We'll do our best to give you perfection.  And we think that you'll find our products at a level that's on par with the very best brands in the outdoor gear and shooting sports industries.  We stand behind everything that we make, and we're certain that here, you will find original thought.

"Hello, and welcome.  I want to start by getting one thing straight:  in the course of building our company, I have no desire to become a 'famous personality.'  I'd rather just work anonymously, and let the company's products speak for themselves.  But as we've gone along, I've come to realize that my story is part of what makes this company make sense, so I have to tell at least part of it.  To begin with, I'll help you with the name.  You say it "eh-brr-lee-stock."

Anyway, I've come to a place in life where I've come to realize that 'I've seen a thing or two.'  I've successfully lived a life with few boundaries, and I still enjoy poking holes in new directions.  A lot of what I've done has had to do with machinery.  Starting with my dad's electric drill, and graduating to table saws and milling machines, along the way I picked up proficiency operating school busses, drill rigs, semi trucks, fighter planes, great big things built by Boeing, an occasional farm tractor, and now the humble sewing machine.  I'm a builder, and a person who always has more projects in the wings than he has time for.  Anyway, in the middle of all of this, I've always been driven by an impulse to stand things up, make 'em right, make 'em better.  I guess it can be said that I've left an impact wherever I've been, and I've come to see that although it's not all been perfect, it certainly has been unique, and the new dimension as expressed by our company is the best endeavor of all.

Eberlestock is a natural evolution of an effort that I started a long time ago, back in 1985, when I first posted a note on my hotel room door in West Yellowstone, Montana, announcing that I'd be happy to supply one of my lightweight rifle stocks to any and all comers who could cobble together two-hundred-and-sixty-five bucks.  One of these days I'm going to dig out one of those old mimeographed, hand drawn fliers and frame it in my office, because I think that it's a great testimonial to humble beginnings, and to a company that's been built the hard way, one nail at a time.

I've no doubt that we'd be a lot farther along in this whole affair, but for the fact that I shelved it for a while so I could go off and learn about life.  In the course of that, I became an aviator, and although flying has become a part of my fabric, the good Lord has brought me back to my roots as a designer of gear.  Over the years, my closets and notebooks had become cluttered with idea fodder, a result of experiments that I thought I'd like to try, or gear that I felt I needed but couldn't find anywhere.  Then later, when the twists of fate made me realize that all of this needed to exist, I didn't have a question of what to do, but simply where to begin.  There's quite a lot more to this story, of course, but the point is that I have a deep motive to create exceptional gear.  I get a hoot out of knowing that something that our team has worked on, or some old concept that I had, has been met with rave reviews from our customers.  I love to hear from hunters and backcountry explorers who write to us about their adventures.  I love the calls from the New York City SWAT team telling me about the latest experiences of their counter-snipers in the vertical environment of Manhattan.  And above all, I love the calls from Baghdad, Kabul, and various far corners of the planet, from fellows who tell me that we've provided something that they really needed.  I cannot imagine a more gratifying and humbling experience than serving the men and women who serve the free world.  We are honored.  So, to all of our customers, I just want to say a sincere thank you.  Godspeed and good luck.

We put a simple tag, and our Lucky Ring Logo, inside of each product that bears our name.  The tag says Lots o' Luck, and it brings a little bit of the heart of this company with it.  Above all, we sincerely want to express our gratitude to the service men and women, and to our nation's professional police officers, for placing themselves into the breach.  Our hearts and prayers are with you.

Shifting gears, I'll tell you a little more about what we're up to, and how it all began:

There's nothing quite like being in the middle of nowhere, on the top of a mountain -- by yourself, with an elk at your feet.  You have a feeling of accomplishment, of satisfaction in a job well done, and a keen anticipation of a bigger job ahead.  In the country where I hunt, there's only one way that the elk is going to get into our freezer, and that's by putting it onto my back and carrying it out. 

Anybody who's ever done this knows that it's not a task for the faint of heart.  But it's also a task that's worth doing, particularly if you understand that part of God's plan for a healthy life is knowing that food doesn't naturally come packaged and wrapped in cellophane.

