Business owner Mike Mayhood, second from left, and the Mayhood’s Sporting Goods staff. Mayhood’s offers products for hunting, hiking, archery, and a number of other outdoor activities. (Photo by Tyler Murphy)

NORWICH - The 62-year history of Mayhood’s Sporting Goods began with a sign on a front porch in the early 1960’s when a father and son decided to share their extra fishing worms with the neighborhood.

Store owner Michael Mayhood said the business was started by his parents, Merritt “Red” Mayhood and Charlotte Mayhood, when he was around five years old at their home on Division Street in Norwich.

“I’ve been running Mayhood’s since 1990. It was my father’s before that, and it was only live bait and tackle,” he said.

“It actually started when my oldest brother wanted to go fishing and my dad told him to pick the worms and he would take him fishing.

“They had extra worms, so they put a sign on the porch, ‘Worms for sale’” said Mayhood.

The worms sold so fast the family began actively picking them. Kids in the neighborhood would also pick worms to sell. All the family sold for a time was worms, but as more people stopped by many asked where they could also buy other fishing gear.

Mayhood recalled, “So I went out and bought hooks, sinkers and bobbers and marked them up and sold them, and after doing that two or three times, we had so much business that we ended up going through a distributor to get a better price.”

The business was transformed from Mayhood’s Bait Shop into Mayhood’s Bait and Tackle.

Over the years, a little bit at a time, the family kept adding inventory and when they finally had enough money saved they purchased land and built a store. “We never thought we’d be able to fill the store once we had it built, but the store is full,” said Mayhood.

Chenango County is a special place

In 1990 Mayhood’s expanded inventory for hunting, hiking, archery and a number of other outdoor activities and the name became Mayhood’s Sporting Goods. In 2022, Mayhood’s celebrated its 60th anniversary and was recognized by the New York State Historic Business Preservation Registry.

Today, Mayhood’s carries firearms, ammunition, archery supplies, fishing supplies, paintball gear, footwear, clothing, and much more.

“I do appreciate the local support, and I cherish my help. We try to do the right things all the time, and we try to increase our selection so that they have a good place to shop, and we try to keep competitive prices. I appreciate our customers, because I know there’s a lot of other places they could go to get the stuff that we sell,” said Mayhood.

“I’m still trying to keep a good inventory, I’m trying to invest in the right inventory at the right times. We have areas of growth, like trapping, fishing and footwear, so we’re going to increase inventory in those departments to make up for the lack in ammunition sales. It’s seasonal, so right now we’re taking down our deer hunting stuff and we’re putting in more predator and turkey stuff. We’re having a turkey seminar as well.”

Mayhood said Chenango County is lucky to have so much wilderness and the local area would benefit by embracing and advertising its outdoor identity more.

“In our local area, we are in the midst of some of the best hunting in New York State. We’ve got more state land in Chenango County than any county in New York State, outside of the Adirondack Park,” he said.

“We’re close to Hudson Valley, we’re close to the Adirondacks, we’re close to the Catskills, and we have deer and turkey hunting, we have good fishing in the rivers, lakes and ponds. So this is where people want to use the products that we sell,” he said.

“People come here for hunting, fishing, trapping, hiking, camping — there’s a lot of camping sites that people come here from out of the area to enjoy. Bowman Lake is a real nice facility. People come here just to be in the outdoors, to be in the country,” he said.

Over the years the Mayhood family has donated to a number of youth organizations relating to education, athletics and scholarships.

As a personal policy Mayhood said he has always tried to find a way to “donate to everything that is involved with children.”

He said, “The school programs, stuff like that. We’ve helped with fundraisers in the past, like the SPCA’s annual fundraiser, the Snowball. We try to do stuff like that as much as we can.”

For many years Mayhood has held a Customer Appreciation Sale around August that attracts other private venders and crowds of customers.

“We’re continuing to grow our demographics and customer base with advertisements, so we are getting more well known further outside of the local region. We have to go after that larger market because so much is happening to our market here with customers going to Pennsylvania,” he said.

New York State gun laws are harder to follow

“We were able to comply with all of the New York State Police and Federal requirements to stay in business - that had been a big focus for us in 2023,” said Mayhood.

In the past few years, especially in 2023, New York State passed several unprecedented laws that fundamentally changed how gun owners in rural parts of the state have been treated for the past generation.

“All day long people are asking us questions about the laws. They’re confused, and the laws are confusing. I was threatened by an individual to be sued because I retained his social security number that he wrote down to buy ammo. The law says I have to have your social security number to buy ammo,” said Mayhood.

New York State, which had some of the most stringent requirements already in the country, has introduced additional requirements for background checks and has expanded the checks to include ammunition by state police.

It also requires owners to renew their permits more often. The state has effectively revoked the right to carry a pistol in almost all places even with a permit. New York State now also prohibits the sale of semi-automatic rifles without a permit.

Many of these new changes also include additional state fees and are in the process of being legally challenge in court. New York has been previously ordered to relax some regulations but in response to those rulings political leaders created different more-strict laws to take their place instead.

Failure by law-abiding owners and permit approved holders to properly follow the changing requirements can result in their guns being seized without compensation and criminal felony charges being filed against them.

The sudden tightening of the laws and lack of clarity has sparked demand for guns and encouraged many owners to seek gray area’s of compliance. These changes in attitudes have been felt in gun clubs and on the bottom line of New York gun stores.

