What’s in store for Hornady during 2016? A number of things! We’ve introduced a new line of bullets called ELD, divided into the ELD Match and the ELD X (eXpanding). ELD stands for Extremely Low Drag and we’ve introduced these thanks to the growth in interest in shooting at longer ranges. The ELD range is a whole new series of projectiles and is now available in most of the popular calibers in 308 and 6.5 Creedmoor and so on. So, that’s probably our biggest recent development. In addition we’ve introduced our new classic-style single stage cast iron reloading press. This incorporates a cast iron frame and many interesting features aimed at the hand loader. For example the priming system gives you a lot of flexibility to deprime the cartridge case, remove it, and do other steps to it before you put it back in to seat the primer. Then there are other accessories in our reloading line; a dryer for cases once they’ve been cleaned in a sonic cleaner and we’re offering a new electronic scale. We’ve also expanded our popular range of American Whitetail ammunition to include more calibres, and done the same for our new American Gunner line which features our very well known XTP (eXtreme Terminal Performance) bullets and is designed for hunting, self-defence and law enforcement.

What’s the latest on the shortages of ammunition? Are we back to normal? We’re basically back to normal as far as demand is concerned for our primary products and production has increased. However we still have a backlog we are working our way through on secondary items. To illustrate, if we have A, B, and C categories of products we’re back to normal on the As, we’ve now moved on to Bs and are working on restarting production on the Cs. The primary ammunition products are also seeing increased production and the others are coming online. The political climate in the USA is certainly fraught with threat from the left wing about guns infringing on a variety of rights and that will make the consumer nervous which is what happened previously. Mrs Clinton has made no secret of her animus towards the firearms industry and has said that the National Rifle Association (NRA) is her enemy. The NRA is made up of five million people so she has just said five million people are her enemy, which does not give those people a warm fuzzy feeling. The reality is that we would rather be doing business under normal economic methods and know that new products we design and produce are desired in the marketplace, rather than everyone buying anything they can get because they are frightened they won’t be able to buy it in the future. That is not a healthy way to do business; we don’t like it.

What are the issues concerning ammunition manufacturing at the moment? I don’t believe we will see any significant impediments this year. Hornady continues to expand, we continue to bring in more machinery, and we continue to expand our employee numbers and our skills base. Our worse impediment right now is that we are awfully tight in our production facilities so we are looking at expansion. However, that is in the very preliminary planning stages, so will take some time to come into fruition.

What has been Hornady’s most recent achievement? Developing the ELD range of bullets and what we discovered in its development. It really is a significant technology advance in how bullets perform at long range and also in how the bullet tips respond as we discovered that the polymer tips we, and our competitors, are using deform in flight from aerodynamic heating. That is a phenomenon we didn’t think happened but when we were testing we kept getting anomalies and results we didn’t expect. In our work to eliminate variables we decided to use an aluminum tip and the anomalies went away which was interesting: aluminum tips did exactly as predicted, polymer did not. So we then changed polymers and the new one now performs exactly as we predicted. The use of Doppler Radar went a long way to giving us the actual data. A lot of people look at ballistic coefficient and think that gives you an absolute result and it doesn’t. BC is the ratio of a performance of your projectile to the standard projectile and what the Doppler Radar gives you is a drag coefficient and there is a difference. Once you get the BC ratio you can plug it into a calculator and use the formula to predict the trajectory. With Doppler Radar and a drag coefficient you don’t predict the trajectory, you state it because it is a fact not a prediction. We’ve also discovered some of our competitors are extremely creative when it comes to listing the BCs of a type of ammunition which is to their benefit as they have all gone high, but the average consumer has no way of knowing what is correct.

What are your most memorable/enjoyable hunts? One of my favorites was hunting roebuck in the UK as it’s so civilized and after the hunt you go back to the pub and have a gin and tonic with your friends and chat about the day. However, I generally find sheep and goats more interesting to hunt than antlered game, which ties in with my most memorable hunt that is memorable for the wrong reasons. This hunt in Kyrgyzstan was a terrible overall experience; we didn’t like the guides, they mistreated their animals, they lied to us and my hunting partner didn’t even get a shot at a Marco Polo sheep. He was then offered one that was already frozen and ready to have its picture taken back in Bishkek!

What do you think are the greatest threats to hunting? Ignorance by the general public and the non-hunting population that doesn’t understand what hunters do for all of the things the general public purports to care about yet isn’t willing to pay for and doesn’t know how it is paid for. The North American wildlife model uses tax revenue from firearms and ammunition manufactures to fund what is called the 1937 Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, better known as the Pittman-Robertson Act. This funnels hundreds of millions of dollars into our wildlife programes to protect habitats and to establish and protect seasons so our wildlife is self-perpetuating and a resources that can enable everyone to participate in the outdoors. It is almost exclusively funded through that Act. The model that wildlife has an intrinsic value for just being there is unique to North America and not particularly appreciated in many parts of the world where wildlife is seen either as hazard to livestock or livelihoods because it kills people’s animals or destroys their crops or it becomes meat for the pot. We know that when hunting was banned in Kenya they went from around 12,000 lions in the 1970s to around 1,500 today. If you want to preserve lions you reallocate blocks of public land to hunting concessions that protect the game from poachers and from encroachment. Kenya is now at a point of no return and before long political pressure will be such that any ongoing wildlife encroachment will result in the elimination of that wildlife in order to plant another stand of maize or raise more goats or sheep.

What do you like to do outside of work and hunting? I like to spend time on my farm working on a variety of projects and I’ve acquired some machinery to give me a hand in the process. So I have a John Deere 100hp tractor with a shredder/mower on the back, along with a scraper and a disc. My pride and joy is my T650 Bobcat track loader, then I have a log splitter, a lawnmower, a post hole digger, a tree shear and saw and I just acquired a snowblower. I have a mini excavator with a digger and bucket and a front-end loader. I also have access to a bulldozer. The only problem with any of this equipment is that it doesn’t go fast enough when I want to move from one part of the farm to another. But what I really need is more time: I want to plant some trees and watch them grow.