Ashe Gagne has been a long hole driller in Red Lake for 22 years.
He started practising archery four years ago and fell in love with it. This led him to start his new entrepreneurial venture of Red Lake Archery.
“I want to share the art of archery with our community,” says Gagne. “We don’t have that here, but we will soon.”
Gagne has been working on bringing this project to life since the early fall of 2022. He has been a long-time hunter, and hopes to share his love of bow hunting and recreational archery with the Red Lake area.
“I realized that if I wanted to do this right, I would need the right equipment and a shop,” says Gagne.
For the following seven months, Ashe took some time off of work to study every aspect of archery. He learned about things like bow tuning, shooting and arrow building from professional shooters and bow technicians online.
In October of last year, he was able to officially open his business.
Currently, Gagne plans to run a youth program and has been meeting with families to measure for the purchase of bows. He has been registering members of the community for his program, and ordering business cards and hats to promote his business.
"Compound archery is very shooter specific; each bow is set up to a specific person,” says Gagne.
Gagne plans to purchase ten bows up front to help get kids acquainted with archery, and he hopes that the families will purchase their own equipment if the long-term interest is there.
He has also been working with local archers to offer bow tuning services.
As the business grows, he plans to have a shooting range, and has been working hard to secure a location for the near future. He also plans to build a three-dimensional animal training course later this year on the desired location.
“I’m basically trying to build an archery community for our kids, giving them a passion for archery instead of all the video games,” says Gagne
He hopes to use his business to help others develop skills not just for hunting, but for focus, determination, confidence and respect for wildlife as well.
When Gagne is not working, fishing, or playing hockey, he is working to perfect his own archery skills. He works on fine tuning his personal equipment and his shooting. He says archery take work, building muscle memory, as well as knowing yourself and your equipment.
“Archery brings communities together,” says Gagne. “If I would’ve known what was involved in it, I would’ve done this years ago.”
