Cabela’s “It’s In Your Nature”:
An Exploration of Love, Death, Retail and Taxidermy at Cabela’s Worlds Foremost Outfitter
Eden Redmond
What happens when a department store, natural history museum and amusement center exist under one roof? We see different combinations of these features in the world already. Natural history museums surely have gift stores in them, built strategically, requiring one to pass through it at the end of their visit. But this gift shop is small and separated from the museum proper. Department stores will include aspects of children’s entertainment such as gumball machines, monitors showing cartoons and kid friendly displays, but the store merchandise is still segregated into separate audiences (men, women and children) and not woven together to promote family interactivity. If each of these features is housed under one enormous roof without walls to partition their relationships, what comes to light?
Cabela’s World’s Foremost Outfitter begins to answer this question. Cabela’s is a colossal hunting supply store with the most popular online and write in presence of any hunting retailer. [1] The massive storefronts include museum quality taxidermy displays complete with fully painted dioramas and sculpted mountainous footing. This display of North American fauna surrounds the entirety of the store and culminates in one central display: “Conservation Mountain”. Cabela’s also features an indoor café, arcade games, a kid’s toy and candy section and a souvenir penny presser among their typical retail items such as hunting rifles, camouflage gear, sub zero tents and skinning knives. Without dividing walls the politics of these spaces speak openly to one another. What are they saying? Using the strategic abilities of storefront displays and natural history dioramas, Cabela’s naturalizes man’s purpose to conquer, normalizes capitalist consumption as both educational and environmentally responsible and makes the legacy entirely family friendly.
It was a frigid January morning when we parked in the very last row far far away from where we aimed to be. We bounced down from the high seats of our old red jeep and surveyed the parking lot, full of post Christmas shoppers and their vehicles slowly, tensely bumping forward trying to navigate in and out of teeny spaces. The maneuvers are clumsy and polite and terse. We begin our ducks and dodges between cars and carts over icy asphalt to the dirty sidewalk pedestrian path. After traversing the sidewalk lane between moms pulling fervently at their children, we arrive at one more impasse marked by bumpy, yellow plastic on the ground. Our final lurch is across one last stream of cars where an enormous white shiny truck stops for us and we are waved across politely by an enormous white shiny man.
Through seamless automated glass doors we are delivered to a bright window lined foyer. A 12-foot stuffed sturgeon leaping dramatically in the air greets us immediately. Our eyes are drawn left to an enormous space, the array is disorienting and takes a moment to make sense: large land mammals- moose, coyotes, caribou, deer, and rams are frozen in dramatic poses at the top of a 40 foot vaulted, exposed beam ceiling. The long beams are clamped with iron trimmings, illuminated by huge iron chandeliers resembling some sort of mega-cabin. On ground level there are racks upon racks of merchandise, everything is muted in taupe, kaki, moss and umber. It is as if we stepped into a valley with a shopping mall at its base and a splendid court of North American fauna at the edges looking in. Directly in front of us is a gun check, our entrance point into the dell of Cabela’s World’s Foremost Outfitters in Tualatin, Oregon.
The Tualatin this store opened as the 64th Cabela’s shop on the continent on September 18, 2014. That premier weekend an estimated 40,000 visitors came to the site.[2] Some customers had camped on the leading sidewalk for up to 22 hours before the 10:45 AM opening. Cabela’s franchise is an enormous retailer supplying all one should need for a hunting lifestyle. Cabela’s also circulates the world’s leading outdoor outfitting magazine, four television programs, cookbooks, and has it’s own bank (Cabela’s.com). The monumentality of this enterprise is fully realized in the physical store. Each retail location operates at the scale of Costco Wholesale or IKEA, the Lehi, Utah location for instance is 250,000 square feet. Each store is outfitted with thousands and thousands of dollars worth of taxidermy trophies displayed dramatically in dioramas mounted on high above customers. The centerpiece of each Cabela’s is the overwhelming “Conservation Mountain” display located at the back, center of the store, visible from all other points of the store it acts as a visual marker for customers as they shop. This peak is covered in the largest assembly of taxidermy animals in the store from small game such as quail at the base to the largest game, bears and elk at the crest. On the surrounding edges of the display guardrails are labeled buttons where, when pressed, children can hear the noises made by each animal. At the base of each trophy is a small plaque informing viewers of the trophy’s origin and state record status. The Tualatin store hosts the Washington state record holding non-typical elk. Just behind the mountain face is a grotto housing a 55,000-gallon fish tank filled with live rainbow trout and catfish. In the adjacent cavern is a replica of a cave bear skeleton flanked by informational placards sharing local geographic history. This set up has all of the signifiers of a natural history museum. The displays at Cabela’s are certainly designed and treated with the same curatorial care.
