Great American Outdoor Show In Harrisburg, PA Promises Another Year Of Interactive Opportunities

HARRISBURG, PA. – The 2015 Great American Outdoor Show, held February 7-15 at the

Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, will feature several exciting

interactive events and contests in addition to the show’s more than 1,000 hunting, fishing, and

outdoor sports exhibitors.

The NRA launched the show as a replacement for the long-running Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show after a one-year void of any show in Harrisburg. That hole in a decades-long run for the largest consumer sports and outdoor show anywhere came about after Reed Exhibitions canceled the old show in 2013, in the wake of widespread negative reaction by exhibitors and show visitors to Reed's ban on modern assault-style rifles and accessories at the show.

Jeff Poole, shows and exhibits managing director for the NRA, said the 2015 show will again offer all members of the family multiple chances "to test their outdoor sports skills in a fun environment."
The popular Family Fun Zone, which the NRA added to the show's offerings last year, will be back again this year with its kid-friendly stations for camouflage face painting, magnetic fishing, barrel racing, wildlife identification, suction cup archery, LaserShot, and more.

Perennial favorites like the live trout fishing pond and the CastingKids competition also will be back the year.

The Pyramyd Air Gun Range will give all show goers a chance to try a variety of air guns in the company's extensive inventory, while a dozen archery shooting lanes will be open for visitors to try out the latest bows from every major bow manufacturer.

The NRA Sports' Three-Gun Experience, will simulate the competitive shooting that normally involves modern rifles, pistols and shotguns, but in the safe and fun environment of AirSoft technology.

The 3D Bowhunter Challenge offers a landscaped, indoor range of life-sized animal targets, while archery tag fills the large arena and LaPorte Archery brings areal archery shooting at flying discs to the show.

Game calling competitions are scheduled many days of the show, including duck, goose, turkey, barred owl, elk and predator.

Entries in the taxidermy contest will be judged the day before the show opens, but will then be on exhibit throughout the show.

More than 200 seminars and demonstrations by celebrities and experts in topics ranging from hunting and fishing to cooking and home defense will be offered through a varying schedule each day of the show.

Show hours will be 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sundays and 10 a.m.-7 p.m. weekdays.
Admission will be $13 for adults, $6 for children ages 6-12, $10 for seniors 65 and older, $22 for a two-day pass and $10 per ticket bought in a group of 10.
Learn more at the Great American Outdoor Show website. 

Massive New Great American Outdoor Show Debuts

By John Hayes / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In the year since one of America's biggest outdoors shows shot itself in the foot, the National Rifle Association has retooled the event, attempting to recast its public image as a family-oriented advocate of the outdoors lifestyle.

The new NRA-sponsored Great American Outdoor Show debuts Feb. 1-9 in Harrisburg at the site of the former Eastern Sports and Outdoors Show.

Last January, weeks after the Newtown, Conn., shooting tragedy, the 65-year-old expo's British owners announced a ban on the sale of semi-automatic rifles. In an internationally publicized demonstration of pro-gun solidarity, hundreds of vendors boycotted the event including non-firearms firms such as Bass Pro Shops, ThermaCell and the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association. The vendor boycott killed the expo, costing the Harrisburg business community some $80 million and many jobs.

The NRA is promoting the new expo as the world's biggest outdoors show with more family activities, country music concerts and, of course, more guns including the high-performance modern sporting rifles that had been at the center of the controversy.

Jeremy Greene, NRA director of general operations, said reviving the expo was good business.
"We had been a participant in that show in Harrisburg for over 35 years ... [and have] 900,000 members within 300 miles of Harrisburg," he said. "The media pick up on our Second Amendment stand, but in addition we advocate for firearm safety, marksmanship and education training. The NRA has always been very much in tune with the outdoors industry in general. This isn't a gun show, it's about the lifestyle."

Seminars and celebrity speakers will focus on fishing, hunting, cooking and other outdoor lifestyle activities -- not firearm advocacy. But there will be guns -- an entire "shooting sports hall" filled with them. Buyers, however, can't just walk out with a new toy. They'll be processed through the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The exchange will not take place at the venue. Approved buyers can pick up their guns at a federally licensed firearm dealer located near their homes.

Reed Exhibitions of canceled Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show drops another shooting-related show

By Marcus Schneck Patriot-News, Harrisburg

Another shooting-related show has slipped away from Reed Exhibitions, which earlier this year canceled the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show in Harrisburg when an exhibitor boycott developed over Reed's decision to ban modern tactical-style rifles from the show.

View full sizeThe National Shooting Sports Foundation is looking for new management for its annual SHOT Show for the firearms industry after ending a relationship of more than three decades with Reed Exhibitions.NSSF PHOTO

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for the firearms industry, has pulled the SHOT Show – the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show – from Reed, beginning with the 2014 show next January in Las Vegas.

