Austin and Halleck's demise

[Bill]

I found this on another site. Its a letter from Austin and Halleck anouning their demise.

It is with great disappointment that we announce the suspension of operations at Austin & Halleck, effective 10/01/06.

To our customers, you can take pride in knowing you own one of the finest muzzleloading rifles offered in this country. You'll already have experienced it's outstanding shooting performance and enjoyed and admired your rifle's unmatched quality of materials and workmanship.

While there is no longer anybody on staff to service your rifle in the unlikely event it would need any, we will be pleased to provide you any component parts free of charge, as long as they remain available. We will also attempt to offer technical assistance by phone or email on a call-back basis. There are no longer any employees at Austin & Halleck and while we may contract for some repair services, we cannot offer any assurance about the timely return of your rifle.

First quality rifles may be made available at a discount from the factory. Please contact me for further information.

It is our intent and our commitment to satisfy all Austin & Halleck accounts, to both pay monies owed by us as well as to collect monies due us.

Please address your inquiries by email to [e-mail] or by phone to Sandy Chisholm at 610-940-1668. Voice mail messages can also be left at 877-543-3256. Every effort will be made to respond to your inquiry on a timely basis.

[deputydon]

Another one going under???

[Purebred Redneck]

I looked at a Austin Halleck a few months ago and I will say it is a great bolt action style gun !!! I'm sure the Hawken is of equal quality.

But the days of bolt action muzzleloaders and side locks are OVER in the near future !!!
A company that depended on those types of sales were doomed to fail.
If they could of got their leveraction on the market a few years ago instead of after everyone else did, it might be very different.

Most Inline hunters don't care about things of beauty. They don't care about shooting much and don't care about tradition - they don't even know how the thing works. All they care about is getting the cheapest watertight gun they can so they get a couple more weekends of hunting.

Muzzleloader actions come and go. New models of bolt actions are rare now. We're in the height of ejection-hinged single shots. We can already see that lever actions are going to be the next big thing within 5 years or so.
I think we're going to see bolt actions reign again once and if the manufacturers can figure out an easier way to clean gun and also keep the bolt more water tight.

Now Bill, I was told by some guy at a shooting range that Austin made Cabelas muzzleloaders. Is this true???
He may got wrong info or maybe just making it up...

[Purebred Redneck]

How close is the Austin Halleck bolt action to the Weatherby or Howa???
Could it be possible that the company is for sale and one of these might consider picking up the rights to the muzzleloaders???
Weatherby's been trying awefull hard lately to market their guns to normal working class people yet keeping quality.
Austin Halleck prices are about the same as TC and knight - but these companies had retail exposure.
Could a big company sell these muzzleloaders and make a profit???

[Bill]

Nope no connection between Cabela's and Austin and Halleck Red. The guy is either making it up or dreaming. As far as the rest of it goes, you read it. Austin and Halleck has no employee's anymore.

[Purebred Redneck]

Yeah, I had to go to their website to believe it myself.

I wonder what happened?

[klsm54]

Geez! And I just hunted up their Website to put on our new links forum...

[twomoons]

This is an outfit that made a great loking poor handling rifle in the traditional line. The gun was offered in 50 or 54 and looked good, but they took the stock style from a squirrel rifle and tried to adapt it to big game. The roman nosed stock kicked like a mule and was too short to boot. As a consequence most of the guns were bought by newbies and quickly offered for sale. The inlines were ok, but overpriced. I am astounded that so many folks would spen so much money on an inline when the whole idea of an inline is how cheap it can be made. Hand labor on these is zip. No inline, even with the best wood stock should sell for more than $200 tops.

[Purebred Redneck]

I don't know if I'd go that far b/c good wood stocks can retail for 200 alone.
But I agree otherwise - inlines like the omega, knight, encore, etc are way overpriced for me.

[twomoons]

Yes a pre-inlet wood stock for some rifles can go that high, but for a 12 stock with probably the simplist inletting even a premium stock shouldn't run more than 100 bucks. In actual production the rest of the gun is $29.00 for a trigger 68 bucks for a barrel and maybe 15 bucks for the rest of the parts. That's why CVA can sell these suckers for $100 and still make a profit, no hand labor and a spanish imbecile can screw one together and it will still work.