Tom Fuller: How an End-of-Times Mindset Changed the Long-Range Game [ZEROED IN]

Photos by Sunni McAllister

‘‘Beans to bullets.” That was the initial goal when retired Army Ranger Tom Fuller founded Armageddon Gear. Every item one would need should the world go to sh*t, all in one place. Just as importantly, he wished to share the knowledge: how to survive.

Fuller, now age 55, served in the U.S. Army 75th Ranger Regiment. Over six combat deployments, he earned the Legion of Merit, a Bronze Star, and five Meritorious Service medals. He retired as a sergeant major in 2009 after 22 years. Also, while serving, Fuller acted as a battalion sergeant major over the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit, a competitive shooting team that won two Olympic gold medals during Fuller’s time.

After the Army, Fuller transitioned to a security detail for cargo ships, protecting U.S. freight from Somali pirates. After his one expedition, he was hired by Bushnell, where he served as an expert consultant and helped design and launch the HDMR scope, which, at the time, was considered the next step of evolution in terms of precision glass.

As part of settling back into civilian life, Fuller spent time settling behind the gun of various precision-rifle rigs. He discovered a growing passion for putting bullets farther and farther down-range and was one of the early participants in the Precision Rifle Series, years before it was the Precision Rifle Series.

As a result of his background and love for precision shooting, in addition to an entrepreneur spirt, Fuller started Armageddon Gear in 2012 and through various contracts and the occasional “right place at the right time.” 

Fuller built a brand brimming with personality, at-office culture, unapologetic patriotism, and a second-to-none work ethic that continues to produce gear considered essential for any shooter looking to stretch his or her comfortable distance.

We spent time with Fuller to discuss how it all began, where he and his brand are today, and where everything is going.

RECOIL: Tell us a bit about your upbringing.

Tom Fuller: I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains, Southwest Virginia. Me and my dad and my brother, we raised hogs, tobacco, corn, dug coal, all that sh*t, just kind of hustling as a kid.

And our dad was a hustler. He wanted a lot for us, but couldn’t afford college so I joined the army. I had a great career, man. I loved it. My first job out of the army was doing security on ships, when Somali pirates were an issue. 

I was getting good money to ride around the ships and make sure they didn’t get hijacked. It was pretty cool. And then I went to work at Bushnell. Back in those days, basically they hired me and the GWOT (Global War on Terror) money was flowing. There was lots of money.

The military had lots of discretionary funds. So, every company was like, “We want some of this money,” but man, it was a fun time. It was super, super fun. I got to go to Japan and designed some scopes. Do you remember the HDMR? When it first came out, it was probably the most popular scope in that five-year period. We were selling to everybody. Everybody loved them. We changed the whole industry of scopes. Because, before, everything was longer and bigger. It was a fun time.

Then, I just wanted to start my own thing. I learned about business, saw the opportunities that were in the market and I’m like, “You know, everything shooting related to our soft goods is cheap sh*t.” 

From the military standpoint, they were forced through, it’s called the Berry Amendment, that you have to buy American-made textiles and not just American-made, American-grown textiles, American-woven textiles. Every piece of it has to be American made. And I was getting calls from a lot of the contractors and officers and purchasers for the military that I was doing business with saying, “Hey, man, we need a thing, we need a pouch, we need a sling. We need this, but it’s gotta be Berry compliant at the time.”

All the U.S. manufacturing, especially the tactical space, had been bought up by these conglomerates, such as Vista Outdoors, which I was working for, then Freedom Group, and they just moved it overseas and the middle of that was just not much for the military to buy. 

So, I was like, “I’m going to figure this out.” And I started the company. I wanted to be an online prepper superstore. That’s what I really wanted to do. That’s why I called it Armageddon Gear.

Long story short: I wanted to start an online prepper superstore and sell the knowledge, but the first couple of products were shooting-related. And then the military started calling me. He’s like, “Hey man, can you make this? Can you make that?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I know I could,” but I figured it out. I just followed the money.

RECOIL: How did PRS come into play?

