Neal Kregamaki peered intently through the sights of a freshly assembled Ravin crossbow. Kregamaki, of South Superior, Wis., works at the Ravin manufacturing facility in Superior's Mariner Mall.
It's his job as an inspector at Ravin Crossbows to test-fire the weapons. He squeezed the trigger. An arrow flew from the crossbow and almost instantly smacked a target 20 feet away. On its way, the arrow had passed through an optical chronograph, which measured its speed _ 393 feet per second.
Right on the money. Kregamaki nodded his approval.
The new crossbow, which turned heads at two national trade shows in January, is the latest archery product brought to market by entrepreneur Larry Pulkrabek. His previous archery products, including the popular Field Logic block targets and Rage broadheads, gained large market shares in short order, but none has captivated the imagination of hunters and archery retailers as quickly as the Ravin.
Randy Graber of Custom Archery and Outdoors in Superior, Wis., saw the crossbow wow attendees at the Archery Trade Association show in Indianapolis in January.
"It was pretty much one of the biggest things at the ATA," Graber said. "You'd be walking down the aisles and hear these groups of people saying, 'Did you see the Ravin crossbow?' You'd go 20 feet and hear someone else say the same thing."
It took only a couple of years before Pulkrabek's Rage broadhead cemented itself as the market leader among broadheads. (A broadhead is the assembly of sharp blades affixed to the tip of an arrow.)
The Ravin's rise to popularity has been even faster, he said.
"It was instantaneous," said Pulkrabek, 56, who makes his home in Iowa. "It's been pretty fun."
On range day in January at the SHOT Show _ primarily a gun show _ in Las Vegas, Pulkrabek let showgoers try the Ravin at 100 yards _ the target a complete football field away. The website guns.com wrote that the crossbow "stole range day."
"So how on earth did a crossbow even make it into the mix, much less win the day?" the website wrote. "It's not your average crossbow, that's how. This little booth at the range ... had the longest line of any on the firing line."
"We had people come up and take two shots from 100 yards at a 6-inch diameter target," Pulkrabek said. "Ninety percent hit the target with at least one of two shots."
The only problem crossbow hunters are having with the Ravin is getting their hands on one. Graber, at his shop in Superior, has just one _ a demo.
"I'm letting people shoot that one," he said. "Everything else is pre-ordered. We should start seeing them the end of March."
"We have huge backorders," Pulkrabek said. "We're shipping as fast as we can."
