2011 Shot Show: MAX Attendance

It's hard to find a place to start writing about the 2011 Shot Show.  All of us know that the hunting and shooting industry is big, but I'm here to tell you, the Shot Show is HUMONGOUS!!!

This year was the 50th anniversary of the Shot Show and it is the largest and most recognized hunting & shooting show in the world.  In fact, it is in top 10 of the largest trade shows on the planet! 

The Shot Show is an industry show and is not open to the public.  It's the show where a lot of yearly deals are made between the manufacturers and dealers and distributors across the country and around the world.  There is almost nothing for sale that you can walk out the door with.

I've attended the past two years to build relationships between MAX and the manufacturers, it's the place for me to meet the decision makers such as PR and marketing people, and most importantly, the CEO's & owners are on hand.

Shot is also a place to meet celebraties from our industry.  This week I was privileged to meet Chuck Mawhinney, Vincent Hancock and Jon Michael McGarth.

Chuck was credited with 103 confirmed NVA-VC kills and 216 probables as a Marine Sniper.  Having met Carlos Hathcock many years ago, I can now say I've met two of the most famous Snipers in the World and both are American Heroes.

I was also on-hand to meet two fine young men like Vincent Hancock and Jon Michael McGrath.  Both are true world class trap & skeet shooters.  Vincent is an Olympic Gold Medalist and holds other world and national titles.  Jon Michael currently holds 19 (NINETEEN!) World Skeet titles and 9 National titles!

These two very fine young men are not just great competitors, they are now using their status to work with youth through the Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation.

We were lucky enough to be invited to the Mississippi, POMA, Brownells , Alpen & Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation Breakfast which was held at the Venetian Hotel.  It was great to see old friends like Lisa Methany of Outdoor Inspirations 

and to meet new ones like Matt Buckingham of Brownells

and Doug Gilmer of Gilmer Outdoors.

Catching up (and having lunch with) great friends who live across the country is a bonus, like Kevin Reese of Just-Hunt.com 

and finally putting faces to people we've talked to on the phone a million times, like John Phillips of Night Hawk Publications 

is really a bonus to attending this show.

Another fun part of the Shot Show is it's location:  Las Vegas, NV. 

So after hitting the floor hard each day for 8 hours, meeting and greeting so we can pass on information to the muzzleloading consumer on new products and upgrades on old ones, we hit the Strip!  After all, what's the fun of "all work and no play"...

So after the show closed each night we explored Vegas.  Kathy (my wife) had never been to Vegas before and we both had a great time, almost like a second honeymoon!

This is actually a photo of us at The Sportsmans Channel Awards Banquet, what a blast that was!!

I'll close this article letting you know that we met some great people and will share more about that over the next few weeks.  The two big ones to look for in upcoming posts will be some in-sight into the new Knight Rifles and Leupold....there is a lot of good stuff coming from both of these companies!