TF: I was shooting PRS before it was PRS. It was just the long-range shooting matches. When the PRS was established and started growing, I had just started making stuff for that. It was just a lot of luck. The timing was perfect. Because I got in as the PRS was growing up and solidified myself as the brand for that kind of sport.

Up until then, you had companies where — you know how it was back then — some dude in his garage made a rear bag and everybody’s like, “Oh, so-and-so just makes the best rear bag.” And then somebody else had a sling and nobody ever put it all together into a full line.

I would assume we’re probably the first and still only company that you would say is like a long-range shooting accessory company. That’s what we focus on. And that’s what we do when we have the full line of that.

I got a phone call from the contracting officer in the military army saying they need a sling to be able to carry a tripod. The tripod could be collapsed, and it just so happens I sold the tripod to the military through Bushnell. Every single sniper in the Army and Marine Corps had a tripod that I designed and I’m like, “OK, I can figure that out.” We made it, and they called me and said, “Man, I need 6,000 of these.”

I’m like, “Holy sh*t.” So, I called ADS as a military reseller, right? “Hey man, if you will prepay me on this deal, I’ll give you 20-percent margin and tell the military they have to buy it from you,” which is no big deal because this is my authorized military reseller kind of thing. And they were like, “If you get the PO in hand and you give us 20 percent, I’ll prepay you.”

So, I got the PO. Sent it to them. They prepaid me. I took the money and drove to Tennessee, bought two sewing machines, and hired a girl at the gas station that said she could sew. 

Turns out she didn’t know how to sew. And we together figured out how to sew it. We freaking started making them do that. That was kind of how I got started. I didn’t even have the money to do it, but I already had the order in hand. I didn’t have the money to freaking deliver. Yeah. So, it was pretty cool. It was a pretty cool American story. 

RECOIL: Sewing is a skill set that’s just been lost.

TF: It’s true. Back 50 years ago, when cotton was king in the South, there was a little sewing plant in every town. And Columbus, Georgia, which is not far from us, was a huge textile town. They had mills all up and down the river. But yeah, it’s gone.

Basically, what we do is we know we’re not going to hire anybody that can sew anymore. But we do what we call a sew test. We draw weird shapes and patterns on a piece of fabric and just say, follow that line with the sewing machine. If they’re scared of the machine, you really can’t teach them anything. But if they sit down and start doing it, if they’re not scared …

My first sewing manager came up with this and said, “Look, all you got to know is that if they’re scared of the machine, scared to have their fingers around it, it’s gonna be hard to teach them.” But if they’re not scared of it, you can teach anybody to sew.

Our best sewers are young girls in their 20s, and they’ve never sewed before. They sew amazing, and they’re really good at it.

And I’ll tell you what, we’ll hire everybody that walks in and looks like they got a brain. You talk to them, and they can answer questions and talk to you, look you in the eye — they’re getting hired. That’s just where it is.

We’re in a very, very small town. We have a small demographic, but we’ll hire anybody and give them a shot. But the way it is, you got to hire three to keep one. You know, that’s just everybody I think nowadays. 

RECOIL: How many people are working for Armageddon Gear now?

TF: I think we’re close to in the mid 50s as far as employees, but that’s also professional. I got marketing. I got HR, payroll, the cutting room, shipping room, finishing room, where you trim the threads, fill the game-changer bags with the media that you’re going to fill it with, and all that kind of stuff. Maybe close to 60 total.

RECOIL: You mentioned the prepper mentality, that it’s become the “homesteader.” Could you ever see yourself going back to that, stocking beans and the bullets, like you said initially, and the education side of things?

TF: I don’t think I would ever go back and try to sell anything for that. I think as a person, Tom Fuller in the future. I live as a homesteader now. I didn’t really do that. People don’t understand that in the South you can grow anything down here. You can grow beans. Everything grows well, but you got to understand when it comes to like some sort of crappy situation where you don’t have electricity maybe, like an EMP, you know, Y2K — by the way, which is the biggest disappointment of my life — people don’t understand things like meat. Keeping meat in the South is your biggest challenge. How do you preserve meat when you’re living in a 100-degree humidity? There are ways to do that. I think things like that would still be fun to do, just to kind of record them and do them anyway. Just because I’m doing it anyway, why don’t you just record it and share the wealth and the knowledge?

