7mm Backcountry
Experience the world’s most advanced 7mm rifle cartridge.
30 Super Carry
Hits like a 9mm Luger. Carries like a 380 Auto. Designed exclusively for defense.
Raptor Steel
Built in collaboration with Rob Roberts Custom Gunworks, these loads put more pellets on target through Raptor Series chokes.
FireStick
There’s never been a muzzleloading system like this. See all the benefits that set FireStick apart to provide the most convenient, safe and consistent performance ever.
Hydra-Shok® Component Bullets
The bullet that’s defined self-defense for a generation is now available as a component.
Federal X Duluth Pack
Check out the all-new lineup of Federal-branded Duluth Pack apparel and gear.
Model 2020 Waypoint Special Edition
We worked with engineers from Springfield Armory to create Custom Shop loads specifically designed for the utmost performance from the new Model 2020 Waypoint rifle.
Before Cory Kruse ever stepped onto a sporting clays course, long before world titles and professional coaching, he was a ‘little redneck kid’ memorizing the rural environment of his back 40 in Willis, Texas.
To young Cory, shooting wasn’t a sport requiring training or competition. It was the top-tier way to pass time. It was freedom. It was backyard marksmanship that rang out a satisfying “ping!” from his mother’s pots and pans.
Cory went through the natural firearm progression, graduating from a BB gun to a .22, which he’d haul around his grandparents’ Gulf Coast Texas farm on summer days. He recalls his grandfather shaking Federal .22 ammunition into his hands before the two of them would wander through the property’s tall pecan trees toward the river together.
But losing track of time in the woods isn’t Cory’s only recollection. He recalls standing on a little step stool – one he says is still beside his grandpa’s gun safe today – so he could watch his grandpa place treasures on the top shelf, which would usually include half-full boxes of Federal ammunition.
That gun safe was like a museum from a young boy’s perspective.
“I go into that room now, and it’s like a time machine,” Cory said. “My grandpa can tell you exactly why a box is missing three rounds — which mule deer or hog he shot with them, what year, what hunt. Every box has a story.”
And it’s not just the old Federal boxes and missing rounds that carry nostalgia. Cracking open one of those boxes released a scent that has stayed with him his entire life – that ‘unmistakable Federal gunpowder smell’ that he touts he’d recognize anywhere to this day.
“It’s like walking into a place you haven’t been in years and being taken right back,” he said. “That smell is my childhood.”
Those memories, that exposure and the growing love for shooting formed the foundation for everything that came next — the lessons, the mentors, the championships and the role he now plays in the Federal family.
Those early days in the woods didn’t just shape Cory’s love for shooting, they unknowingly prepared him for a more structured, competitive world. What began as a boy’s outdoor pastime evolved in an unexpected direction, thanks to the changes in his family and the new influences that expanded his access to shooting more than he ever could have anticipated.
“I grew up with two dads: my biological dad and my stepdad. I hunted with both, but my stepdad lived for clay shooting. He ran a trap and skeet club in Conroe in a little town near where I grew up, and his kids were allAmerican trap and skeet shooters,” Cory said. “That was the world I stepped into at a very young age.”
Dan Carlisle, a highly decorated shotgun shooter and coach, taught his first official class at Cory’s stepdad’s range before moving on to the Army, the Olympics, and eventually to the explosion of sporting clays in the U.S. It was Dan who introduced Cory’s stepdad to the ‘new game’ of sporting clays. Being an all-around phenomenal shooter, and money being tight, Cory’s stepdad began shooting tournaments to make a little extra cash. And he started winning.
His stepdad took him along to tournaments, which sounds majestic. Only one problem: as a pre-teen, Cory was still too little to hold up a shotgun, so he was mostly there to observe and carry his stepdad’s bag.
“He’d drag me along to tournaments to watch, and I’d just stand there foaming at the mouth, begging to try,” Cory said.
Then one day, his stepdad let him try one station – low seven on the skeet field.
“I broke my first target, and just like that, I was hooked,” Cory said. “I still couldn’t hold the gun up long enough to shoot a full round, so I kept tagging along, kept waiting for my turn.”
