Last fall, more than just the leaves on Wellsboro’s tree-lined Main Street were changing. The second largest storefront (Dunham’s is the largest), longtime downtown clothier, Garrisons, had gone out of business when Al Garrison retired in December 2023. If anyone was worried about a new business changing the town’s historic feel, they soon relaxed when word spread that Zack Buck was opening another location of his Morris store, Nessmuk’s Sporting Goods. Nessmuk is a name with roots Pine Creek Gorge-deep in these parts. And the unique mix of what Zack has to offer is very Wellsboro indeed. As the window decals state, he sells what the outdoor enthusiast might need for Trekking, Camping, Foraging, Hunting, Trapping, and Fishing.

A mounted bear might be one of the first things a customer notices, but another black critter with a bandana will wander over as a greeter. Blake, the calmest Labrador ever, acts as welcome committee. Camp Ration Coffee is brewing, and a faint woodsy smell comes from balsam fir incense. Where customers head first depends on their interests. Camping and bushcraft? The knife and axe nook is a good place to start. If maps, field guides, and how-to’s are the pull, those shelves are to the right. T-shirts, stickers, and bandannas satisfy the souvenir shopper. Pottery by several artists make great gifts. A hut in the front holds trapper supplies. Fishing and hunting gear are toward the back, everything from dapper and practical wool vests and jackets to waxed canvas rucksacks to basic tackle to firearms—some that Zack makes.

There’s always someone eager to chat about outdoor opportunities or history. Currently, Zack’s main help is Chris Niemczyk, a friend he met in the National Guard, who watches the store four days a week with Blake. Chris is also the one who scours the internet for artifacts.

“People come in wondering if we’re a museum or store,” says Zack. The two large shop windows do give a glimpse of something a little wild. “I don’t think there’s anything in here I killed,” he says. Lots of the antlers were his grandfather’s. Most of the taxidermy came from generous folks at the Morris Rod & Gun Club. The bear was shot outside Morris by Terry House, who told Zack, “Hey, we’ve got this in our garage!” Zack smiles, “A couple things guys’ wives thought would look better here. Like Ricky the raccoon.” The ’73 Radisson canoe packed with camping gear was Zack’s grandfather’s.

Zack says it really should have occurred to him sooner that this was the space he’d been waiting for—he’d been scouting Wellsboro storefronts for years—but he’d seen the “For Lease” sign at 91 Main Street and assumed it was too large. When he finally dared imagine it, he had his mom call the number and inquire, afraid to hope it’d be possible. Al says, “I was aware of Nessmuk’s in Morris. I said, ‘Hey, Wellsboro is doing well.’”

The post-covid shopping surge was still happening, and Al’s business had been better than ever. Many people were interested in leasing half the store, but Al didn’t want to add back a wall that his father had removed when he’d bought the building in the late ’60s. Garrisons had been in the side toward the Green since 1955. Before the expansion, Davis Sporting Goods, a gun shop, was in the other side. “It’s a unique property,” Al says. He told Zack he’d be glad of the 3,200 square feet of selling space. “You’re going to need two doors on Dickens,” said Al. “And that’s not the only day of the year you need two doors.”

Re-Wilding Wellsboro

Zack is still adding inventory but has put the space to good use. In the back, a glass case is devoted to Nessmuk, the pen name of George Washington Sears (who was born in 1821 and died in 1890) whose book, Woodcraft and Camping, shared opinions and tips about how to set up camp and make a fire that’d burn all night, what gear was and wasn’t necessary, his favorite knife and double-bladed hand axe, and who eventually, out of necessity, pioneered the ultra-light canoe. Far from the stereotypical brawny, rugged outdoorsman type, Sears was short, 110 pounds, and for many years struggled with recurring illnesses. He used a confident, jocular tone to persuade working folks that they didn’t need to spend a fortune hiring guides and buying the latest thing in order to enjoy the wilds. They just needed the right thing—a philosophy Zack embraces.

Sears took the name Nessmuk to honor the member of the Nipmuc tribe who’d mentored him in outdoor skills when he was a little boy in Massachusetts. He wrote, “I think he exerted a stronger influence on my future than any other man.” Zack chose the name for the store because of the history and values Nessmuk stood for, especially how he’d seen the beginning of the destruction of Pine Creek with over-logging and the tanneries, and spoke out about it. “There was an emotional connection for [local] people,” Zack says.

But he first considered naming the store after a man who exerted a strong influence on his future: Charles Chamberlain, his grandfather and mentor in the outdoor arts.

