Joel Hodgdon: Four Generations of the Gunpowder People [ZEROED IN]

In 1947, Bruce Hodgdon, a Navy veteran, got word the military was planning to dump 50,000 pounds of surplus gunpowder into the ocean following World War II. Bruce saw an opportunity: Instead of discarding gunpowder now that global conflict had ended, purchase the surplus and sell it to reloaders in America.

Bruce cut through government red tape — something he and family would continue to do for decades — and purchased 25 tons of government surplus 4895. To advertise, Bruce rented a farm pasture and moved an old boxcar into it, took a photo and placed a 1-inch ad in American Rifleman. His business of gunpowder was born.

The first 150-pound kegs sold for $30 each plus freight. Bruce’s grade-school age sons, J.B. and Bob, sawed orange crates into wooden boxes for shipping. During high school, the boys delivered shipments to the REA or the Merriam Frisco train terminal each morning on their way to class. Bruce’s wife, Amy, served as bookkeeper and saleswoman. 

Very quickly mail order sales grew to include other reloading components, tools, and finally firearms and ammunition.

In 1952, Bruce was also still working full-time at the Gas Service Company. His boss began cutting his sales territory and eventually demanded Bruce wear a tie during sales calls. That was the last straw. He promptly resigned, and devoted all of his efforts to B. E. Hodgdon, Incorporated.

With the help of his sons after they graduated college and his wife, Bruce expanded the business during the 1960s, eventually separating the gunpowder side from everything else. In 1966, Hodgdon Powder was its own company, a move that would cement the Hodgdon family as “the gunpowder people.”

Bruce Hodgdon died in 1997. He was among other things an avid reloader, competitive rifle shooter, trap shooter, hunter, NRA Benefactor Member, and World War II Veteran. The responsibility of running the company fell to his sons, J.B. and Bob. In his final years, Bruce’s eldest son, J.B., served on the board as Chairman Emeritus until his death on June 13, 2025. A lifelong outdoorsman, J.B. carried his passion for shooting and hunting pursuits throughout his life and right up to the end.

Bruce’s youngest son, Robert Eltinge “Bob” Hodgdon died on January 14, 2023. Up to his last year, Bob was still active in shooting and hunting activities with friends and family.

Bob’s son, Chris, began his professional career with 13 years in radio broadcasting then transitioned into 25 years working in the day-to-day operations at Hodgdon Powder Company. In January 2019, Chris retired from operations and assumed a seat on Hodgdon’s Board of Directors. Chris also remains heavily involved in the shooting and hunting industries. Among various work, he serves on the NRA Shooting Sports Committee and as a director on the Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation.

What started as a bold move by Bruce in 1947 turned into a legacy of gunpowder for hobbyist handloaders in the United States. The Hodgdon story is one of innovation, autonomy, a shared destiny between the company, its employees and family, and its customers, the men and women reaching for fire-formed brass, pouring powder into cases with plans to maintain a tried-and-true load, a tried-and-true tradition.

In May 2025, Hodgdon Powder Company purchased RCBS, a prominent manufacturer of reloading equipment, from Vista Outdoor’s brand collective, Revelyst. The acquisition marked the return of RCBS to family ownership and created excitement within the reloading community, as now two major respected brands in the industry were under the management of one trusted set of passionate and dedicated individuals.

The RCBS acquisition also officially brought Joel Hodgdon — son of Chris and grandson of Bob — into the main story arch of Hodgdon Powder Company.

Since its inception, the Hodgdon mission remains the same: devotion to God, family, and America’s reloader. Few companies today can honestly say the same. We sat down with Joel to discuss where Hodgdon Company Powder is, where they’re going, and the overall state of gunpowder and reloading in the United States.

RECOIL: Technically, you’re employed by RCBS — now a subsidiary of Hodgdon — but how much is your role in Hodgdon right now? 

Joel Hodgdon:  I’m an RCBS employee, but as you can imagine with my last name, I get hauled into powder conversations occasionally. It’s fun for me personally being in RCBS and Weaver everyday because that’s a big opportunity for us as a company now.

The powder business, we’ve been doing it well for such a long time. But now on the reloading tooling side — and rings, mounts, and bases — that’s a big wide open market with great competition, great things we can do. We can innovate.

It’s fun to have our RCBS and Weaver brands driving forward to propel what we’re doing here at Hodgdon.

Oftentimes, for a family company, especially multi-generational — a lot of times a family member goes to work for the family company immediately. You worked outside of your company first. Why was that important?

JH: I was lucky enough that I grew up around the business because my dad was working here day in and out. I heard about it at the dinner table, at family meetings, on the weekends, at the range or whatever. 

The Hodgdons — we all love the business and our history, but we’re a big family. I’ve got cousins who are firefighters, home-builders, nurses, graphic designers, stay-at-home moms, much more. Many of us worked in the powder company over the years, but today, I’m the only family member who’s in the business day-to-day. And that’s an honor and responsibility, truly. 

Some folks can go right into their family business and make a huge difference from day one — depends on the person, on the business. For me, the advice I got, and I think the way it really worked out for me, was going out and doing my own thing for a while.

I came out of college with a business degree. I did my MBA. I worked for the Congressional Sportsman’s Foundation for a couple years getting a grounding in the regulatory and legislative environment of our industry. Every company in our industry — I mean you know how important the Second Amendment is, you know how important Pittman-Robertson is to our way of life as hunters, as shooters, as reloaders. 

One thing I love about our industry is how close we all are and part of that is because we need each other. We have this group of people out there that would shut our industry down, just like that. We face existential threats as an industry that others just don’t, whether from a law, a regulation, whatever. I saw some of that firsthand and experienced some of that, met people and understood that side of our industry more.

From there, I ended up at an event with, at the time, the head of sales for Federal Premium Ammunition. We get to talking a little bit and he says, “Hey, if you ever decide to hop back on to the private side, give me a call, we might have something for you and I said, “You know, that would be great. I’d love to see more of the industry.”

That was Jason Vanderbrink, he’s now leading The Kinetic Group. Jason gave me a shot; he became a mentor. I went into Federal Ammunition as they had a marketing spot open. Man, I’m forever grateful to the TKG folks. They taught me a ton of stuff. Great people there. I got to see how the big boys do manufacturing, marketing, sales, whatever, and saw how some of the best brands in the industry make ammunition, talk to the consumer, think about the industry, run a supply chain, and that was a great experience.

A few years into my tenure at Federal, my boss calls me up and he says, “Hey, we’re buying Remington ammo. How do you feel about Arkansas?” The joke I like to make is they sent me down there because the Minnesota guys at Federal needed somebody to translate for the Arkansas folks. They’re like, “get the Kansas kid in there. He can speak Arkansas.” 

I spent a little over three years as Remington’s marketing director in Lonoke. We were restarting a factory in the middle of COVID. We were rebuilding a factory, an office, a marketing team. I think in my time there, we added hundreds of employees. It was huge to be able to see Remington get back on its feet and be who we all want Remington ammo to be.

What brands are currently in the Hodgdon portfolio, and to what other brands do you have licensing rights?

JH: I think my great grandpa would roll over in his grave if he knew that we bought IMR, because that was the Goliath to his David. I mean, IMR was the big dog, big competitor to him, and so, over the years, as we’ve grown, Hodgdon has picked up and bought other powder brands like IMR.

We bought Western Powders a few years ago, which is Accurate, Ramshot, Blackhorn 209, brands like that. We license the Winchester name for gunpowder exclusively as well.

My grandpa Bob was into smoke poles, so products like Pyrodex and Triple 7 muzzleloading powders — those were his babies, and it’s really helped make our company who it is today. RCBS is the first brand away from our core of gunpowder.

Why was RCBS so important to acquire?

JH: The way we look at it as a family is, “Hey, we’re the gunpowder people.” In our minds, anything that touches gunpowder, that’s who we are. Reloading is what we want to support. My great grandfather, Bruce Hodgdon, he knew Fred Huntington, the RCBS founder. They did reloading clinics together, they went out and taught handloaders how to use their products — use Fred’s tools, use my grandpa’s powder. We’ve been around a long, long time in the industry with RCBS. RCBS is actually older than Hodgdon by a few years — since 1943, which is pretty cool.

What have you seen in terms of demand, RCBS, or the reception since Hodgdon acquired RCBS? 

JH:  Overwhelmingly positive. I saw some guy on Reddit or another forum say, “So that’s what they’ve been doing with all my Varget money.” And I’m like, “Yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing with your Varget money.”

We have a chance to help a historic reloading equipment brand. Our customers are happy to have RCBS shipping product again, fulfilling on time. As a handloader myself, there was a time when you couldn’t walk into a store or shop online and find a ChargeMaster dispenser or find that 280 AI set of RCBS dies you wanted. Now we’re really focusing on inventory, making sure we’re making the right things and getting them out to the people who want them. That’s been really positive.

This is always a major discussions among the community: How do we build the reloading community? How do we sustain it? For Hodgdon and RCBS, together, how are you trying to grow the community?

JH: By focusing on trying to grow reloading as a whole, not just RCBS. At the end of the day, if we teach somebody how to reload through a YouTube video or someone gets exposed to reloading through a post of ours on Instagram or whatever, and that person goes and buys somebody else’s press or dies, odds are at some point they’re going to use our powder, right?

We are focused on growing that overall pie, instead of taking a bigger piece of the pie for ourselves. We know the folks at the other equipment manufacturers and they’re good people. They’re doing good things, and the more new reloading products that are out there, exciting stuff that is out there, the better. If we can make reloading easier to learn, faster, safer, higher quality, everybody wins, right?

COVID was a big thing for the industry. During that time in the industry, in your role personally, what were you seeing?  

JH: I was coming out of Federal going into Remington.

So you were dealing with components. Every brand was re-examining the supply chain, sourcing from wherever they could, just to get ammunition out there. For Hodgdon and RCBS, are the lessons from COVID still in the back or you minds? Is that a sort of situation brands like you are still planning for, again?

JH:  So obviously, your press, your dies, your dispenser, no good without powder, the primers, the brass to run through it. And as we’ve seen in COVID and other spikes, the big ammo guys, it’s all they can do to keep up with demand for loaded ammo. And so sometimes those component sales, you know, they slow down because there’s not enough to go around.

I’d encourage everybody that’s been through COVID or the Obama spike or whatever that is — if you’ve been around handloading more than a few years, you know this stuff is coming. Now is the time. We’ve started to see prices on components going down.

As a reloader myself, I’m stacking primers deep, because you know it’s going to come around at some point. I’d encourage everybody, hey, if there’s something you’ve had your eye on, get it now.

For Hodgdon, we learn from these lessons. We want to carry a little more inventory. We want to be able to help people when that supply shrinks. And that’s a luxury of being a family owned company that’s in it for the long haul. 

Hodgdon has always been very loyal to its dealers, crediting dealers for the brand’s success. That is powder going to hobbyist handloaders, but some consumers think your powder gets prioritized for big ammo manufacturers during spikes like COVID.

JH:  First and foremost, we are a canister company selling to the everyday Joe handloader. We care about the dealer, the reloader, because that’s our heritage and that’s our brand. The handloading market — it’s a very loyal group of folks. They’ve supported us for a long time. They’ll continue to do that if we can get them the right powder they want. That’s who we serve first, for sure. 

During COVID, people asked Hodgdon, “Why can’t you just make another gunpowder-manufacturing facility?” And then the answer always was, “Well, there’s demand now. But you understand, that’s not always going to be there.”

JH: Our mission statement says that people are more important than dollars and that we deal with integrity and honesty. Our family approaches this question through our faith so our mission also says our purpose is to bring credit to our Lord Jesus Christ. Our people are our most important asset. We don’t want to hire people during a surge and let them go later because demand’s dropped off. We’re in it for the long haul. That’s part of our values. We don’t always do this right, but we try. 

How are you guys looking at these various industries — hunting, personal defense, precision shooting — and saying what is or how can we contribute from our side of things?

JH: Reloaders are tinkerers, right? We want to build a better mousetrap and kind of tweak every little piece of performance we can out of our gear. We look at these different pursuits or hobbies you mentioned and see where we fit in. We also try to follow the reloader and go where they want to steer us. We’ve seen interest in higher-end reloading tools that help you meet an uber-high bar for precision. 

We also contribute by helping be an authority on handloading and that means providing good load data as the floor. Our ballisticians are amazing at generating real-world data. We don’t just use a computer model to figure out our ballistics. We shoot all of our powder’s data, so we present verified shot data that you can trust as a reloader and say, “Hey, if Hodgdon says it’s whatever — 32 and a half grains of powder gives 2,900 feet per second — that’s what it is.” 

And your testing facility is in Herington, Kansas?

JH: Yep. Hodgdon has two different labs with super, super knowledgeable folks. We have one in Herington, Kansas, which is historically where we’ve been — packaged powder, made powder, all that good stuff. And then we have a ballistics lab guys out in Miles City, Montana, which is where Western Powders was.

At both those labs, we make our own test barrels, we shoot our own data, and it’s everything from boutique 28-gauge turkey loads with a new wad, all the way up to whatever new cartridge the major ammunition manufacturers are introducing through SAAMI. We have the ability to generate that data and be really fast and nimble with it. Typically, you’ll see if somebody comes out with a new bullet, primer, cartridge, whatever that is, we’re going to be the first people following them with that info.

From the Hodgdon or RCBS side, what is the on the horizon in terms of new product launches or development?

JH: For Hodgdon, it’s hard to launch a new powder when people can’t find their old favorite. Hopefully, folks have seen more powder available, on the shelf in front of you. I think that’s continuing to get better. That’s our focus but you may see a new product from Hodgdon from time to time, like High Gun and Perfect Pattern, two newer shotshell powders. These powders are really good substitutes for other shotshell or pistol powders that have been harder to get a hold of. 

What is Hodgdon’s official response to anyone who can’t find a certain powder because it’s been discontinued, or it’s just very rare to find?

JH: First off, I just tell people, “Hey, we hear you. We’re reloaders and shooters too.” It’s so frustrating when you work up a load, you have something that you like and you have to go replace it because you can’t find the power you need. It’s a pain in the butt. I get it.

Tough-to-find powders have been a sore spot. Sometimes we just can’t get enough. I’ll just say we have some plans there to kind of help meet that. Powder gets sucked up in a huge, huge capacity to meet world conflicts. We’re always looking for ways to get more powder available for the everyday reloader. And like we talked about, that’s our business, what we focus on.

Your great-grandfather Bruce died in 1997. What are some special memories you have with him, or with family in general growing up a Hodgdon? 

JH: As you can imagine, like 4th of July around our house growing up was always like a bit of a production. It was just insane.

Usually somebody was hauling out some old drum of powder or, you know, test batch or something and blowing it up.

No matter how old he got, my grandpa Bob had this fiendish glee about blowing stuff up. He had this pyrotechnic streak a mile wide. He’d light up like a little kid when we did this stuff. One year, he had to remove a stump from his pasture, so we just blew it up. I think it was H4350 sitting on top of the stump, and we shot the old metal can and the stump’s just gone, huge explosion. Poof.

Every Hodgdon has a little of that in us, men and women. 

My great grandpa gets all the credit, but my great grandma Amy, she did the books for the company for years. Anybody who has been around a family business, you know what a sacrifice it is. The whole family has to pull weight. We’re a family business but we’ve also had people who have worked for us for decades and are like family. Our outgoing chairman of the board, Tom Shepherd, is a great example, since he got his start packing powder for us in the ’60s and worked his way up.  

My great grandpa founded the business because his boss, at his day job, kept cutting his sales territory. And one day his boss said, “Hey, you need to start wearing a tie when you go on the sales calls. And that was the final straw, my great grandpa said, “Screw that. I quit.” And that’s when he started really focusing seriously on Hodgdon. We still have a “no ties” rule at the company.

We’re not any different than any other family. We love hunting and shooting because that’s part of who we are. Whether that’s opening day deer season at my dad’s farm, or whether that’s the pheasant opener, it’s something that we do year after year, it’s just part of who we are.

And that’s a heritage that as you grow up you appreciate it more. At least I do. I want to hand it off to my kids.

Is there a sense of pressure, whether it’s just the industry in general or being the fourth generation in the biggest name in gunpowder?

JH: I think if you’re not growing, you’re dying in the business world, so it’s important for me to maintain our growth. At the same time, I think our biggest challenge as a company is we need to maintain our values, our humility, and remember where we’ve come from: a bunch of Kansas rednecks hustling to pour surplus military powder into a sack, labeling it by hand at my grandpa’s kitchen table, selling it through American Rifleman and shipping the powder through the U.S. mail — that’s our heritage.

The generational aspect is more inspiring than it is pressurizing. My family has been good about not putting pressure on my generation. That’s why I have cousins who go off and do other things. Conversely, as a family, we’ve said, “Hey, we don’t really care what your last name is. We want the best person for the job, in the job.” We don’t hand out gigs just because you’re a Hodgdon. There’s a lot of trust the family puts in me now that I am working within our business, but I also know the family has my back.

Look, I’m just the marketing guy, right? We’ve got an amazing executive team, experienced leaders who have been around the industry way longer than I have. These guys and gals, they’re steering the company. And we’re lucky as a family to have the right people on our team pushing the company forward.

Something like buying RCBS, I don’t know if that would have been possible 20, 30 years ago for us as a family. But the fact that we had experienced leaders who knew the ropes, that’s a big deal.

You’ll see us continuing to grow, but grow keeping in mind that challenge to grow our way, grow with our values.