Imagine your normal workday was spent walking around a 100-plus-acre ranch where you could practice your aim, while trying out different caliber ammo. For many a Texan, this sounds like a dream come true, but for Defender Outdoors Clay Sports Ranch president Travis Mears it’s just another day at the office. But this passion project-turned-business was anything but easy to build. As Mears puts it, he had to choose the right path so he could be where he and his business are today.
“Well, when I was growing up, I sort of had some success on the competitive side of shooting,” he says. “I had a lot of great adults to look up to, and what I noticed was that they were all businessmen that had the financial ability to enjoy doing things like shooting.”
This is where Mears says he hit a crossroads in his life. “I had the choice to go the professional level and live on the road and shoot and try to make enough money to go to the next tournament, or I could be like those guys that I looked up to and have a job that provided financial stability.”
Mears chose the latter, which meant he went to business school with the goal of running and owning his own business one day.
“When I got out of school in 2009, it wasn’t a great market, so I went to work in insurance and then eventually in oil and gas,” he explains. Soon after getting his feet under him in the business world, Mears says he started putting together a business plan which combined his passion for shooting with his knowledge of the business world.
Soon after he hatched this idea, Mears and his partners at Defender Outdoors Shooting Center found the perfect piece of property in Fort Worth to build what is now the Defender Outdoors Clay Sports Ranch.
“Even when I wasn’t in the shooting business, I was always trying to be,” he says. In fact, Mears says he would always try to string as many vacation days he had together to see if he could compete in a shooting tournament or a hunt. “I knew at some point, this was my destiny.”
Since its official opening in January of 2018, the Defender Outdoors Clay Sports Ranch has become the go-to spot for many a pro and amateur gun enthusiast, Mears says. “This area was in dire need of something like this for a long time, so that’s why I really tried to make this happen.”
Mears says word-of-mouth and his network of colleagues in the world of shotgun sports, a world he’d spent 25 years in, helped his business gain traction. “We chuckle about this now, but back in those days, we had three employees, and on Fridays and Sundays, you could go all day and not see five people,” Mears says. “Nowadays, on Fridays and Sundays, there’s a line at the register all day, every day. Things have evolved, and people have definitely found us now, but back then with three people, we felt like we were doing great.”
Currently, Defender Outdoors Clay Sports Ranch has 12 to 15 employees on any given day with a capacity to host as many as 1,000 shotgun-only shooters at any given time.
“We hosted the 2022 Texas State Sporting Clays Championship, which was the largest Texas State Championship ever held,” Mears says. For this, we hosted 804 competitors, which means there were probably a thousand people here for five days.”
Although this event was a one-off, Mears says Defender Outdoors Clay Sports Ranch hosts nearly 100 events every year.
“For the last three years, the total number of funds that have been raised here for local and nationwide charities is well into the millions,” he says. “This is really cool, because as the host, we’re facilitating the event, but we are also benefiting hundreds of really great causes, which to us is phenomenal.”
So, whether you are a first-time shooter or a seasoned pro, Mears says his range has you covered. •
