Geoff McDonald has had a lifelong interest in guns and hunting. He was raised on a farm, "Woodleigh" where small game such as rabbits, pigs and foxes were readily available.

A long held desire to enter the gun business led to setting up a gun smithing business in 1976. The business was operating by early 1977, specialising in general repairs custom rifle manufacturing and die making.

In 1979 Geoff travelled to the Northern Territory on a buffalo hunting safari. There he met a group of buffalo hunters using English double barrel rifles. They were having trouble obtaining quality bullets for their guns. The original manufacturers of ammunition "Kynoch", had gone out of production with only limited supplies of original ammunition available. Some calibres were being manufactured in USA but were of inferior quality and accuracy to the original Kynoch projectiles.

The idea of manufacturing big game bullets was born. Woodleigh Bullets.

Because Kynoch had been so successful in the past Geoff decided that the bullets should be of similar profile and style, with some improvements of course.

What followed was three years of trial and error, testing and re-testing of samples.

Soft nose jacketed bullets were made first out of gilding metal 90% copper & 10% zinc, with a pure lead core.

Access to large numbers of buffalo in the 80's and 90's allowed a thorough evaluation of the bullets on dangerous thick skinned game with great success, hence the confidence that the bullets were a superior product.

Production started on a single hydraulic press. The bullets were hand made one bullet, one process at a time. Few people today realise how many processes there are involved in making a jacketed bullet. A soft nose bullet jacket can take up to 4 draws then you have to make the core and form the bullet shape which can add another 8-10 processes. A very time consuming and lengthy procedure. Production runs of 1000 in one calibre in the early days were a big order.

Weldcore technology was established in 1988, which vastly improved the weight retention and reliability of the soft nose bullets.

Gradually automated machinery has been purchased as demand for our product increased and our range of bullets increased.

Full Metal Jacket bullet development began in 1983. The jacket was first made with 1.6mm brass, then 1.6mm clad steel, then progressed to 2mm thick (0.080") custom made deep drawing grade clad steel strip. The cladding was gilding metal both sides.

Today we are the only company in the world making a comprehensive range of steel jacketed bullets for dangerous game hunting.

Our first export was in 1985. Due to the small Australian market today most of our production is exported to USA, Germany, England, Sweden, Norway, South Africa, Italy, New Zealand, Denmark, and Zimbabwe.

The first company to load our bullets commercially was Brass Extrusion Laboratories, in USA. Jim Bell started making brass cases for British double rifles, many of them obsolete calibres and with our bullets made it possible for many guns to be used again. This was the trigger to the resurgence of interest in classic big game rifles.

With the availability of ammunition many new guns were made in these calibres also.

Although we started making all the classic big game calibres, today we cater for all calibres and types of game. Premium Bullets for Big Game has become Premium Bullets for All Game.

As a testament to the quality and performance of Woodleigh Bullets leading ammunition factories Federal, Norma and RWS have at different times over the years loaded a variety of our calibres in Weldcore Soft Nose and Full Metal Jackets.

We are very proud of the fact that Kynamco Limited in England who have taken on the Kynoch name are also almost exclusively loading our bullets into their ammunition.

The circle is complete, our aim achieved - the production of quality bullets, reliable under all conditions, equal to, and in many cases better than any in the world today.