Roy Weatherby

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roy E. Weatherby was the owner and founder of Weatherby, Inc., an American rifle, shotgun and cartridge manufacturing company set up in 1945. Weatherby firearms are best known for their very high-powered magnum rifle cartridges, such as the .257 Weatherby Magnum and the .460 Weatherby Magnum, and for the production of appropriately-chambered sporting rifles.

Weatherby came into the world of commercial cartridge and rifle making with a background of experimentation in cartridge wildcatting and was determined to develop a range of sporting rifle cartridges that would produce very high muzzle velocities, high bullet energies, very flat trajectories, and very hard-hitting characteristics at long range. Among those who influenced his thinking and products was the English riflemaker and cartridge designer David Lloyd.

Following the considerable commercial success of Weatherby Inc., Roy Weatherby established the Weatherby Foundation (initially known as the Roy E. Weatherby Foundation) as a non-profit, tax-exempt Foundation to educate the non-hunting public about the beneficial role of ethical sporting hunting, especially its contributions to wildlife conservation. It currently leads a national initiative to foster the development of educational outdoor expositions, and as at 2007 has sponsored 78 events in 19 of the US states, with combined attendance figures of nearly 1 million. The Foundation annually sponsors the prestigious Weatherby Hunting & Conservation Award, which is 50 years old in 2007.