The new 72,000-square-foot Cabela's store in Fort Oglethorpe employs around 200 full- and part-time workers. And all of them are locals except for a handful of top managers.
These people know the territory -- they've hunted these woods and fished these streams, said General Manager Ellis Yarrell.
Within a week of posting available jobs, Cabela's received 1,600 applications. There was so much interest that the online application site got bogged down and broke, Yarrell said.
Roughly a year ago, the outdoor outfitter announced its north Georgia store, which sits next to Costco off Interstate 75 just across the Tennessee line. Now, the grand opening ceremony is less than a month away.
Yarrell said key to the Cabela's culture is helping customers find what they need based on what they plan to do, to think of it as outfitting people instead of just selling them a gun, or a fishing rig or a sleeping bag.
"We have what you need to play," he said.
For some, a job at Cabela's is a way to "marry what you love to do and make a living," said Yarrell.
At a glance
* What: Cabela's * Where: 350 Cobb Parkway, Fort Oglethorpe * When: Grand opening ceremony with guests and bow-and-arrow ribbon-cutting, May 13, 9:45 a.m. * Inside: Aquarium, archery range, gun library, fudge shop, cafe, boat shop, wildlife displays
That's me, said Doug Mawhinney, a Maine transplant who ties his own fly lures and who has been fly fishing for decades.
He moved to Georgia last year to be near the woman he would go on to marry last October.
"I'd been looking for work since I got here," Mawhinney said.
Then, a lead: A new Cabela's coming to north Georgia.
"I knew they have a fly fishing department, and it's like, 'That would be perfect for me,'" Mawhinney said.
It's a similar story for Beau Fouche, a 2013 graduate of Kennesaw State University with a passion for duck hunting.
"I've always loved Cabela's stuff," he said.
Wielding a bachelor's degree in mathematics, Fouche was trying to figure out what he would do after school, and he applied for a job at the Cabela's store that opened in Acworth, Ga., last fall.
It didn't work out in Acworth, thank goodness, he said. Fort Oglethorpe is closer to his Dalton home. And he's the duck hunting outfitter around here now.
"That's what I live, breathe and sleep," he said.
Becky Reeves is a former insurance agent who sold her firm in 2011 and has been hanging around since, pouncing on a Cabela's application because of her passion for the outdoors.
Reeves fishes, hunts and camps herself.
"I really wasn't looking for work," she said. "It was just appealing to me."
The store is now staffed, and is largely stocked.
Inventory has been added in most departments, rows of fishing poles down to the smallest camping accessory.
No detail will be overlooked in these last few weeks, said Yarrell.
The striped bass, crappie and bluegill are in the store's aquarium, and there may be a gar and albino catfish on the way.
And it's all overseen by the taxidermy game -- raccoons, moose, goats and so on counting over 100 -- mounted around the store.
At the main entrance, three bears stare down the sights of Civil War-era cannon. Near the cafe, a raccoon looks down on customers from a Pine with a "See Rock City" birdhouse mounted on it.
"All my years of doing this tells me this is going to be a pretty successful opening," said Yarrell.
Contact staff writer Alex Green at agreen@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6480.