Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. has acquired Savage Arms, Inc., the 132-year-old Massachusetts-based rifle and shotgun manufacturer, from JDH Holdings for $160 million. The acquisition combines two historic American firearms manufacturers, with Savage bringing approximately $160 million in annual net sales and 500 employees to create the largest commercial firearms manufacturer in the United States.
Vortex is introducing new Fall/Winter 2026 apparel colors across hoodies, T-shirts, and graphic tees inspired by changing landscapes and colder weather, featuring fresh seasonal colors and new camo options.
Carbon Express Arrows announced that Alexis Ruiz, the 2026 Hyundai Archery World Cup Final Champion in women's compound, has joined its professional shooting team. The 26-year-old from Phoenix, Arizona, defeated Mexico's Dafne Quintero in a shoot-off and earned multiple medals at World Cup Stage 2 in Shanghai alongside teammate James Lutz.
Hornady has been recognized as Ammunition Manufacturer of the Year by the National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers (NASGW) for the fourth consecutive year. Vice President Jason Hornady praised the award and highlighted the company's commitment to innovation and customer service through their wholesale distribution partners.
The Double D Foundation presented its 2026 Patriot Award to Pete Brownell, Chairman of Brownells and 2nd Adventure Group, during its Annual Georgia Banquet on October 15. Brownell was recognized for his leadership, integrity, and commitment to protecting the Second Amendment and advancing shooting sports. The Brownells Foundation also joined the Foundation's Corporate Partners Program.
The National Rifle Association and Second Amendment Foundation filed an amicus brief in United States v. Cordova before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, urging adoption of a dangerousness standard for disarmament challenges. The brief argues that America's historical tradition supports disarming only dangerous persons, not peaceable citizens or nonviolent felons.
The Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association filed an amicus brief in United States v. Cordova, urging the Fifth Circuit to adopt a dangerousness standard for lifetime federal firearms bans. The brief argues that historical tradition supports disarming only dangerous persons, not all felons, and that nonviolent felons who completed their sentences should retain Second Amendment rights.
The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) secured a historic victory in Heeter v. James when U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra, Jr. struck down New York's 2022 body armor ban, holding that defensive body armor is constitutionally protected under the Second Amendment. The court granted FPC summary judgment and issued a permanent injunction against the state's restrictions on purchasing and selling protective armor.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources is using drone-mounted infrared cameras to locate residual fire activity across the Rugged Terrain Complex fires in the Upper Peninsula. Deputy Incident Commander Jennifer Hansen and DNR Fire Specialist Keith Murphy report that suppression efforts are winding down, with firefighters now focusing on mopping up hot spots and monitoring containment lines across the Ridge, Craig Lake, and Black River fires.
The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources is proposing to reinstate a bighorn sheep hunt on the Box Elder, Pilot Mountain unit for 2027 and recommending renewal of 83 Cooperative Wildlife Management Units and Landowner Associations for 2027–2029. Public feedback is being sought through Regional Advisory Council meetings and the Utah Wildlife Board meeting in November and December.
Vermont's regulated land and water trapping seasons open October 24, 2026, according to the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. Land traps for fox, coyote, and raccoon run through December 2026, while water traps for beaver, muskrat, and otter continue through March 2027. Wildlife Biologist Brehan Furfey emphasizes that trappers, hikers, hunters, and skiers have safely shared Vermont's landscape for decades.
The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission is accepting lottery applications for general and landowner mountain lion permits from November 2 through December 4, 2026, for the 2027 hunting season across three units: Pine Ridge, Niobrara, and Wildcat Hills. Season 1 runs January 2 through February 28, 2027.
Whitetail Institute unveiled its redesigned website featuring streamlined shopping for food plot products, educational resources, and expert advice. The new platform offers customers easier access to seed blends, fertilizers, herbicides, and habitat management solutions, plus a comprehensive blog and direct connection to Whitetail Institute experts.
MidwayUSA Foundation's Hometown Challenge raised $1,002,911.19 for youth shooting sports, with $993,777.66 supporting team endowments matched dollar-for-dollar by Larry and Brenda Potterfield. Hudson Farm Foundation won first place with $199,800 in donations, while industry sponsors including SK Guns, UMAREX, and Savage Arms contributed prizes.
