TACCOM 2022-Day One Recap

Words by: Wally F. Photos by: Wally F.

Day one of TACCOM, the first one back since Covid hit the mainstream, returned with a big bang and are featuring the stand outs in the Canadian Firearms shooting sports, tactical, retail, manufacturing, Veteran support, and citizen firearms advocacy arena.

The best way to describe my first on the show floor is a literal stream of consciousness tour manifested physically by where I randomly walked on the show floor. Unlike SHOT Show where I had strict interview times at certain booths and they always happens to be across the whole show on a different floor, TACCOM is nicely spread out in a large but not overwhelming setup that is easy to navigate.

I made it a point to hit the Veteran run booths first, with a quick swing by Corporal 4 Life apparel, because if you know you know. Always great stuff there. I spent a significant amount of time over at Mad Hatter Industries, a veteran founded and operated apparel company dedicated to supporting Veterans and assisting in mental health awareness, especially in the areas of mental resiliency, suicide prevention, and creating and sustaining support within the community. A noble and necessary cause, also their Memento Mori t-shirts are pretty sweet.

Without having a a set time to be at a specific location had me wondering about, and as usual I landed at the Vortex Canada booth checking out their excellent line up and optics. The updated Strike Eagle 1-8 is I’d say an LPVO optic that everyone should have some variant of on their semi-auto rifle. The latest version of the Razor HD is a beast and I haven’t lensed clear glass in an optic for a fairly long time. It’s always a pleasure to hit them up at every trade show.

A pleasant surprise was MantisX coming up from the US to have a booth setup with their latest training systems. If you know anything about Mantis their X series and dry fire training aids are the stuff that legends are made of. I recently wrote and in-depth article on their Laser Academy system training package, and it is worth it’s weight in gold considering the price of ammo nowadays. Along with their Blackbeard system and their newly announced Blackbeard X, their dry fire training systems just keep getting better and better. I was also hinted that they got another surprise up their sleeves that they will be launching soon as well, I’m looking forward to it when its released.

As I strolled the trade show floor I did a flyby of the Cadex booth, which always presents the latest in their precision rifle chassis setups and builds. Any serious long distance shooter in Canada has at one point owned or at least been behind the trigger of a Cadex build.

If you’ve never heard of Confections Carcajou you don’t know what you been missing out on. These super friendly folks out of Gatineau make a variety of quality field products, most notably a very well made ghillie smock, all made in Canada. As I was looking at their cam and concealment products I got into a conversation about helmet scrims and specifically compatibility with the CAF issued helmets. While, they didn’t have an exact solution they knew someone else on the show floor that did, which led me to what I think was day one’s hidden gem of TACCOM: Nutsof.

Nutsof doesn’t have a booth, and up until today I didn’t even know they existed, and I’m usually pretty dialed into this type of thing. Nutsof, a cleaver play on words is how I would describe their philosophy on their products and design. They specialize in build products to solves that always hit when in the field for the 18^th day in a row and you’re cursing “Why can’t somebody just make something to fix X, Y, or Z?!” Nutsof are those somebodies. Know that everyone and their pet snakes are making battle-belts, a better chest rig, a better whatever, Nutsof is building products to bridge the gap for things that you’d need in the field for those minor and or major annoyances. In my case, a decent and durable turnkey helmet scrim for my issued helmet. Hit up their website and you’ll what I mean when I say you’ll get an Aha moment on at least one of their made in Canada products.

This was just the tip of spear in terms of places I hit up today. The must and will sees for day two will most likely be heavily weighted on the manufacturers side with Black Creek Labs, Crusader Arms, Sterling Arms, and hopefully I’ll be able to catch my fellow media cohorts on the show floor Code of Arms TV. See everyone out there for day two!

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Reporting for TV-PressPass

Wally F.