Ranchers are paying big bucks for big bucks
Two Texas ranchers recently paid $450,000 for Jake the Dream Buck, a white-tailed deer with an enormous set of antlers that far exceed the measurements of the state record buck taken in 1892.
Jake’s sale is the most extravagant example of a growing Texas industry: breeding captive deer to produce genetically improved offspring in a state where big game is treated much like livestock.
Like a champion racehorse or a pedigreed bull, the 4-year-old deer will be selectively bred in hopes that he will pass along the genes for his huge antlers to lure hunters in a state where virtually all big-game hunting is for a fee on private land.
Breeders such as Jake’s new owners trade and sell deer and the animals’ semen to one another, and also to landowners who release the animals for hunting and to upgrade the wild deer herds.
The bottom line: the bigger the rack, the higher the price hunters are willing to pay.
Deer breeding is helping to turn one of the most popular animal hunting sports into an increasingly big business and in the process may be shutting out average hunters unwilling or unable to pay escalating hunting fees.
Some scientists and hunters also complain that selectively breeding deer in pens is transforming wild animals into glorified livestock.
Texas’ annual deer season, which will open statewide Saturday, attracts more than 500,000 hunters and pumps more than $2.5 billion into the state’s economy, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. More than 4 million wild deer populate the state.
Less than 2 percent of the whitetails killed this season will be the product of deer-breeding efforts, according to the state, but the business is clearly lucrative and expanding.
An auction last month in San Antonio generated more than $1 million in sales. The average sale price per animal was $5,500.
The 20,000 to 30,000 whitetails held in breeding pens today are probably worth an average of $5,000 each, says James Kroll, who helped found the Texas Deer Association, a group of 2,000 landowners who manage deer. That’s $150 million worth of breeding stock.
The $450,000 paid for Jake by breeders Gene Gonzales and Don Wilson is believed to be a record. George Barnett, a deer breeder near Lake Texoma who has been photographing giant breeding bucks for 20 years, says he knows of higher offers for other deer, but their owners have turned them all down.
Jake, purchased from a South Texas breeder, is half Northern whitetail and half native deer. Deer breeders attempting to upgrade genetics often use Northern whitetails, which are bigger than Texas deer.
The deer will share his pen with a harem of does, and his semen will be collected and frozen in “straws” for artificial insemination. A straw of semen, enough to impregnate one or two does, sells for $3,500. Gonzales says he already has enough orders to pay for the animal.
He defends his deer breeding by arguing that a half-century of hunting the best wild bucks on the range has depleted the natural stock.
“For years, hunters went out there and shot the best buck they could find,” Gonzales says. “They left inferior bucks to do the breeding, and inferior bucks passed on poor genetics. We’re trying to reverse 50 years of bad management.”
Like Gonzales, Kroll, who breeds deer for scientific and business purposes, sees nothing wrong with the process. “Whitetails are amazing animals,” he says. “When you release them from the pen, they become wild deer.”
Bob Brown, head of Texas A&M University’s wildlife and fisheries sciences department, scoffs at that claim. He says hunting a deer bred in a pen “is like hunting a skittish cow.”
“Texas is overpopulated with wild deer,” says Brown, who is also vice president of the Wildlife Society, a national association of professional wildlife scientists. “An animal that’s been bred in captivity is not a wild animal.”
Brown also criticizes “the escalation of deer management” keeping deer in fenced-off areas, feeding them and using helicopters to survey the animals. Those costs, he says, also are passed on to hunters. “Most people can no longer afford to hunt on private land,” Brown says.
Package hunts for trophy deer generally cost anywhere from $1,500 to $15,000. Almost all deer hunting in Texas is done on private land; less than 3 percent occurs on public lands.
“Five years ago, I thought the deer breeding business was fluff, but I was wrong,” Kinsel says. “The industry continues to gain momentum. It is driven by the sale of recreational ranches. Baby boomers are buying ranches, and they want to improve their deer herd without doing 20 years of management work.”
Recreational ranch owners who spend millions on land don’t hesitate to spend $200,000 to $300,000 to upgrade deer herd genetics, Kinsel of the Texas Deer Association says. He acknowledges the criticism of deer breeding but says he believes the hunting industry has benefited from the controversy.
“It’s like the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue,” Kinsel says. “Some people don’t like it, but it creates a lot of interest.”
Unconcerned with predators or food supplies, a whitetail buck in a breeding pen may live 10 years or longer.
But even in captivity, there are no guarantees. Jake could step in a hole and break his leg, or he could die when tranquilized for semen extraction.
White-tailed deer are high-strung animals, and captive deer are notorious for dying unexpectedly.
“They’re as unpredictable as nitroglycerine,” says the deer association’s Kroll, who is also a wildlife professor at Stephen F. Austin University and a whitetail authority. Kroll has used artificial insemination in more than 4,500 deer. He figures the conception rate at 68 percent when performed by an expert.
“We’re rolling the dice,” Gonzales says. “If the buck lives, he’s a cash cow.”