RECOIL: It’s not uncommon for owners of brands these days to kind of show the behind-the-scenes lifestyle that they run. And then, as you said, that knowledge is pretty valuable. We think we saw at one point in an interview that you also got go-bags stored in lockers nationwide.

TF: That ain’t me. It’s probably a good idea, but I don’t do that. I’m not going anywhere. 

I’m staying. I live in the middle of nowhere. My nearest neighbor is over a mile away. If I’m on the road and something happens, my plan is just to get home. Steal a bicycle if I have to — get home.

RECOIL: Growing up, you wanted to be a veterinarian, and then you decided, “No, I’m gonna do the army.” How does that transition happen? 

TF: Growing up the way I grew up, we had to work on our own animals. It was kind of like animals as a commodity, right? And so, well, at least to some people, farm animals, anyway, to a farmer, but every now and then my dad would have to call a vet if we were going to lose a cow or something like that.

When they came out, I was so enamored. I just enjoyed watching them do their job. And that’s just what I wanted to do. I was a pretty smart kid. I was valedictorian in my small school in the mountains, but it was literally a graduating class of six. It wasn’t like I was going to get a scholarship or anything. I was one of those kids, everything interested me, but I had no one singular passion other than hunting and fishing.

I just met an army recruiter one day and he’s like, “So what are you doing?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” I had been out of high school for over a year. I went to a small community college because my parents were like, “Well, if you get a small community college for a couple of years and knock out some of this stuff, maybe we can maybe go to college later.”

I f*cking hated it, dude. I hated it and I just, I just walked out one day in the middle of class, just got up and left and went home.

I do that all the time. People call me the freaking expert at the Irish exit. If I’m not happy where I’m at, I just leave and it’s just a thing I have. I just, I literally, I don’t know, man. I don’t realize I do it sometimes. I don’t go where my heart isn’t happy anymore. Sometimes you’re just in a certain environment, a certain place, like you feel icky to be there, I guess. I don’t know what else to say, but I won’t stay. I don’t care. I’m sliding out the back door. 

RECOIL: Life’s too short to be where you don’t want to be. 

TF: That’s true. So, I just joined the Army. Man, I was really, really good at it. I liked it. It was the only place where 100 percent you get exactly back the effort you put into it. If you’re good at it, you get rewarded. If you’re bad at it, you’re punished. It’s absolutely the perfect place for somebody with my mentality. It’s just like you do it. You can you move up. If you do good, you move up and they, the army, is really good at saying, “Here’s your goals. Here’s your dates. This is what we expect from you.”

It was so simple. I finished my last career. My last job in the army was the Army Marksmanship Unit. And that’s what kind of helped me get into the gun industry is the Army Marksmanship. The Olympic shotgun shooters, the Olympic small bore, all the Olympic sports you pretty much represent there at that unit. You have most of the guys that shoot in Olympics and then you’ve got the, you know, the PRS guys, 3-gunners, world champion shotgunners. It was just a cool, cool job, man, to be able to work with those guys. 

RECOIL: You met Jacob Bynum and that’s kind of what got you into the ELR and longer-range shooting?

TF: A buddy of mine that I served with in 2nd Ranger Battalion was the director of marketing for Barrett. His name was Kyle Lynch, and he goes, “What are you doing?” I’m out of the Army now, and I just got a job at Bushnell. And he’s like, “Let’s go down to Texas and shoot this match.” I said OK. “We’ll shoot Barrett rifles,” and I’m like, “OK, that’s fine.”

We go down there, and it turned around, it was a Sniper’s Hide cup. This was pre-PRS. It turned out I was like, “Man, I’m pretty good at this.” I never shot a match in my life, and I think I was like fifth place or something. I was like, “Dang, that’s pretty cool.” And I remember Wade Stuteville, who was Sergeant Rifles at the time. He was like, “What grain bullet are you shooting?” I’m like, “I don’t know,” and I looked at Kyle, “Hey, what grain bullet?” He’s just laughing. He didn’t even know I was green, and I’m like, “No, I don’t know, they just gave me the stuff.” But, anyway, I met George [Gardner] at that event too.

