I had a political science professor tell my class once that if we really wanted to freak out a European tourist all we had to do was “take him to Wal-Mart for a big-ass Coke and a gun.” For reasons obvious and memories recessive, this quote on culture shock rang through my head as I traversed the hot black top toward the 180,000-square-foot Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World in Denham Springs. I felt a little like my imaginary European might feel adrift in the vast commercial gluttony of a Super Wal-Mart. I grew up in Louisiana, but to me “Sportsman’s Paradise” was either a braggart’s vow to the DMV or a reference to Saturday nights in Tiger Stadium. The last time I went fishing was less about catching fish and more about coveting a new Cub Scout patch. I’ve never hunted in my life.
Maybe it was because I haven’t yet sat in a duck blind, but more likely it was the guarded turnstile entry. With tracts of Spanish moss hanging from a stadium-high ceiling, chairs made of little more than leather and tusks, and an overall hunting lodge aura, Bass Pro first struck me as a theme park, all the minor details sportsmen take for granted gleaming like fantastic attractions.
Of course, by design Bass Pro has legitimate entertainment sectors, too, like an arcade, a virtual shooting range and two life-size racecar video simulators where, for $8.50, you can “capture the NASCAR experience.” But it was the hidden gems that provided more unintended thrills.
Most of the time I felt like I had swallowed some low-grade psychedelic. One minute I’d be salivating over a bar of amaretto chocolate swirl fudge in the General Store or sizing up the water-resistant anoraks, then all of a sudden the surreal would set in, and I’d find myself face-to-face with a snarling black bear or blinking at a large jug of Ooey Gooey Concentrated “Pig Out.” According to the label, this slime is fruit, berries and molasses-flavored “wild beast bait” for pigs, deer and bears. “Concentrated goo soaks into the wallow to keep ’em coming back!” the product exclaimed. Nearby were bottles of something called buck licker. I wasn’t ready for that so I walked on and discovered several Monopoly iterations I never knew existed. Obscurities like Wild Turkey-opoly, Whitetail-opoly and the supplemental Bass Fishing Monopoly: “Lakes Edition.”
That’s when I knew Bass Pro was about more than simply hunting. It is a proud purveyor of “huntertainment.”
Trying to huntertain myself, I wandered like a foreigner from section to section, past the kayaks and camping gear, past the pre-owned rifles, past the archery range, zig-zagging through row after row of fishing rods standing at attention like fields of antennae. I even heard a dad call after his son named, I kid you not, Hunter. Then a loudspeaker announcement halted the soft country music playing overhead: “The one o’clock fishing demonstration will begin shortly at the pond.” Finally, I thought, this is my chance to stop being an idiot tourist and learn something. And here’s what I got: No. 1, Bass Pro is more than a store, it’s a family; No. 2, having neon on the end of your rod is a good thing; No. 3, they may call them white perch in other parts, but around here, we call them crappie.
Now marginally educated on crappie, I wanted to do more than observe. I wanted to talk to families. It was spring break and people young and old were combing the aisles of both Bass Pro and the 175,000-square-foot Cabela’s, some geared up in full camo. This was their big day out. This was huge. I saw a family of three rocking gently in camouflaged massage recliners that retail for $700.
“We came as soon as the traffic died down,” said Daryl Wheat, as his wife watched their young son and daughter explore every nook of a speedboat. “We really wanted to check out the boats. And they’re loving it.”
In Gonzales, Cabela’s felt less like Bass Pro’s cohesive theme park and more like an outdoor epicenter with separate divisions for retail and spectacle—a kind of Wal-Mart/Museum of Natural History combo. In the middle of the store, racks of rifles and shelves of camping gear give way to a craggy mountaintop that rises out of the ground and hosts an incredible display of North American wild game, from big horns to prairie dogs, and polar bears to wolves. Another section is an African safari with life-size lions, a zebra, an elephant and much more to stoke the imagination.
It was almost 2 p.m. and I was hungry, so I went to the deli to order a bison and provolone cold-cut sandwich. “What does bison taste like?” I asked with only slight trepidation. “You’ve had beef? It’s like roast beef but a little drier, a little leaner,” the chef replied.
She was right. The bison was good, but after finishing it, I regretted my less-than-daring choice. Next time I’m ordering the ostrich.
Surveying Cabela’s from the second-floor restaurant, I was struck by the sheer enormity of this alternative culture. Cabela’s has 28 locations nationwide. Bass Pro, nearly 60. I found myself still grappling with the tenets and allure of it all, until I remembered a young father’s candid remarks while we watched the fishing demonstration together.
“I just wanted to see how (my daughter) would react,” 34-year-old John Lathan said. For the record, she was wide-eyed and giddy. Lathan works at a local plastics plant and is an avid fisherman. “She loves the outdoors, and it’s important to me that she gets exposed to some of the things I enjoy doing.”
I still may be ignorant of the subtleties of hunting culture, but this father’s passion for sharing something with his daughter really resonated with me, even if I don’t go out on a regular basis and kill stuff. It was in that moment, standing at the nexus of the camouflaged universe, that I think I finally began to understand.
