The day before the SHOT Show begins, there’s a pre-show event: the Industry Day at the Range.
Industry Day at the Range is almost a separate show itself. Around 200 manufacturers invite media people – like me – and special customers to see and shoot the latest guns that will be displayed at the SHOT Show.
In fact, there are TWO Days at the Range. One is for a wide variety of manufacturers – the other is held by just one manufacturer – SIG SAUER – to showcase their own products.
Both these Range Days are held at shooting ranges about 25 miles outside Las Vegas. Unfortunately in opposite directions from each other! This makes the logistics somewhat challenging…
Industry Day at the Range is a noisy affair. There’s loads of people, lots of little tented booths and a huge amount of firing taking place. This is primarily a firearms event and the happy sound of full auto firearms being discharged with enthusiasm is all around!
Two airgun companies took space at the Industry Day at the Range. One was Gamo, the other Umarex. They were placed right next to each other.
Gamo’s main product was the new Swarm Maxxim. This is the new 10-shot repeating breakbarrel air rifle. I was told that the MSRP is to be $249.00.
Here are some close-ups of the magazine housing. Every time the barrel is broken and cocked the magazine indexes the next pellet into position. It’s a simple concept that’s almost certainly not so simple to make work well!
It seems as though the repeating mechanism of the Gamo Swarm Maxxim must obscure the view through the scope. But amazingly, it did not, at least so long as the Gamo scope on the gun was set to more than about 4x magnification.
Gamo also was showing a new PCP air rifle, a new BSA R10 version.
And there was also the new Gamo Urban PCP air rifle among the many airguns they had at Industry Day at the Range.
Interestingly, Gamo were also featuring two “no name” big bore PCP air rifles. It was not clear if these models will actually become Gamo products in future, but their source was fairly obvious. They were both clearly Evanix-manufactured air rifles: one the Rex, the other a Rainstorm. They are first and third on the table below.
UmarexUSA was showing the Umarex Gauntlet PCP air rifle. This 10-shot bolt action model has a MSRP of $299.00. Both .177 and .22 caliber versions of Gauntlet were being shot at Industry Day at the Range.
Above, that’s UmarexUSA Marketing Director Justin – JB – Biddle showing off the new Umarex Gauntlet.
Unfortunately, Umarex did not show the new Hammer big bore air rifle at the Day at the Range. However, I was promised that it will be on the show floor at the SHOT Show.
Then it was back to the Las Vegas Strip and onto another bus to the SIG SAUER Range Day.
SIG SAUER were showcasing their existing range of airguns, together with the new 1911-style BB pistols and the forthcoming P250 pistol. The latter is a pellet-firing gun that includes an interesting 30-shot belt feed magazine. This belt feed magazine is similar in concept to the arrangement used on the SIG SAUER MCX and MPX long guns, but it is loaded without the need to remove the belt from the magazine.
SIG SAUER’s new pistol models have already been revealed in Hard Air Magazine, that’s why we have less detail in this report. But it was interesting to see a large number of firearms journalists who were very interested in SIG SAUER’s airguns. Things are definitely changing in the shooting world: airguns are steadily becoming such more mainstream.
Phew! So, that’s Industry Day at the Range at the 2017 SHOT Show – at least the airgun part of it. The main show opens tomorrow. HAM will be carrying full day-by-day reports of what we see, as we see it.
Keep checking back to HAM every day to keep up with all the news…
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