Rural Missouri - January 2015 - 8

| OUTDOORS

Adding a tailor-made touch
Wenig Custom Gunstocks elevates the art of shotgun and riﬂe stocks

by Jason Jenkins | jjenkins@ruralmissouri.coop

im Rhode is no stranger to ﬁerce competitors. The 35-year-old El Monte, Calif.,
native sees one staring back at her every
time she looks in the mirror.
In the world of competitive shotgun shooting, few
names are as synonymous with success. A 14-time
national champion and member of the USA Shooting Team, Kim was the ﬁrst American to win medals in ﬁve consecutive Olympic games - including
three gold medals - while competing in an individual sport. At the 2012 Olympics in London, she won
the gold in women's skeet, tying the Olympic record
by breaking 99 out of 100 clay targets.
And she did it all with the help of a small business in rural Missouri.
Each time Kim raises her Beretta DT11 shotgun to her shoulder today, she lays her cheek on a
walnut gunstock tailor-made for her by the skilled
hands at Wenig Custom Gunstocks in Lincoln.

photo courtesy of Kim Rhode

RURAL MISSOURI | JANUARY 2015

"When you start shooting
thousands of rounds like we're
doing, if your gun is off even a
little bit, you're deﬁnitely going to
feel it the next day. So gun ﬁt is
deﬁnitely No. 1," Kim says. "I've
always required a unique ﬁtting,
and Wenig has never had a problem with it. I've shot Wenig stocks
in all the Olympics."
Being
an
Olympic-caliber
shooter, however, is not a requirement to own a shotgun or riﬂe
sporting a Wenig stock. Each year,
the company produces thousands
of stocks and custom-ﬁts hundreds of shooters who are looking
to improve their performance at
the range or in the ﬁeld.
"It's like any other game," says
Wenig owner Bobby Chambers.
"We do a lot of things to enhance Wenig maintains a library of more than 4,700 different shotgun and riﬂe stock
the equipment to ultimately patterns, both those for speciﬁc models and those ﬁtted to individual clients.
enhance our scores."
"Fred built me my ﬁrst custom gunstock back in
Gunstock manufacturing has been a ﬁxture in
Benton County since the 1930s. In nearby Warsaw, 1986," says Bobby, a Sac Osage Electric Cooperacompanies such as Reinhart Fajen and E.C. Bishop tive member from Osceola. "I had been in the indusand Sons once put the area on the map as the "gun- trial equipment business in Kansas City, and when
they made the decision to sell, I was ready to move
stock capital of the world."
In the mid-1990s, former Fajen general manager to my property down here."
A successful competitive shooter in his own right,
Fred Wenig struck out on his own, founding Wenig
Custom Gunstocks in Lincoln. He and his business Bobby says the business today is different than the
partner, Elbert Smith, ran the operation until they heyday for Fajen or Bishop. No longer do they mass
produce replacement gunstocks. Instead, Wenig
sold to Bobby in 2008.
focuses on custom high-end stocks for clients who
want a conversation piece as well as those who wish
Kim Rhode of El Monte, Calif., is a ﬁve-time Olympic medalist to improve their scores.
"We have a lot of people that just want a pretty
in both trap and skeet. She outﬁts all of her shotguns with
stock. Yes, they want it to shoot well, but they're
Wenig stocks, to which she attributes part of her success.

Rural Missouri - January 2015

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