Inside the Trophy Room

People come in for a string and leave forty minutes later because they went in the back.

The Trophy Room is not a display case. It is a room, and it holds a little over two hundred mounts collected across three generations of one family hunting.

The polar bear

Yes, there is a polar bear. No, you are not imagining how big it is.

It is the animal everybody stops in front of, and it is the reason a certain number of people drive to Saddle Brook without any intention of buying archery equipment.

What is actually in there

North American big game, mostly, because that is what this family has spent its time chasing. British Columbia. The Yukon. A lot of ground in between.

Walking it in order is a rough map of sixty-plus years of hunting: what was legal, what was reachable, what a family that ran a bow shop could get to between seasons. Some of these animals were taken with equipment that would look primitive next to what is on our wall today, which is worth thinking about the next time you are agonizing over an arrow spine.

Why it is in a bow shop

Because it was never planned. Nobody set out to build a trophy room. Things came back from trips and went on a wall, and then there was no more wall, and then there was a room.

That is why it feels the way it does. It is not curated. It accumulated.

Come see it

The Trophy Room is here during store hours and it costs nothing to walk through.

We get school groups and scout troops through regularly, and it is genuinely a good stop. For a lot of kids it is the first time they have stood close to a moose. If you want to bring a group, get in touch and we will find you a time when the range is quiet enough to talk.

Bring your questions. Somebody here was probably standing there when it happened.