It doesn't ever take much convincing to get RG to drive up to Foxboro for some shopping. That's because Patriots' owner Bob Kraft's "Guy Mall" — now taking shape around Gillette Stadium — already includes a superstore that exerts the same attraction to men as a salt lick does to deer.Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World is unlike any other store you've ever been to, as much about entertainment and lifestyle as it is about actually selling stuff. You see men in workboots and NASCAR jackets pushing around carts in a happy trance, and to tell the truth, it's almost as much fun for women.
The store celebrates the rugged outdoor world of hunting and fishing and sells the infinite variety of accouterments needed to pursue both. You can buy everything from a bass fishing boat to a set of plaster casts that let you tell the age of a deer by its teeth. A motion-detecting night camera lets you capture on film a fisher cat or an owl that passes by its lens. Tents, truck boxes, duck blinds, gas grills, water toys, lodge-style furniture, fish-finders, GPS, binoculars, bait, ATVs, camouflage clothing, fluorescent orange clothing, camouflage make-up and, yes, camouflage make-up remover pads.
It's all there, laid out on two floors decorated with hundreds of taxidermy specimens of moose standing in a rock-lined pool,
deer leaping over the water with wolves in pursuit, bears, foxes, wild turkeys, pheasants. . . . An indoor trout stream plunges into a 30,000-gallon glass-walled aquarium where you can see real trout, bass, and catfish swimming. All over the store, animal and bird calls punctuate the background noise of rushing water or rustling leaves. A wall of windows invites you to lounge in big leather club chairs and look out upon a pond and cranberry bog populated with statues of Big Horn Sheep and other critters that you can spot through sample scopes. There's a nice restaurant for lunch that includes a Wild West-style antique bar that's always lined with rear views of men in truckers' caps or suits talking "guy" to each other.And then there are the arcades: A shooting gallery lets you knock over varmints and set a barn door swinging to reveal a growling bear. A laser arcade sets up interactive images of bounding deer or scattering doves that you knock down with your rifle.
Our excuse for going had been to find a pair of duck shoes, which we did. But you know how guys are with shopping: We ended up spending the whole afternoon.