Nowadays, there are a lot of companies that make some pretty good products that look like hunting packs.  I'm impressed by some of what I see in the marketplace; there certainly have been huge gains in terms of quality, and if I were looking today I might not have been driven to spend so much time with my Speedy.  But I still don't feel like there's very much innovation; most of what's out there is a variation on the same theme.  I'm always surprised by the fact that the company I've founded has such a distinctive position as being one of the very few companies to make a true hunting pack.  Some say that we are the only ones who do.  It's nothing cosmic; it's a pretty simple formula, really.  Make something quiet.  Make it tough.  Make it versatile, so it'll work as both a pack for active hunting and a pack that'll carry meat.  Lay it out so that it's easy to find stuff in it.  Make it easy to attach things to the outside of it.  Make it carry weapons, so that you can use your hands for all of the things you need them for when you're out there.  As a bonus, make it so that you can get your weapons off the pack without having to un-strap everything that you're wearing.  And above all, make it comfortable, because you're going to become mighty intimate with it.

In my book, there are two pieces of equipment that will make or break a wilderness hunt:  your boots and your pack.  If some piece of all the rest of your gear fails you, it might change your day but it shouldn't ruin it.  But if either of these is bad, you're not going to be having any fun.  When I started working on the reincarnation of my company a few years back, I had a tongue-in-cheek goal of breaking even, and having one great hunting pack left for myself at the end of the day.  As it's turned out, we now have several different models of hunting packs, and we're sharing them with friends all over the world.  And, as picky as I am, I really like all of them.  I think that we've achieved great things in the quality of our products, and in their unique ability to provide a hunter with just the thing that he needs for his particular adventure.

Of course, once you start making a high quality backpack that carries guns, more than just hunters are going to be interested.  We're now proud to offer a line of backpacks for military and law enforcement customers that is simply unparalleled.  Our gear is in service all over the world with Special Forces and regular military and police units, and we are gratified to know that we have contributed something of value to the fight.  One of the things that's fun about this is that it validates something that I learned for myself a long time ago.  If you carry your weapon on your back, you're much more agile and effective than if it's stuck in your hands or on a shoulder sling all of the time.  And you're still carrying a weapon; particularly if you have it easily accessible, as our Backscabbard™ provides, there is simply no better way to move about in an organized fashion.

I offer my sincere thanks to all of the customers who have trusted us with their business, and special thanks to those who put their lives on the line for the rest of us.  We're extremely grateful to all of you.  And to those of you who haven't experienced our gear, I offer a simple invitation.  Try it for yourself, and I guarantee your satisfaction.  I believe in what we're doing, I believe in the quality and performance of our equipment, and I back it personally.

Here's wishing you all "lots o' luck,"  

-- Glen Eberle

Olympic Roots.  Glen Eberle was a member of the US National Biathlon Team for eight years, and a member of the 1984 US Olympic Team.  Biathlon is a grueling sport which combines the opposing disciplines of cross country skiing and rifle marksmanship.  In the old days, traditional biathlon rifles were heavy, weighing over 11 pounds, and they had a fatal weakness in the pistol grip area which caused them to break easily if the athlete fell on them — a not uncommon occurrence for those rocketing around on “skinny skis.”

     Following the 1985 World Championships, Glen decided that it was time to make some changes to the slab of a rifle he’d been packing around.  He embarked on a project to build a better gunstock.  The initial idea was to simply make it stronger, but as he began studying the concept, he realized that there were opportunities for weight savings as well.  Contrary to the rest of the shooting world, Glen believed that if you built the rifle right, you could still shoot a lighter gun as accurately as a heavy one.  His work led him to win a research grant from the United States Olympic Committee.  With this in hand, he began a consultation with engineers, biomechanical experts, and NASA scientists.  He developed a design which combines the best qualities of wood with the outstanding qualities of modern composite materials.  It was considerably lighter than a standard wood stock, and virtually unbreakable.  Click here to see pictures of the evolution of the biathlon rifle.