Gun store owners and employees bear the brunt of handling the public’s responses and questions, since they are the ones who are helping gun owners navigate a legal sale.

They are often the first people to notify gun owners, many who have had their firearms for decades, of the consequences the new laws will have on them.

“We have ten employees, five full time and five part-time. It’s hard to find the right workers sometimes. We have a good crew right now, and I count on them for everything,” said Mayhood.

“We’re very fortunate to get people traveling from further away to come here. That’s why it’s so important for us to stay up on top of the laws to comply and stay in business, because so many more people are counting on us,” he said.

The new laws are changing the habits of gun owners, and perhaps not for the better warned Mayhood.

In the last few years he suspects unregistered ghost guns and out of state purchases for ammunition and firearms are increasing. Though often illegal, these practices are hard to trace and owners do not have to worry about compliance with the constantly changing laws, unless they are caught.

The legal hobby of reloading and making your own ammunition at home is also increasing.

Mayhood’s has tried to adapt to this new trend. “We have seminars scheduled so we can try to get customers in here. We have one coming up about reloading for beginners and novices.”

He said Hornady manufacturers are bringing in machinery and have a hands-on ammunition reloading experience at Mayhood’s.

“Reloading- making your own ammunition- is a huge new thing that a lot of people are getting into now. You don’t need a background check with reloading. There’s a lot of skepticism against our government, as you know, and a lot of people don’t trust them with all of this information that they’ve got,” he said.

Many of the new laws in New York State went into effect on September 3 of 2023.

“There was a whole sheet of stuff that we had to do,” said Mayhood.

New York State requires data from surveillance cameras be stored for two years, and requires cameras on all doors for firearm sellers.

The locations allowed to sell ammunition has been restricted, such as hardware stores no longer being allowed to sell ammunition. New rules prohibit customers from touching ammunition themselves.

Stores are prohibited from showing guns to anyone under 18, even though the legal hunting age is below that.

“They don’t want us to encourage anybody under the age of 18 to buy a gun, even though they can get a hunting license. You have to be 14 to get a hunting license in New York. We had to put signs all over that nobody under 18 can handle a gun on the floor. We had to move all of the ammo to the back as well,” he said.

Before the new laws took effect a customer could buy ammunition with a driver’s license and no background check. Now an extensive check is done, even when buying just one bullet of any kind. This has made the process of buying ammunition much more time consuming.

“For ammunition, the customer has a page and a half of information that they have to fill out now, including social security number, address and all that stuff.

Then we have to go online to New York State’s website and enter all of that information and what kind of ammo, what caliber, and how many bullets they’re buying — each and every time they go to buy ammo.

Then the state either gives us permission or denies us or delays the process for allowing the customer to get the ammo. The customer isn’t told why if they’re denied or delayed. We’ve even had current, active state troopers delayed or denied on ammunition purchases,” said Mayhood.

Most New York firearm sellers now have a special section filled with attempted ammo purchases that are pending, waiting for the state to approve them so a customer can return to pick them up later.

“They know everything that’s going on now with ammo, even if you bought ammo here, then went to Bass Pro and bought ammo, or somewhere else, New York would still know what you’re buying, how much you’re buying, and when you’re buying it. So consequently, a lot of people are going to Pennsylvania to buy their ammo now. That was one of the most significant changes that happened for us last year,” said Mayhood.

He also said the state is planning on increasing the sales tax on ammunition and firearms and firearm accessories by 11 percent.

“You can save 11 percent in sales tax in Pennsylvania, and no background checks, but the way I read it, it’s against the law to buy the ammo there. You can buy ammo in another state, but you can’t bring it into New York. All ammunition acquired in New York has to come from a licensed dealer, according to the new law. We’re losing a big customer base now to Pennsylvania.”

The state has also added an additional layer to purchasing a firearm requiring it to be registered and approved by state police.

“The feds don’t do the background checks for ammo, that goes to the state. The state police are still transferring the call to the feds for the gun background checks, but they’re recording everything on the form at the state level and retaining that information,” said Mayhood.

He said business owners expect the new laws to be challenged in court and overturned due to constitutionality, but it hasn’t been challenged yet.

“One thing that is really positive is that we have been able to comply to the new rules and stay in business so far,” said Mayhood.

“We do have a lot of loyal customers who continue to call on us for their needs, and we are reaching a further demographic of customers because a lot of small gun store are now closed,” he said.

In the last year two firearm dealers in the Utica area closed, another in Sidney and one in Greene. Other larger stores like Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Good’s have decided to stop selling or limit the selling of ammunition and firearm products.

“We have to do additional training now too. New York State sent us a fifteen page thing on rules for selling ammo. Mainly what it is: know your customer, make sure you have their ID. We’ve been doing a lot of this with guns forever, but now we have to do it with ammo as well,” he said.

The New York State police by law now have to also inspect the store at least twice a year to confirm compliance.

Moving forward, Mayhood said there are no plans to expand or change the way they do things. He said he just wants to continue to serve their customers that have supported them all these years. He also said the store will always follow the law no matter what it is.

“We have a real good relationship with our manufacturers and our vendors, and we really appreciate our customers that have been loyal to us for a lot of years. We see a lot of the same faces here now as they were in 1990,” he said.