Sportsmen take retail giant to task

It’s a lot like a David vs. Goliath story, except that in the case of Montana sportsmen vs. Cabela’s, the underdog isn’t aiming to kill.

After all, the Cabela’s catalog may be the only “book” many of the sportsmen have read this year, and it cost them significantly more than a library card.

Doubtless many of them will be standing in line when the industry giant opens its Billings retail store – the first in Montana – later this year.

Sportsmen don’t just patronize Cabela’s, they have revered it into the Oprah of outdoor gear.

But the Nebraska-based retailer hit a Montana hot button last year as the company’s real estate operations targeted prime hunting and fishing properties in the Treasure State.

Montana sportsmen, informed by savvy outdoor writers – Mark Henckel of the Billings Gazette, Mike Babcock at the Great Falls Tribune and Bill Schneider of NewWest.net – began sniffing a rat that was getting fat on Average Joes at the checkstand and then moving in to gobble up their prime places to hunt and fish.

When applied to Cabela’s, the term “mega bucks” doesn’t mean deer. The company generates $2 billion in sales through 25 retail stores, a Web site that receives 40 million hits a month, and 130 million catalogs distributed nationwide.

But in recent months, a few thousand Montana sportsmen were destroying those catalogues or sending them back to Cabela’s in protest.

Sportsmen accused the company’s advertising for touting ranches with exclusive hunting opportunities that could involve denying access to nearby public land.

“I can’t fight gazillionaires over (access to) a road, that’s been there since statehood, once they put a gate up,” Rod Bullis, a hunter from Lincoln, told The Associated Press last week.

The protest officially began in May with a letter to Dennis Highby, Cabela’s president, from Craig Sharpe, executive director of the 7,000-member Montana Wildlife Federation. Sharpe zeroed in on the company’s involvement in selling key pieces of wildlife habitat, including a 29,000-acre Winnett-area ranch that had previously been enrolled in the state’s Block Management Program.

For perspective, Idaho and Washington wildlife managers are desperately trying to find funding for models to Montana’s Block Management Program, which pays farmers and ranchers to provide free public access to resident and non-resident hunters.

However, Sharpe pointed out that sales of recreational property almost always result in a loss of public access for hunting and fishing.

“And, frankly,” Henckel reported, “the MWF wonders why Cabela’s wants to be a part of that.”

At that time, Cabela’s Trophy Properties listed 72 recreational lands in Montana ranging to $6 million.

Sales verbiage raised eyebrows, Henckel reported. For example:

•”Last large bighorn sheep range in Montana.”

•”Waterfowl sanctuary entwined along 1.5 miles of the Yellowstone River with three private islands.”

•”Access to over 375,000 acres of BLM.”

Sharpe’s letter unloaded on the industry giant: “The MWF Executive Board finds that Cabela’s is trading on its trusted reputation as a merchant of sporting goods to engage in a real estate marketing activity that is calculated to subvert and destroy the very system of North American wildlife conservation that has provided Cabela’s with the hunter-and-angler markets that gave your company life in the first place.”

Cabela’s responded with three quick misfires, according to Schneider.

•Company spokesman David Draper insulted Montana hunters, saying they shouldn’t fret because the properties sales were “probably going to make the land better.”

•The head of Cabela’s Trophy Properties tried to dodge the bullet, saying the company isn’t really in the real estate business, just the real estate marketing business.

•Cabela’s third response, Schneider said, was the old “can’t we just get along” comeback, which included an invitation for the MWF board to an exclusive VIP reception at the Billings store opening.

Whoopie!

But as news of the protest sifted out of the sparsely populated state, the Cabela’s high brass saw the tarnish creeping into their worshiped name brand.

Last week, Cabela’s Vice President Mike Callahan, a former Montanan, showed up at the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission meeting with a $50,000 check and a pledge for another $60,000 over five years to support the states’ land-access programs.

Callahan said the company will change how it markets Montana. Under new policies, Cabela’s will not advertise the prospect of subdividing land in Montana and will avoid undermining existing Block Management contracts, he said.

The sportsmen apparently were heard.

“None of this is illegal, of course,” Henckel said. “It’s not necessarily immoral or unethical, either. It’s an owner’s right to sell and a buyer’s right to do what he wants with the property.”

But, he suggested, sportsmen all over the country need to stand up for access, the foundation of their sport, before they lose it to the rich and those who pander to them.