A Self-Made Woodsman

Zack grew up in Tioga, near his grandfather. He spent as much time with him as possible. “Being homeschooled, I could just walk across town and bug him,” he says. Retired from Corning Glass Works and the National Guard, his grandfather had lots of hobbies and skills young Zack was eager to learn. “He did reloading, and worked on guns in a gun room in the house, and had a workshop in the garage for woodworking. It didn’t matter what he was doing, I liked following him around.”

He took Zack squirrel hunting for the first time when he was eight. When they left the house that day, Zack didn’t know his grandfather was carrying a Marlin youth single shot .22.

“There was a large hickory with lots of squirrels on it. A big one stopped, and he said, ‘See that?’ And he handed me the rifle,” Zack remembers. “It wasn’t exactly legal back then, but it wasn’t uncommon.” He got a squirrel that day, but, because “I shot more than once,” he’s not sure it was that one. And he was hooked. “Pretty much every day I’d get my schoolwork done, then go ask if we could go hunting.”

Zack hunted with his grandfather until his teens, adding turkey and deer hunting at age eleven. The next year, his grandfather gave him a Marlin lever-action .30-30. They’d hang out at Coopers Sporting Goods in Mansfield back when Chuck Cooper owned it and Thursday mornings were a coffee klatch. “That was the first sporting goods store I knew—in my mind’s eye that’s still my model.”

An avid reader, he found a copy of Nessmuk’s Woodcraft on his parents’ bookshelf. “I was enamored,” Zack says, but he was eight and had no idea of the local connection. “When I re-read it at thirteen, I started recognizing the places he was talking about.” His family moved to thirty acres outside Lawrenceville when he was eleven, where he could hunt out his back door. But like Nessmuk, who wrote in the introduction to his book of verse that the “ardent lover of nature” makes a deeper connection with forest life than hunters who have a “brutal love of slaughter for the mere pleasure of killing something just because it is alive,” Zack’s love of the outdoors went far beyond hunting. He loved learning the old ways of self-sufficiency and working with his hands.

His first job at eleven was at Glenfiddich Farm, in Millerton, helping Robby England with his sheep. Kathleen England, owner of Glenfiddich Wool, taught him to spin and weave. He never took to knitting, but loved spinning. “I made a lot of yarn and never did anything with it,” he grins.

Zack learned from his father how to make knives on a bench grinder, and helped him build a barn. At fourteen he went to a nearby reenactment and spent the whole time watching the blacksmith. That was in May. In December he got his first forge. “I’m probably the only kid that was happy to get coal for Christmas,” he jokes. That winter, in below-zero temps, Zack was in the garage trying to get the forge going. His dad, a woodworker, had put together a table frame for it, and Zack used a chunk of railroad tie for an anvil. This was far from efficient, but he made and sold squirrel forks and tent stakes, saved the money, and, the following spring, found an anvil at an estate auction. “I probably spent too much on it,” he says, “but the lady I was bidding against wanted to put it in her garden. I took that personally.”

A thing of use is a thing of beauty. And Zack used that anvil, starting Blak Forge.

Stalking His Dream

Zack went to Mansfield University, where he lived on campus, studied sociology and anthropology, and continued to date Tracy Jack, his girlfriend since he was sixteen. They’d met at a historical re-enactors rendezvous and had friends and interests in common. They married in July 2007, he graduated in December 2007, and she graduated with a degree in mathematics in May 2008. Zack realized that using his degree would take him away from the area, and, long before he’d graduated, he’d decided he wanted to open a sporting goods and gunsmith shop. Now they were on the hunt for a location. Zack and a buddy got a map and put pins every place there was a gun store. Then they circled areas without one that had a crossroads. Morris was one such place.

It was Zack’s mom who showed Zack and Tracy the advertisement in the paper for an old storefront just past the Morris Fire Company and ball fields. The location was great. Babb Creek ran behind, and it was close to one of the winter camps Nessmuk wrote about. But it was in bad shape, and would need a lot of work before it was habitable. The floor was rotten in places and the foundation unsafe. They had to jack it up and replace everything. Zach added walls upstairs to make rooms, and put in a kitchen

For a while, the couple lived in a house Tracy’s father owned. Tracy worked at a map company in Wellsboro to pay bills. Zack, with no money for inventory, started Blak Forge Armoury, named after his forge as a kid. “At first it was half barter,” he says. “If you’d buy me the tool I needed to do the job, I’d do your gun for free.” Soon Bill Bennett partnered with Zack, and they had a workshop downstairs. Zack mostly made guns, but also built knives, did some leatherwork, and made some powder horns. He got one bedroom mostly finished and started work on the library.

