Mounts at Murski’s Flint Creek, many of which are from Bosque County.

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Ray Murski was selling Texan Reloaders and a few other lines of sporting goods back around 1970. "Everything I sold, nobody wanted," is the way he defined his business. Then he made a cold call on the Ben Franklin Stores in Arkansas and, fortunately, the owner of the franchise was a quail hunter. The owner arranged to have him show up at a store of his in Popular Bluff, Missouri, and demonstrate the reloaders on a Saturday. Even ran ads saying Murski would be there.

Murski with the sheds from a 3 1/2-year-old Flint Creek deer.

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He packed 24 reloaders--all his Mercury station wagon would hold--and hit the road. By noon that Saturday, he had sold out. When he returned jubilantly to settle up, the owner told him if he had any--well, let's just say, cojones--he'd have sold 48! That man with the high standards for his salespeople was Sam Walton.

Murski was born in Brenham, and tried to play football at Texas A&M for Bear Bryant. He went on his first deer hunt in 1958 in Maverick County and, in his words, "haven't been normal since." After college, he went into the military and was in the artillery. Maybe that's where he developed a taste for Ultra Mags. During that time, he also played football for an Army team, delivered top secret information in Vietnam and proposed to his wife Susan by long distance from Okinawa.

By now, an image may be forming of a man who allows neither time nor distance to keep him from his goal. Returning to Texas, he went to work selling insurance for Connecticut General and applied that drive to break a 100-year record for selling group policies in a year. The next year, he broke his own record.

Ray points out one of the deer taken from his ranch.

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"I was bullet-proof," he said. With money to invest, he left the insurance business and financed "Outdoor Times," a tender trap of a hunting and fishing tabloid. "Bad move," he said with 20-20 hindsight. He also invested in Buddy's Landing, a marina on Cedar Creek Lake that might have paid off had it not been for a three-year drought just setting in. And, to frost the cake, he drilled a dry hole or two.

While selling ads for Outdoor Times at the Houston Boat Show, the man in the next booth asked him if he'd like to sell sporting goods. After all, he'd always really wanted to be a manufacturer's rep for women's wear, so it wasn't all that of a stretch to get into sporting goods. And that brings us back to where this story started.

Murski ran his business well and had a stable customer in the fledgling Wal-Mart stores. In 1971, Sam Walton invited Ray and others to invest in the IPO of stock in his expanding business. The rest, as they say, is history. The stock has split 11 times since then.

Murski soon bought into a larger sporting goods business, which is now known as Murski-Breeding, Inc. Ray is also owner of Strike King Lures, the nation's third-leading freshwater lure company.

Not surprisingly, former athletes comprise a significant amount of his sales staff. "It takes a competitor to be a salesman," Ray said. "They don't want to get beat. That's what we look for."

Continued...

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