SHOTSHOW Report 2024
For all gun owners attending ShotShow is a fairytale dream of mind blowing proportions. With over 800,000 square feet of booths, products, salesmen, and guns, the place is overwhelming to put it mildly.
It's really easy to get sidetracked by new fangled products that really have no place in the market. However, it's really worth attending for the great people and products that are in the market from great companies like Primary Weapon Systems in Boise, Genesis arms in Northern Idaho, and Uintah Precision out of northern Utah. These are just a few of the crazy cool manufacturers we ran into this year.
Uintah precision is a manufacturer of AR patterned bolt action rifles with the butteriest smoothest actions and wicked good triggers. We can't wait to shoot them. Primary arms is one we were already exposed to as we own one and it is a beautiful piece of machinery. --Half mile shots are easy peasy with their AR-15s with an Eotech.
Genesis arms is known to anyone who watches Garand Thumb because they showcased the semi/full auto shotgun recently.
There were also fun items with no real use but for goofing around like the StarWars blaster in 22 Long Rifle. It was pretty legit. I admit I want one for no good reason except to have it.
Apex Optics was the stand out new optics manufacturer at the show with all their new offerings. If you haven't heard of them here's a link to their amazing products which are already winning PRS matches. Not too shabby right off the start.
On the flip side there was way too much foreign made nonsense copycat garbage on site too. Why they bother I couldn't tell you because no one was having any of it.
But the really big stand out of the show was how many products were there that are meant to replace solid knowledge and understanding. This is really concerning to us because we believe in minimal gear and maximum knowledge; not the other way around.
Warning: Shameless plug. Our courses are built on this principle. People attend and leave with enough knowledge to shoot long ranges with their rifle, scope, and a Kestrel. That's all they need. Our other courses such as our pistol courses are the same. We don't encourage people to run race guns or anything fancy. Learning is key first and once they've developed 99% of their fundamentals to perfection we talk modified pistols.
The show also came with a budget lineup of scopes from Leupold being released and I am super glad to see these. The Mark 4HD lineup is a full line of glass from LPVO up to 5-25x magnification but my favorite is the 4.5-18 with the illuminated reticles. At $1599 these are amazing