With Green River Rifle Works’ success and the strong demand for more authentic Hawken replicas, a number of other companies entered the market with their version of a Hawken rifle or a semi-custom rifle meant to compete with the Hawken.  Six of these companies will be discussed in detail, giving both a history of the operations and some samples of the guns they produced.  Two of the companies came out with a mass produced Hawken rifle, one with a custom Hawken rifle, and the other three developed semi-custom rifles following the process developed by GRRW.

 

THE COMPETITION

 

Click on the company name above to take you to its page.

These competitors were a bit late to the party, 1976-79, and never really cut into GRRW’s business.  GRRW had a backlog of orders right up to the end.  At least during the late-1970’s and early-1980’s, the market seemed big enough for all of them.

Ithaca may not have seen the sales volume they were expecting or the profit margin may have been too small–something caused them to get out after approximately 18 months of production.

Uberti continued to make their Hawken rifle well into the 1990’s, discontinuing it when the Hawken craze was replaced by the Cowboy Action Shooting craze.