Hunter Nation, a national grassroots nonprofit organization, urges eligible voters, especially hunters and sportsmen, to participate in the November 3rd, 2026 midterm election. Founder and CEO Keith Mark emphasizes that voting is a patriotic obligation to protect hunting heritage, constitutional rights, and traditional American values.
Fly fisherman filmmaker Ben Annibali discusses his work with Fly Fisherman Magazine Publisher Ross Purnell on episode #41 of the Fly Fisherman Loop to Loop podcast. The conversation covers their collaborative films "Descent" and "The Shoals," which documents giant trevally fishing at St. Brandon Atoll in Mauritius.
Duck Commander introduces Commander Beard Co., a new men's grooming line featuring the Timber Beard Care Collection with three products: Timber Beard Oil ($18), Timber Beard Balm ($22), and Timber Beard Wash ($20). CEO Willie Robertson highlights the collection's all-natural ingredients and outdoor-inspired Timber scent, available October 24, 2026 on duckcommander.com.
Tink's #69 Doe-In-Rut, America's #1 buck lure for over 50 years, offers hunters multiple application formats including liquid, mist, patented Gel Stream, fogger, and scent stick to adapt to different rut stages and hunting conditions.
Zanders, an all-women-owned distributor based in Sparta, Illinois, is the first to release the Canik METE MC9LS Flying Aces, a 9mm handgun featuring World War II aviation-inspired laser-ablated Cerakote artwork. The optic-ready pistol includes two 17-round magazines, holster, carrying case, and accessories.
TriStar Arms announces the Viper G3, the next generation of its popular Viper semi-automatic shotgun series. The new flagship features a robust internal system, oversized controls, and accommodates a wider range of ammunition in 12, 20, and 28 gauge, plus .410 bore, with suggested retail pricing from $739 to $1,129.
Tactacam has integrated its DEFEND 360 Cellular Camera with the REVEAL Mobile Application, allowing hunters to manage both camera types in one platform. The integration includes new features like Live View recording, 2-Way Audio, and AI Object Tracking, alongside REVEAL's Hunt Radar and mapping tools.
Derya Arms announced the TM22 Timekeeper, a semi-automatic .22 LR rifle featuring an adjustable stock, 18-inch threaded barrel, and upgraded sight package. The lightweight rifle ships with two 10-round magazines and is available in multiple colors with an MSRP of $249.
GRITR Sports, a Texas firearms retailer, is featuring October Season Deals with special prices on firearms, ammunition, and shooting accessories from brands including American Tactical Imports, Browning, Colt's Manufacturing, Federal, and more.
The Montana Land Board approved Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks' proposal to acquire an 86-acre easement from the Montana Department of Natural Resources & Conservation for developing the Logan Public Shooting Range south of Logan. The project, funded by a Pittman-Robertson grant and state general license dollars, will provide safe recreational shooting facilities including rifle, pistol, and shotgun ranges in the Gallatin Valley.
UNIT Solutions will exhibit at the International Association of Chiefs of Police 2026 Annual Conference in Orlando, showcasing the UNIT9 Training Pistol and UNIT4 Training Rifle with live demonstrations. Attendees can meet with the sales team to discuss agency training programs at booth 3172.
Wild Wildebeest Lodge has renewed its sponsorship with Whitetails Unlimited, announced by WTU President Jeff Schinkten. Located in South Africa's Limpopo Province, the lodge offers hunting and non-hunting African adventures while supporting WTU's conservation mission.
Hook & Barrel Magazine founders Natalie and John J. Radzwilla appeared on Fox News's 'The Will Cain Show' on October 20, 2026, discussing how they built their outdoor lifestyle brand and their vision for supporting the outdoor industry's growth.
Travis Haglin stopped me at the Beretta booth during last year’s Safari Club International Convention, moving with the haste of a man who had found something he wasn’t supposed to show anyone.
“You gotta check out this room.”
Coming from someone with the Beretta Gallery in New York, that invitation could reasonably lead to walnut worth more than my first car. Instead, Travis ushered me into a technology room that looked like something out of The Matrix. Here was a company whose name belongs on heirloom doubles, showing me how much of gunmaking’s future it intended to invent.
I went in expecting beautiful guns. I came out thinking about the people who refuse to leave a perfectly successful idea alone.
