'Just happened to catch on the current ad playing for Bass Pro the throw-back picture of the owner and his dad in front of an early sign for the store. At the very bottom of the sign is one word - "Liquor." There used to be a nice bar in the one by me, with a beautiful aquarium as a bar back and a decent restaurant in an interesting venue behind it. It's all boarded up now, and has been for years. Nothing opens the wallet like a little booze.

Down here there were Texas Stores when I was a kid. Booze on one side, guns and ammo on the other. It was interesting going in there with my dad, particularly since we were Baptists.

I miss Western Auto...... too late to fix BassPro,,,clothing is king now in the box outdoor stores

Yup, other Baptists won't say hi in the liquor store.

I just wished BPS hadnt ruined Cabelas when they bought them out a few years back... I've got a Cabelas thats literally walking distance from my house.. I used to go there frequently.. now 80% of the time I make the 20 minute drive to Scheels rather than the 2 minute drive to Cabelas.. its really nothing more than a BPS with a different sign on the building anymore..

Now I only shop at BP when I order ammo on line and have it shipped to the store, walk in and pick it up. We must live close, BP is a 5 minute drive, Scheels about 15. Scheels is fantastic. Great selection, knowledgeable employees, trophy wives.......the few times I've been inside BP over the last year there were more employees in the store than customers. I don't see how the place stays open.

Johnny Morris's dad started Bass Pro, in the back of his liquor store

The local Cabela’s is almost useless these days, and that wasn’t true before the acquisition. To much cheap Chinese RedHead branded junk at retail plus. They are neither price nor quality competitive.

Bass Pro ain’t bad for used guns though. Great selection, if you look for it you can find a deal.

Edit- Cabela’s, too.

We stopped at the Bass Pro at the Pyramid in Memphis a year ago while passing through. It was nice. Lots of customers, but it was a huge place. All the fun stuff. Lots of employees all over the place with good moral and drawn to my dog like crazy and wanting to help. A hunting ducks unlimited museum upstairs that was impressive. And I bet there was more merchandise on the shelves than there is product in the catalogs. I bought some things I needed and some of it after checking prices online, was cheaper than prices on the bass pro site. A large live alligator habitat inside. And though we did not eat there, my understanding is there was a fishing theme restaurant upstairs with a nice bar.

My wife and I used to enjoy walking around the grapevine bass pro and was my top spot to socialize my dogs. We would have some nachos by the pond and watch the trout, see the rattlesnakes, look over the boats, watch the fish in the big tank, look over the more expensive guns, etc. Always good customer service shopping too. Last time we went, there was a lot of empty shelves, all the fun stuff was gone. The trout gone. The food gone. Snakes gone. Flyfishing section weak. etc. It was a ghost town with no employees on the floor we saw. Guns were boring. Maybe covid killed it, but we have not been back. I am not sure why Dallas does not fit their market, but it obviously does not. They have let it go from what it formerly was.

Bass pro executives were strangling it, and Scheels put the nail in the coffin. Similar things happened when Sam Walton died. The idea of customer service first went out the window because the new brass thought they knew better. Scheels is customer oriented like Cabelas used to be. Like bass pro used to be.

Even when Cabela's Buda was new, clean, and cool, I don't remember any staff being particularly helpful. They were always talking to each other. Maybe that manager just couldn't hire worth a crap.

I grew up in Memphis, and was a cop in the metro area for about a decade.. everyone in the city was pretty excited when Bass Pro first bought the Pyramid.. the building was in bad shape and not being used for anything.. and the city didnt really have a big outdoor sports retailer yet (there was a very tiny BPS out east in Bartlett, one of the suburbs.. but it was really just a converted grocery store, that was about 1/3 of the size of most typical BPS across the country and didnt have much to offer)...

Sadly it only took a few years before the disappointment sunk in... the city has done a terrible job controlling crime around the Pyramid.. and A LOT of cars in the BPS parking lot get broken into (the theives know most people shopping there are not locals.. they are tourists, or people passing through on I40 that are traveling and just want to check out the store.. and likely have lots of stuff in their cars).. BPS hasnt done a great job of maintaining the building, so it continues to be a bit of an eyesore on the outside (filthy).. and theyve had a really hard time maintaining quality staff (no one living in the metro area wants to travel all the way downtown to work for retail store wages)..

Its a cool place to check out if youve never been.. simply because of its size and the volumes of "stuff" to look at... Sorta like the Cabelas in Ft. Worth.. but, I dont know of any locals that actually shop there for any reason.. the city continues to not really have a large scale outdoor sports retailer that anyone can/will shop at..

Scheel's is where it's at. Great people, great company.

I've always enjoyed BP and Cabelas when we lived in McKinney area years ago. They usually had what I was looking for when I went in, if not I could find it online. Last winter my wife and I came back to the DFW area for X-mas with the kids and grandkids. We had an opportunity to go into Scheels. Wow, looked very impressive. The hunting and gun sections were very nice. What I didn't like, there seemed to be nothing on sale. No matter what I looked at, everything was manufactures list prices. Ammo was much more expensive than Natchez and Midway USA. I was getting ready to purchase my new Leupold VX6 3-18X44 mm scope. BP/Cabelas, Natchez, Midway USA all had it on sale for $1499.00 as did most every online retailers. Scheels was at list price for $1899.00. I double checked with the counter and they confirmed $1899.00. They also were not including the Leupold aluminum flip covers that everyone else was including in their sale prices. Again, my first trip in a few days before X-mas. I can purchase retail prices anywhere.

Not sure when I'll get back in the area to go in again, but I'll go back..

Bass pro sucks. And what used to be Cabelas, now sucks.

