BY JIM NIEMIEC
LAS VEGAS – The world’s largest shooting venue was held last month and it showcased a huge selection of sporting rifles, black guns, shotguns, ammunition, pistols, knives, hunting accessories, hunting gear, along with just about every product available on the market for tactical gear and law enforcement. Unfortunately, this annual show is not open to the general public, as it’s a marketing event and to introduce new products for sporting arms dealers across America to see what’s new for 2024.
There were over 12,500 exhibitors at this show, representing over 100 countries, that saw an attendance of over 50,000 gun enthusiasts. Surprisingly, at this year’s show there seemed to be a new trend in the making. Over the last decade, the focus of the show had been on black guns, tactical gear and law enforcement products, but this year there seemed to be a bigger presence of pistol and knife exhibitors.
This Western Outdoor News senior hunting writer spent two days at the show covering the two main floors of the show and barely had enough time to check out most all the booths. Big names in the shooting sports industry showed cased new products in giant booths with extreme lighting with well-staffed representatives close at hand.
New hunting rifles and shotguns were the main attraction of many attendees and there would be a waiting-line to check out the latest firearm. Winchester newest rifle is the Ranger, a 22 rimfire rifle featuring a lever action. This appears to be an ideal plinking rifle with its 15-round tube-feeding magazine and light weight, it kind of reminded this shooter of handling an old Red Ryder BB gun. Savage introduced their 110 Ultralite Elite, CVA’s Cascade with a LR Hunter, Benelli’s newest the Lupo HPR, Beretta announced the release of their A300 Ultima SG Arctic Fox, Glock 9mm pistols, Reminton with a Mdl. 870 FieldMaster Synthetic, Smith and Wesson presented its Response PCC, Browning introduced the A5 auto 20 ga. shotgun, Mossberg with 4 new turkey models and many new rail-type platform rifles and tactical accessories.
Legacy Sports International will be offering 11 new rifle models in 2024 with the HOWA Superlite, in Kings camo, being their most featured model rifle weighing only 4LBS, 3OZ., Charles Daly, one of the oldest names in shooting sports unveiled the CD Empire shotgun, which features three barrels. The most impressive big bore rifle on the show room floor was Barrett’s Mradelr Extreme Long Range rifle featuring a 50 caliber magazine that can shoot a 661 gr. bullet with accuracy over 2 miles. There were also a number of other big bore rifles to check out and gun-mounted vehicles, law enforcement SWAT armored trucks and military type specialty units.
Shotgun ammunition and custom big bore cartridge exhibitors were a big draw for many attending the show. Heading the show with new ammo were products from Federal, Hevi-SHOT and Remington. Federal’s TSS turkey ammo is sold in a 5 round box featuring tungsten-alloy shot that is deadly out to 50 yards, the company’s new Hi-Bird bismuth No. 5 shot is new for 2024 and Hevi-Shot XII shotgun shell ammo is loaded up with tungsten shot that is 53.8 percent denser than steel. Wolf Shot shells, manufactured right here in Placentia, CA, manufactures steel 12 ga. waterfowl loads with a muzzle velocity of 1425 fps.
There were thousands of hunting accessories and related hunting gear products to check out too. Mojo Decoy’s, booth was filled with action decoys topped by the new spinning-wings mallard model, Caddis/Waterfowl Wading Systems, caddiswaders.com, showed new camo chest waders and accessories to keep boot-foot waders snug on your heal. Trijicon, Burris, Steiner, Swarovski and Aimpoint optic companies unveiled hundreds of different scopes and optics for all kinds of application(s) when in the field hunting. Camo manufactures were well represented with Realtree APX and Mossy Oak dominating not only apparel, but the choice for both shotgun and rifle stocks and barrels and many other shooting sports accessories and gear.
