Hornady began in 1949 as a manufacturer of bullets, but in the company's 74 years in business, it has expanded into a number of other areas. One of Hornady's main channels of growth has been in the development of loaded ammunition, and now, the company makes a wide range of hunting, defensive and target loads for every corner of the firearm market. Watch our American Rifleman video above to hear Jason Hornady talk about the development of Hornady's ammunition lines.
"You know, it's interesting, my grandfather started our ammo business in the early '60s, and he did it because he wanted to have a constant customer for his bullet business," Jason Hornady told American Rifleman. "And then in the late '80s, early '90s, my dad wanted to make more ammo, and so he started making cartridge cases. And when I say we started making cartridge cases, we made like, 12. And it wasn't until the early 2000s that we really doubled up on cartridge-case manufacturing."
The company released several innovative designs in the early 2000s, notably the .375 Ruger and 6.5 mm Creedmoor, both of which were released in 2007. The .375 Ruger was a unique cartridge designed jointly between Hornady and Ruger, and it offered a large-caliber round designed for dangerous-game hunting that could be chambered in a standard-length rifle action. For the 6.5 mm Creedmoor, Hornady started with the .30 TC cartridge, creating an efficient, long-range cartridge that's taken the precision-shooting world by storm.
"The number of steps a cartridge case goes through to become a loaded round of ammo is unbelievable, so we've focused on that, we've spent a lot of time trying to make sure we do it, and we've come up with some fun ones along the way," Hornady said. "When you do a 6.5 mm Creedmoor, which it took a while to get going, but boy, we sure sell a lot of them, and people like to shoot them, and there's a whole bunch of that stuff, PRCs and 6 Creedmoors and ARCs, and it's really turned into this little ammo company that buys a lot of bullets from our bullet business."
For more details on Hornady and its ammunition, visit hornady.com.