The mere proximity of museum quality curatorial display and retailed items is perhaps the most obvious marker for needed discussion- apparent but not simple. Some taxidermy specimens are donated by or purchased from private hunters, who more than likely bought the ammunition that killed that animal here at Cabela’s. Museums build their collections up in a similar manner; buying and borrowing privately owned pieces. This provides a tidy circuit loop to be considered, and I believe it’s one of many in this site.
Well, a nearly tidy circuit. For surrounding the perimeter of the store, underneath the taxidermy displays and on the fringes of the merchandise is a series of arcade games: there is a big game hunting video game with plastic rifles pointing into screens where digital elk run weakly. There is a section of children’s merchandise that could be transplanted seamlessly into any amusement park gift shop with popguns, stuffed animals, video games and candy. There is the “Lazy River” café where guests can rest from their bargain hunting. Most significantly there is a pressed penny machine. This machine is advertised to offer a saccharine souvenir, not of the Cabela’s franchise at large, but a specific souvenir celebrating your time in the Tualatin Cabela’s location marking this store as a site for memorable experience. All of these markers suggest plain leisure activities similar to a boardwalk. If we consider the shape, ratio of space and layout of Cabela’s it could be understood as a department store with a museum wrapped up in a boardwalk. Let’s begin with the department store.
Cabela’s Worlds Foremost Outfitter has every staple, odd and end you should need for a variety of huntsman lifestyles. Taking the whole family camping? “A true home away from home that easily accommodates your whole family and even allows for a little privacy. Cabela's Backwoods Three-Room Cabin Tent boasts an extra-spacious interior – plenty of room to shelter
your entire family, pets and gear” [3] available for $699.99. Are you getting away for your annual bow-hunting trip with just you and Fido? Don’t forget your Camouflage Systems Men’s Bow Hunter Pants for $109.99. “These pants combine the best of leaf and ghillie camouflage for outline-breaking 3-D concealment. Made of lightweight, 100% polyester mesh and hand-tied jute string for all-season performance and a natural look.” [4] Need to refill your ammunition stocks? Cabela’s offers 875 different types of bullets ideal for the recreational shooter or hunter. Everything from tools to hunt your target, gear to keep you warm and hidden, animal calls and tools for training your own hunting dog, to comforts for family camping.
Perhaps most interesting is the genre of products fashioned to bring the outdoor hunting lifestyle into the home. Take for instance Cabela’s The Beast Camouflage Power-Lift Recliner. This chair offers “More room, more cushioning, more comfort! […] Power-Lift raises the chair at an angle, making it easier for you to get in and out. Hardwood frame and bar-coil spring system supports up to 400 lbs.” [5] available for $1,199.00 on sale. In one hundred thousand square feet of floor space, Cabela’s offers nature (stuffed animals), outdoor adventure (mega-cabin structure and retail goods) and now domestic comfort (recliners, slippers, dog toys) and suggests that you can be the master of every domain.
There is a degree of typical department store ambulation, but informational tiles, heroic stuffed animals and playful arcade games punctuate this walk, coding the process of capitalist consumption with the wholesome presence of educational sustenance and quality family time. These educational and familial cues normalize shopping as just another branch of a well-developed family unit. The blur between consumer and audience is intensified when the Cabela’s customer is both buying goods and taking in curated dioramas. The language of the diorama and the role of natural history museum confirm to the buyer that hunting is an accepted as a naturalized historical act, and at Cabela’s one can literally buy into that natural lineage.
