Hanging up the antlers

For 49 hunting seasons, Merrill Meat Company north of Encampment has accepted wild game from out-of-state and local hunters. This season, what would have been its 50th, that will no longer be the case.

No elk, no deer, no antelope.

A difficult decision, according to second generation owner Cade Merrill, because his parents, Bob and Judy Merrill, started the processing business during the hunting season of 1971. In fact, it was wild game processing that helped establish and grow the family business.

“My parents built this business based on hunting season and started to do domestic (processing) throughout the winter and the summer,” said Cade.

Though processing domestic meat, primarily beef, began as a way to keep the business going through the winter and summer, it is now that part of the business which Merrill Meats will be pivoting to full time. According to Cade, several factors played into the decision. Primary among them was the extension of the hunting seasons.

“Instead of beginning September 15 and ending October 31, you can shoot elk starting August 15 with the right license, and antelope as well,” Cade said. “Bow season’s getting a lot more popular, which starts September 1 for all animals.”

In addition to the early starts, the late ending has also provided some difficulty. With some seasons starting as early as August 15, other seasons don’t conclude until the end of January. That means approximately six months of wild game coming in to be processed while, at the same time, trying to handle the growing domestic processing side of the business. That is, when the domestic side of the business isn’t shut down to handle the bulk of hunting season.

“It was one thing when it was six weeks a year. You could put your head down and go for six weeks, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” said Cade. “But when you’re trying to juggle early animals with your domestic and then shutting everything off and being super busy with hunting season then everyone’s waiting with their beef after you get done and you have Thanksgiving and Christmas and you’ve already been putting them off for hunting season. So, as soon as you can in early November, we’re killing beef again.”

The early and late seasons may be one of the largest contributing factors to the decision to cease wild game processing, but it isn’t the only one. According to Cade, while he has three full-time employees it would take six to eight seasonal employees to be able to properly handle hunting season.

“That’s all day, everyday. That’s not really being able to schedule days off and time off. You’re struggling to get people and the deal is ‘Hey, I need you to work as much as you can’. That’s what I tell them, ‘I need you to work as much as you can. I understand this isn’t your business so I don’t expect you to kill yourself doing it but if you can work seven days a week for a month and a half, great. If you need a day off, let me know we can work it out’,” Cade said. “That’s the other struggle. You can’t find enough people to have a schedule. You’re trying to find enough people to just make it work and that pretty much requires all day, every day.”

During the 2019 hunting season, from November to January, Merrill Meat Company received and processed 160 animals in a three month period. That comes down to approximately 53 animals a month. In an average season, around 550 to 600 animals are processed. That’s not counting the 200 beef processed each year.

As the business has grown, so has Cade’s family. Married and with two children, the normal hunting season hours of arriving to work at 3:30 a.m., cutting until 5 p.m. and taking animals and skin until 9 p.m. is becoming more and more difficult. Cade isn’t the only one with a family, either, as his employees are also raising families of their own.

“I can’t just say ‘Hey, we potentially have five elk coming in, we need to get them done’.

That’s the juggle,” said Cade. “You don’t have room to keep them forever, so they come in throughout the week, hopefully towards the end of the week, and you’d spend the weekend cutting them.”

As the 2021 hunting season approaches, Cade hopes the hunters—both out-of-state and local—who have brought their animals for processing understand why such a difficult decision had to be made.

“We built the business based on hunting season and unfortunately that’s the one that’s going to get nixed. It’s just too much for the staff that we can get together. We’re very thankful for all the people throughout the years that have brought us business and those are the people we feel for and didn’t want to make this decision based on them,” Cade said. “People have supported us for the last 49 years during hunting season and, unfortunately, it’s time.”