A Morgantown archery shop built one customer at a time

Our story

The Sportsman’s Refuge opened in 1997 as a family business, and it is still run as one. Over 29 years the shop has grown from a counter and a few bows into a full pro shop with a 50-yard indoor range attached — but the reason people keep coming back has not changed much. You can walk in with a problem you cannot describe properly, and somebody will figure out what you mean.

That matters more in archery than in most retail. A bow is not a product you take off a shelf; it is a piece of equipment that has to be fitted to your body, your draw and the way you shoot. Selling one without setting it up is selling somebody a frustration. So the shop has always been built around the bench and the range as much as around the sales floor.

Top 20 Hoyt Dealer

In 2010 we were recognised as a Top 20 Hoyt Dealer — the banner is still on the wall at the end of the range, and you can see it in the photo at the top of this page. It came with a line we have always been proud of: “thank you for your technical expertise and professional service.”

Being a top dealer for a manufacturer like Hoyt is not about volume alone. It reflects the technical side — knowing the equipment well enough to set it up right, diagnose it when it is wrong, and tell a customer honestly when a bow is not the one for them. That is the part of the credential we care about, and it is the same standard we try to hold on a fifteen-year-old PSE somebody inherited from their father.

What our customers say

We are 4.8-star rated on Google across 100+ Google reviews, and the reviews tend to say a version of the same two things: that the staff took the time, and that the work was done right. Longtime customers describe the shop as“the place to go for all your archery needs” and, more bluntly,“you will NEVER go to a better shop.”

We would rather let those speak for themselves than write our own paragraph about how friendly we are. If you want to check, they are all on Google.

A place for families, not just competitors

The Youth 3D league is the clearest expression of what the shop is for. Nine Friday nights between January and March, archers up through age 16, two distance classes so nobody is asked to shoot past what they can hold, and a pizza party at the end. A lot of our adult league shooters started there, and a lot of our current youth shooters are the children of people who did.

If you have never drawn a bow, that is genuinely fine. Come in, ask, and we will point you at the right first step — usually an hour of instruction and a bow that actually fits.