimal penetration and 97 percent+ weight retention. Tested and accurate with all leading muzzleloading propellants, Premier AccuTip MZ’s bonded bullets are paired with an easy loading sabot for quick reloads. MSRP: $22.99/Package of 12www.remington.comRinehart Bighorn Sheep TargetThe Signature 1/2-Scale Bighorn Sheep Target is engineered with precision and crafted from Rinehart’s renowned Signature solid, self-healing foam — allowing archers to experience the thrill of a bighorn sheep hunt right in their own backyard. This 3D target is anatomically reduced to 1/2-scale size of a simulated 140-pound ram, which means shooting at 30 yards feels like taking a 60-yard shot in the wild. The target features the company’s patented Signature series replaceable locking insert (sold separately) to further enhance the longevity of the target. Incorporated score lines help facilitate practice of shot placement, enhancing shooting precision. Additionally, the 1/2-scale Bighorn Sheep target accommodates both compound bows and crossbows, catering to a diverse range of archers and their preferences. MSRP: $350www.rinehart3d.comSavage 110 Magpul Scout RifleThe Savage Arms 110 Magpul Scout Rifle features an updated iron sight system, full length extended Picatinny rail and Magpul Hunter stock — engineered to perform in any environment, whether it’s hunting, target shooting or tactical applications. It is equipped with a 16.5-inch matte black button-rifle barrel with muzzle brake, integrated and removable rear peep sights and a fully adjustable AR-15 style front sight post for elevation. Magpul rifle stocks are well known for exceptional grip that produces rapid and accurate target acquisition. The 110 Magpul Scout and its Magpul Hunter stock with aluminum bedding block provides the user with consistent and long-lasting performance in a wide variety of shooting conditions. MSRP: $1,099www.savagearms.comSitka Turkey Tool BeltThe Turkey Tool Belt from Sitka combines innovative features to ensure easy terrain navigation, call management and overall preparedness — allowing hunters to maneuver the woods with confidence without being weighed down by a conventional turkey vest. This minimalistic call- and gear-management system merges the simplicity of a hip pack with the specialized storage of a full-featured vest. To deploy, simply drop the removable seat pad and spin the pack to the front of the body to access an array of call pockets. There is plenty of room for other essentials, plus compression straps to secure added layers often necessary for unruly spring weather. The molded front call pocket stows two pot calls, four strikers and six diaphragm calls. MSRP: $229www.sitkagear.comWeatherby Sorix Semi-Auto ShotgunWeatherby recently added the optics-ready Sorix Semi-Auto Shotgun to its esteemed firearms lineup, designed for reliability, performance and adaptability — built on the field proven inertia recoil system. The durable, ergonomic Sorix uniquely accommodates left-handed hunters with Weatherby’s Shift System — a cut on the left side of the receiver allows lefties to easily swap the charging handle, and the safety can be reversed. Other key features include a competition cut receiver and oversize controls, stepped rib and LPA fiber-optic sight, adjustable stock shims, hand-painted brush patterns — Midnight Marsh, Storm and Slough — and the Crio Plus choke system: MSRP: $1,499www.weatherby.com

