Here's the story fellas.
Andre (the founder and prior owner of Lone Wolf) sold the company in 06. He had a 3 year non compete clause. He kept ownership of the name Lone Wolf when he sold though. He and his son Cody moved to Dubuque in 08 and now that the patents are up on Lone Wolf, they have started making stands again under the XOP name. They are actually identical to the previous lone wolfs except for the fact that they are indeed outsourcing some of the parts to China. They are still all assembled here in the USA and Cody is personally inspecting all of them before shipping.
They have redesigned a few things for next year which will make the sticks better IMO.
XOP's are not the lone wolf rejects....... They could actually put the lone wolf name on them if they wanted, but it would confuse the hell out of the consumers.
IMO they will dominate the market when people start catching on to what is actually going on. One of the main things that had been discussed was that Lone Wolfs price point was way to spendy for the average hunter and needed to be addressed. Also when the company was sold, they quit doing consumer shows and that killed their market share, but the new owners didn't seem to care.
They are worth the look for sure and I already own one that I will be testing this fall. They are going to be in a few of the box stores as well as some of the local shops. Pikes Peak Archery in Farmersburg will be handling them for any of you guys in Eastern Iowa.
They also are toying with the idea of producing some ground blinds and trail cams under the Lone Wolf name.
This is straight from the horses mouth, and now like Paul Harvey says... you know the rest of the story.
