The Story of Adams Archery

In the fall of 1979 Dick & Susan Adams opened an outdoor 3d archery course by buying a Golden Arrow Archery franchise. They found out about the business from Susan’s mother Dora Green. Dick was complaining that practicing in the back yard at straw bales was not effective practice for whitetail deer hunting. Dora saw an article in the Gladwin, MI newspaper about a new business using 3 dimensional targets for archery practice.

 

They started with a card table and cigar box for money at the entrance on the range. Susan ran the business during the day when Dick worked at Fords, then he would work the business during the evenings. In 1980 they bought an old house trailer to repair targets in and used a room to stock some archery supplies. They purchased $500 worth of stock from Remacklus Archery in Dundee, which mostly included field tips, and arrows. Slowly the archery shop grew larger and larger until they had to build new building in 1984. The shop started carrying bows at the same time with bow companies Martin and Darton. A family atmosphere was maintained by hiring Dick’s daughter Diana as manager in 1989. The franchise was dropped in 1991 because the Golden Arrow targets were not keeping up with the evolution of faster more penetrating bows and arrows. Adams Archery started using Mckenzie targets on the 3d range & changed the name to Adams Archery which was incorporated in 1994. Business has continually grown throughout the years. In 2002 Adams decided to build an indoor range and 50 x 134 foot building opened in December 2003.