Hunting season in Grenada County is going to be much easier for local and nearby hunters as Back Forty Outdoors plans to open its doors in November.
Representatives with the Greater Grenada Partnership, the Grenada County Board of Supervisors and various local businesses were on hand last Wednesday afternoon for the official Groundbreaking Ceremony for the new one-stop outdoors shop.
Construction on what owners Mike Campbell and Jay Culpepper nicknamed Grenada’s “mini Bass Pro Shops” will begin soon with dirt work nearly completed and concrete scheduled to be poured this week.
“I think that’s probably the simplest way to define the store,” Campbell said. “Our vision – everything that we’ve talked about – goes back to the ‘mini Bass Pro.’ With that being said, having all of the outdoor products as well as the inside stuff – clothing, guns, bows and everything you can imagine – we’ll have all the boats and buggies and lawn mowers outside too. In the back part of the warehouse, we’re going to have food plot seed, fertilizer, minerals, corn – if it’s got something to do with outdoors, you can pull in this lot and leave with it and go to the hunting camp or wherever you’re headed.”
Campbell currently owns and operates Grenada Bad Boys, while Culpepper, an orthopedic surgeon in Greenwood, also owns Grenada Nutrition. The duo’s new business venture is located at 2055 Sunset Dr., next to Tractor Supply just off Interstate 55.
The building will be approximately 17,000 square feet including retail and warehouse space.
“It’s going to be big enough to house a lot of inventory,” Campbell said. “We are going to have all the big names. We’re going to have a women’s section; we wanted to focus on that too.”
Back Forty Outdoors will also have a “super knowledgeable” gun salesman and gunsmith on staff as well as “the best bow tech in the State of Mississippi,” according to Campbell.
The businessmen agreed late last year that there is a need for a new outdoors store in Grenada.
“Back, right around Christmas, Jason (Golding) with Lakeway (Sporting Goods) decided to shut his doors and go more towards the fishing,” Culpepper explained. “Once he did that, Mike called and asked if I was interested and I said, ‘Absolutely!’ Probably my main passion is hunting and fishing as is Mike’s. It’s just something we enjoy and thought there was definitely a need for it in Grenada. We just got rolling from December and are trying to get it open before hunting season this fall.”
After the concrete is poured, the building will be delivered the first week of July and it will take four to six weeks to erect it, weather permitting.
“I think, realistically, we’ll have a Grand Opening the first of November – we possibly could be open in October, but I think with the Grand Opening, we’re shooting for the first of November,” Campbell concluded.
The business team took time out of their busy schedules last Thursday, June 9, to answer a few questions about Back Forty Outdoors in an interview with Adam Prestridge, publisher of The Grenada Star. Click the video to watch.
