Some have to turn away hunters
By Craig Nyhus, Lone Star Outdoor News
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Deer hunters seemingly have been able to spend more time in the deer blind at their ranches or leases this season, resulting in a record number of deer being brought to many of the deer processing facilities across the state. Some processors have even had to turn hunters away at times, as they reached their operating capacity.
Kuby’s Wild Game Processing, in Dallas, is a popular processing facility that reached its capacity for processing wild game earlier this month.
The processor closed for 10 days at the beginning of December to bring their processing inventory down to a manageable level, ac- cording to associate Johnathan Myers.
“We processed 5,000 animals in a two-week period,” Myers said. “It was like all of the hunters showed up at one time. We have never had that many wild game processing orders come in all at once.”
Myers said many of Kuby’s customers have been working remotely from their ranches and leases since deer season began.
“We are seeing folks who typically bring us two or three deer per season bring us four to six this year,” he said.
Kuby’s has developed a plan to handle the larger-than-normal amount of processing orders for the remainder of the season.
“We will remain open for deer drop-offs for the rest of this season,” he said.
Cinnamon Creek Ranch, located in Roanoke, also has received higher than normal wild game processing orders this season. Office Manager Theresa Yardley said
they are open and accepting deer, but their turnaround on most processing requests is averaging about eight weeks.
“We have definitely had more deer dropped off this year than we’ve ever had before,” Yardley said. “People seem to be spending more time hunting this year than they have in the past.”
Yardley also said they’ve had a lot of hunters show up with deer this month that had been turned away from other processors.
“We are glad to take on more processing orders, we just want the public to understand that it is taking us longer than normal to get them completed,” she said.
Klein Smokehaus, in Boerne, also has been nearing their capacity for process- ing orders. Sales associate Alli Duecker said they are open and accepting deer on the weekends, but they have been staying closed during the weekdays in order to keep up with orders.
“We are taking in hundreds of orders during the weekends, so we are trying to push them through as fast as we can while we retain the quality we are known for,” Duecker said. “That’s why we are not accepting orders on most weekdays at this time.”
Duecker said for the most part, they have been able to begin accepting deer by most Thursdays and Fridays of each week.
“Anyone who wants us to process their deer should just give us a call before head- ing over,” she said.
According to Duecker, this is the first time in the 15 years of ownership the cur- rent owners have had to turn away deer.
“Some of our regular customers that we don’t normally see until late in the season have already dropped off deer to us several times,” she said. “During October when bow season and MLD season opened, we fulfilled as many orders as we normally do throughout the entire regular season.”