Yeah I met George, I met the old group: Shannon Kay, Frank Galli, and actually that kind of was my introduction and then after that the PRS started growing but it’s a cool sport, man — getting together and started in cow pastures and power lines, guys just getting together and shooting and coming up with little matches.

Just the old days with guys like Jeff Badley. He’s still on team GAP and I shoot with him a lot. He’s a good friend. He was like, “Man, we used to all show up to shoot a match and everybody had to have a course of fire in your head.” It was like “OK, mine’s gonna be this.” Everybody shot it. Somebody else was like, “Mine’s gonna be this.” And everybody shot it. 

The sport is huge now. It is still growing. I called the other day just for some market research for my business.

Ken Wheeler, the owner of the PRS, said it was a 28-percent growth in membership last year. The 22 and the rimfire and the NRL 22 is kind of leading the charge right now. I’m happy to see that. The barrier for entry is a lot lower in the 22 sport than it is the centerfire.

RECOIL: How many matches are you shooting a year now? 

TF: I had a shoulder surgery last year in the spring. Completely ripped my shoulder. Everything that holds your shoulder together, I tore it up completely. Separated it, so I had to get completely put back together. I didn’t shoot a match last year at all. I don’t even know if I’m going to shoot one this year.

But to be honest with you, when it comes to shooting, I just had my comp gun re-barreled. I just got it back, and I’m going to start shooting. I love shooting. It is so freaking fun. And then I built a business around it. And then I was going to so many, many matches; it just felt like a task.

But then the shoulder surgery forced me to take a hiatus, and I’m starting to get the hunger back. The other day I wrote a little training plan out. I’m going to blow the rust off, man. I still have the knowledge of how to shoot, but if you’re not practicing or going, you’re going to be so rusty that you’re just going to shoot like sh*t, you know?

This sabbatical from it has really kind of gave me just a little bit of burn to want to go back, but the matches I shoot in the future are going to be ranges I’ve never shot. I love shooting new ranges. I live on the East Coast. I’m in Georgia. You get stuck in the same old ranges, same old matches year after year. So, moving forward, I’ve got a motor home, and I’m just going to start traveling. I want to shoot in Park City, Utah. That match is beautiful out there. I only go to cool places where there are other things to do on the way. 

RECOIL: That sounds like a great plan.

TF: Yeah. I’m going to do it different. Now that I’m coming back, I’m going to make it fun for myself again.

I’ve had good finishes. I’ve done well in the past. I want to do it because I’ve met lifelong friends in this sport. And I want to make it like that again. I want to go meet new people and shake hands. I want to thank people for using my product. And I generally want to get to know new people. I want to see new places and just have fun shooting a rifle. And I think that would make it so much more fun again. Let’s go back to that attitude. 

RECOIL: You’re no longer putting pressure on yourself for purposes of a job or career like you got to feel as though you have to perform at a high level. You might think, “These people are expecting certain things,” and, at the same time, it’s marketing. You’re there for your brand.

TF: So, I’m going to get over myself on all that. The level of competition today is so crazy. I’m not even going to kid myself that I’m going to spend that much time behind the gun to try to be competitive for a number-one slot. I have a whole lot of other things that I want to do in my life. I just don’t have the commitment to put that much time behind the gun anymore.

But that’s OK because, this community, it’s built around shooting the matches, but, you know, I went moose hunting with Tate Streater, Joe Walls, Benjie Bates — all guys I met through shooting sport. We shared 10 days floating the river in the Yukon in Alaska, shooting moose. It was the freaking most amazing time to get dropped off by planes. I’ve got a moose hunt next year with John Kyle from Foundation Stocks. I’m going to Columbia with George Gardner and the Team GAP guys, Shannon Kay, we go fishing in Panama every year.

We built these relationships. We built these businesses. We built these friendships around the matches, but as we’re maturing and as we’re growing and as we’re watching this sport evolve around us, we’re using the relationships that we built through matches, and we’re doing the rest of our life with those people and they’re your friend group.

