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When I first met Johnny Morris, I was immediately greeted by what seemed to be an ever-present smile. The affable 75-year-old billionaire founder of the Bass Pro Shops empire has plenty of reasons to grin, having built one of the country’s most beloved brands around his life’s passion for hunting and fishing. What started at age 21 as eight square feet of retail space in the back of his father’s Springfield, Missouri, liquor store is today nearly 200 retail locations with some 200 million customers generating $6.5 billion in annual sales.
Visit a Bass Pro Shops store and you feel as though you’ve landed somewhere near the heart of the hunting and angling universe. The mountains of immaculate animal dioramas celebrating all manner of the world’s great game species, aquariums the size of lakes with names, and dramatic wildlife sculptures and other art could rival some American natural history museums.
While hunting and fishing are often solitary pursuits, these destination stores are community hubs where America’s 60 million hunters and anglers—and many others—can converge to pay homage to an endearing lifestyle. While here, outdoors people of all walks of life will check out the latest gear to make them more successful and comfortable while pursuing their favorite quarry in the nation’s woods, fields, marshes, and waters.
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