How Dick Cabela Sold The Great Outdoors

The origin tale of Dick Cabela, who founded the outdoor-goods chain Cabela’s, and who died recently, at the age of seventy-seven, begins with fishing flies. In 1961, according to company lore, Cabela bought forty-five dollars’ worth of hand-tied lures to sell at his family’s furniture store, in Nebraska. Customers weren’t interested, so Cabela bought an ad in the magazine Sports Afield, offering five flies in exchange for twenty-five cents in postage. When people wrote in to redeem the offer, he put their names on a mailing list, which he blasted with three-page-long catalogues of fishing gear.

The growth of Cabela’s reflects Americans’ odd relationship with the outdoors: we mythologize it even as we pave it over.

LINK (via: The New Yorker)

Why Have So Many Cities and Towns Given Away So Much Money to Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's?

When was the last time your local specialty retailer received a government handout?

An exhaustive investigation conducted by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity found that Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's together have received or been promised more than $2.2 billion from American taxpayers over the past 15 years.

LINK (via:The Atlantic Cities)

#SAVEOURTROUTFROMTHETANK

AlaskaGuideList is reporting that the new Anchorage Cabela's retail theme park has been given the green light to stock their aquarium with wild rainbows harvested from the Kenai.

LINK

Update on Sunday, October 13, 2013 at 10:00AM by El Guapo

#Cabela'swillnowgeththeirfishfromahatchery