At this point it may be helpful to understand the hunter’s mentality around conservation. Cabela’s and conservation are seen hand in hand online, in store and in product design. To gain further understanding about this lifestyle I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Renee Snider of Elk Grove, California. She has been[6] hunting internationally since 1979. Snider is recognized in the top 1% of competitive big game hunting which is additionally impressive when we consider that only 5% of all hunters are women.[7] She is renowned for her arduous climbs in the highest mountain ranges of the world, hunting big sheep with minimal guidance. She has been recognized with international and national hunting awards. Just last year, August 2014 she was the first woman to be gifted the Weatherby Foundation International Award. This award in particular accounts for quality of kills, sure, but it mainly looks to conservation efforts, sportsmanship, and education efforts. Given these considerations is it no surprise that Snider was elected.
On her trips around the world Snider leaves a wake of philanthropic efforts. She brings physicians and medical aid, buys artwork and cultural products from local towns, and funds fresh watering wells for people and animals alike. She is polite, generous and modest. I think it is important to focus on Snider here because she can give us insight to the logic of the huntsman but also because she embodies and lives out much of what Cabela’s promotes in their stores; exemplary hunting abilities and responsible environmental activity. “The Cabela’s are close personal friends” she informed me upon my arrival. When I called her just an hour before our interview to confirm one more time that I would be coming to her home, she asked if I wanted any photographs. I said I did indeed want to take photos of the displays in her home, she laughed with relief and said “Good thing”, she was about to wash her hair and didn’t want to be surprised by an expectation to be photogenic.
When I arrived at the huge white iron fence to her estate I pressed a buzzer and the automatic gate slid away. The brick columns supporting the gate boasted life size iron busts of a water buffalo and rhinoceros. I drove up the long driveway alongside beautifully manicured lawns and bushes, parallel to pastures full of ponies, cows and full size horses. The home was exquisite with a turnabout centered on a beautiful fountain surrounded by roses and snapdragons. Once I parked the petite silver Prius I borrowed from my mother, I was reminded again that my task was a challenge to my young professionalism. Renee Snider and I fundamentally disagree on the subject that drives her livelihood. But I was delighted to begin the interview and had no secret agenda. As I’m soothing myself in the driver seat I look ahead to see a full size bronze statute of a rhinoceros running across this section of the lawn. I am taken in by the whimsy and ready to begin.
Snider is incredibly gracious when she greets me, even with her hair in a towel. She is beautiful and strong and shakes my hand with a smile. I am led into a house that is full to the brim with many kinds of collections, not just animal trophies. There are miniature crystal lasered car replicas, walking sticks from around the world, beads and photographs everywhere. I meet Snider’s husband Paul and their new German Shepard puppy Duke on our way to the exhibit hall. Though my connection tried to prepare me, I really was not ready.
The wing of the house was specifically built just to host Snider’s Africa collection. Snider designed the arrangements herself. Snider explains to me that big game hunting is conservation. She uses the terms conservation and management interchangeably. A certain percentage of those animal populations will die that given year anyway, so, a carefully calculated number of licenses go up for bid and big game hunters come flocking. Some years a population will be entirely off limits. Some populations will over graze areas and need to be moved, Snider says referring to big grazers of North America. When this happens hunters are invited by licensure to cull the herd. Hunting organizations pay for safe havens for animals where hunting is not allowed, funding for research trips and much more. Snider says “Hunters are the ones who actually put up money to conserve animals, because we love them. Many protected natural spaces are funded by hunters, you’ll see”. It’s out of love for the animals; this came through over and over again. On her own property Snider has a pond that produces almost 1,000 new wild birds each year.
Though it is unclear what drives her process entirely, someties there is a need for pragmatism. For instance, her rhinoceros pair had to be sculpted in a curve so that they could hug this predetermined bend in the rock wall. Many taxidermy decisions are made on the spot while examining the kill. Factors include where the animal was wounded (ideally just once through the heart and Snider makes sure of this), how they fell, and what condition their body is in. Sometimes narrative of the hunt makes its way into posture. Sometimes, in Africa especially, an artist will be on the hunt and will begin sketching the trophy pose as soon as the animal falls to the ground. Snider informed me that there are always artists and there is constant sketching on hunting excursions. The curation and the acquisition happen simultaneously.
