With a dream to start a company based on the long-range hunting he grew up doing in Wyoming, Aaron Davidson has turned his youthful dreams into founding one of the world’s top rifle manufacturers in a short two decades. His obsession with accuracy has fueled the Cody company’s rise to the top.

Davidson’s dream has gone global; Gunwerks represents half the rifles in elite Asian sheep hunting operations and a third of the rifles in South Africa’s important safari hunting camps. Yet, it’s not just rifles the company produces. Gunwerks specializes in entire hunting systems, including its own amazingly accurate barrels, ergonomic stocks, strong, almost bulletproof bipods and tripods, suppressors and an extremely impressive line of Revic rifle scopes, built to take the guesswork out of making tough long-range shots.

The company now has about 100 employees, but it started as a one-man operation.

“It was pretty much a one-man show,” Davidson said. “Now we’re hungry for great people all the time. And that’s really the big challenge with Cody; can we get enough people to continue to grow the way we want to?”

The company has a plan to hire another 100 employees as it continues to grow, said Marketing Manager Jason Byer.

Davidson didn’t want to simply build a monumental product line. From the very beginning, Davidson wanted to share his knowledge and experiences that make using the Gunwerks’ system the same way an artist sculpts or paints a masterpiece. The tools of the trade need to become an extension of an artist’s creativity, translating their vision seamlessly to the canvas in the same way that a well-trained hunter’s weapon system needs to work almost subconsciously as the hunter concentrates on shot placement at a moment’s notice.

Long Range University

Davidson started the company’s Long Range University in 2007, just a year after producing his first gun.

“We introduced the first progressive training curriculum designed specifically for hunters and extending their effective capability,” Davidson said during a recent phone interview.

Termed the Ivy League of long-range shooting education, Long Range University training methods were developed over decades of successes and failures in real-world hunting scenarios. The full education is a three-level course. Level 1 lays the groundwork for precision shooting, teaching equipment selection, ballistics and core techniques. Using Gunwerks rifles, students master bench shooting, shooter/spotter teamwork, and trajectory validation to 1,000 yards, and learn internal/external ballistics, bore maintenance, and ethical hunting principles to ensure first-round hits.

Level 2 elevates your skills with advanced ballistics and wind compensation for complex conditions. Master wind reading with tools like wind meters and environmental cues, and tackle factors like air density, spin drift, and Coriolis effect. Students practice field positions and supports to extend range with Gunwerks rifles and smart rangefinders, gaining confidence for precise, ethical shots under pressure.

And finally, Level 3 is the capstone course, applying the first two classes skills in real-world mountain hunting scenarios. The hunter brings their rifle to test their systems — marksmanship, ballistics, and environmental compensation — to the rugged terrain of their Sheep Mountain facility. The class will help hunters hone quick, ethical shot decisions under pressure, mastering dynamic conditions for long-range hunting success.

Gunwerks’ combined products and services has secured this Cody company a place deep in the dreams of serious hunters. But Davidson is said to be relentless in his search for perfection.

“There’s so much work to do, and there’s so many things that we can do better,” he said. “There is no time to dwell on what we’ve achieved. There’s only focus on what needs to be done next.”

A passion for perfection

Arranging a face-to-face meeting with Davidson during hunting season is next to impossible. Fall and early winter is treated like a long holiday season at the company, offering employees — who typically work 10-hour days (Monday through Thursday) — ample opportunity for hunting in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and beyond.

They also sponsor employee group hunts, encouraging every employee to increase his or her knowledge of hunting and shooting sports.

For Davidson, he’s not simply in search of adventures hunting wild game animals from around the globe, he’s ardently striving to achieve perfection.

“For me, a hunt is an opportunity to prove myself and my skill set, my equipment and, you know, all the training that I’ve done,” he said. “Hunting is great for the social [aspect], but the actual shooting and killing, to me, is all about making the perfect shot.”

He carries that diligence and ethos of care for the next single perfect shot to his company. To do so means flying solo as a first mover in a saturated industry.

“To start a business — to bootstrap it and grow it — you generally either have to be wildly successful, or you have to fixate on a forward vision of what you’re striving for. For me, that forward vision is what gets me up in the morning and drives me to push through the challenges that you have when you’re growing a business,” he said.

However, flying solo is expensive. For every couple steps forward, there is always an expensive step backwards. Davidson built his company on his own exacting standards. Yet, the process requires a mountain of capital.

