Bass Pro Shops

Well, it was fun. Their big fish tank was pretty impressive. I was impressed with the size of that shovelhead catfish (a.k.a. yellowcat, flathead, etc.). That sucker was pretty big. Their alligator gar...well, someone had told me how enormously huge it is, so I was expecting to see a real monster. No lie: my dad and I caught one about a foot and a half longer than that one on a trot-line once--in the San Miguel Creek in Atascosa County. That was one of the very few times when I felt actual fear when fishing. It was cool that they had three different kinds of gar in there so I could point out the differences to my kids.

We split up for a minute and my son and I walked through the "Fine Guns" room. The guy in there asked if there was anything I wanted to look at. Heh. I wanted to say: "Do I look like I can afford to even get a greasy fingerprint on one of these guns?"

I noticed they had the PT-1911 for $569. I pointed it out to my wife as the next pistol I wanted to get if I can ever afford a new pistol again. She said, "Well, I did already enter you in their Glock giveaway." I noticed they had one Para-Ord for around $700, which seems oddly inexpensive for that brand, to me.

I asked a guy at the archery counter if they cut arrows, and they do. My dad gave me some a while back that need to be cut because they're too long for my bow. The place where I used to get it done went out of business. I might head back there before Christmas and buy bows for the kids. They've been bugging me about bows a lot lately.

So that's about it. The only bad part was, of course, construction. The Camp Bullis crossover was closed down for construction, and there was such a massive backup of detoured traffic that it took us 40 minutes to get back around on to IH10 after we left Chik-Fil-A.

Oh yeah, black powder stuff. I noticed they didn't have any real black powder, but they had four different brands of substitutes. The GOEX brand substitute actually has F numbers like real black powder. I suppose next time I need some I'll get some of the GOEX stuff. I'm never buying Pyrodex again unless I absolutely have to.

I was amused that they had black powder revolvers with complete starter kits included hanging on racks in transparent plastic packaging just like they were selling mp3 players or something.