The Sniders have tried to build a natural history museum in Sacramento for some time now. UC Davis is the most recent interested collaborator “We have offered to pay for everything” she says, referring to her and her husbands multiple proposals for funding. But Sacramento has overwhelmingly turned them down. For now her home is open by appointment to show her collection to students and children. She has approximately one tour group a month and hosts many events for the Sacramento Safari Club, the NRA and personal celebrations. Snider explains how valuable she thinks her collection could be to the public and wishes desperately to make it happen. People may never get the chance to go to Africa, Snider explains, and she wants to give them the opportunity to experience Africa up close. She also wants to showcase the natural beauty of North America and beautifully display local populations “for educational” purpose. This is the broad mission of any natural history museum; to record and display an area’s history for the sake of preservation and in order to educate the public. This education includes the local geography and land formations, flora and fauna of the area, how the area’s population came to be, and has changed. Additionally, contrasting samples are featured from far away places that the public may not have the chance to see otherwise. This contrast may serve to genuinely inform viewers of different places, but it could also be seen as a move to encourage local pride. In seeing different species of wildlife next to those that you consider as natural, the strangeness of the contrast could encourage the viewer to further embrace their surroundings as normal and safe and even worthy of pride.
Mark Dowse, the taxidermy product manager and diorama design director for Cabela’s curates each retail location personally. Dowse strives to bring local customers wildlife they would appreciate and recognize from their own region, as well as introduce them to animals they may not have the opportunity to see nearby.[8] At the Tualatin location Cabela’s has Washington State’s prize non-typical elk buck. It also features North American Antelope and Mountain Sheep from altitudes so high that Tualatonians may never see them for themselves (except for maybe in the Oregon Zoo where they have two mountain sheep). Dowse explains his process with the straightforward manner of an insider: “What's [nearby] and what people expect to see are […] details that are not overlooked […] You just start brainstorming what needs to be for South Dakota […] But then, we have all these other trophies from North America that people in South Dakota haven't seen."
While Dowse is the key designer for all Cabela’s exhibits, at a certain point he hands the fabrication over to local taxidermy production agencies, some of which are funded by Cabela’s. In Tualatin this task fell to Tim Brown, a local, independent taxidermist and hunter. Brown told local KOIN 6 News that he wanted the store’s exhibits and specifically “Conservation Mountain” to be full of action. He wanted to show the folks of Tualatin something “out of the norm”.[9] Here is a conscious effort to display what is natural in an extraordinary way. And surely the animals here are extraordinary, each of them displayed as virile and alert, either ready for action or resting majestically.
The natural history diorama [is] a narrative of animals, nature and family that consisted of mounted animals (usually a large, powerful male, a few females and a baby) posed as if in their natural environment. These animals [are] perfect, particularly the desired male animal (the courageous, worthy opponent), and the essential nature of the species [is] represented by the exemplary specimen. But the diorama was possible only by killing those perfect specimens. [10]
Displaying taxidermy animals has been linked to discourses of domination. Donna Haraway notes that the story of nature is constructed in the process of hunting and killing, and doing so produces a picture-perfect natural animal history.[11] Taxidermy and reproduction of life after death illustrates the human/other animal boundary.[12]
There is a desire to look out and see the true beauty of nature but in order to do so the animal is taken from it’s natural state, the state of being alive as well as being in the wild. Department stores rely on the desire to look, “[…] distracted observation and dreamlike reverie—became a prototype for those of the consumer, whose style of “just looking” is the pedestrian equivalent of slow motion”[13]. Looking around Cabela’s the slow movement and gaze toward the dioramas is identical to the slow movement and gaze toward price tags. These inanimate animals do much more for us than a mere incarnate animal could. Man gets to engage a look with this frozen animal that surpasses any organic encounter. The animal can gaze back and hold this look for eternity, ears alert, and nostrils flared. The animal has transcended mortality, and lives on. Man cannot gain such meaningful exchange in the wild; he can only gain it here, in nature’s re-presentation.