In short what is wrong with the SA bass pro:

It’s a tourist stop, not an outdoor outfitter. 80% of the people in there go to look at the stuff, they don’t actually hunt or fish. Same goes for the staff…they hire college kids or (with rare exception) people who don’t have an outdoor background. That’s fine for the clothing department but does not cut the mustard in outdoor gear.

I do shop there for clothes so no complaints there, wish they would stop carrying the lumberjack line though. No one wants to dress like the Brawny Towel guy.

Boat department is good and marine service is good as well.

Basically, they cater to an urban/suburban audience who is neither skilled nor knowledgeable in outdoor pursuits.

Sportsman’s warehouse was a 10x’s better store

Cabelas used to have a awesome reloading section.

Scheels is employee owned. Kinda like Home depot was at one time.

Scheels Silencer screw ups are well documented on here. Maybe they have figured it out by now.

y'all stay away from scheels

Methodists will.

Not the experience I had. There was a lot of security in the parking areas when I drove through. And there were so many people coming and going walking through the lot i parked in, i can't imagine someone someone doing smash and grabs. In the store I was offered help by employees so much it became annoying. But I was carrying a puppy. The whole place looked new, with lots of remodeling going on. And a crazy amount of shoppers. Not even close to a cabelas ft worth in it's heyday. Way way nicer.

Spend your money somewhere else. Vote with money.

BP by me has lots of smash and grabs in the parking lot too, and now security camera towers all over it. Who knows if they're turned on or even monitored. 'Building is tired. They moved ammo into what used to be the fine gun room and assigned a very odd duck to stand in there; the talkative type that thinks he knows everything and obviously knows very little. He'll scare away customers. I just can't see this lame business model being able to continue much longer.

I worked at Cabela's for a little while. I enjoyed it most of the time. The constant training as they called wasn't fun. You get a talking to if you don't get so many people to sign up for the club card that they push when you walk in the door. I was told the company makes $85.00 every time someone is approved for the credit card. A manager walked by a candy wrapper on the floor up toward the front of the store. When she got to rear of the store in the hunting dept where I worked she told me about it and asked me to walk all the way to the front to pick it up. The markup on the products is ridiculous.

Mine got rid of the used-gun racks post COVID. I only darken their door if I’m in a bind.

I can confirm the Sam Walton story because my mom worked at Walmart for 30 years. She said the same thing. It was a great place to work for when Sam was still alive and not so much afterwards. Scheel’s is employee owned so maybe they are nicer because they have skin in the game. I don’t know, but I get treated very well when I’m in Scheel’s. They were way too convenient when I lived in The Colony (as in, they got too much of my money lol).

A friend of mine was a general manager at Bass Pro in Grapevine. He was there from its opening and for many years. He quit over ten years ago because of their policies and the way they treated employees.

I bought a crossbow from Cabelas. It lasted about 3 months of occasional trying to get used to it. It was an impulse buy. A small piece broke and wouldn’t go to full [censored]. Took it back to the store and showed it to the manager of the archery area. He said I could leave it for repair but couldn’t say when they could get around to it. He showed me a full rack of repair jobs that needed to be done. He had one guy who did repairs and couldn’t replace it. No idea how long it would take.

I left and haven’t been back to Cabelas or Bass Pro Shops. No interest in backing faulty products is not the people I deal with.

When we shop/go to a restaurant/doctors office we make note of the employees. When they are happy, helpful and enjoy their jobs we compliment them on it or tip really well.

With that in mind we were at BPS the other day and the Checker looked bored and unfriendly....like she was hating her job. I was disappointed with that.


If you REALLY want a GOOD experience at a BPS store you HAVE to go to the one in Springfield, MO. It is a destination location.

The attached 1.5 million gal Aquarium with 35,000 fish is indescribable as is the attached Wonders of Wildlife Museum with its 1.5 miles of trails. The aquarium takes 3-4 hours to walk through and the museum ~2hrs.


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They broke ground on BPS here in Odessa few weeks ago! Supposed to be a large one. My turning 62 next month and taking a beating in industrial world I'm wondering if that might be a direction for me? have experience in outdoors so that means if I worked there they would place me in lady's footwear! They mentioned building it in Midland but IGA (big property company) swung them over here. Some developer posted big sign near where they were going to build it over there and used BPS name stating walking distance...typical real estate leech, and was told to remove any reference to BPS. Next thing you know they are building in Odessa.

I have not been in a BPS or a CABELA'S in 15 to 18 years. Bought a BPS high dollar rain suit and was told it was guaranteed forever and had a witness with me. Had to take it back about a year before BPS bought Cabela's. BPS wouldn't even recognize it as one of their own even though BPS was sewed into the shell in several places. Store Manager told me she couldn't find that model suit. Found out that Gore-Tex would warrant the rain suit, Sent it to them and got a letter back saying they would cover any suit up to $350 plus shipping and taxes. BPS bought Cabela's shortly after I got the new rain suit. NEVER BEEN BACK IN BPS OR CABELA'S AND THAT HAS BEEN ABOUT 15 TO 18 YEARS

This is not true. It was Johnny that started Bass Pro in his fathers liquor store.

Well...whoever started it, it ain't keepin' up.

You can’t fix BP, it’s headed to basically be an Academy with a fish tank.

It’s no longer a hunting& fishing destination store front, it’s just a private label Outwear store now

I like Cabelas. I like the people who work there. "ALOT"
Sometimes i know more than they do.
Sometimes they know "ALOT" more than I do.
Seems fair.

although only by association am I plugging love to Allen Cabelas instead of same people, Bass Pro, which is too far away.
Hope your experience improves.

BTW the modern problem with THF and TFF is the in-ability to give likes or not-likes to a post.
lol

I love it! Goody goody. Hobble Creek and yeah everything else.