Yes, this is exactly what the people behind Abercrombie & Fitch did.
They had an idea for a college brand of clothing and repurposed an old, dying hunting brand in the company lineup to give the new brand authenticity and a nice number to follow “est. “ in their branding.
There was actually an intermediate incarnation. After closing its high-end hunting/fishing store in Manhattan (gunsmiths on premise, fishing lures for a particular type of fish on a particular stretch of Western river) and going bankrupt, a Houston-based outfit made them a more generic "yuppie-ish" sort of store with connections to hunting mostly as an image thing. Then they were sold and developed into their current form.
They had an idea for a college brand of clothing and repurposed an old, dying hunting brand in the company lineup to give the new brand authenticity and a nice number to follow “est. “ in their branding.