Cabela’s is a monolithic hunting superstore where humans can go to stock up on weapons, supplies, and other paraphernalia in the war on animals. Think of it like the Bat Cave for hunting and fishing—except Bruce Wayne is actually thousands of grizzly-jowled men in overalls, instead of being subterranean it’s actually located off interstates in gaudy brown-and-green compounds near places like Owatonna, and the Butler is wearing hip-waders and a cap with fishing hooks stuck in it.

The Cabela’s experience is like a pilgrimage to Mecca. People travel from hundreds of miles for a Cabela’s and will stay for hours, days, even weeks scouring the aisles for bargains on guns, fishing poles, and collapsible fish fryers.

At the Cabela’s in Owatonna there is a massive indoor mountain decorated by the stuffed carcasses of dead beasts. This is sort of like when the FBI puts up its “Most Wanted List.” These are the nasty characters. Condescending bobcats, some jackass elk, that bastard bighorn sheep. Upon entering the Cabela’s, you visit the mountain to pay your respects to your enemy, look into his eyes, understand his fears/passions, contemplate whether you’d eat him with vinegar or just a light beer batter, then sanguinely turn to buy shit like ropes and knives and bullets to go get ‘em.

It’s important to know what kind of animal you’re going to kill/maim/hilariously detain for photogenic opportunities. For example, you can go after fish. Fish are dumb. Inside Cabela’s, you’ll find an assortment of hooks and stealth-like coverings like squirming worms, fish called “minnows,” and jelly-like apparatuses called “jigs.” If the covering is good enough, the fish (how dumb) will bite down with its mouth onto the fancy hook. Then the fisherman will pull a fast one on the fish, yank back the hook, sinking the barb into the fish’s face, and hauling back the poor dumbass to the boat to take photos with it. Then you can feign making out with the fish on camera and toss the little feller into the lake again and give its flop a rating like you’re an Olympic diving judge. Fish love this.

At Cabela’s, you’ll also find various black and silver tubes to take out bears, wolves, deer, sick cattle, etc. These are called guns. If you stuff something into these—bullets usually, buckshot—they will rip large, usually un-healable flesh wounds in the sides of whatever they hit. When you hit a deer, everyone cheers. When you hit a hunting partner, people all stop laughing and sort of look at you funny. So aim for an animal. Keeps the party going.

Cabela’s also has plenty of supplies for tracking down these hoofed and finned beasts: animal-attraction spray (KY style), flashlights to wear on your head, tents, and jig-saw knives to cut out the vital organs of dead deer so you can have a moment with your son and share the raw, bloody heart of a white-tail deer in celebration of the kill. Bring some clean wipes so you can wash away that blood from your cheek!

Cabela’s unfortunately is not for everyone. Some wimps get turned off by the glorification of blood sport. They say the animals don’t stand a chance against night-vision goggles or high-powered rifles that can knock down prairie dogs from over a mile out or special-ops-style GPS equipment. But that’s just because these wussies don’t get it. They’ve been desensitized by the conveniences of modern living/mainstream media.

My best friend’s dad once took me to Cabela’s, and I saw a profile of a man—it was for a shooting target. “Ha, pretty neat,” he said when I asked him about why you’d want to have a man target as opposed to a polar bear target or mallard duck target. Obviously I was youthful and naïve. I now understand. Cabela’s doesn’t kill people. People who shop at Cabela’s practicing killing the faceless shapes of people just in case those bastard zoo animals start donning human costumes. And from what I saw in the steely glare of those stuffed Bobcats on the animal mountain, I wouldn’t put much past them.

– Dunstan McGill

Photo by Lirena (Creative Commons)