Higgys Stand
By Don Higgins
I attended the Great Lakes sale a couple of weeks ago where prices for both shooter bucks and breeding stock seemed to tumble a bit from prices paid last year. Some pessimists were declaring the end of the “good ole days” of deer farming. Luckily there is more to the story than meets the eye. To begin the Great Lakes sale was held at the same time as a major sale in Texas. Many of the top breeders were at the Texas event which likely had a negative effect on prices. Next, the shooter buck sale was held the day before the breeding stock sold. Shooter buck prices were off BUT I heard reports that some potential buyers were not able to get an internet connection to the sale and thus be able to bid. I also heard at least one preserve owner give multiple valid reasons for not buying shooter bucks at auctions. Whatever the reasons for the soft shooter buck sale, it definitely caused serious concerns which carried over to the breeder sale. Why would a potential buyer spend big money on breeding stock when the end market for our industry just took a seemingly huge hit the day before?
A week after the Great Lakes sale was the Ohio sale. Those that I talked to who had attended both sales indicated that prices were better at the Ohio sale but still down some from a year ago. I have sold deer at both of these sales in the past and felt that for the most part the prices were a fair indication of the real value of a particular animal at the time. Of course there is always the bargain or the seemingly high priced lot that doesn’t seem to make sense but that comes with almost any auction, be it deer or whatever.
These lower prices leads to one glaring question; just where do we stand as an industry? Have we built a house of cards that is about to tumble down around us or have we simply hit a small bump in the road? I am not ready to declare this industry as on its last leg but I do see some needed changes if we are going to continue raising deer for profit long term. To begin, I am certain that the poor economy and serious concerns over the direction the Obama administration is taking our country is having a negative effect on our industry. Just yesterday I was in Pike County, Illinois doing some habitat work for a client. I also had to meet up with an outfitter from the area to discuss some work we are doing on the same property. Most of us know that Pike County is one of the premier destinations for whitetail hunters from around the world. The area is an outfitting hotbed. This outfitter told me that overall bookings for hunts are only one third of what they normally are. Many outfitters are afraid they won’t even be able to pay for their land lease contracts. I am hearing very similar comments from preserve owners where our deer are harvested. This clearly shows that much of what we are seeing in our industry is related to the economy. Hunters are not traveling this year like they have in the past, either to shooting preserves or to outfitted destinations to hunt wild deer. Personally I think the economy is made worse by the radical direction of Obama and his gang of czars. I believe there are plenty of people who still have good paying and secure jobs that normally would go on a hunting trip but who are scared out of it by extreme concern over this countrys future. Simply put, they are preparing for the worst and that means saving money for possible hard times.
What we are seeing in our industry now is something that some of us have been preaching for a while; the realization that shooter bucks are the end product of our industry. We have been blindly breeding tumor heads with high scores for a robust breeding market that will undoubtedly have a limited life span. We have made some noticeable changes in recent years as many now breed for “the look” as much as gross score. Still, each breeder has been able to continue breeding for whatever end result they wanted because shooting preserves have always bought all of our shooter bucks each fall. Why should we change what we are doing if we can sell every buck we produce? That trend may very well end this fall as some deer farmers may have shooter bucks carried over for another year or sell them at seriously reduced prices. We must start breeding deer that will make good shooter stock rather than simply high scores.
Changing the direction of our breeding programs is a step that will help us as individual farms survive long term, however if our industry does not thrive, most of us will not survive as deer farmers no matter what we are breeding our bucks to look like. First, we need to realize that the future of this industry is in growing shooter bucks. As simple as that sounds, it is tough for some to buy. Most people would rather have a lottery ticket handed to them that is worth a million dollars than to get a job making $100 an hour. This same mind set makes it a lot more fun to breed for the next million dollar buck than to breed for bucks that can each be sold for a reasonable profit as shooters. The guys that have already hit the deer breeding jackpot will understandably keep spinning the wheel but is that a smart move for the rest of us? That is clearly a decision that each of us will have to make based on our personal situation. If you are well set financially and simply enjoy breeding deer as a hobby, then rolling the dice might give you exactly what you desire from this industry. If you have mortgaged your home or bet your kids college fund on the deer business, you probably need to go for the sure profit with an outside chance to hit the jackpot.
Growing the kind of bucks that hunters want to shoot will do us no good if we do not have the clients to shoot them. We as an industry have got to promote our end product. I am going to go out on a limb here and make an educated guess. I would guess that a fair number of shooting preserve clients take their trophies home to show their buddies without ever mentioning that the buck was shot in a preserve. In other words, we cannot depend on word of mouth advertising to get the word out about our preserves. I know of big name hunting celebrities that hunt in preserves but who do everything possible to hide that fact. I was in a booth next to one of these big names at a hunting show this summer. I knew full well that the guys bucks on display were killed in preserves because I actually set him up through a mutual friend to hunt a new preserve a few years back. I sat back and watched this guy sign autographs all weekend as a hunting hero without ever mentioning where or how he got his bucks. My point is that this guy who hunts in our preserves is doing nothing to promote them. I am sure that there are a lot of everyday no-name hunters who take their trophies home and do nothing to promote the place where they shot it. I am amazed at the number of deer hunters who visit my farm to see my deer and have no idea that whitetail hunting preserves even exist in our home state. Those that are aware of preserves seem to think of them as a “Texas thing”. This is our fault as an industry because we have never made the effort on a large national scale to make hunters aware that they have an option to hunting in the wild. If we don’t do it for ourselves, can we really be disappointed when our industry falters?
A few issues back I wrote about having a “deer check-off” program similar to the programs that the pork, beef and soybean industries have. The way these programs work is that each time a producer sells a hog or beef animal, a specified dollar amount is subtracted from the sale price and sent to the Pork Producers Council or the Cattlemen’s Association. The same thing happens when soybeans are sold. These funds are then used to promote these industries. What I proposed was that at each whitetail auction a small percentage of the sale price be allocated to a fund for promoting our industry. This certainly seems to be a fair way to make whitetail producers pay their fair share. The breeders selling more deer and/or higher priced deer would pay more but would benefit more. After writing that article I later learned that the idea had already been discussed by a group in Ohio. For what it is worth, I would strongly encourage the auction companies and the leadership of this industry to seriously consider implementing such a program. In talking with others I think there is a lot of support for it. The funds could be used in a variety of ways to get the word out about our industry. Magazine ads, TV commercials, website, booths at hunting shows, brochures and numerous other ways could all be part of a huge ongoing program to drive our industry. Based on the thousands of deer hunters I talk with each year, I am certain that our industry can grow to several times the size it is today. The challenge is for us to get the word out. We cannot depend on the hunters to do it for us. When was the last time a good deer hunter told you the exact spot of his favorite treestand? What would it be worth to you and your farm if our industry tripled in size over the next 5 years? Our future is in our hands.
