The Man Behind LBW Specialty Shooters Supply...

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Louis B Wood grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where his shop is now located. Like most country kids, he was introduced to shooting and hunting at a very early age, and some of his earliest memories are of being allowed to tag along with his Father and Grandfather while they hunted quail. His father was an avid shooter, reloader and gunsmith, and pursued many disciplines of the shooting sports, but his first love was precision riflery, not only as a competitor, but later as one of the original founders of the National Benchrest Shooters Association.

Growing up in this culture of precision shooting and reloading, Louis began to travel with his father and shoot rifles at every opportunity. Later he became interested in hand guns and competed in NRA sanctioned rimfire and centerfire matches which he pursued for a number of years. Later, to perfect his shotgun skills, he began to shoot skeet and trap and later shot and refereed in Registered Skeet shoots where he ultimately participated in AA class. His love of history and hunting later led him to participate in muzzle loading rifle matches, and then into buck-skinning ( a form of black powder shooting which involves competing in historical period dress, and practicing real world frontiersman skills as well as shooting) where he earned a spot on the Governor’s Flintlock team representing the State of Virginia in National Competition in which his team took second place.

Always an avid hunter as well as a shooter, he pursued opportunities to hunt in a variety of places, and during his young adulthood was able to combine his love of horses and hunting in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta and British Columbia which he continued to pursue for many years. The vastness of the country and the longer distances at which shots were often taken peaked his interest at becoming more proficient at longer ranges, and swould give him cause to consider what an alpine hunter might truly want in a highly accurate, durable, lightweight hunting rifle. Other experiences included numerous waterfowl hunts on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the 1980s and 90’s, the last part of the Golden Age of waterfowling on the Delmarva Peninsula.

Louis’s business and retail experience began in 1976 when he and his father started LBW Shooters Supply in Staunton, Virginia where they retailed guns, reloading and shooting accessories as well as gunsmithing services. In 1979 his father was tragically killed, and as a monument to what they had started together, Louis continued the business expanding it to include archery, hunting clothing and fishing tackle as well as an extensive offering of gun repair and customizing services. In 1989, after the birth of his son, he decided to close the business in order to be able to return to the ranch he grew up on where he could spend more family time and be able to have some of the same shooting and hunting experiences with his own son.

With all of his experiences in shooting, the thing that he has remained the most passionate about is his love of long-range shooting. The attentiveness to the equipment, the details of ultra-precision reloading, and the ballistic science involved continue to fascinate him, and he continues to push the limits of perfecting his own skill sets as he shoots regularly at distances he previously never imagined possible.

Upon closing his former retail operation, Louis had thoughts that later in years to come he might consider opening a much smaller custom shop, catering to serious shooters, where his lifetime of experiences and refined skills could once again come to life in a beneficial way; And in 2018 that vision became a reality with the formation of LBW Specialty Shooters Supply, LLC located on his ranch in Waynesboro, Virginia.