Gearing Up for SHOT

The 2012 Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show (http://www.shotshow.org/) will again be in Las Vegas. Dates are January 17 to 20. This will be about my tenth SHOT Show, and I always look forward to them with a little trepidation.

By now I have the drill down but, with something around 1,700 vendors of guns and gun-related stuff, there is a lot to cover. So much so that you can get swamped. There also will be about 2,000 media flaks like me to get in the way.

Like any anal-retentive gun writer, I have my lists. All are carefully assembled in the quiet of my office at home. I draw up an Excel list of all the gunmakers in the exhibitors’ list that they send to us. Then I organize them by booth number so that I can hopefully trot around the aisles and visit them in sequence. The alternative, which I discovered when I was just starting out, was aimless wandering about an endless wasteland of sleeping bags, scented doe urine and civilian AR15s while looking for a particular gunmaker.

My carefully laid-out plans never work as well as I’d like. When I get home from the show, I always get a note from someone or other asking me what I thought of the new Super Duper Model X5 shotgun. Of course, I failed to see that one.

I long ago solved the brochure problem. You’ll see people parading up and down the crowded aisles pulling carts full of brochures that they’ve picked up at the booths. One year I came home with an entire second suitcase full of them. Dumb ’n’ dumber. Now I either try to have the gunmaker give me a CD or promise to mail me any relevant literature. Sometimes the company has everything I need on its Website, which makes life even easier.

In addition to the catalogs I can’t escape, I also carry a camera and a pocket recorder. A lot of times I’ll take a photo of a gun and the display information. This makes it much easier to recall. The recorder is my main asset. There is just too much information to try to remember everything, especially when I get chatting with a gunmaker’s rep about the product. The recorded conversations also remove any doubt about who said what.

The Media Day at the Range (http://media-day.com/) takes place at a nearby Las Vegas gun range the day before SHOT opens. Lots of the writers are there, and it gives me a chance to schmooze with my confreres while actually getting to shoot some of the new guns and eat a big free lunch. Like any household pet, we media types love free food.

This year we have a bonus at SHOT. Beinfeld’s Antique Arms Show (http://www.antiquearmsshow.com/) will be at the Riviera Hotel & Casino from January 20 to 22. It’s the best high-end used-gun show around. I’ll tack a visit there onto my SHOT trip.

SHOT Show is interesting, and there are always surprises to go along with the flat feet, gun lust and convention-chow heartburn.

And in that vein, it’s boots off, beer open.