So, another morning and another “daily” from Boycie has hit our inbox so that we can share the ongoing “Las Vegas Adventures” that he, TC and Jase are having while they gather information for their annual SHOT Show report for AIRSOFT ACTION!
Yesterday was most assuredly a case of “Suns out, Guns out!” as they hit Industry Day at the Range to get their hands on the very latest real firearm developments… and put a LOT of free ammo downrange whilst doing so!
Many of you will know that many of the AA Crew shoot “real” as well as “6mm”, and the now-traditional trip to the “SHOT Show Range” definitely allows us to keep our fingers on the pulse of what we might see in airsoft-form at a later date, and to get the history and development path behind them.
Boycie told us of their day;
“Well here we go with the first major part of our trip which is the Industry Day at the Range!
This morning we all met up at the lobby of Treasure Island before making our way over to the Venetian bus shuttle which would take us out to the Boulder City Rifle and Pistol Club range.
The media get access to all the manufacturers and their products before the main group arrive at lunch time. As is usual we started at the top of the range complex with our visit to Bushmaster Firearms. Last year I mentioned that Skye had incredibly cold hands due to the wind chill of near freezing point, but this year the shooting gods were with us and even at 0900 the weather was a balmy 15 degrees with a very light breeze hardly making the flags move. This year I brought some hand warming pads to give to Skye but these weren’t needed.
We had a really good catch up as we waited in the line to try out some of the latest Bushmaster rifles including the BA30 straight pull rifle in .308, which was debuted today. We all gave Skye our congratulations as last year she had told us that she and her partner Erik had recently got engaged, but since we last met her at Shot 25 they had got married! We wish them a long, healthy and happy life together.
Moving on down the line of ranges we sort of cherry picked what we wanted to shoot rather than go all out and shoot everything that was there. As TC said, “there was a really eclectic group of firearms available and some really interesting calibres”. One thing that made our ears prick up though was the “brrrt” sound coming from further down the line, which later we found out to be the belt fed AR from Fightlite; this rifle was the latest iteration of the belt fed rifle that Li’l Stu and I fired as the first rifle on our first trip to Shot Show in 2023. The guys even remembered me from four years ago!
Of course we had to visit the Glock range to try out the newly released Glock 17 Gen 6; safe to say we were all impressed with it and specifically the trigger reset. Katherine Glock spent most of the day at the stand engaging with the visitors to the range. After coffee and a muffin, we set off to look for other stands which caught our interest. As I approached the SimX stand, Charles, the owner’s son, immediately greeted me and thanked me for the sweets that they were given last year. TC had the chance to fire two rounds of standard ammo followed by three rounds of SimX ammo and was amazed by the differences in recoil and report.
For our stand out products of the day, I chose the Bushmaster ACR straight pull in .308. TC’s highlights were the .50 cal bolt action from Kahr Firearms Group, the new Kimber Warrior in 9mm, and he definitely got his giggle on with the Fightlite Belt Fed AR! John P had long had on his “want to shoot” list the new Kimber 2K11 Pro Comp which had a ported barrel and really put a smile on his face.
We called it a day about an hour before the range closed and boarded the coach back to the Venetian Expo Center and a quick can of Sprite before we went off to have a beer and snacks with an old friend of AIRSOFT ACTION, as well as Bill and TC, Graham of GM Tactical. Graham commented that it’s been a while since he’s seen Bill and hoped that they got the chance to meet up in the near future.
Tomorrow and we’re on to the floors of SHOT Show 2026 for DAY 1, so we’ll hook up with Jase again and start of a lot of walking around the booths!”
“Tomorrow” of course is now “today” for us, and we wish “Da Bois” all the very best for DAY 1 proper pounding the halls of SHOT Show 2026… there’ll be a lot for them to see, so stay tuned here over the next few days to find out just what they see!
