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If anything can be said of 2021, it is that it was one strange year. In spite of the national and global circumstances, people were still spending money like it was being printed on a never-ending copy machine… Anyway, we are at the end of this year, hanging out and hanging onto the ledge of the unknown. My apologies to New Riders of the Purple Sage for stealing their lyric. While I do take poetic license on occasion, what is not exaggerated or plagiarized are the facts represented below. You, our customers, have spoken with your wallets on our products.

Passing on the shooting tradition to the next generations is a goal that both Ruger and Umarex USA share. While the Ruger brand has historically been associated with firearms, Umarex has been producing licensed air guns in conjunction with Ruger for over a decade. One of the newer additions to our line-up of officially licensed Ruger airguns is the Ruger NXG APX pump pneumatic rifle kit. Yes, kit! That means everything you need to get started is included in the box.

I do not recall a time in my life where we’ve depended so much on the abilities of third-party shippers to get products the last mile. The last mile is industry jargon for store-to-consumer. Most of my life this was a matter of going to the store and picking up the items I wanted in person. In this “order it online” world we live in, there is an incredible amount of shopping done from our computers and especially our mobile phones. The world of commerce has always rolled on commercial shippers’ wheels, but not like it’s rolling today.

Shooting, whether it be a rifle, pistol, powder burner, airgun, or bow and arrow, is a lifetime sport. You don’t have to be a super fit athlete to enjoy shooting. You can be young, old, healthy, and super fit or disabled and still take great joy from recreational shooting. One of my favorite Instagram accounts is a fellow across the pond who shoots a rimfire target pistol and does quite well with it despite his vision issues. The point being, shooting is an activity a wide audience of people can participate in. So what does this have to do with breaking in a break barrel rifle? Glad you asked.

It’s not a trade secret. Even the most daft among us know that there’s some weirdness afoot in the global and local markets. If you haven’t heard the clarion call to start getting stuff stocked up now, whether it be for Christmas or whatever-- here it is one more time. If something you want is in stock, you had better get it now rather than wait. This isn’t a bold sales pitch. It’s just a fact that you need to get used to. Even though the Christmas shopping season is still officially a few weeks away from its usual start, if you are not shopping now you are way behind the curve. This is a crazy world where anything can happen. With the past as a predictor, we have learned to expect the unexpected.

November is here. It can be said with reasonable authority that the contiguous United States is experiencing the first really cool month. In some places, it might be getting downright cold, but here in the south, the HVAC unit is officially kicked over to the heat side for the next 4-5 months. November is a month that represents, at least to my feeble mind, high school football games and hot chocolate, early mornings in the tree stand, getting together with the family for thanksgiving, and the frenzy of Christmas shopping that begins seconds after the plates are cleared and the turkey-induced coma starts.

Nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news, but unfortunately, someone has to do it. OK, this isn’t really bad news, per se, just news you are not expecting in October. The Christmas shopping season is still a turn of the calendar page away from its usual start. But this is a brave new world and nothing is happening as it usually does. As you might be aware there is a bit of a hold-up with shipping and transportation these days. This is simply a fact of life for the brave new world we’ve been thrust into. Here’s what we do know: We are expecting replenishment shipments of many items to come in from now until the very tail end of the Christmas shopping season. Yes, we do plan on offering some killer deals around the Black Friday--Cyber Monday time frame, but there are some items in the inventory right now that will not wait around for a month or more and they won’t be replenished before Christmas.

Arkansas outdoorsman and outdoors advocate, Howard Robinson, has passed away. He slipped into eternity doing one of the things he loved so dearly, sitting in his tree stand waiting for a buck on the opening day of muzzleloading season. Of note for the airgun industry, Howard was absolutely crucial in bringing big bore airgunning advocates and Arkansas State Game & Fish officials together to legalize big bore airgun hunting here in the Natural State. We thought it appropriate to re-share this blog entry which chronicles this feat in Howard’s honor.

Umarex has made a GLOCK 17 Gen 5 paintball gun, you have no idea how excited I am! Just to start off, the GLOCK 17 is the original GLOCK. The model 17 was named the 17 after GLOCK had 17 different patents made for the first pistol. It was not well received in the beginning, who wants a polymer gun? The answer now, EVERYONE. It is one of the most popular pistols and the GLOCK fan base continues to grow every day, me being one of them.

Seasons come and go. You know this to be true just by virtue of living in a temperate zone on this earth, assuming, of course, that you are reading this from either North America or Europe... Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and back around again. But the metaphor is not a perfect one, as in our lives we transition from one season to another never to return to the previous season. Having kids is a good example of this. They are babies, then toddlers, the school-aged… and so on. Once that season is done, the kids move on and we parents do too, into the next thing that is coming around the bend.