Syracuse.com - CNY venison processers are super busy this hunting season

[HuntingNY-News]

Deb Tanguay said this is the first time she and her husband, Ed, have had to turn business away for a few days this fall at Marsh Mill Ranch, the Kirkville venison processing business. “At one point we had 75 to 100 deer outside the building,” she said. “We had no more room to put any. I know we...

Deb Tanguay said this is the first time she and her husband, Ed, have had to turn business away for a few days this fall at Marsh Mill Ranch, the Kirkville venison processing business.

“At one point we had 75 to 100 deer outside the building,” she said. “We had no more room to put any. I know we can safely cut 25 deer. We didn’t want to get to the point where they’re laying all over the yard.”

Elizabeth Metzer, co-owner of Dave’s Archery and Sports Center in Homer, said her venison processing numbers were also way up early on during this year’s firearms season in the Southern Zone.

“We had to put in some real long hours to get a handle on things. We had to call in for extra help,” she said. ‘We didn’t turn anyone away, but this is the first year we started thinking about it.”

“All I know is that there seems to be a lot more bucks being taken,” added Kevin Lillie, of Kevin’s Custom Butchering and Meat Cutting in Auburn. “Last year I caped (for trophy mounts) 17 bucks. This year I’ve caped 45 so far.”

What’s the story? Are more deer being shot this year? Is the economy driving more to hunt? Are there more older and younger hunters out then than usual who don’t know, or don’t want to process the meat on their own?

It may be a little of all this, say meat processors and hunters interviewed this week. Then again, it just may be the result of the warm weather that’s bathed much of the early part of this fall firearm season.

A spate of warm, weather that saw temperatures rise to the mid-60s, particularly on opening week and the days afterward most likely translated into more youngsters and older hunters in the woods for longer periods of time, said some. The end result was more deer being taken.

“You had a lot of older hunters out who (usually) can’t handle the cold. My dad’s one of them,” Tanguay said.

Matt Richards, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said reports on numbers from opening day of the Southern Zone are not yet available, but that people who were out the first weekend this year in general were more successful than those out opening weekend last year.

Richards added that hunters in the eastern part of the region seemed to be most successful than those in the western half.

Another factor to consider concerning the rush to use venison processors is that the warm weather may have affected hunters who normally would process their own meat, but didn’t want to hang their carcasses outside in the warm temperatures and chance having their meat spoil.

Jon VanNest, owner of Jon’s Custom Meats in Moravia, said he felt the early season rush at his deer processing business. Several times he ran out of hooks to hang deer, but that things have slowed down in the past week.

He said several of his clients who normally process their own venison early on approached him about just skinning and hanging their carcasses at his place just to keep them cool until they had time to work on them. He turned them away “because we didn’t have the space..

“Things have changed. A guy just can’t hang deer out on a tree in front or back of his house like he used to, or his in garage ... particularly in 65-degree weather,” he said.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog