Trijicon has a rich history in the shooting industry and was originally founded by Glyn Bindon. Bindon was reported to be quite a character by most. At any rate, his death in 2003 was felt throughout the shooting industry. He was a pilot, and after decades of innovating new optics for the shooting industry, he was killed in an act of irony when the plane he was piloting plunged into Gunsite Mountain in Alaska.
“Glyn was quite an inventor, the type of guy who just thinks about things that nobody else considers,” said Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing at Trijicon. Glyn was born in South Africa and emigrated to the U.S. as a teen. He was an engineer by training and an inventor by genealogy. His talents were employed by NASA to build landing parts of the Lunar Landing Module. “He also had inventions with regard to the braking system that stops jets on aircraft carriers,” said Munson.
Around the late ’70s, Bindon was on a trip to his homeland and came across the OEG (Occluded Eye Gunsight). Instead of looking through, you only looked into the OEG. “The concept dictated keeping both eyes open. One eye looked at the target, the other just saw a red dot. Your brain then merges the two images together,” Munson explained.
Armson built the sight, and Bindon became its sole U.S. distributer. The OEG contained tritium and fiber optic to illuminate the dot. In order to service the sights, Bindon had to get a license through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Armed with the license and sighting system, he started looking for other ways to use them and broke on to the gun scene with pistol sights that you could see at night. Trijicon was formed as a result in 1981.
Around 2005–2006, Trijicon increased its marketing efforts with the sport hunting community. “As we became more ingrained with the hunting scope market and better connected to outdoor writers and enthusiasts, it became a natural move into the archery market,” Munson recounted. “We were already the leader in fiber optics, but when asked, we simply stated that, ‘We focused on riflescopes and still felt we had a lot of work left to do there,’” Munson remembered.
Eventually, passionate engineers within the company and pressure from the hunting community convinced Trijicon to develop and offer the AccuPin hunting bowsight. The AccuPin is a mono pin adjustable design with battery-free illumination and a simple sight-in procedure. “We already have a strong following within the hunting community and entered the archery market with a strong, well-built sight. Now we just have to see how it’s going to play out, how the community is going to receive it.”
(800) 338-0563; www.trijicon.com
