Shooting Industry Masters – July 2010
What a fantastic weekend! I just got back from the Shooting Industry Masters a two day shooting event put on by FMG Publications. You know them better by their magazine titles, “Guns Magazine”, “American Handgunner”, “American Cop”, and “Shooting Industry”. Every year they put on an industry shoot with teams entered from Brownells, Sinclair, Remington, Hornady, Smith & Wesson, Ruger, Colt, and DPMS, just to name a few. The two day shoot is comprised of shotgun, pistol, and rifle stages. There is an Open Division for the pro shooters and an Industry Division for the casual shooters.
This year, the event was held in Grand Island, Nebraska at the Heartland Shooting Park. What a great facility the folks in Grand Island have built for shooters. The entire city welcomed us with open arms. You don’t know how great it is to walk into your hotel (Best Western) and have the front desk staff welcome you with your firearm, hospitality package, and a smile. That warm reception was typical of the response we received throughout Grand Island.
I arrived on Thursday having drove over during the morning with Pete Brownell, the president of Brownells, Inc., our parent company. Pete and I joined up with several other Brownell guys at the Hornady Manufacturing facility (maker of premium bullets, ammunition, and reloading tools). We were greeted by Steve and Jason Hornady who gave us a personal tour of their facility. Each time I visit Hornady, I am impressed by their growth but also by their continued commitment to quality and customer service. Even though I have toured it several times it continues to fascinate me to watch the bullet go from lead billets and flat copper sheet to the finished product. Hornady has also been making quite a bit of their own brass in the past decade and that is an enjoyable process to watch as well.
After touring Hornady, we all returned to the hotel and got cleaned up for the welcoming dinner co-sponsored by the Grand Island Economic Development group, the Grand Island Sports Council and Hornady. This warm reception reinforced our earlier impression that guns are definitely welcomed in Nebraska.
The next day we got up early and headed to the range. Our team consisted of Frank Brownell, the CEO and second generation of Brownells; Matt Buckingham, the Chief Operations Officer; our captain Monty Crain, the head of Brownells technical group; and myself. The other folks from Brownells also split into four-man teams. The day was extremely hot and humid and our team was scheduled to shoot a 100 round sporting clays course. Fortunately we didn’t start until 10:30 am which gave the temperature some time to really get nice and pleasant (read this with sarcasm!). We all did fairly well with the sporting clays range except for one very tough station that had two crossing shots that we eventually figured out had the lead of about a Suburban. The throwers were mounted up on tall poles way off the ground and threw straight across in front of you at a pretty fair distance. It was really difficult to force yourself to put that much lead on a bird. I was actually pretty happy with my own performance in shotgun not having shot it much. Oh Bill, don’t worry there is still pistol tomorrow.
The best part of the day other than shooting was getting to meet a lot of friends from the industry and also make some new ones. The high point for me was meeting the guys from Team HAVA. HAVA stands for Honored American Veterans Afield. We kept bumping into these guys on the shotgun stages and then naturally kept seeing them over the two day event. What a fun bunch of guys. They were tickled to be there and having a blast shooting up the course. Obviously, these guys could really shoot. These gentlemen were a great representative of our United States military and we were glad they were able to join us for a couple of days of fun shooting. It amazes me how someone can classify an overpaid athlete or actor as a hero. I’m telling you, these guys are true American heroes and it was an honor and privilege to shoot beside them.
That night we had the Academy of Excellence Awards presented by the FMG team. A couple of awards that were particularly noteworthy; 1) Brownells won the Accessory of the Year for their AR15 Builder program, this is the online program that allows you to configure your AR with different accessories and see what it looks like before you order it. 2) Brownells also won Distributor of the Year, which was quite an accomplishment. Brownells works hard to take care of their dealers and the industry definitely agreed. 3) Hornady won Ammunition of the Year for their Superperformance Ammo. 4) The hands down sentimental award was for Industry Citizen of the Year, which went to our friend Hewitt Grant, the CEO/President from Ellett Brothers. He is a fine representative of the shooting industry, a classic gentleman and very worthy of this honor. Along with the awards, we had a very enjoyable dinner and a few adult beverages.
Day 2 started out with completely different weather – cool and breezy. Our team moved over to the rifle range and shot two different courses of fire that were timed events. Clangers at 100 yards and then short range plates with a S&W M&P 1522. Our team did pretty well with the rifles – good hits but not blazingly fast. Then we moved to the short gun ranges – pistol. This year was all about the wheel guns. We shot double actions in .38 Special at plates in a timed event (three stations and two run-throughs) and then did the same with double actions in .22 LR on a slightly different course. The best part was watching the pro shooters eat up the plates. It amazes me how fast they can move on the targets. I did better on the pistol than last year but still have a long way to go before I could be considered a pistol shooter. Then we started to shoot some of the side matches. Those are just for fun and not part of the team competition. Some of our guys shot the 3-Gun Side match and did fairly well. Frank Brownell and I headed over to the long-range match which was being shot for group. Frank and I both chose to shoot 6.5 Creedmoors. The groups were being measured with acoustical measuring devices which I hadn’t used before. You got one sighter and 5 shots for group. It was a little breezy and we really didn’t have much wind reference (no flags). Frank shot a 2.85” and I shot a 2.92” group, I hate to lose! Nice shooting Frank!
That night we had another dinner and more adult beverages and passed out the awards. First place in the Industry Division was Smith & Wesson Team III. First place in the Open (pro) Division was Team Hornady. Then a raffle was held to sponsor the First Shots Program ($32,000 raised) and some firearms were auctioned to help sponsor the USA Shooting Team (some of their members were present).
In all, it was a very enjoyable event and a good way to meet your industry peers in a non-business setting. Thanks go to the FMG team for outdoing themselves, it was a well ran event. Also, thanks to Hornady for doing all they did to make the even successful. I know they shut down a lot of presses and had a lot of their own staff working out on the range both days. Thanks guys for your support out there.
Good Shooting,
Bill G