Sierra

Sierra began in 1947 in a California Quonset hut building. At the time, World War II had just ended, shooting popularity was rising to unprecedented levels and the supply of high-quality ammunition was limited. Shooters were discovering that to satisfy their own demand, reloading was the answer. Frank Snow, Jim Spivey, and Loren Harbor recognized this and created Sierra Bullets to help fill the void. A few years later, an accomplished competitive shooter named Martin Hull joined Sierra. Martin brought with him an understanding of the market and the ability to translate ideas into a finished product. He was the manager of our ballistics laboratory for nearly 20 years. In 1969, Bob Hayden joined Sierra as Manager of Operations for The Leisure Group, who at the time was Sierra’s parent company. An engineer by trade and an avid hunter, Bob led Sierra through years of tremendous growth while greatly expanding Sierra’s product offering before his retirement in 2012.

In 1990, we left our factory in Santa Fe Springs, California for a new beginning in Sedalia, Missouri. Armed with years of experience in the manufacturing and testing of quality bullets, we designed and built one of the industry’s most advanced manufacturing facilities. While integrating the best of the old with the new, we enhanced our tool and die shop, upgraded our metallurgical laboratory and quality control systems, redesigned our process for washing and polishing bullets, and improved our bullet assembly equipment. Our shining star, however, was the construction of an underground, 300-meter test range, the longest privately owned underground bullet test facility in the world. Without it, we would not be able to conduct the degree of accuracy testing necessary for our stringent quality control requirements, nor would we be capable of producing the reloading manuals at the level we do.