     The Myth Buster.  The new stock looked different from anything that had come before.  In place of the heavy single chunk of wood in prior use, the Eberle stock was made of laminates of Sitka spruce and carbon fiber.  And everywhere that wood didn’t need to be, it wasn’t.  The result was a stock that was over three and a half pounds lighter than its predecessor, and a great deal stronger.  Not only were athletes using the Eberle stock going to be able to ski considerably faster, they also lost their old fears of falling and breaking their rifles. 

One of the important reasons why biathletes had previously packed around heavy rifles was the universally held belief that you  needed the weight in order to shoot accurately, particularly after the kind of exertion you're doing in a biathlon race.  The Eberle rifles demonstrated that an athlete with an ergonomically correct lightweight rifle would actually shoot better than with the conventional heavy guns that were in use.

The US Team’s new rifles were initially challenged by the European-dominated biathlon governing body, but were eventually accepted.  They became the standard for the design of Olympic Biathlon rifles, and established the floor weight of 7.5 lbs that is currently mandated by the International Biathlon Union.

     Soon, Glen was making dozens of his new stocks, the Eberle Stock Company was born.  And everyone in the biathlon world was either using an Eberle, or using something that was made to look like one.

     Many years later, we have come to realize that there’s more to be made than just gunstocks.  But our identity will always be derived from our roots.  So, in homage to the original Eberle Stock, we’ve re-named our company Eberlestock.  We hope that you’ll enjoy the quality, the versatility, and the variety of the products that we bring to the shooting sports.  We will always strive to make things better than they’ve been made by anyone else before.

   We're now proud to be introducing new products that are designed to be every bit as revolutionary as our first biathlon stocks were.  Our backpacks are sure to make a lot of hunting outings more enjoyable, and we have versions available in other places where they're really needed, particularly for the military and police  communities. 

  For fun, and to demonstrate the fact that we are continuously a source of original thought, we've re-engineered new biathlon gunstocks, and are shaking up the biathlon world all over again.  For the first time in Olympic history, in the 2006 Games the athletes had rifles that looked their part in the same way that Formula One race cars look their part.  A glance at their lines says these are for racing, and we're doing all that we can to help our U.S. Olympic Team to be winners.  But the story gets better.  These new modular stocks are something special.  They are the first gunstocks that allow you to bolt virtually any kind of rifle into the same stock, and still have an accurate and customizable shooting platform.  What this means is that our stocks have unprecedented versatility, and are destined to bring the concept of High Performance Gear to an entirely new group of users.

     More Good Things.  Along the way, people started asking if Glen could put one of his biathlon stocks on their favorite hunting guns.  The design of a target rifle’s stock is unique enough that you can’t just make a direct transfer, but Glen started to think that perhaps these folks had a good idea.  He began a new project aimed at building a better hunting rifle.  The result is a hunting stock that is unlike any that came before it.  As light as a composite stock, but with the added three-dimensional strength benefits of wood laminate.  And with a new fit and feel that make shooting a large caliber Eberle rifle a whole new and exciting experience.  Accurate.  Comfortable to shoot.  Eberle stocks combine the natural beauty of fine woods with the stability and strength of carbon fiber.

     Over the years, Eberle stocks have had many opportunities to prove their exceptional qualities.  Outstanding results on biathlon ranges throughout the world have challenged the old beliefs that you need a heavier gun to shoot accurately.  Eberle hunting rifles have shown that a lightweight high-caliber rifle doesn’t have to hurt you when you pull the trigger.

     New Directions.  A philosophy of excellence in design has evolved at our company.  We have come to realize how many things there are that, frankly, could be made better.  We’re developing an entire line of High Performance Gear that will continue to bring products that make sense to the shooting sports.

Curious about our 3-ring logo?  Look closely at the biathlon rifle in the picture at the top of the page.  From Eberle's earliest rifles onward, we've used the three ring truss.  When we started looking around for a logo, that one just seemed to fit.  We hope you appreciate seeing it on all sorts of fine products.

Thanks for your support.  We looking forward to meeting you along the way.

Want to learn more from someone else's perspective?  We were selected as the subject of one of the lead stories in the launch of the U.S. Biathlon Association's new website.  See their perspective on how our work is helping the U.S. National Team in their drive to win the first-ever U.S. Olympic Biathlon Medal: