By Jim Matthews

It’s amazing what drugs and a night’s sleep can do for a guy. I was ready for the final day of the show, if not mildly eager. This was my day.

A few years ago at SHOT, there was a fellow trying to sell Mickey Mouse ears as field hearing enhancement devices. I talked the man out of one of the headsets, camouflaged them up, and used them until they fell apart. Sadly, he was only at one show, and he got far more laughs than orders, but the darn things worked.

How well did they work? Cup your hands behind your ears and bend the whole works forward a little—just like you’ve seen old, deaf shooters do for years. You can hear better—a lot better. That’s how the headsets worked, but they kept both hands free. The problem was that you looked like you were off to the Magic Kingdom.  Being from California, that didn’t bother me. I wore them out, and I miss them.

I was thinking about that guy on day four of the show. The last day is when I limp along the back aisles and corners of the main halls, looking for those hidden gems. It dawned on me that having a good idea and a functional product sometimes isn’t enough to make it successful.  I’m not sure you could sell a guy an indestructible straight 4-power scope today, regardless of its applicability to every-day hunting.  Things have to have at least a little panache, a great name, something new and catchy—or, even better, all four.

With the exploding popularity of varmint hunting, Western Rivers’ www.western-rivers.com line of game callers, motion decoys, and other accessories is worth a hard look for retailers.  For example, you could sell the new Wounded Woody moving woodpecker decoy simply as a novelty item (and I won’t make any more comments).  They win for best-named product of the year, at least in my book.

Huntside, LLC has an innovative inflatable whitetail deer decoy with scent patch and a remote-controlled swishing tail called the Easy Doe www.easydoe.com.  While designed for deer hunters, a partially-inflated version would also be dynamite for predator callers. The Easy Doe comes with an adjustable mounting pole, battery-powered air pump, and daypack. Use it during the off-season at children’s birthday parties.

Most gun shops now carry lines of pepper spray, and Spitfire, Ltd. www.spitfire.us has a small, light, simple delivery system that can fit on a key chain.  Retail cost is only $14.95 and it’s refillable.  You should be able to sell one of these to everyone who comes in the store.  This is really cool.

While it’s probably not too important that you can drink your gun cleaning supplies, the M-Pro 7 www.MPro7.com four-product line (gun cleaner, gun oil, cleaner-lubricant-protectant, and copper remover) are being touted as the best cleaning and lubricants available today.  I know everyone says that, but these guys are getting accolades from across the shooting and hunting community.  Add in that they are about the greenest products you can buy, and they will have a huge appeal to a marketplace that is increasingly chemical leery. Very cool.

Lastly, and appropriately, I wanted to mention the Off-Road Commode www.theoffroadcommode.com.  “Now you can go where your truck goes,” is the slogan.  I won’t say it’s a rip off of Uncle Booger’s Bumper Dumper www.bumperdumper.com because I don’t know who came into the marketplace first or even if you can rip off a toilet seat design, but Uncle Booger was at SHOT a few years ago and has been on Jay Leno’s show, so I only felt it fair to mention him, too.  Both are simply toilet seats that attach to a vehicle’s towing hitch.  The Off-Road Commode, which is padded, has a warning that says the product is not for use while the vehicle is moving, which conjures up some incredible imagery.  It has a 500-pound capacity, ostensibly for your hunting buddies who are really full of it.  Or perhaps you know an outdoor writer.  -SSR

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