I haven’t shot a match with all those guys I mentioned together in years, but I see them hunting and fishing because you built these friendships, you know, and the sport of shooting brought us together, but it’s not what keeps us together anymore. We’re all business owners in the sport. We all got in early, and I’m not going to speak for them, but I assume they’re a lot like me. They’re like, sh*t, if I got an extra weekend nowadays, I’d do the go hunter fish and then shoot another match. 

RECOIL: What do you think it is about PRS, compared to other shooting disciplines and organizations, that builds community and sets itself apart, making it something you want to go back to and meet, create, and continue friendships? 

TF: I started in 3-gun. My first venture in the sport shooting was 3-gun. It was the old-school 3-gun. It was like 3-gun nation, right? You know, Bennie Cooley and Bruce Piatt and a lot of those old guys. There was only maybe four or five major matches around the country. We had a wonderful time, made lifelong friends.

In regard to PRS, I’m going to go back a little bit to the early days of it. It was a hell of a lot smaller, and it was such a niche that if you did it even going back to 2009, 2010, 2011 timeframe, it was the same group of guys. You’d see them in Texas. You’d see them in Virginia. 

There was just only a handful of places in the whole country that you did this. You shared this bond created around it, knowing, “Man, there’s only maybe 100 or 200 of us in the whole country doing this sh*t.”

Now there’s a match every weekend somewhere different. So many people that I don’t know. I haven’t met. In the early days, everybody that owned an Armageddon product, I probably shook their hand at a match and bought beer for them and pizza at the end of the match. And now I could go to a match, and nobody knows who the hell I am — and that’s fine.

They know who the brand is. So that’s the maturity of a brand, from a personality-based brand, based on the individual to the brand having its own life.

I don’t know what it is with PRS. I can just tell you that, for the most part, the people are higher caliber for some reason, more so than you’ll just meet in your average life. I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s a guy that wants to learn ballistics, that wants to understand the wind, that wants to load his own ammo, that’s willing to freaking buy or build a freaking crazy expensive gun. That doesn’t make them a better person, just makes them a different person, They’re of a different caliber than the average guy you meet on the street. That’s for sure. 

And maybe it’s because to do the sport and even be OK at it, you really have to invest in a lot of learning. There’s a lot of investment in your personal training knowledge, and if you’re the kind of guy that’s going to do that, you’re probably just a good person, I guess.

With the sport, while we compete and there’s a winner and you want to beat somebody, you’re really never competing against another person because when you’re behind the gun, it’s just you. It’s just you pulling the trigger, making your wind calls and you’re really competing against yourself. I think everybody out there is at a certain level of knowledge and skill. If you shoot your best game right now, you’re going to win.

There’s a whole top 20 percent of the pack — any one of them — if they shot their best day, they would win, and it’s just a matter of minimizing mistakes and minimizing errors. That is what the game is now.

RECOIL: Speaking of community, and the culture of community, why was your brand culture so important from the very beginning — the message you convey and the atmosphere you create at the workplace? 

TF: The only thing of value in business is the brand. You could take every single product that I make, and somebody with a sewing machine and a little bit of knowledge could replicate every single product we make. They really could. It could be made in China, but the valuable thing is the brand.

And it’s not so much that we are inventive and innovative. It’s so important to me to create the culture because our company is real. So often companies or people start businesses because they see an opportunity in the market and they’re like, “Oh, well …”

I’m not going to say this in a slighting way. I’m just going to say there are companies that just made the same thing in a different little way. They may just start marketing against you, but they aren’t shooters. They weren’t shooters. So, it’s just not real. They’re taking advantage of an opportunity in a market that has room to grow, whereas our products, man, we invented the space for support shooting bags, the Game Changer.

The Game Changer literally changed the game. Before the Game Changer came out, you go to a stage that you’re shooting off of rocks and you come off the stage and like, “Oh my gosh, I hit six out of that stage. That was such a great stage. I hit six on the rocks.” And now you come off the exact same stage with smaller targets. And you’re like, dammit, I missed one.

