Getting in the Game

By Barry Shlachter, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Jan. 28–JERMYN — How about animals that produce gourmet meat but cost the seller nothing in feed, breeding, marketing or veterinary costs?

All 70-year-old Kim Rife has to do is fuel up his small pickup, build wire-cage traps, then match wits with a seemingly endless supply of unloved, fast-breeding critters variously known as feral hogs and wild boar.

Last year, Rife laid traps baited with yellow corn and artificial vanilla extract on 44 North Texas ranches and came home with 2,000 hogs. Bought by Fort Worth-based Frontier Meats, some yielded T-bonelike chops that sell at Central Market for $7.99 a pound. About 70 percent of Frontier’s boar meat is exported to Europe.

Rife gets up to 50 cents a pound plus a $10 per head bonus on boars 250 pounds or bigger. He also brokered the purchase of an additional 3,200 boars from others on behalf of Frontier. He won’t say how much he earns, but the craggy-fisted trapper, who also removes nuisance animals for landowners, says the work supplements his Social Security retirement benefits and keeps him hopping full time.

He pays nothing to ranchers whose land he uses.

Some literally beg him to remove what they consider vicious varmints that destroy crops, tear up pastures and trample fencing. A state survey of 775 landowners reported average property damage of $7,515 from the hogs.

“There were none here 30 years ago,” says Rife, referring to the Jack County town of Jermyn, 78 miles northwest of Fort Worth. He blames at least part of the proliferation on a nearby hunting ranch whose specially imported wild Russian boars escaped when 17 inches of rain toppled barriers.

A large swath of the state is now plagued by the proliferating critters, whose numbers in Texas have been estimated at more than 1.5 million. They can be European wild hogs brought over for hunting or domesticated pigs that escaped and became feral, or a cross of the two, says Billy Higginbotham, a Texas Cooperative Extension wildlife specialist in Overton.

Rife nursed a cup of coffee and grew thoughtful as he waited for a hauler that Frontier was sending to fetch a load of more than 50 feral pigs.

“When I approach a trap, it’s exciting to see what the Heavenly Father put in there for me,” said Rife, who spent decades as a builder and an auctioneer but always found time to outfox wild boar.

“I’ve been trapping all my life — can’t even remember the first time I put my hand on a trap I was so young.”

Down in the Hill Country, Chris Hughes also has ranch managers calling him to remove unwanted animals.

His 23-year-old venison-meat company, Broken Arrow Ranch, culls exotic deer and antelope or antlerless females and young bucks that don’t interest trophy-seeking client hunters or simply are overpopulating the land. Unlike native whitetail deer, there are no hunting restrictions on such imported breeds as the Axis deer and Nilgai antelope from India and the Sika deer from Manchuria and Japan.

Unlike Rife, Broken Arrow pays ranchers — up to $2 per pound of carcass weight to landowners on venison from exotic species, which can wholesale for $24.98 a pound for a boneless loin.

Initially, company founder Mike Hughes, Chris’ father, planned to raise many of his own deer and didn’t know whether ranchers would allow his hunters and processing trucks on their property.

Gradually, confidence in the venture grew with its reputation, and Mike Hughes found himself busier on the nonhunting part of the business.

“I got to the point where I had to make choices about where I was going to make my priorities and chose building up the marketing and processing side,” Mike Hughes recalled. “Others were doing animal propagation; no one else was doing the processing on a commercial scale and under [state] inspection.”

So he phased out his own ranch’s deer-farming efforts. Broken Arrow has managed to outlive competitors, six or eight having tried to replicate the operation over the years, Hughes said. Many didn’t realize how many complicated facets to the business there were, he said.

Last year, he estimated sales at about $1.8 million. His son said revenue has been growing about 4 percent to 6 percent a year.

Broken Arrow now works with about 100 Texas ranches and sells to about 800 restaurants across the country as well as to retail customers directly via its Web site, www.brokenarrowranch.com. The only store selling its products is the H-E-B supermarket in nearby Kerrville.

With its venison served at many white-tablecloth eateries, Broken Arrow has boosted its image with coverage in several publications, including The New York Times, and supplied cuts to the Food Channel’s popular Iron Chef program in October. This year, an episode of PBS’ Chefs A’Field will feature the operation.

Every new niche business presents a unique set of startup problems.

For Hughes, who wanted his game meat government-inspected, it was learning that, technically, the U.S. Department of Agriculture didn’t consider venison to be meat because it wasn’t listed in federal guidelines.

After eight months of wading through red tape, the Texas state government agreed to supply field and slaughter inspectors at about $30 an hour. Ten years ago, the fees were waived because conventional processing plants of its scale were not charged.

What has resulted is a win-win for area ranchers, said Chris Hughes, now Broken Arrow’s president.

The culling fits well with the ranches’ game-management programs without extra outlay and earns them a modest revenue stream.

“We’ve created a sustainable business model service for ranchers, one that makes money for them,” he said.

KIM RIFE ANIMAL CONTROL TRAPPING:

–Owner: Kim Rife

–Location: Jermyn

–Services: Traps wild boar for meat processing, and removes coyotes, armadillos, bobcats, skunks, raccoons, squirrels and beavers for property owners.

–Phone: 940-342-2101

BROKEN ARROW RANCH:

–Owner: Hughes family

–Location: Ingram

–Products: Venison and wild boar

–Availability: Online sales

–Internet: www.brokenarrowranch.com

–Phone: 800-962-4263

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Copyright (c) 2007, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

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