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Cabela's opened NO stores in 2001, and one each in 2002, 2003, and 2004.

4 in 2005

4 in 2006

6 in 2007.

Cabela's is touristy. I drive cross country, from time to time, and if there's a Cabela's on the way, I might stop and stretch. And then, impulse buy. Due to the nature of the store, Cabela's can cannabalize each other even with so few stores.

Consider Prairie du Chien, an older 40,000 square foot store, located on the mississippi. It is surely being cannibalized by the new huge stores in Rogers, Minnesota, AND the one in richfield.

This is a classic case of overexpansion. Meanwhile, with expansion into Canada, I doubt Cabela's will be down forever. After all, the WEATHER problem is quite real. Iowa's hunters made a poor showing this year, so the DNR extended the season.

Finally, while discretionary spending is down in the arena of hunting, 2007 saw the launch of the Iphone, and red-hot sales of the Wii since it's launch late 2006.(The stocks of Apple and Nintendo are) Could it be that Iphones and Wiis are eating the lunch of gun sellers?

And another stock that is soaring, and recently split: John Deere. The most avid hunters I've known are farmers. Could it be they've been too busy busting ass to harvest corn at the best price in 100 years and buy tractors, rather than improving their gun collections?

2007 has been a volatile year, but the major indexes are still higher then they were at start of year. For every stock that's going down, there's a stock going up. So, while you write a bearish story, you're missing out on a bullish story.

I agree. This article is just another case of lazy journalism. Just cherry pick a few bits of data, and suddenly you have a trend.

Then we also have all those avid gun lovers that are busy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Balmond, there's a question of tipping point. What happened between the 2006 hunting season and 2007 hunting season that changed the market? Iraq has been a factor since 2003. New factors would be the accelerating expansion of Cabela's, unique weather, or something new to spend money on.

In the early 1970'sMy ex husband and I were care takers at a fishing and hunting club outside of Atlanta georgia. This was for the Southern bell workers the bel tel club was the name of the place. and the big fight was between the gun owners that wanted to taret practice on the firing range and the non gun pmembers that wanted to fish and camp. This is a no win situation if you had to referee like I did . I sided with both of the types of members and ignored the target shooters , since they just laughed at me when I told them they cold not target practice. Since this was in a rather remote location and my ex huband was gone every day to work in Atlanta evening shift

my 12 year old brother , my one year old son and myself were alone after the last fisherman left. So I was glad to have a legal weapon in the house stored in a locked area for protection. There were large tractors, lawn mowers and coke machines other items criminals steal if the opportunity is good.