Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Why did the Ruger Hawkeye All-Weather rifle fail?

Wage compression. People in the rifle buying demographic don't have the money to spend that they used to.

Then how has Kimber stayed in business?

Changing tastes and use patterns.

People under (approximately) 30 have grown up in a disposable society. Expensive electronics, furniture, even cars are used until something goes bad, or until something better comes along, then dumped. The attraction of finely machined parts, nice wood, even traditional features like iron sights, hinged floorplates, and crf, is lost on these folks unless they happen to fall in with some old-timers or start reading stuff that extolls the virtues of them. These folks are also less likely to think about the future potential of the rifle via re-stocking, re-barreling, etc.

Also, a lot of newer shooters are ex-military and are more likely, I think, to treat guns as tools. These guys are more likely to drop a bundle on a tricked-out AR or maybe a LR rig than a nice sporter.

Nothing wrong with any of this, except when sales figures for the stuff we like cause them to get dropped.

Reliable as Old Faithful. One could not imagine what my Ruger 77 MK II All Weather has been through. It even has its original plastic stock which has worked admirably over the years. I like its shiny finish too. I refer to the gun as "battleship grade".

That and I've never met a whitetail hunter that thinks he needs a stainless rifle.



Dave

I don't need one, but sure like having one available for crappy weather. We're more likely to get rain than snow and the seasons of WV and Va run from early November into early January, so sleet and the deadly "wintry mix" are common as well. I'm unemployed, so can pick my hunting days, but working schlubs gotta go when they can get off, even in the schitt.

Also, as a confirmed lazy-ass, I like the option of throwing a wet rifle in the corner until after my dinner and nap.

Kimber plays to a much smaller market and sells alot fewer rifles.

A self described, unemployed lazy azz. That's impressive.

^^^This^^^^ A Remington or a Ruger has to sell a whole lot more units to keep the big corporation fed....Kimber doesn't sell to the same demographic....every type of manufacturer has to have a market share proportionate to the size of the corporation they're trying to feed. The niche/luxury product providers in any field have much smaller operations than the ones that sell to Everyman. It really doesn't matter to Ferrari what's going on with the working class wage earner, but it sure matters to GM.

I'm with you.

But the question was why did this rifle fail in the sales department.




Dave

Yup. I was such a terrible employee that my company, after only 40 years and a week, decided that they'd rather pay me thousands of dollars a year plus bennies to stay home and out of their hair. They even threw in 2 years pay extra to make sure I left.

I was crushed!

Not pretty enough for the guys willing to pay that much for a rifle, and too expensive for the cheap gun crowd. Lots of Ruger fans don't like the matte finish either, apparently. So many bitched about the matte blued models, they started making them a little shinier. According to another thread, those are going to get dumped too, though. There's plenty of them out there, new and used, so us refined and intelligent types still have plenty to choose from.

Blame it on the bean counters. They seem to think they're in this to make money. Of course, those same guys sold a bunch of $1800 Number 1s to SAS and some others cheap enough that he could sell one to me for less than $900 and still make a couple bucks, so maybe their business model has a few wrinkles.

Perhaps the market is saturated. I see most younger shooter at the range spending more of their money on highly modified ARs and less of it on hunting rifles not built on an AR platform.

Retired ain't the same as unemployed. Poor choice of words on your part perhaps.

Perhaps, although I am without employment, unless you count my posistion as "Lab (as in retriever) Assistant".

When people ask me what I do, I usually just say "I wait for Direct Deposit".

I also fear this is the case. I don't shoot at a range where a lot of people shoot, so I don't get to see it in that venue. However, it doesn't take long walking the aisles at the local gun shows to see that the tactical group is front and center to the rifle market these days. In the 2 shows I have gone to this year, I have yet to see an old tang safety or even a used Hawkeye. Seems if there are any owners of these firearms, and I know there is, for the most part they are holding on to them.

Don't go to shows, but tangers are common on used racks around here, along with 700s, various post-64 M70s and Savages. Also starting to see some of the Tupperware guns, but not always used; one big shop just throws them into the used rack with the rest.

I don't fret about the changing scene. These guys are still shooters and just as passionate about their stuff as we geezers are. Lots of them are going to turn into hunters eventually. They can be a distraction on some ranges though, when a bunch show up and start slinging a bunch of rounds downrange when Gramps is trying to concentrate on holding and squeezing. One range I use has a limit of 10-rounds in the mag and discourages "rapid fire", mainly so as not to piss off the neighbors, but it helps control some of the chaos. So does going there in the midfle of the week, which is what I usually do.

The RAR stole its thunder...people can't resist cheap rifles.

Especially cheap rifles that, usually, shoot more accurately out of the box than OTB Hawkeyes, with more easily-adjustable triggers. It's easy to "fix" the bedding and triggers on Hawkeyes, but many shooters aren't as into dinking around with factory rifles--perhaps with good reason. Why should we have to spend time and money fixing what shouldn't be wrong with a new rifle?

I know this is contrary to loony tradition, but to tell the truth, these days I'm just as happy to find a new rifle shoots very well.

+1. I think Kimber is the profile of the type of company that will be supplying for lack of a better word quality sporting arms. I expect the bigger companies will continue to reduce their quality chasing the mass market. It's going to be tuff in the future a market awash in used guns coupled with fewer hunters.