Southwick Associates, a market research company specializing in the outdoor industry, has announced the brands hunters and shooters purchased most frequently in 2011. This list has been compiled from the 41,923 internet-based surveys completed by hunters and target shooters who volunteered to participate last year in HunterSurvey.com and ShooterSurvey.com polls.

Rather than simply list the categories, I wouldn’t be the Insider if I didn’t comment on each to offer some (hopefully) interesting insights.

“German engineering” is a phrase we’ve come to associate with high-performance automobiles like BMW and Mercedes-Benz, but the concept applies to firearms every bit as much, if not more. This was brought home to me recently as I took a long look at the guns of Heym and Blaser.

I’ve long admired the hunting rifles from both companies (along with Sauer) but I finally bought a new Heym Express rifle and—I must have been on a roll—also a Blaser R8.

Famed English gunmaker John Rigby & Co. has weathered a driving storm of controversy the past few years, tossed from one owner to the next amid lawsuits, a bankruptcy and even a second “John Rigby” firm claiming to be the original, but it’s all in the past now that a Dallas-based pair of investors have bought the storied brand.

John Reed, a businessman, and his partner have acquired all rights to John Rigby Gunmakers and, for the first time since 1997, has reunited the historic Rigby archives with the gunmaking assets. The Rigby archives include handwritten sales and gunmaking records of John Rigby & Co. from Dublin and London dating back to the 1700s, as well as historic firearms and artifacts. The ledgers, which had been in a private collection, consist of more than 80 handwritten volumes, many 700-plus pages long. Selected ledgers and artifacts were displayed by John Rigby & Co. at the 2012 Safari Club International Convention last week in Las Vegas.

Checkbooks were flying and pens were racing at the biggest gathering of hunters in the world this past weekend at the Safari Club International’s 40th annual convention where every exhibitor visited by the Insider reported land-office sales.

“We took 29 deposit checks yesterday,” effused Dave Fulson of Safari Classics. “Twenty-nine! And I don’t mean for plains game safaris; I’m talking about lion and elephant and buffalo, lion/elephant, leopard/buffalo, all high-end safaris.”

Rumors of the Freedom Group looking to buy a handgun maker have been bantered about by industry insiders ever since the holding company (owned by Cerberus Capital) began gobbling up gun and ammunition companies several years ago. The buzz centered on European handgun makers, specifically GLOCK or HK, however, the card has finally dropped and Freedom Group now owns Canadian-owned, but U.S.-based Para USA Inc.

The sale of Para USA is not entirely a surprise to the Insider. Originally known as Para-Ordnance of Toronto, Canada, the company was formed in 1985 by Thanos Polyzos, an entertainment lawyer, and Ted Szabo, an engineer. Lifelong friends and business partners, Polyzos and Szabo were a classic odd couple: one scholarly, urbane and sophisticated, the other hard-charging, blunt-spoken and churlish. Szabo died in 2007, leaving Polyzos and his wife Katherine to step into the breach.

More than 60,000 attendees flocked to the SHOT Show last week, a record-setting number of shooting industry professionals. Upbeat is the best word to describe the overall mood at the show, which represents firearms manufacturers, retailers, distributors and media as well as a host of ancillary professions attached to the industry, everyone from advertising salesmen to patent attorneys.

The show was held in the Sands Convention Center, which is a smaller venue than the traditional location of this, the sixth largest trade show in Las Vegas. Normally the SHOT Show takes place at the Las Vegas Convention Center, but remodeling prompted the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) to move location.

The shooting industry’s annual trade show begins next Tuesday in Las Vegas. The Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show is always a spectacular event, but this year is special because it marks the 50^th Anniversary of the founding of the SHOT Show’s owner and sponsor, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF).

The mission of the NSSF, ostensibly a trade association for firearms, ammunition and hunting merchandise of all descriptions, is: “To promote, protect and preserve hunting and the shooting sports.” There are about 6,000 members of the NSSF. The organization’s president is Steve Sanetti, formerly the corporate counsel of Sturm, Ruger & Co.

Even if you don’t need a last minute gift, buy this book because it’s a must-read for anyone with an interest in the inside story of the most fascinating firearm since Eugene Stoner invented the AR180, which became the AR15/M16 family. What gun could as dramatic in its impact as the M16? What else? The Glock.

"Glock: The Rise Of America’s Gun" is written by Paul M. Barrett, an investigative journalist (formerly with The Wall Street Journal, now with BusinessWeek) who examines Gaston Glock’s eponymous pistol through a variety of filters. First, Barrett reveals how the Glock has become an icon of pop culture, named specifically in rap lyrics, used on movie posters and celebrated in the “gansta” lifestyle.

The Insider just placed a call to the North Pole and, after assuring Santa that he does not intend to hunt caribou anytime soon, was formerly pronounced “nice.” Accordingly, I put together the Insider’s Christmas Wish List and submitted it to Santa:

• That Colt’s new 10,000 sq./ft. facility in Florida, the first frolic by the rampant stallion ever outside of Connecticut, will be hugely successful. Colt has endured so many hardships since the end of World War II (when the Hartford factory shut its doors because of no more government orders). It would make me smile to see the iconic brand thrive once again.

Black is beautiful. I stopped in Spurlock’s Gun Shop in Henderson, Nev., on Black Friday to find a crowd of customers besieging Rance and Pat Spurlock, the husband-wife owners. Black Friday is so named for the widespread belief that retailers only go from “being in the red” to becoming profitable on the Friday following Thanksgiving. Such is not the case at Spurlock’s Gun Shop, even though Black Friday was a huge day for the shop.

Rance Spurlock said: “This year in particular I think we sold something like 35 guns, which is a tremendous day for us. Normally we don’t get the really heavy Christmas traffic until the first week in December but that Friday was nuts in here.

“We were a man short that day too,” Rance added.

I asked the affable proprietor if he thinks the Black Friday phenomenon affects the gun business.

“Normally it’s just another day to us,” he said. However, Rance added that he arrived at 8 a.m. to open at the usual 9 a.m. time and found a woman waiting in her car to buy a gun.

“Black Friday has never been a big deal for us. I don’t carry the gimmick stuff like air soft or accessory stuff. Black Friday has always been a day to me where I want to avoid the department stores where things are just nuts. But I don’t think the gun business has that kind of walk-in traffic that the electronics stores have with iPhones and what have you,” Rance said.