02/04/08 Worshiping at the Cabela's Altar could be Costly

Never has a company been so blindly worshiped by men as Cabala's. A store opening is a hallowed event, then a vacation destination. The catalog has grown into a brawny hardcover, in many cases the only coffee table book in hunting homes. Yet it might be time for sportsmen to wake up and face the behemoth they have created. In Montana they are doing just that. Several thousand Montanans have retuned their catalogs or burned them in protest after the executive director of the Montana's Wildlife Federation called Cabala's president to the table over the fact the mega corporation is aggressively in the ranch real estate business, buying up large tracks of key wild life ranges for rich, exclusive buyers, basically selling out access for the average outdoorsman that created the Cabala fortune. Cabala' s has responded to the protest by a writing check to the land access program ( less than the commission on one ranch sale ) and promising they will not undermine Montana's existing free public access Block Management contracts, but they didn't say nary a peep about how they would conduct business in other Western states.