“It is very, very expensive and very risky to do a design where you’re not able to copy somebody else,” he said. “I try to fixate and remember the failures, because those are great learning experiences and a lot of the unique innovations that we’ve created over the years have been sparked from a failure.”

His diligence and drive may have offended or frustrated some, yet his dream is shared by many of the nearly 100 employees at the Cody headquarters. They have bought into the business of creating instead of copying. And that’s where the fun starts.

“First mover cost is high, but it’s also where all the fun stuff happens. It’s where the action lies,” Davidson said. “As a company, we’re wired for creating the newest ideas for improvement, for solving problems. There’s an element of not being satisfied with the status quo that exists in our organization, where we understand that we can do it better.”

Validating the dream

An example of those standards is evident with each gun leaving the armory. After assembly, each weapon goes through the Validation Department, where it is shot in the company’s 100-yard indoor range; two volleys of five rounds each. If it doesn’t pass the stringent test for accuracy, the gun won’t leave the factory until it represents Davidson’s vision of stacking shots in the bullseye.

Kellen Washut is the range validation supervisor and never gets tired of his job firing some of the world’s finest precision weapons.

“Shooting guns all day is not the worst way to make a living,” he said with a grin. “It’s pretty fun, especially when you start trying to beat your own personal record, or try to set a record for the company. You’re always pushing yourself to see just how good the gun can be.”

The range is set up to allow the validator staff to be able to see their results on a computer monitor immediately after the shot. Groups that would thrill most shooters are common results for the staff.

“Each rifle is a beautiful piece of equipment merging both art and precision, but also offers [hunters’] shortcuts to get on target. They don’t have to spend years trying to develop this skill,” Byer said.

Byer came from Florida for the job, having never worked in the firearms industry previously. But he loves to hunt and was quick to take on the challenge.

“I came from outside of the industry, so I naively thought that every rifle brand built all the components,” Byer said. “You find out, no, they take this stock from this manufacturer, this trigger from Trigger Tech, and this barrel from Proof [Research], and they assemble it. And then I further naively thought that they all shot these rifles before they sent them out to customers. That’s
not true either.”

He said at the core of their philosophy is building long-range hunting systems that match the kind of hunting their clients want to do. He calls the time saving systems “time machines.”

Within Revic scopes, hunters can simply dial the turret and the system calculates all the ballistics for the shooter. Every part and design element is focused on pure hunting efficiency. Their top line scopes host a complete sensor suite. Real-time, accurate temperature and pressure sensors are used to calculate air density, while the magnometers and gyroscopes produce signals that calculate inclination angle and the compass heading. Within the scope, the hunter can control earth-based effects, vector wind inputs, and make adjustments without losing focus or breaking shooting position.

Through Bluetooth connectivity to the Revic Ops app, shooters can also edit profiles and program base wind functions. It’s all designed so shooters can save time while on once-in-a-lifetime hunts.

“Our clients are often too busy... and they want a shortcut. They want to skip this process of years worth of honing this skill. And they want to be able to go on a hunt and feel confident in the field when seconds count. They want a time machine,” Byer said. “We have to build simplicity into our product so that you can get on target in those high stress situations.”

That system includes training at Long-Range University, he said.

“LRU is incredibly popular. We are booked from spring to fall. We run pretty much daily, from spring to fall out in Burlington [at their main training range]. It’s almost always 100% booked,” he said.

With the new Wyoming State Shooting Complex being built in Cody, offering a soft opening in the fall of 2026 and a full opening in spring of 2027, those seeking an elite long-distance shooting will soon have access to true long-range shooting. Davidson was appointed to the State Shooting Complex Shooting Complex Oversight Task Force, which oversees the process at the legislative level for building the complex. His voice helped land the complex in Park County.

“I do believe that with this training facility, they want to make it ... open for more people. We’ll definitely try to have some special events there, and to utilize it as appropriate,” he said.

He hopes the combination of the museum and the shooting complex, along with Gunwerks, will bring more people to the area to be introduced to the Gunwerks product line or to work at the armory and in the ecosystem’s beautiful landscapes. The key for Davidson is to not rest on his laurels.

“We completely turned the industry on its head,” he said. “There were no mentors or companies that we could look to for inspiration. So, I think we’ve carried that innovator and first mover energy for the past two decades.”