Beretta turns 500 this year. Its documented beginnings date to 1526, when Bartolomeo Beretta supplied 185 arquebus barrels to the Venetian Arsenal. Five centuries gives a company considerable material for an anniversary brochure. It also supplies a dangerous temptation: become so pleased with your history that you start manufacturing souvenirs of it.
Beretta seems constitutionally incapable of doing that.
The old skills remain in use. In its custom studio, the SO10 EELL is still hand-built and finished. Engravers still turn steel into something you can study long after you have forgotten to ask its price. One anniversary SO10 required more than 1,000 hours of hand engraving. That is a substantial devotion to making certain nobody mistakes your shotgun for his.
Elsewhere in the operation, the tools include five-axis laser technology, additive manufacturing, and 3D printing. Beretta’s Small Series Department already uses those technologies, and the company has announced an Innovation Hub to carry the work forward. Looking at the modern side of Beretta, you could be forgiven for wondering whether the next product leaving the building was a microchip or a precision medical instrument.
The pursuit of precision makes sense to anyone who has ever needed a gun to work. The interesting part is how broadly Beretta applies that thinking, including to problems hunters have tolerated for so long that we sometimes confuse them with tradition.
Consider the AX800 Suprema, the new waterfowl shotgun that has several serious duck-hunting friends talking as though they have discovered a trade secret. Their enthusiasm is emphatic enough that I suspect some would rather I leave its name out of this story. A waterfowler’s wet dream, if you will forgive an expression that practically writes itself.
There is substance beneath the excitement. Beretta brought Steelium Pro barrel technology from its DT11 competition gun into the duck blind, with an extended forcing cone designed to improve patterns and shooting comfort. The redesigned B-Link Pro gas system is designed to build up fewer deposits. Adjustable stock dimensions and interchangeable grip and cheekpiece components give hunters more ways to make the gun fit.
Beretta says its hydraulic Kick-Off Pro system reduces felt recoil by up to 70 percent. That is the company’s claim, but the problem it addresses needs no explanation to anyone who has spent a morning shooting heavy duck loads. Less punishment and a gun that returns to the bird more readily are advantages a shoulder can appreciate without consulting an engineer.
A few weeks ago I walked into the Denver Bass Pro shops off of I-70, climbed up the stairs to the hunting and gun department, and saw an endless row of firearms lined up behind the counter, I asked to see the AX800 and they had three left. I asked how many they had in stock and there were only three left. “We put all of these we have on the shelf,” he said, “they don’t last long.”
Most recently, I took a pair of Giubileo 20s to Yorkshire for driven grouse, the second time I have used that pair for such work. The memories tied to those guns are immense from trips for driven partridge in Spain, to perdiz in South America to ptarmigan in Alaska. Who doesn’t love carrying a beautiful gun that performs as well as it looks? Fast grouse have a way of exposing the difference.
I also regard Beretta auto-loaders as a definitive standard for performance and reliability. You understand their reputation especially well in places where shotguns digest thousands of rounds, and the nearest gunsmith might as well live on another continent. A broken gun there has about the same practical value as a fencepost, though the fencepost probably cost less to transport.
I also value Beretta’s investment in the institutions that keep American hunting alive. Its longtime support for the NRA and conservation giving belong in any fair account of the company. The NRA Foundation recognizes Beretta USA as a major supporter; Beretta’s relationship with SCI Foundation includes the Conservation Leadership Award and fundraising for conservation work. Such commitments help sustain the sporting world that gives all this fine equipment a purpose.
A company planning beyond its fifth century ought to care whether future generations have somewhere to hunt or the right to hunt at all—especially given the rash of ballot-box-biology that’s sweeping the country and upending our state wildlife agencies and conservation funding models. Beretta’s participation gives me another reason to respect the name.
But my most personal reason has become clearer with age. We spend years assuming another season, another trip, another gathering of the same friends will come. Eventually, an empty place in camp corrects that arithmetic. The days we once treated as renewable prove more precious than anything printed on a gun tag.
While I cannot buy another morning with someone who is gone, I can choose equipment that gives the mornings still ahead their best chance. That is how I have come to see a Beretta: a hedge against losing a day I will never get back.
– Chris Dorsey
Chris Dorsey is a Coloradan, 30-year media veteran, biologist, outdoor television producer and natural history filmmaker whose writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Forbes and dozens more national titles.