In a press release, NSSF said the organization "has reached an agreement with Reed Exhibitions to terminate the agreement the parties had for the management of the SHOT Show." As a result, Reed will no longer be manager and producer of the SHOT Show.

Reed "provided excellent service to NSSF and the customers of the SHOT Show for more than three decades," noted NSSF. "However, the company's decision to restrict the sale of certain types of firearms this year at its consumer hunting and fishing show – the ESOS, which was unrelated to NSSF and the SHOT Show – was in conflict with NSSF's mission to serve the shooting sports industry."

The NSSF statement explained, "As a result, both organizations decided it was in the best interest of the SHOT Show to end their relationship."

Reed officials could not be reached for comment.

NSSF is seeking a new show management company to manage and produce the SHOT Show, beginning with the 2014 SHOT Show.

Owned and sponsored by NSSF, the SHOT Show is billed as the largest and most comprehensive trade show for professionals involved with the shooting sports, hunting and law enforcement industries.

The 2014 SHOT Show will be held Jan. 14-17 at the Sands Expo and Convention Center in Las Vegas.

NSSF's mission is to promote, protect and preserve hunting and the shooting sports. Formed in 1961, the foundation has a membership of more than 8,000 manufacturers, distributors, firearms retailers, shooting ranges, sportsmen's organizations and publishers.

Following Reed's cancellation of the ESOS, which was estimated to have cost the region $88 million, a coalition of local economic development, tourism and government agencies announced that the National Rifle Association would manage a new show in place of the ESOS next February. The new show at the State Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg will be known as the Great American Outdoor Show.

National Rifle Association is taking over the Eastern Sports & Outdoors Show

By P.J. REILLY

The National Rifle Association next year will run a new show at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg to replace the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show.

Scheduled to run Feb. 1-9, which is about when the Eastern show traditionally was held, the Great American Outdoor Show will be bigger and better than its predecessor, according to the NRA.

"Next February ... the place to be if you're an outdoorsman or outdoorswoman, if you're a family that's interested in the outdoor sports, the place to be will be Harrisburg, Pennsylvania," said David Keene, president of the NRA. 

"This is going to become a national show with implications way beyond the borders of this state and this county, and it's going to attract people from all over the country — not just next year but for years to come."

Keene said the show will include country music concerts, national speakers and conferences, all to be held after show hours.

The desire to expand the show is what made the NRA rise above the 16 other promoters who applied to the state Department of Agriculture, which owns the Farm Show Complex, to take over the show, according to Jeff Haste, chairman of the Dauphin County commissioners.

"Going through the proposals, there clearly was one vendor that stood out from the rest," Haste said. "There was one producer who looked at the show as a reason to be here."

That applicant was the NRA, Haste said.

"Having been the host of this show for over 60 years, here in Dauphin County, it's become a tradition of ours," he said. "It has been something that has driven our economy."

When Reed Exhibitions, which owns the Eastern show, canceled this year's event, Haste said, it "was like a stock market crash — our own economy took a crash right there. It had over an $80 million economic impact to our citizens." 

Reed canceled the show after hundreds of vendors and celebrities boycotted the event, due to a rule imposed by Reed just three weeks prior to its scheduled start on Feb. 2.

Under that rule, Reed banned the sale and display of semiautomatic assault rifles and high-capacity magazines — both of which can be legally bought and sold in Pennsylvania.

Reed officials indicated such products might have created a distraction at the show, given the political turmoil in the wake of the December massacre of 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., by a man carrying a semiautomatic rifle.

One of the first exhibitors to pull out of the Eastern show and to denounce Reed's actions as an attack on the Second Amendment was Lancaster Archery Supply.

Owner Rob Kaufhold said Tuesday he was pleased to hear the NRA would be taking over the show, and he said Lancaster Archery will exhibit at the new event.

"The whole reason for the boycott was there was someone running the show that obviously was working against the interests and core beliefs of sportsmen — those of us that believe in the Second Amendment," he said.

"The NRA is very good at organizing sportsmen and gun people."

Keene promised "all legal firearms and products" will be allowed to be displayed and sold at the Great American Outdoor Show.

That was good news to Joe Keffer's ears.

Keffer owns The Sportsman's Shop in New Holland. He said he was directly affected by Reed's weapons ban.

The Sportsman's Shop had planned to sell semiautomatic rifles at the Eastern show.

"I'm looking forward to it," Keffer said of the NRA-led show. "At this moment in time, it would be our intent to pursue space at the show."

And if the show grows under the NRA, that's even better, he said.

"Anything you can do to make it bigger and better — I'm all for that," he said. "If they bring in more people, we can sell more stuff."