So what presentations and narratives can be read from the Tualatin Cabela’s taxidermy? Brown exerts such an effort for active imagery, how does this affect the space? On the left hand side of the main aisle there is a scene backdropped by a purple misty forest. Trees span so high that no leaves are visible except for the three dimensional plastic Christmas tree placed right in the center. The subjects of this scene are a female and male elk, a doe and a buck. The doe walks ahead of the buck with her head down, maybe looking for food, ambling through the woods. Close behind is the enormous buck, muscly and crowned with impressive antlers. His head is also low but he is focused on the doe, his mouth dropped open probably emitting a characteristic bellow. Maybe he is pursuing her as a mate. Maybe he is just communicating with her. He follows her and bellows as they go together through these foggy woods.
In the context of a shopping experience, I cannot help but be tickled by a new narrative cast upon this interaction. There is a department store trope unfolding. The department store generally, and Cabela’s specifically is full of middle-aged couples. They negotiate time, look for kids, and point out things about the store. There is a moment though when someone is ready to leave before the other and an annoyed prodding begins. I cannot help but look at these elk and imagine an exchange; negotiating what someone needs versus what someone wants, maybe the time the couple agreed to leave the store has long since passed. I realize in this viewing that the doe’s ears are not up and alert, but stayed in the middle, hovering between listening and annoyance.
Whether this display is intended to show a couple annoyed at each other or a couple in pursuit of sexual engagement, there is undoubtedly a heteronormative pairing here with gendered actions being performed. There is also an uncomfortable tension in not knowing what the display should be selling. The male specimen has his mouth open implying that he is heard although the display is of course silent. The female’s mouth is closed and her head is bowed submissively. They are both walking but he is given much more action, his muscles more engaged his step more dramatic and his head animated.
When the contextual staging is considered, even the lighting is focused primarily on the buck. Furthermore this display is put on high, like religious narratives on church walls. This moment is preserved infinitely. He is heard and she is silent and bowed forever.
When this diorama is placed in a department store the boundaries between education, historical preservation and consumerism becomes slippery. Is a submissive sexual encounter being historicized, propagated and sold here? Is Cabela’s selling the supplies for a consumer to replicate this display and message in their own collection? If we are displaying bodies, is this really how we want to remember them?
Another more active scene in Cabela’s is the revenge scene, which can be found displayed above the archery section, next to one of the two rifle counters. Here the wall above the semi automated crossbows breaks away from plaster into a rock outcropping jutting into the air making a dramatic perimeter for the scene. Above the rocks is a large brown bear has just taken down and now consumes a female moose who lies bleeding and punctured at the edge of the scene. The bear turns up and away from the kill to make eye contact with a nearby male moose who has stumbled onto the scene. The moose bends around tall plastic pines to find what is undoubtedly his mate decimated and being eaten by this bear. This is a tense scene of first contact spanning multiple boundaries at once. There are multiple species interacting in a harmful way. The boundary between life and death is fresh, for the male moose has only just come across his mate. The sculpted rock outcropping gives way in the backdrop to rolling, grassy prairies and we see that we are in an in between geographical zone where mountains meet plains. The bear and the moose are locked in a look of surprise with a decision hanging delicately between them. Is this the moment before sad concession or a brutal vengeful battle?
This image shows the violence of borders. Being territorial is natural, but here territorial behavior is normalized without exception. There is a danger to being in-between spaces; there is a danger to interacting with the unfamiliar. Seeing difference and being in indeterminate spaces is where violence is found. This is by far the most violent scene in Cabela’s, it is certainly the first trace of death and blood. Though human hands do not produce death. This affirms Snider’s comment earlier, the logic that a certain percentage of animals will be killed a year anyway, may as well manage that percentage.
Susan Buck Morss explains that “[… wandering through department stores is] an ideological attempt to […] give assurance that the individual’s passive observation was adequate knowledge of social reality”[14] This quote carries a daunting weight when walking through a department store full of lethal weapons. The Cabela’s group presses safety and legality above all else, but these displays suggest subtle, different messages. “If shopping activates the power of the consumer gaze, then purchasing asserts power over the objects beheld”[15] Shopping and hunting both purport domination for the sake of beauty. Acquisition means power and owning these things displays taste and beauty. But what does it mean that to love something means to kill it? It feels as though the act of bargain hunting in a department store is equate-able with the act of hunting animals in the wild. This entire dialogue of domination and ownership is described in language of conservation and love. The store is nearly constantly full of people shoulder to shoulder convening with the animals. Donna Haraway writes this about the Akeley African Hall in Central Park:
No matter how many people crowd the Great Hall, the experience is of individual communion with nature […this is the moment where] nature and culture, private and public, profane and sacred meet—a moment of incarnation in the encounter of man and animal [16]
This moment of first encounter, abstract recognition, is the moment before conquest. In natural history dioramas we look upon animals posed as if in the wild, fetishizing this moment of anticipation. At Cabela’s this anticipation of encounter with nature is conflated by anticipation of consuming retail. This is rebranded as a valuable past time fostering well-rounded familial education and environmental responsibility. One can commemorate their trip into the wild with a mounted animal trophy, or into Cabela’s with a pressed souvenir penny. Conquest, acquisition and domination, it’s in our nature.
