OLD TOWN, Maine — A new sign hangs above the door of 300 Main St., a shop that for the past decade has been Old Town Archery Center, a place for bowhunters and sharpshooters to meet, resupply, hone their skills and compete.
That’s still the case.
The shop’s new name, “Old Town Archery & Survival,” is the work of its new owner, Dan Sanborn, a lifelong bowhunter who is keeping the traditions of the shop alive while giving the space a fresh look and expanding its inventory to include outdoor survival gear.
“Archery has always been big in the area,” Sanborn said Tuesday morning. “We’re hoping to get people in the area back in [here] shooting on a weekly basis.”
Dan Sanborn and his wife, Betty Sanborn, purchased the store Oct. 1. Since then the couple has completely renovated the space, opening up the front retail area and adding shelves of survival and camping gear.
A celebration of the shop’s re-opening will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 3, at 300 Main St. Visitors can expect special sales on archery and survival equipment, as well as free refreshments. And all 12 of the shop’s indoor shooting ranges, as well as the TechnoHUNT (a virtual hunting game), will be open for customers to rent.
“Dan did a really great job remodeling,” said Bob Wengrzynek, 67, who owned and operated Old Town Archery Center with his wife, Sue, for the past 11 years. “He’s offering the same experience in a different atmosphere.”
The space at 300 Main St. has a history as being a place for archery enthusiasts. The location used to be the home of a shop called Archer’s Edge. When that closed, the Wengrzyneks purchased the space and opened up Old Town Archery in 2005.
“We didn’t want to see archery die when [Archer’s Edge] went out of business,” Bob Wengrzynek said. “It was going to turn into a pizza parlor. We wanted to save archery in the area, and hopefully we’ve done that for the last 11 years.”
Now the Wengrzyneks are ready to pass the torch.
“My wife and I decided, ‘Hey, it’s time,’” Bob Wengrzynek said about selling the shop. “We’re not internet people. I don’t do things on the internet. I still use a slide ruler and an abacus. I don’t do social media or anything like that, and that kind of business today needs that presence, and Dan is willing to do that.”
In fact, the Sanborns have already launched a new website for the shop at oldtownarcheryshop.com, and they’ve gotten the shop’s TechnoHUNT up and running again — after ironing out a few kinks that resulted in the machine being close to customers for a time. The 20-yard virtual game includes more than 25 scenarios and allows the shooter to “hunt” a wide variety of wild animals, including deer, bear, partridge and turkey.
“I was looking for something new,” Dan Sanborn said about purchasing the shop. “I’d been a customer of Bob’s for a long time, and it just worked out.”
For remodeling this fall, the Sanborns closed the shop for just four days. During that time, they tore down walls and erected new ones, making room for all of the archery inventory to be placed on display. Recurve and compound bows hang in neat lines on the wall behind shelves of archery supplies and survival gear.
The shop now carries buckets of freeze-dried food, perfect for emergency situations like Maine’s famous 1998 ice storm. Other useful products they offer include hand-crank USB chargers and lanterns, a backpack filled with three days worth of survival supplies, compact thermal blankets, collapsible shovels, first-aid kits and much more.
Dan Sanborn hopes that offering a range of outdoor and survival gear at the shop will help them run a successful business and may introduce more people to archery.
“Archery is our main business, and we know that,” Dan Sanborn said. “But I think it’s hard to be a single-faceted store of any kind.”
Dan Sanborn is well aware of the long history of the Main Street shop, and he looks forward to working with people that he refers to as “long-term fixtures” of the shop, experienced shooters who visit often and are enthusiastic about helping others learn the art of archery.
“This winter we’re bringing back having tournaments, daily shoots,” Dan Sanborn said. “We’re going to have winter leagues, where it’s eight weeks long, you come in and you shoot once a week, you record your scores into an Excel spreadsheet on a computer, and at the end we award the top three shooters of each class with a little prize, whether it’s a trophy or a certificate or something from the store.”
“Some of the best archers in the United States are based out of the shop there — very dedicated people who enjoy shooting,” Bob Wengrzynek said.
Bob Wengrzynek is among those skilled archers, and he has devoted much of his time to training others how to shoot over the years. He plans to stay involved in the shop and the area’s archery community, he said. In fact, he’s keeping the outdoor archery course on his property open for the shop to use. And he’s going to be working with Dan Sanborn in the months to come, imparting his knowledge and experience.
“We need those guys in this world,” Dan Sanborn said, “passing their knowledge on.”