Then came the babies. First was Gwenevere, then Evelyn, two years later. Three years later, Charles, named for Zack’s grandfather, came along. The girls shared a bedroom. When it came time for Charlie to have his own room separate from his parents, they thought it’d be easier to keep him in the same room and move their bed into the library. While Evie, now thirteen, has moved into the attic, Zack and Tracy still sleep in the library, surrounded by packed shelves and their Madonna icon collection (the Catholic one, not the material girl).

In 2017, they started looking for a storefront in Wellsboro. Nothing available was ideal. But Zack received some advice from the Scranton Small Business Development Center: opening in the space he already had would provide “proof of concept.” The gunsmith workshop had to move, and inventory had to be acquired bit by bit. A main distributor they’d based their business plan on went out of business, and Zack had to start over with suppliers. So, they decided to source directly from small businesses and crafters. The pandemic shutdown seemed like a sign to finally redo the downstairs into a store. “We bought supplies immediately,” Zack says. Small businesses welcomed orders during that time, and the Bucks were able to build inventory for their April 2021 grand opening.

The 650 square feet of store space in Morris still has a rustic shelter in one corner showing off wool blanket rolls, pack baskets, and canvas rucksacks. There’s fishing gear—more than the Wellsboro store carries.

“You don’t normally see books in a gunshop,” Zack says, but tomes by Nessmuk and others on the outdoor arts remain good sellers. There’s a shelf near the back for Gwen’s Goodies, their oldest daughter’s business, with smoked maple syrup (she learned from her grandfather) and jams and jellies. Following her father’s example—but making her own footprints—at nine Gwen saved money from sales to buy her first gun, a 20-gauge Ithaca 37. At her request, she’d started shooting at age six, and Zack took her squirrel hunting at the same age his grandfather had taken him. “Mostly we got cold and rained on,” he recalls. A couple years ago Zack made her an iron-sighted Marlin, a nod to the rifle his grandfather gave him, and took her deer hunting. None came close enough to take an ethical shot, so the next year he made her a scoped rifle. She’s gotten two does with that. At fifteen, she’s the most outdoorsy of their kids, but all have had a chance to help Zack at the gunsmith’s bench or on the property. He wants to give them lots of opportunities to do different things and let them choose. Except chores, of course. Everyone chips in there.

Since they opened in Morris, Tracy works from home, taking care of the books and staffing the store counter when Zack is hunting or gunsmithing. The kids, whom she homeschools, come and go, pounding up and down the stairs behind the store wall, and calling down through the floor grate when they need something, sometimes startling customers.

The Outer Limits

April is the fifth anniversary of Nessmuk’s Sporting Goods in Morris and of the Spring Festival held on their property by Babb Creek, with about fourteen vendors and demonstrators. It fulfills his goal of not just connecting people with unique outdoor products but giving them a taste of new skills and activities. This year some of Nessmuk’s recipes will be used in the Dutch oven cooking demonstration. There’s fishing for kids—they dam up a ditch feeding the creek and throw in a couple buckets of trout, thanks to the Morris Rod & Gun Club. Kids will be shown how to clean and cook their catch, too. There’s decoy carving, tips on fly-fishing and foraging, free hot dogs, and “the smoked cheese guy is always a big hit.” This year’s festival is Saturday, April 12, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 1803 Route 287. Zack also holds “Camp Fire” events on various topics. Check Facebook for events or call (570) 724-0717.

Having a second store has certainly changed the Buck family’s life. Gwen isn’t thrilled that her dad could only take her hunting three times last season. Zack says, “You get to do way less of the outdoor things after you open an outdoor store.” Looking at his daughter he adds, “The hope is as the business grows, we can hire more people so I can buy back some of my time.”

They’re off to a strong start, offering basic gear for “the average outer,” as Nessmuk would say. Zack sources as locally as possible, with items like Hunters Soap, Haft and Head Dressing, and Nessmuk’s box turkey calls, made just for them. Punky Dope bug repellant is made according to Nessmuk’s recipe, and trout flies to his instructions. Zack had to go to Johnson Woolen Mills in Vermont for the kind of quality jackets he wanted. Frost River packs (Minnesota) and Hults Bruk axes (Sweden) are brands Zack has long admired for their quality. They’re hard to find (available online, including at nessmuks.com), and Zack likes that customers can handle them here before purchasing.

In February, Al dropped by first thing one Saturday to check on his building (“Zack’s been a perfect tenant,” he says). “Honest to Pete, the door kept opening and opening. I looked around and it was full. I said, ‘You know how jealous any retailer across the country would be of you right now? Middle of February, ten in the morning, and you have a packed store.” He laughs. “I never thought there’d be a big, mounted bear standing there, but people love it.”