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Founded by David P. Bushnell in 1948, in Japan.1
The company was founded in 1948 by David P. Bushnell, when he returned to California from his honeymoon in Japan with two crates of binoculars and sold them by mail order. Bushnell made precision binoculars affordable to middle-class Americans for the first time through a strategy of importing from manufacturers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, who provided optics to his patented specifications. Bushnell eventually expanded his business to include riflescopes and spotting scopes. In 1971, Bushnell sold his company to Bausch & Lomb. The firm renamed itself Bushnell Performance Optics. Three years later, Bushnell retired as vice-president of Bausch & Lomb.
In 1999, Bausch & Lomb sold Bushnell Performance Optics to the private equity firm Wind Point Partners through a recapitalization of Bushnell's then parent company, Worldwide Sports & Recreation.
The Serengeti Eyewear brand was acquired by Bushnell in September 2000. Bollé, Cébé and Serengeti Eyewear were part of Vista Outdoor's acquisition of Bushnell in 2013. In July 2018, Vista Outdoor announced it had reached an agreement with a European private equity fund to sell the Bollé, Cébé and Serengeti eyewear brands.
In 2002, Bushnell bought the sporting optics company Tasco. Tasco is a major international distributor of telescopes. The company's line of products mainly target amateur astronomers but has grown to include many products besides telescopes. Tasco's other products include terrestrial spotting scopes, microscopes, binoculars, telescopic sights, and other rifle accessories. Tasco sells through specialty outlets, catalogs, and online vendors.
In 2005, Bushnell acquired Michael’s of Oregon. Michael's sold holsters, scope covers, cleaning kits, and other gun accessories under the brands Hoppe’s, Butler Creek, Stoney Point, and Uncle Mike’s Law Enforcement. The deal was closed with debt and cash.
In 2007, Bushnell was acquired by MidOcean Partners, another private equity firm, which acquired it in a leveraged recapitalization. The same year, Bushnell acquired the Final Approach and Kolpin Hunting brands from Facilitator Capital Funds, a Wisconsin-based private equity firm.
On Sept. 5, 2013, Alliant Techsystems announced that it had entered into a firm agreement to acquire Bushnell. ATK paid $985 million in cash, subject to customary post-closing adjustments.
After ATK merged with Orbital Sciences in 2015 to form Orbital ATK, it spun off Bushnell and other subsidiaries as Vista Outdoor, a publicly listed company.
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In November 2024, Vista Outdoor separated its outdoor products business into an independent, publicly traded company named Revelyst. In January 2025, Revelyst was subsequently acquired by Strategic Value Partners.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bushnell Corporation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5