Bass Pro Shops

🌧️ The rain today wasn’t angry — it was that Carolina kind, soft and earthy, smelling of moss, pine smoke, and warm soil 🌲. Drops slid down the hood as I parked at 801 Bass Pro Ln, Cary, NC 27513, and when I opened the door, the scent hit me — wood, oil, and adventure 🔫. Inside, the light was warm, the air thick with timber and calm, the kind of peace only hunters and sailors truly know 🌊. The store is vast, yet intimate. Every beam, every glass case of knives and shells seems to whisper, “Welcome home, traveler.” Here, wood and steel are honored equally. An old man by the counter tells stories about scopes while a young boy listens as if hearing a legend 💬. In the distance, fish glide in a huge aquarium, the sound of water merging with the rhythm of rain outside 🐟💦. As I pass mannequins in camouflage, I feel part of something ancient. No rush, only memory, craft, and respect for the wild 🌾. I think: a hunter isn’t the one who shoots — he’s the one who listens and waits. To hear the rain tap on the roof and realize that life itself is a hunt — for peace, for truth, for meaning. And as I stand by the rack of smoothbore rifles, the rain grows stronger. It feels like it’s washing the sky, the land, and my soul all at once 🌧️☕️. In that quiet moment, I know — everything is right. I am exactly where I should be: between the forest, the steel, and the silence. “Not every shot is loud. Sometimes the truest shot is silence.” 🌲🦌

Before our recent ice storm of January 2026 in NC I went to Bass Pro Shops in Cary, NC to buy a tarp. A friend recommended that we cover a steep part of our driveway with a tarp so that if we had to get out of the driveway we could easily move the tarp and the accumulated ice with it. Bass Pro Shop had a great deal on a large tarp so I went ahead and purchased one. The idea definitely worked as you can see from the photos. However, melting had already begun once I got out there to take photos. Since the ground underneath the tarp was not wet I suspect that if I had taken the tarp up when ice was covering it, it would have been more work (but not as much as clearing ice from cement would have been) so to me, this is a practical and useful idea. Just wanted to share the results, as my helpful Bass Pro Shop representative encouraged me to do.