Roy Edward Weatherby (4 September 1910 — 4 April 1988), was the founder and owner of Weatherby, Inc., an American rifle, shotgun and cartridge manufacturing company founded 1945. Weatherby created an entire line of custom cartridges, and was one of the people responsible for the industry interest in high-speed cartridges. He created a custom rifle action to accommodate his high-pressure cartridges.

History

He grew up on a farm in Kansas. He later moved to

Huntington Park, California Huntington Park is a city in the Gateway Cities district of southeastern Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 58,114, of whom 97% are Hispanic/Latino and about half were born outside the ...

where he and his wife, Camilla, bought a Spanish style home located on 7672 California Street on the corner of Grand Avenue. Weatherby started manufacturing Weatherby Guns in his garage at the Huntington Park home. Weatherby firearms are best known for their very high-powered rifle cartridges, all bearing the name Weatherby Magnum such as the

.257 Weatherby Magnum The .257 Weatherby Magnum is a .257 caliber (6.53 mm) belted bottlenecked cartridge. It is one of the original standard length magnums developed by shortening the .375 H&H Magnum case to approx. . Of the cartridges developed by Roy Weatherb ...

(designed in 1944), the

.378 Weatherby Magnum The .378 Weatherby Magnum was designed by Roy Weatherby in 1953. It was an original belted magnum design with no parent case, inspired by the .416 Rigby and headspacing of the belted .375 H&H Magnum.Any Shot You Want, The A-Square Handloading ...

(1953) and the

.460 Weatherby Magnum The .460 Weatherby Magnum is a belted, bottlenecked rifle cartridge, developed by Roy Weatherby in 1957. The cartridge is based on the .378 Weatherby Magnum necked up to accept the bullet. The original .378 Weatherby Magnum parent case was ...

(1957), and for the production of appropriately-chambered sporting rifles. Weatherby came into the world of commercial cartridge and rifle making with a background of experimentation in cartridge wildcatting and was determined to develop a range of sporting rifle cartridges that would produce very high muzzle velocities, high bullet energies, very flat

trajectories A trajectory or flight path is the path that an object with mass in motion follows through space as a function of time. In classical mechanics, a trajectory is defined by Hamiltonian mechanics via canonical coordinates; hence, a complete traj ...

, and very hard-hitting characteristics at long range. Among those who influenced his thinking and products was the English riflemaker and cartridge designer David Lloyd. Following Roy Weatherby's death, the Weatherby Foundation International (initially known as the Roy E. Weatherby Foundation) was established as a non-profit, tax-exempt Foundation to promote sporting hunting and contributing to wildlife conservation. It currently leads an initiative to foster the development of educational outdoor expositions, and as at 2007 has sponsored 78 events in 19 of the US states, with combined attendance of nearly 1 million. The Foundation annually sponsors the Weatherby Hunting and Conservation Award.

References

*http://www.weatherby.com/company/history.html – History page on company website *http://www.weatherbyfoundation.org/ – the Weatherby Foundation *Gresham, Grits & Tom : ''Weatherby – The Man. The Gun. The Legend'' – 290-page biography of Roy E. Weatherby * {{DEFAULTSORT:Weatherby, Roy Firearm designers 1910 births 1988 deaths People from Kansas 20th-century American inventors