NEW YORK – It turns out there is such a thing as too much taxidermy.

Cabela's, a retail mecca for all things outdoorsy, admitted Thursday that it vastly overestimated the market for massive shopping centers stuffed with stuffed critters.

In the recent quarter, Cabela's revenue increased a respectable 4.6 percent, to $927 million. But the company was operating 10 more giant shops than it was a year earlier. Sales at comparable stores slumped 4.2 percent, and profit plummeted 19 percent.

In a note to investors Thursday, Goldman Sachs analysts said cannibalization among the company's stores "looks severe." In other words, the new sites are luring customers from other Cabela's shops rather than from competitors. Now that there's a Cabela's in Missoula, Mont., grizzly hunters don't have to schlep up to Kalispell.

In Minnesota, Cabela's has three stores in or near the Twin Cities: Owatonna (opened in 1998), Rogers (2005) and Woodbury (2014).

Cabela's result presents a cautionary tale for the few companies bold enough to double down on bricks and mortar in a Web-savvy world. As some sellers shift more of their business online, others are moving in the opposite direction — building superstores, shopping planets that have their own gravity.

Few commit to this strategy as fully as Cabela's, which boasts a "tourist-type experience." Its 250,000-square-foot barn in Hamburg, Pa., has a museum, a shooting gallery and a kennel where shoppers can leave their dogs for the day. That kind of presence requires a lot of expensive inventory, and, in Cabela's case, taxidermy (the Pennsylvania store has mounted musk oxen).

Cabela's said it will slow its expansion schedule. It's now calling for seven new stores next year and no more than that in 2017. Still, the company plans eventually to have 225 brick-and-mortar shops in North America. They have 74 now. "We're still confident," Chief Executive Thomas Millner said. "But the pause to have a model that is far more predictable is really important."

In the meantime, the company is buying back stock, which was on sale at a 17 percent discount by Thursday's close. The shares fell $7.19 to $34.48.