Must Have Outdoors

Needless to say I wasn’t sad at all leaving cold snowy Missouri for the 70 degree weather of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Katie and I were headed to the SHOT Show, the mecca of outdoor industry retail shows. The SHOT show is a gathering of pretty much every company in the outdoor industry. Each company has their own booth where they feature new products and dealers come by and make their orders for the year. Media was also allowed to go around to look at the new products, and Katie and I were excited to get a first look at some of the “Must Have” products for 2011.

We flew into Vegas on Sunday, and after getting settled in our hotel room we had a nice dinner at Buca di Beppo, a family style Italian restaurant. On Monday Katie and I helped out with the Sportsman’s Channel hunt fish feed event, which is a program where wild game is cooked for residents of homeless shelters. Katie and I helped serve the meal. It was a very eye-opening experience seeing so many people in need, but they were very thankful for the food and excited to be eating Mule Deer.

Tuesday was an overwhelming day of navigating the SHOT show. We had several good meeting and got to see some old friends. Wednesday was another good day, and that evening, Katie and I attended the Sportsman Choice awards at the Hard Rock Café. It was a really fun event and then we walked around some of the hotels on the strip.

Thursday morning Katie and I had a chance to meet with the CEO of Stormy Kromer. They make some really cool hats and the tradition of the company was really fun to learn about. Katie and I left with two new hats which have really come in handy in the cold weather. We wrapped things up on Friday and headed back to Missouri where a foot of snow greeted us. For Must Have Outdoors, we had a great SHOT Show and we are excited for 2011!

- Andrew