Ben Garbacz/Daily Mining Gazette Rick Freeman of Northwoods Sporting Goods speaks with a customer Wednesday morning.

HANCOCK — Sporting goods stores are a common service found throughout the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to provide the tools and equipment necessary for residents and tourists to enjoy the outdoors. While some stores provide strictly goods, some stores seek to provide more than products and try to give back to the community and take an active role in conservation. Within the Copper Country, Northwoods Sporting Goods in Hancock goes the extra mile to give to the community it resides within.

Northwoods provides the equipment needed to partake in hunting such as firearms, ammunition, archery and optics, as well as rods, reels, lures and other tackle for fishing in small and large bodies of water. The owner of Northwoods, Rick Freeman, understands that outdoor recreational resources can sometimes be limited in rural areas, and he sees having the availability of products as a way to serve the community.

“Around here, we try to tailor it to the local community,” Freeman said. “We’re semi-remote and there’s not a huge population up here, so we try to provide customer service as No. 1.”

Aside from the products, Northwoods is a facility that can legally sell hunting, fishing and off-road-vehicle trail licenses through the Department of Natural Resources. The funds that are spent on licenses go into the state funds for natural resource management. Freeman implores those wishing to partake in activities involving the harvesting of wildlife or using recreational trails to purchase these licenses in order to fuel the needs of conservation.

“What if one day there’s no fish, and it’s not from over fishing?” he said. “Sometimes a few people will, you know, kind of make a remark about the price [of licenses], and then I reiterate to them, ‘Hey, your $26 for a fishing license is going right back to the DNR to pay for the agents and also pay for the conservation.’ Fish stocking, deer management — There’s so much more science that goes into this, [like] the chronic waste disease [regarding deer] in the lower peninsula and upper Wisconsin; there’s so much more research and development that goes on behind the scenes.”

Freeman also emphasized that the licenses for trails in the winter contribute to the maintenance of those trails and the snow grooming that occurs to keep them accessible and as safe as possible. He explained that conservation and the Michigan or more specifically the Keweenaw region’s economy are tied together at the hip.

“The more we conserve up here, the more people from Chicago, Milwaukee, downstate Michigan, Green Bay, are going to come up here,” Freeman explained. “And when people come up here as tourists, money comes in the economy, so it literally cycles around. I mean, hotels and restaurants… As a matter of fact, snowmobilers rarely ever come into my store because I don’t have much to provide for them. [Except] they need a snow permit. That’s it, you know. Some people may not realize that the tourism up here, the majority of it will be hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, ATV, and it will literally be outdoors.”

Other than licenses being sold which goes to provide for the DNR’s funding, Freeman encourages healthy environmental practices and to leave the environment better than hunters or fishermen found it when they go out for their activities. Freeman said that he is not sure why some people view hunters and fishermen as environmentally detrimental when he believes he’s witnessed the opposite and does what he can to remind others to be responsible with natural resource preservation.

“I always tell my guys at the shop, especially for ice fishing, for even if they only have a couple items, [to] get them (the customers) a bag,” he said. “And customers are sometimes like, ‘Oh, we don’t need a bag.’ And I say, ‘Well, it’s for trash on the ice.'”

While keeping conscience of one’s impact on the wilderness, Freeman also believes that serving the community is just as important since the two reside in the same environment. Northwoods has donated to multiple causes found throughout the Keweenaw region with some examples being 200 bags of candy for kids at the end of summer celebrations, funds for painting Finlandia field for the Hancock Alumni Club. Northwoods has also participated in the Houghton County Lions Club dinner for the past few years and have made donations to the Lake Linden Sports Club.

The donations to the Sports Club went into purchasing deer feed and Northwoods has donated firearms to raffle off at events to generate funds for outdoor clubs or the community as a whole. Freeman exhibits that conservation and community service are intertwined, and he said that he observed this in the banquets the shop has assisted in when he saw the community come together for socializing and conservation goals. Freeman decides to get him and his business more directly involved in these events.

“The amount of work that goes in with the individuals that actually do the banquets are just– it’s unbelievable,” he said. “I mean, these people are running around and stuff, looking for donations, they’re taking time out of their schedule that they’re not getting paid for it. The only benefit is that some money, if not all the money, will go to conservation. Which, you know could be deer feed, replanting of fish in a certain area somewhere in the U.P. … It’s just, it blows my mind when you start getting behind the scenes and you actually see these people, because if you go to a banquet, you just walk in and everything is set up; there’s the food and there’s the raffle. But actually, talking to some of these folks, they have to take massive amounts of time out of their schedule for probably, sometimes months on end to get things put together. So I guess that really opened my eyes.”

In other ways Northwoods gives back to the community, the store will have sales on days such as Veterans Day to honor the military community of the Keweenaw and will also give away a firearm for a veteran. Another demographic that Freeman has emphasized is important to serve is children. Freeman stresses that children may be the most important group to get involved in conservation to better educate them for environmental preservation. He said that if children mention that they have an interest in outdoor activities, that they should get involved to begin the spark of interest because without them, there will be no future in conservation and sporting goods.

“You also got to ask yourself, in 20 years, is this [natural resource] going to be here? Well, if it’s not there, in all reality, we honestly probably just got to blame ourselves,” he said.