Cory continued going to tournaments with his stepdad, eventually earning the consistent ‘gift’ of shooting a few targets after the real round finished. Cory’s instinct was ignited and his phenom-level skill was shining through.
At the end of the following year’s season, his stepdad wanted Cory to classify with NSCA. He took him out on the last day of the year to shoot just enough targets so that come January 1, he’d have a legitimate class instead of a penalty one.
And in that first year, with his stepdad’s coaching he won the Texas State SubJunior Championship. Though he did great in his first year, his stepdad detected Cory’s skill level starting to plateau. At fourteen, Cory’s stepdad sent him to Pennsylvania for a week to undergo training with Carlisle. And that’s when everything shifted.
“He was one of the only instructors in the country who had really figured out sporting clays at that time – championship pedigree, deep technical knowledge, the whole package,” Cory said.
Carlisle coached Cory from his first year in Juniors into his midtwenties. According to Cory, everything that came after – every win, every breakthrough – traces back to Dan’s coaching.
“Every bit of success is due to that decision my stepdad made – sending a kid from a tiny trailer in the woods to train with one of the greatest shotgun shooters on earth,” he said.
With Carlisle’s guidance, Cory sharpened raw talent into true mastery – a foundation that propelled him into one of the most decorated careers in sporting clays. From winning the World FITASC Junior title in 2003 to earning two National Championships, capturing multiple U.S. Open and Browning Briley titles, and ultimately becoming the 2019 World Sporting Champion, each milestone built on the mechanics and mindset Dan helped instill. Those victories weren’t just trophies – they opened doors, expanded his circle, and connected him to the people who would shape every part of his life.
When Cory looks at the full arc of his life, shooting isn’t just a sport – it’s the thread that stitches everything together. Every major relationship, opportunity, and blessing traces back to a shotgun, a clay target, or a range somewhere far from home. His marriage, his closest friendships, his business ventures, his charity work, even his career in the oilfield – all of it began with shooting.
Because Federal has been part of Cory’s story since childhood – and because his work ethic mirrors the dedication of the brand itself – it’s fitting that in 2026, Federal Ammunition welcomed him onto its roster of sponsored shotgun shooters. For Cory, the move feels less like a business decision and more like another door opened at exactly the right time, a return to a brand that has been woven into his life since the very beginning.
World and National titles aside, Cory sees the bigger picture. To him, none of this is coincidence. He views it as a Godgiven gift – not a sign that he was destined to be a worldclass shooter, but that this single passion would become the path to every door he was meant to walk through.
“You zoom out, and the picture becomes obvious,” he said. “Shooting gave me my people, my work, my family, my purpose. It’s the connector for everything.”
It’s why he stays loyal, why he gives back, and why he feels such gratitude for the life built around the sport. Shooting wasn’t the destination – it is the pathway to everything that matters.
Outside the competition circuit, Cory has built a life that still revolves around shooting in meaningful ways. He and his wife, Catherine, run Kruse Shooting – a consulting business that blends range design, selective instruction, and industry representation. That network also opened the door to his career in the oil and gas world, where relationships formed on shooting ranges eventually led him into an outsidesales role supporting marine transportation in the Gulf of Mexico.
Giving back has become just as important as competing. In 2012, Cory and his wife launched the Kruse Classic, a charity shoot that raised significant funds for organizations like St. Jude, LOST, and the Children’s Transplant Initiative, always guided by a simple rule: support charities that put most of the dollars into the mission. That commitment later extended into powerful work with the Warrior Health Foundation, where Cory helped raise more than a million dollars to support Navy SEALs recovering from traumatic brain injuries.
When he’s not teaching, consulting, or competing, Cory is in the woods. Hunting is his reset – a place where the world quiets down and he can watch the sunrise from a tree stand instead of a blind. It’s an activity he now shares with his daughter, who has already harvested her first deer and dove.
“Hunting clears the noise. Problems fade in the sunrise. And sharing that with my daughter – that’s everything,” he said.