Hope you don’t think I am complaining but coming back to you after a trip to SHOT Show, I am even more trail weary than usual. Yes I ventured once again to beautiful, wonderful, exciting, and awful Las Vegas. Vegas is you will recall where every year the trade show known as SHOT, Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade show is held. SHOT, as we have discussed before is THE place for all things in the shooting, hunting and firearms related world.
How big is SHOT Show? It is immense and it keeps getting bigger. The 2024 SHOT Show had more than 2,500 exhibitors on the exhibit floor, including the Supplier Showcase. SHOT is the largest event held at The Venetian Expo, and 2022 marked the expansion of the show to Caesars Forum. Total exhibit space for the 2024 show in these two venues will be more than 816,000 net square feet—equivalent to more than 18 acres or enough space to park 547 F-16 fighter jets. The SHOT Show boasts 13.9 miles of aisles, a distance more than half a marathon. This is the 45th annual SHOT Show, the first SHOT Show was in 1979 in St. Louis, Missouri, and the 2021 show was virtual due to the pandemic. This will be the 24th SHOT Show in Las Vegas, no other city has hosted more SHOT Shows, and Las Vegas has been home to the show continuously since 2010.
So maybe you get the idea that SHOT is big and I am glad to report this in that it shows the firearms, hunting and shooting industry is doing well. In truth by the second day of the show it seems that I have walked those fourteen miles of aisles at least twice. Your feet hurt, your back hurts, and you would really like to go somewhere and lay down but there is always something new to go see and check out. SHOT Show is immense, overwhelming, exhausting, and wonderful all at the same time. It is in fact the source, the fount, of all things new in the shooting and firearms industry. So for a humble gun writer like myself it is the place to be although the trail getting there and back is not for the faint of heart. (Did you know you had to go through Seattle Washington to fly back to Atlanta? I didn’t either)
I left the great state of West Virginia during the artic cold front which of course caused several delays that morning, but somehow I made it to Atlanta for my connection and on to the balmy climate of Vegas (highs of maybe 50 degrees). I arrived early in Vegas to take in Industry Day on the Range where you are transported on buses to a huge shooting facility in the desert, the Boulder Rifle and Pistol Club, near Boulder City Nevada. Like SHOT itself, range day can be equally intimidating as there is a lot of walking and a lot to see. The good part is you can visit the booths of dozens of companies and shoot the firearms they are offering for the new year (and shoot their ammo). Since I have never been overly bashful about shooting other peoples ammo I took a deep dive into what was offered. As I will nowhere near be able to tell about all I saw in this column, I will try a few highlights.
It would be an outright lie if I didn’t say how pleased I was to see the new handgun from Ruger, a Super Redhawk model chambered in .22 Hornet. It just struck me as very cool that they chose this caliber to put in this big revolver. The handgun has 9 ½” heavy barrel and since the .22 Hornet has a negligible recoil to begin with makes this gun a pleasure to shoot. I started noticing that while talking about the Hornet on the range I may have got a few strange looks. I dawned on me that many of the younger shooters have no history with the Hornet and know little about it. Back in the day (at least 50 years ago) there is no telling how many deer the .22 Hornet accounted for. As we are in a time when some are routinely hunting whitetail deer with .300 Magnums and the like some will just be aghast at the thought of hunting deer with this little cartridge. While I am not really advocating using the Hornet for deer, believe me when I tell you it has taken more than its share of venison. Good bullets and bullet placement mean everything.Â
This Ruger Redhawk in .22 Hornet will be an excellent choice for small game, varmint hunting, and different competitions like NRA Silhouette matches. (www.ruger.com)
While I saw many shotgun goodies at SHOT, I must say that the new offering from Mossberg, the Mossberg International Silver Reserve Eventide over and under turkey gun is something. This gun is so sexy mostly because of its 20” barrels, which will make it light and fast handling and less chance of that sapling or limb being in the way when you are taking a bead on that gobblers head this spring. Long ago I told you how Jim Crumbley (inventor of Trebark camouflage) first enlightened me to the advantages of using an over under shotgun for gobbler hunting with two different choke tubes, one for close shots, one for farther away. This new Mossberg shotgun decked out in Mossy Oak Greenleaf camo will be perfect for all that. (www.mossberg.com)
Like I said, we wouldn’t have room this time for all the wonders at SHOT Show, so we will take it up next time. For now, boy am I glad to be home!
Larry Case