It’s so different, but Armageddon Gear created that category with the Game Changer. It’s like front-support bags, shooting bags, gun, tripod accessories. We make all these accessories around the tripod. The Tripod Caddy was the innovative product of the year in the Industry Choice awards in ’21 when we launched. No one had ever heard of the product — like nobody thought of a product like that. We were the second in effort to build a suppressor cover. And now we have a whole line of suppressor accessories. 

We created these categories, and because we use these products, we know the space. We’re not just a business in the space. We’re subject matter experts in this space. We don’t have to do market surveys and market research to see, “Is this going to be a good product? Is it going to sell?” Because we invented the product out of necessity for ourselves.

Our brand is honest, man. Our brand is real. Our brand is organic to who we are. We love to shoot. We love guns. We love to hunt. It was just as important to me that we took who we were, and we introduced us to the shooting world and our brand at the same time and our products as we started going into PRS. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the meat wagon, that old army ambulance, have you ever seen that? 

RECOIL: Not in person.

TF: I bought that thing in the middle of a field. It was sitting on four flats, and I took my tractor up there and pushed it up on a trailer, got the thing running in a couple days. We used it to go to matches, and we would fill it full of gear. We had a sign that said: “Free beer for tax-paying Americans” and “Apple-tinis for 6mm Dasher shooters.” And we would just go to matches. We’d sell gear out of that. Give away free beer and play music. We were the life of the damn party.

The brand became what it was and now has a life of its own. It’s no longer a person. We’re no longer a personality-based business. The brand has its own personality, and it’s gonna grow and go its own way with or without me.

RECOIL: In terms of the growth, you guys started dropping hunting gear too. I think it was the chest rings and stuff were one of the first things we saw. 

TF: Yeah, that’s doing great. I love the old-school look and feel. I love that nostalgia, that heritage-rich look of the wax canvas with the leather trim. And nobody’s really doing it.

I think Filson mostly does clothes now. They still have some old throwback actual gear, but it’s a very antiquated product line. Their designs are the same. We’re like, man, let’s take the Filson look, or let’s take that heritage-rich, nostalgic hunting look and put some modern design. Let’s update it. What are guys carrying? There’s a million bino harnesses on the market, right? But with my 22 years in the military, if I need it, if I know I’m going to need it for what I’m doing, I want it right here around my chest, because that’s your position of strength, right?

RECOIL: It’s got to be hard to do hunting apparel while keeping every stitch American. 

TF: Apparel in the United States is challenge. Yeah, the performance fabrics. You could import them right to the United States, but I mean everything we make is U.S. We do, when it comes to apparel, a lot of hats and T-shirts. That’s about it.

In the past I wanted to start with some tactical clothing. I wanted to make a pair of pants, and I wanted to make them like, you know, shooter pants. I wanted to market them to the shooting crowd. A purpose-built pant for shooting. I was on like prototype number three, and I’m getting real close and then COVID hit and the sewing factory that was doing those for me was out of California. It completely shut down.

RECOIL: COVID changed so many things. Nowadays, with PRS, what is the primary cartridge you are shooting?

TF: 6GT. I’m not a crazy geeky reloader. With the 6 GT, you accidentally spill part of the charge, and it’s still going to shoot pretty good.

RECOIL: What would you say is your most brag-worthy competition accomplishment?

TF: Have you heard of the Sniper Adventure Challenge? 

I won that two years in a row, won it a third time, but then got the win taken away on a technicality because I went out of order on the match. But, I mean, while I was shooting — and I’ve had a pretty good time at it — those sniper matches, man, I used to freakin’ kick ass and those damn things, where you had to like 60 miles map and compass, through the mountains, freakin’ rock climbing, all those things, problem-solving events, I was good at it. I was really good at that sh*t. And I liked it.

And I still am. My knees just don’t work the same as they used to — 22 years in the military, most of that special operations, all that on jump status, and you just kind of get beat up a little bit, knees especially.

Questions or comments? Reach out to the author on Instagram at 

@OutsideTheSkillet 

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