Written by HLRBO Staff|
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A 23-year-old college student in Minnesota is developing a youth shotgun training device designed to show young hunters exactly where they aimed when they pull the trigger. It revives an idea first conceived by the founder's father more than a decade ago.
Conner Couet, a senior studying entrepreneurship at St. John's University, has released the Junior Hunter Gun. The product, which has obtained a U.S. patent, uses a camera mounted near the muzzle and a built-in display to provide instant visual feedback, allowing young hunters and instructors to review virtual "shots."
A small screen on the side of the training gun allows a shooter to "see" the shotgun spread
Originally from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Couet traces the Junior Hunter Gun idea back to his childhood.
"My dad originally came up with the idea when we were kids," Couet said. "We used to carry sticks or even a marshmallow shooter while pheasant hunting to learn how to handle a shotgun."
Couet's father built two early prototypes around 2010 but never pursued commercialization. At the time, the technology was more difficult to develop, and the concept remained a family project.
Years later, the Couet son revisited the idea while studying entrepreneurship at St. John's. However, his first venture was unrelated to hunting.
A family tradition from the start ... photos from Couet's youth
"I ran a food truck for two summers," Conner said. "But my dad kept coming back to this idea, and the more we looked at it, the more we realized it could help young hunters learn."
A Startup is Born
Today, the company is called Hunter's Edge LLC. Its first product, the Junior Hunter Gun, is designed to mirror the weight and handling of a traditional shotgun while focusing on safe training.
It's a new category of product. The goal is to reduce guesswork and accelerate learning for beginner hunters.
Couet is working with a manufacturer in the San Francisco Bay Area to develop early prototypes, marking the transition from concept to physical product. The first products will be delivered in the coming months, ready for testing.
Prototype of the Junior Hunter Gun
The marketplace for the Junior Hunter Gun is broad. Customers are expected to come from organized youth shooting communities, including 4-H clubs, shotgun clubs, and high school skeet shooting teams. Couet is working to get those groups to test early units and provide feedback to shape the final product before broader manufacturing.
A potential market includes hundreds-of-thousands of youth participants nationwide who move through hunter education programs and organized shooting sports each year.
Couet said he plans to finance early production through crowdfunding, followed by friends-and-family investment and an SBA loan to scale manufacturing. Interested early adopters can reserve a unit with a $150 deposit ($349 total cost) on the Hunter's Edge website.
If early testing goes as planned, the Junior Hunter Gun will move from prototype to limited production over the next year, shaped by feedback from youth programs and instructors in the field.
For Couet, the path forward is less about a single product launch and more about proving the concept can hold up in real-world training environments, something his father never had the chance to do more than a decade ago but is now proud to see brought to life.
--Learn more about Couet and his startup at the Hunter's Edge website here.