Ok, here's the deal on the bobcats....
CVA no longer makes them, unless they made a major corporate decision change that I'm not aware of in the last three months or so. CVA was bought out by a company named blackpowder inc, and like so many other manufacturers, they've decided to use a shortsighted approach, seeing the high dollar profits per item available by producing inlines....
Shortsighted because, only like a hundred other manufacturers also offer inlines, and they're competing against all those other manufacturers. Seems to me they would think a little about profit in volume rather then per item. Uhh, hellooo... that's how walmart originally became so powerful in the first place? VOLUME of sales, not profit per item. But we live in the world of screw the other guy, and so its all about how much you can charge for whatever your selling, even garage sales and flea markets are pretty much a waste of time.
True, most Americans want inlines, and blah blah blah... but then again (and yes, I'm biased) alot of Americans today are either A. Uneducated/uninformed or B. just don't think
I viewed the bobcat offering as a public service to the muzzleloading community, and actually to Americans as a whole. For 60$ you can have an honest to goodness firearm, admittedly primative, but probably as good or better then what many of our ancestors used to protect life and limb and put meet on the table.
Anyway, back to the situation. Walmart in April closed up alot of their Gun counters in urban settings, and so forth... in fact, there are some articles still circulating out on the Internet that estimate Walmart has reduced their gun selling stores by a third. I suspect that what you're finding are Bobcats that were in the backrooms of Walmarts and Walmart warehouses (although they don't have many) that have now been shipped to other stores for sale, especially now that Muzzleloading season is approaching.
Do yourself a favor and get a Bobcat. You can't beat them for the price, they're cheap and they work and you could always loan/sell/give it to a friend later. Heck, some carpetbaggers are disasembling them and selling the parts on EBAY (which really ticks me off) and some mail order outfits sell them for over 100$ a piece (which also really ticks me off). But we're not going to change the system, so be sure you get yours. I'm thinking about getting another one myself, although I think I now have like 6...