Guys, I used to work in the KC Cabelas for a couple of years. Trust me, there are probably between 60-80 deer racks mounted in there, and you can count all the replicas on one hand. And the replicas a marked as if they're replicas. It's easy to find racks that big, when you're a store like Cabelas and have a deep pocket, REALLY EASY. Just look on ebay, practically every week you have a monster authentic(non-replica) buck being sold.

Besides that, people would bring in their deer to the store on a consistent basis to sell them to cabelas. Which in return, most people would get large gift cards. There are a lot of bucks around here that make B&C that don't get recognized until the farmer decides he'd rather have $1200 instead of the rack, and sells to Cabelas. I can't speak for Bass Pro, or even some of the other New Cabela stores, like the ones on the east coast, but majority of the mounts are definately real. Anybody else that says different doesn't know know what they're talking about.

fatsbucknut. I am also from Pa and i heard about that. It may not be the same deer but my buddy said some guy was letting this big deer grow and he finally had to shoot it because the rack was downsizing. I think the guy was offered like 200,000 dollars or more to make a replica and the guy turned it down.

they would have to be reproductions they are in every store

I took my Daughter (7 yrs old) into the BP in MD and she made a comment that put a look of amazement on a cople of employees faces. She was looking at some of the mounts that they had there and turned to me and said in a rather raised voice "daddy, how come they have small mounts on the wall, yours are bigger than those." One individual came up to ma and started asking me about my mounts and wanted to know If I wanted to sell them. I looked at him like, you've got to be kidding me. I politeli declined. Personally I like the look of a couple of 140 - 150 class bucks on my wall as well as a couple of smaller bookend 8 pointers.

My daughter likes to do that when she sees mounts in public stores. She did the exact same thing in the Gander Mountain up the street from me. They asked me if I wanted to display them in the store with a discalimer that all the deer in this panel were taken locally. I declinde that as well.

Personally I think that most if not all of the full body mounts are the original racks but I have to agree with the famous ones hanging on the wall such as the knife handle buck and the austin buck. I'm sure that in one Cabelas store they have the real rack but the others must be repros from that one.

Thanks for posting. I buy a lot of stuff from them through the mail. It must be awesome to actually be there.
Chuck

Just last week I was traveling on business and went into my first Cabella's. What an experience. They had a mini-mountain in the store that apepared to have everything that walks/crawls stuffed on it. This store was in Minnesota. Are they all like this?

those are probably the real deal

rick_reno

I've only been to Cabela's in Hamburg(sp) PA. It has mini mountain with everything that ever walked/crawled on it. We now know that at least two Cabela's have that same/similar mountain.

If the one in Hamburg PA wasn't about 4 hrs away i'd be there at least 3-4 times a month spending too much $$money$$.

Most of the record mounts are reproductions. The smaller mounts all over the store are more than likely real.