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Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence
2002 Awards Reception
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2002 Accessory of the Year
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2002 Specialty Product of the Year
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Streamlight Shines Brightest in Specialty Product of the Year Category
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The Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence looked beyond the camouflaged efforts of Mossy Oak and Realtree to select Streamlight’s Stinger HP Flashlight as Specialty Product of the Year.
"Well this is a huge deal to us," said Streamlights Jeff Orr. "We’re pretty well known in the law enforcement world but not so well in this one."
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2002 High-Tech Product of the Year
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Leupold Scores Bulls-eye with Fourth Consecutive Optic of the Year Award
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"This isn’t the first time that Leupold has won this award, but we’re very appreciative every time we win it," said Leupold’s Tom Fruechtel. "It’s an amazing thing what four years of developmental time and three million dollars worth of capital can produce and that’s it."
This is the fourth consecutive year that Leupold has received the Optic of the Year Award.
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Benchmade Captures Fifth Consecutive Knife of the Year Award
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The Benchmade Model 556 Mini-Griptilian was named Knife of the Year by the Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence.
"Each one means as much as the first one," said Benchmade’s Joe Verbanac. "Les and Roberta de Asis put together a good group of people who just keep trying every year.
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2002 Ammunition of the Year
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Winchester Loads Eighth Ammunition of the Year Award
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Winchester received the Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence Ammunition of the Year award for an unprecedented eighth time in 11 years for the .270 Winchester Short Magnum (WSM) cartridge.
"I think this is confirmation that our product development efforts are really working – that we really are on track and we’re developing products that the consumer really wants," commented Winchester’s Thomas Gura. "As you might expect, we have a number of those new items in the hopper and we would certainly like to believe that we are going to be a strong candidate for ammunition of the year for this coming year."
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Third Time A Charm as Kimber Wins First Handgun of the Year Award
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Two prior Handgun award nominations yielded plenty of accolades but little hardware for Kimber. The third time proved to be the right time as the Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence selected the Eclipse Series .45 ACP as 2002 Handgun of the Year.
"We’re very proud of what we’ve done and it means a lot to us to know that the Academy is proud of it as well," beamed Kimber’s Ryan Busse.
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Ruger Doubles Success with Rifle and Shotgun of the Year Awards
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The Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence honored Ruger with both the Rifle and Shotgun of the Year awards for 2002.
Ruger’s 77/17RM .17 HMR rimfire rifle bested entries from Thompson/Center and five-time award winner Marlin for Rifle of the Year.
The new Gold label Side-By-Side 12 gauge captured the Academy’s attention for Shotgun of the Year eclipsing efforts by perennial shotgun manufacturing heavyweights Benelli and Beretta.
"On behalf of Bill Ruger Sr., Bill Ruger Jr., the 2000 employees of Sturm, Ruger and Company and the many thousands of American shooters who have really clamored for the return of the classic American double shotgun, we’d like to thank the Academy," gushed Ruger’s Steve Sanetti. "We’re delighted you liked our result."
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2002 Distributor of the Year
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"On behalf of Acusport and its over 200 employees we’d like thank the Academy and all our industry peers for everything you’ve done for us. This is a great award and we really appreciate it. This is six out of eight years."
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2002 Manufacturer of the Year
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"Manufacturer of the year is so meaningful to our little company," said Taurus president Bob Morrison. This is the second time Taurus has been named Manufacturer of the Year by the Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence.
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2002 Shooting Industry Award
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Bob Scott, Smith & Wesson
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Bob Scott Earns Prestigious Shooting Industry Award for Engineering the Return of Smith & Wesson to American Ownership
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The Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence selected Bob Scott, president of Smith & Wesson, as its 11th Annual Shooting Industry Award recipient.
"I’m really proud to be able to have a small part in bringing this 150 year-old company back to the stature it once held," said Scott, who put an investment team together in May 2001 to purchase the struggling gun company from the British-owned Tomkins. The Academy of Excellence honored Scott with the 2002 award for skillfully reorganizing Smith & Wesson to reflect its heritage of innovative handgun design and production, and for reestablishing badly damaged industry relations.
"These past 18 months have been sort of a labor of love but I’ve been blessed by having great people who are dedicated," continued Scott. "I accept the award on behalf of the 600 people in Springfield, Mass., and up in Maine who have suffered through some difficult times in the last couple of years and they’ve hung together. We’ll keep striving to reach that stature again because we’re not there yet but were working very hard."
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