Prolific deer harvest means long hours at RJ's Meats and Groceries

By Jon Echternacht

A prolific deer harvest has increased pressure on Rick Reams and his crew at RJ's Meats and Groceries and its after hours venison processing department.

Business has been so successful that Reams has had to consider ways to limit the number of deer coming into his establishment and has turned away potential customers this season.

"I don't know if hunters are getting more deer or if there are just fewer people doing processing," Reams said. "But we have to find ways to reduce the amount we handle."

To that end, Reams has limited the time he will take deer at his store on Coulee Road. "We take deer from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.," he said. This applies if there is room in the additional deer cooler in back of the building. Last Wednesday morning, at the halfway mark of the gun season, a sign on the door of his shop stated no deer would be taken in until 9 a.m. the next business day because all the hooks were full.

"We keep a two-day inventory on hand," he said. "We try to process 25 deer a day with our five-man crew, so there are 50 hooks."

"At 10:10 a.m. Monday after opening weekend we were full," Reams said.

He said that the routine is to try and finish processing the fresh meat for the store by 6 p.m. Then the crew heads out back to start working on venison for the rest of the night, which makes for a long day. "We worked until 11:30 p.m. the Monday after opening weekend," he said.

"Everybody has a specific job. We have a skinner, breaker, steak cutter, boner and wrapper," he said. "That way we are usually working on four deer at the same time."

There are also a couple of extra freezers out back to accommodate the amount of processed venison that piles up during the season.

The meticulous method in which Reams and his crew process the venison may be responsible for the wide popularity of his operation. "We tag each dear that comes in with a number and all the meat from that deer is kept together," he said.

A testimonial to that fact is his freezer stacked with piles of wrapped venison, each package carrying the owner's name.

This extra care adds to time and cost. "To have a deer skinned, cut and wrapped is $80," he said.

Reams said that he has started to inspect the deer carefully and some have been turned away because of poor jobs of gutting the carcass. "If you get a rotten deer, you have to shut the operation down and clean everything up before you continue," he said.

With his set hours, inspection program and limited space, Reams said that he has had to turn away more customers than ever.

"We are trying to figure out a way to reduce the number of hours we spend processing deer. We want to find a way that benefits the most, but no matter what we do, somebody will get mad," Reams said.

He said that next season he may have to limit deer processing just to his regular customers. "And that means regular customers in the store," he noted.

Venison processing starts with the early bow season, he said and continues through to the Friday after the close of the gun season. "We don't cut deer during the second bow season," he added. Then there is what Reams calls "the sausage season." "That goes from Oct. 1 through April," he said. It is the time when Reams' crew makes and smokes sausages of all kind for their venison customers. "Last year we did 20,000 pounds of venison sausage and I think we will do more this year," he added.

The 38-year-old Reams has owned RJ's Meats and Groceries for 13 years. Prior to that, the 1979 HHS graduate worked at the store during his school years. He said the business has had a deer processing operation for all that time. Reams also did some wild game processing during a stint in the United States Air Force in Idaho.