Hunters have prided themselves as being the “original conservationists.” They’re rightfully boastful of that moniker. After all, the hunting licenses, stamps and permit fees hunters pay go directly into wildlife conservation in their states and across the nation. It’s not just hunters paying into those conservation investments. Recreational target shooters and non-hunting gun owners are an increasingly significant part of that equation. Every firearm and ammunition manufacturer pays an 11% tax on long guns and ammunition and a 10% tax on handguns that goes directly to the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Trust Program.That fund, commonly called the Pittman-Robertson excise tax, was responsible for generating over $1.6 billion in funds apportioned back to the states for wildlife conservation and increased access to public lands and recreational shooting opportunities in 2023 alone. About 90% of the money funding the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program (WSFR) can be sourced to the Pittman-Robertson excise taxes paid by firearm and ammunition manufacturers.What’s more is everyday gun owners and recreational target shooters, who may never go afield to chase wild game, are overwhelmingly supportive of firearm and ammunition manufacturers, the same ones they support, paying that excise tax so everyone can enjoy abundant wildlife and access to public lands.Survey Says… A survey conducted by Responsive Management, in partnership with the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (SEAFWA), found that 86% of gun owners and recreational target marksmen and women who don’t hunt support the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Program. That’s an incredible level of support for non-hunters to support a tax that’s been investing over $25 billion in wildlife conservation since 1937, when adjusted for inflation.Those findings also show incredible support for the firearm and ammunition industry to continue to support these conservation investments through the excise taxes on firearms and ammunition even as the customers buying these products continues to shift over generations.The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Program was established in 1937, a time when most gun and ammunition buyers were hunters. This was the model of the “user-pay, user-benefit” system whereby hunters who harvested wild game would be supporting the manufacturers of the products they use — in this case firearms and ammunition. Those manufacturers pay an excise tax to reinvest a portion of their proceeds to sustaining healthy wildlife and the habitats in which those animals thrive.Over time, recreational target shooting grew in popularity as a sport, even as hunting numbers have waned in comparison with population growth across America. That means today’s wildlife conservation efforts are increasingly funded by recreational target shooters and everyday gun owners. Those particular firearm owners might never go into the fields, woods and marshes, but they’re overwhelmingly supportive knowing that the tax the manufacturers pay on the firearms and ammunition they’re purchasing is ensuring that everyone in America — hunters and non-hunters alike — are able to benefit from the wildlife conservation investments made by the excise taxes paid by manufacturers.That support is more than a passing thought to non-hunting gun owners and recreational target shooters. Of that 86% that indicated they supported the excise tax, 52% — over half — responded with strong support to the survey. Just 3% were opposed to the tax and another 12% were neutral.Later questions in the survey revealed that 9 out of 10 non-hunters were proud to support conservation investments and 8 out of 10 non-hunters feel connected to wildlife and conservation.Conservationists RedefinedThis might not be all that surprising to those of us “inside the industry.” We’re routinely exposed to gun owners from all walks of life daily. This is an industry that takes pride in our responsibility to conservation. Our customers share that passion — even if they never choose to harvest wild game.Still, those findings — especially the overwhelmingly high percentage of non-hunters who support the excise taxes manufacturers pay for wildlife conservation investments — were surprising for the architects of the survey.“I expected that there would be support for the Federal Aid program, but not to this extent,” said Responsive Management Executive Director Mark Damian Duda. “I thought there would be more opposition from gun owners and shooters who feel that any tax revenue they generate should go back strictly to shooting projects. Instead, what we saw is that most gun owners and shooters care about wildlife conservation, even if they don’t hunt. Support for Pittman-Robertson exists across the board, with sizable majorities of every demographic group within the sample favoring the program. This is encouraging news and should give legislators a clear sense of how vital the Wildlife Restoration program is. It should also put to rest any ideas of using it for any other purpose.”The notion of a “conservationist” needs an update. It started with hunters dedicated to ensuring that abundant wildlife and public land access was available to future generations of hunters. Today, that’s not confined to men and women with blaze orange caps and camouflage waders. Today’s conservationists proudly include those at indoor ranges, sporting clays courses and next-door neighbors who own a firearm for self-defense.It’s a moniker we’re proud to share.

Moultrie’s feeders and trail cameras have been industry staples for years, and today the company’s mobile features are leading the way into the future.

Air rifles are hotter than ever, and more capable than you might have realized.

