Clear Fork Country Acquires Archer & Gunn

Graham-based Clear Fork Country has acquired Archer and Gunn Mercantile and plans to transform the Main Street shop into a full-service destination for hunters, anglers and outdoor enthusiasts.

Clear Fork Country owner Husky Melendez said the deal came together extraordinarily quickly after he and former owners Lyndsey and Reid Miller reached an agreement for Clear Fork to take over the store and its inventory.

“They had Archer and Gunn, we worked out an agreement to take over their facility and inventory and make it our own,” Mr. Melendez said. “It’s going really great.”

The sale closed last week, and the store has remained open throughout the transition. New merchandise is already arriving, and Mr. Melendez said the deal went from idea to reality in about five days.

“We are going to do this, let’s make it happen,” he recalled of the whirlwind transaction.

Mrs. Miller said she and her husband had not necessarily been looking to sell the family business, which they named for their two sons, Archer and Gunn, but said the deal ultimately made sense for both their family and Olney.

Mr. Miller, a builder, is running the TIRZ-1 housing development planned for Olney to help alleviate the community’s persistent housing shortage.

For Mr. Melendez, Olney fills a gap in Clear Fork Country’s hunting market that he discovered almost by accident.

He said he was driving through town when he noticed the former car lot for sale along State Highway 114 and began watching the steady stream of trucks and trailers passing through Olney.

It occurred to him that Clear Fork Country’s Graham store was missing many hunters traveling from the Dallas-Fort Worth area to hunting country farther west.

“They weren’t going to turn on 380” to travel to Graham, he said. “They were going right around us.”

Mr. Melendez initially considered Seymour or Jacksboro for a second location before deciding Olney offered the best position to catch that east-west hunting traffic.

“I thought, in the best of both worlds, why not hit ’em in the middle — hit the hunters coming out of Dallas,” he said.

Mr. Melendez purchased the former car lot on Main Street and began stocking it with deer feeders, deer corn, blinds and other large outdoor merchandise. Acquiring Archer & Gunn gives Clear Fork an established retail storefront to go with it.

Mr. Melendez envisions the two properties becoming an all-in-one stop for the outdoors.

“We will have processing, taxidermy, lifestyle apparel — everything from guns to suppressors,” he said.

The store already has ammunition, including shotgun shells, and scopes, tripods, binoculars and other higher-end shooting accessories. Manager Luke Leonard said new apparel includes Poncho and GameGuard, and clothing from the previous inventory is currently 50 percent off.

Mr. Melendez said Poncho in particular has become a sought-after outdoor brand.

“Poncho is everybody’s go-to brand right now,” he said.

But some of Clear Fork’s biggest additions are still to come.

Mr. Melendez plans to add an archery shop aimed at both adults and younger customers, as well as fishing gear, firearms and suppressors. Vortex Optics is expected to provide glass display cases and branding for the stores, he said.

By October, Mr. Melendez also expects to have a deer cooler at the former car lot where hunters can drop off harvested deer for processing. The company plans eventually to offer taxidermy services and hunting licenses as well.

Clear Fork is working through the federal licensing process required to sell firearms at the Olney location, which Mr. Melendez expects will take about 60 days.

He plans to wait until that license is secured, and signage now being fabricated by Texoma Metal, is completed before holding Clear Fork Country’s official Olney grand opening.

And when Clear Fork Country formally introduces itself to Olney, Mr. Melendez intends to make an event of it.

The company recently hosted an event in Graham that Mr. Melendez said drew about 6,000 people and filled local motels. He said Clear Fork enjoys bringing vendors together, holding giveaways and creating events where families can spend time as well as shop.

“We love holding events,” he said.