[1] Cabela's website
[2] Hoffmeyer, J. (2014, September 17). Cabela's grand opening in Tualatin draws thousands. KOIN News. Retrieved May 4, 2015, from http://koin.com/2014/09/17/cabelas-grand-opening-could-cause-traffic-headache/
[3] Cabela's Backwoods Three-Room Cabin Tent-- 12 person. (n.d.). Retrieved May 4, 2015, from http://www.cabelas.com/product/Cabelas-Backwoods-Three-Room-Cabin-Tent-150-12-Person/1947494.uts?Ntk=AllProducts&searchPath=/catalog/search.cmd?form_state=searchForm&N=0&fsch=true&Ntk=AllProducts&Ntt=family+tents&x=10&y=6&WTz_l=Header%3BSearch-All+Products&Ntt=family tents
[4] Camouflage Systems Men's Bow Hunter Pants. (n.d.). Retrieved May 4, 2015, from http://www.cabelas.com/product/Camouflage-Systems-Mens-Bow-Hunter-Pants/1347905.uts?Ntk=AllProducts&searchPath=/catalog/search/?N=5100829&Ne=5100829&Ntk=AllProducts&Ntt=camouflage&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial&WTz_l=Header%3BSearch-All+Products&WTz_st=SearchRefinements&form_state=searchForm&search=camouflage&searchTypeByFilter=AllProducts&x=10&y=6&Ntt=camouflage
[5] Cabelas The Beast Camouflage Power-Lift Recliner. (n.d.). Retrieved May 4, 2015, from http://www.cabelas.com/product/Cabelas-The-Beast-Camouflage-Power-Lift-Recliner/1618721.uts?Ntk=AllProducts&searchPath=/catalog/search/?N=5101235&Ne=5101235&Ntk=AllProducts&Ntt=camouflage&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial&WTz_l=Header%3BSearch-All+Products&WTz_st=SearchRefinements&form_state=searchForm&search=camouflage&searchTypeByFilter=AllProducts&x=10&y=6&Ntt=camouflage
[8] Cook, A. (2008, August 6). Stampeding bison herd featured in Cabela's diorama. Rapid City Journal. Retrieved February 27, 2015, from http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/stampeding-bison-herd-featured-in-cabela-s-diorama/article_8ae00f1f-d881-554e-9c62-b9c6e281a066.html
[9] Feldman, C. (2014, September 16). What to expect from Cabela's grand opening in Tualatin. Retrieved May 4, 2015, from http://koin.com/2014/09/16/what-to-expect-from-cabelas-grand-opening-in-tualatin/
[10] Haraway, D. (n.d.). Teddy Bear patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936 (p. 29)
[11] Ibid.[12] Kalof, L., & Fitzgerald, A. (2003). Reading the trophy: Exploring the display of dead animals in hunting magazines. Visual Studies, 18(2). Retrieved February 20, 2015, from http://ecoculturalgroup.msu.edu/Reading the Trophy RVST_18_02_04.pdf
[13] Friedberg, A. (1991). Les Flåneurs du Mal(l): Cinema and the Postmodern Condition. MLA, 106(3), 421
[14] Buck-Morss, S. (1986). The Flaneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering. 103.
[15] Friedberg, A. (1991). Les Flåneurs du Mal(l): Cinema and the Postmodern Condition. MLA, 106(3), 424
[16] Haraway, D. (n.d.). Teddy Bear patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936 (p. 29