One of the great joys of my life has been the process of success, not necessarily success itself. To me, anything in life achieved through hard work and perseverance means so much more than something gained easily, with no sweat equity. I first learned that lesson in sports. I was a huge fan of the early Green Bay Packers and their legendary coach, Vince Lombardi, who once famously said, “Success is like anything worthwhile. It has a price. You have to pay the price to win and you have to pay the price to get to the point where success is possible. Most important, you must pay the price to stay there.” I was never the biggest, fastest or strongest, but I was willing to pay the price in both time and effort, and fortunately, I did achieve some success.This was a lesson applied to all I did in life, believing, as Mick Jagger once said, “Everything worth doing is worth overdoing.”When the hunting bug bit me, I went at it with all I had. Not being raised in a hunting household and before the internet made information gathering as easy as clicking a mouse, I read magazines and books and spent much of my free time exploring the woods. I wrote my first outdoor columns back in the mid-1970s and got my first full-time job in the business in 1978. In my mid-20s living out West, I wanted to hunt mule deer and elk in the high mountain country I’d read so much about. So I started training physically all year round to be able to hunt backcountry areas on foot, filled file cabinets with topographic maps and harvest statistics, and spent countless hours in libraries and state land offices searching for little public-land hidey holes where access in and around private ranches was not easily found.I’d always been a rifle shooter, and started handloading in the ’70s, which was required to achieve the sub-MOA accuracy you can get today with most any mid-priced rifle and factory ammo. Then the bowhunting bug bit me, in no small part because I found punching tags with a rifle was starting to become pretty easy. Because sneaking into bow range of any animal was, and still is, really hard, and learning to put together and maintain an accurate compound bow-and-arrow setup requires a huge commitment of time for regular practice sessions, I was all in. When I worked in the Los Angeles area for Petersen’s Hunting magazine, I helped start, and was the first editor of, Petersen’s Bowhunting magazine. So, three days a week I would get up at 0400 for an hour’s run, then drive an hour on the cusp of freeway rush hour to a public park where I could shoot my bows for an hour, then drive 45 minutes to a gym I belonged to so I could shower and change, then be at my desk by 0900. It was a pain in the petunias, but it enabled me to be a successful bowhunter. And those successes were all the sweeter because of it.This all came home to me last November, when I hunted mule deer in Arizona with a young man in his mid-20s. The difference between he and I at the same age was like night and day. It was classic old school vs. new school. I doubt he could have navigated the country without OnX on his smartphone; he’d never used a topographic map in his life. Decked out in high-dollar Kuiu clothing, he had probably 10 grand worth of optics, an expensive custom rifle and scope with custom ballistic turret, and he bragged about how he and his buddies could shoot a deer out to half a mile. Like most Gen Z’ers I’ve met, he had no idea who some of the “old school” heroes of hunting are, nor did he have knowledge of the history of how modern hunting came to be, the evolution of modern equipment, or even what the Pittman-Robertson Act was. He did not spend any time or money supporting groups like Sportsman’s Alliance or have knowledge of the political issues that threaten hunting today. His hunting life revolved around technology and a plan on how, over the next two decades, he might be able to draw a handful of premium-unit mule deer and elk tags out West. Why read a book when you can watch multiple minutes-long “horn porn” videos on the phone?Time does indeed march on. Today, it seems to me, more and more of the younger generation are into instant success. Why spend all that time and energy to become proficient with a compound bow when you can take a new high-tech, scoped crossbow out of the box and immediately hit the bull’s-eye at 50-plus yards, shot after shot? Why learn to stalk close to a buck, bull or bear when you can snipe it at with the aid of a ballistic turret? Why spend all that time sharpening a knife when you can quickly switch a dull blade for one that’s scalpel sharp? Why spend countless days afield learning to become a real woodsman when electronics can do your scouting for you? Why take the time to carefully craft a short written piece describing your time on a hunt, each word carefully chosen to stimulate another’s imagination, when you can create short video segments on your smartphone, then post them to your social media accounts for all the world to see?While I’m not a “get off my lawn” guy, I do wonder where the reliance on technology will take us. What about you? Is this good or bad, or does it make any difference at all? Drop me a note at editor@grandviewoutdoors.com and let me know. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Lever action rifles are hotter than ever. And we’re not just saying that with no facts and figures to back up the assertion.

Making employees feel they matter is critical to retention, engagement and good health.

Help your patrons get the best possible performance from their rifles with the latest and greatest in hunting optics.

Making employees feel they matter is critical to retention, engagement and good health.

Help your patrons get the best possible performance from their rifles with the latest and greatest in hunting optics.