Hunters have to hunt for a place to turn wild game into food

One of the few store fronts on the two lane highway into Big Piney, Wyoming, is Kampfire Meats. The wild game processing business opened a little over a month ago, just in time for hunting season.

There is the main building where the meat is cut up, and an outdoor meat locker holding about 35 animals, like deer, elk and moose.

“We keep it between 30 and 40 degrees, and this is just where all the animals hang until we get to them,” said owner Chase Keenan, who wore pants tucked into muck boots and an industrial apron.

After an animal is harvested, the meat needs to be cooled to prevent bacteria. Then, someone has to slice it up, and turn it into steaks and burgers.

Some hunters do this work themselves, but many need a wild game processor like Keenan. The problem is, there is a shortage of those in rural areas, where a lot of people hunt. It is seasonal work, it requires expensive equipment, the workforce is aging and the job is labor intensive.

“Elk quarters weigh 40 to 60 pounds, sometimes heavier than that, and you're carrying them and moving them all day,” Keenan said. “And it's long hours. Obviously, I'm doing seven days a week.”

Keenan grabbed two 60-ish pound hunks of meat out of the locker and weaved back through a maze of animals. Inside the main building, he plopped the venison on his butcher block and snagged his big knife.

“Now I'm just trimming off the aged meat that won't give it a good flavor,” he said.

The meat will go into a grinding machine that turns it into burger. He processes one animal at a time to guarantee hunters get their own animal back — not someone else’s.

Just as Keenan finished up with the venison, three hunters dressed in camo walk in.

“You guys called about the deer?,” Keenan asked.

He followed the hunters to a white pickup, where antlers poked out of the bed. Chasen Coberley shot the deer in the nearby mountains.

“Yeah, like two hours ago. We were just road huntin’, found it eventually,” he said, sporting a hunter's orange safety vest.

The deer will feed Coberley for the year, but he needed Keenan to turn it into meat he can eat. So, Keenan grabbed his mini chain saw and got to work.

“Want me to get it carried over to the cooler, and we'll grab a weight off it?,” Keenan said.

The hunters then shuffle into Keenan’s office.

“How thick do you want your steaks for the back straps?” he asked.

“Probably do an inch or so,” the hunters responded.

Also some summer sausage and snack sticks, kind of like Slim Jims. It will set the hunters back about $600 and add a few more hours to Keenan’s hefty workload.

Keenan does not mind the non-stop pace. A lifelong hunter, he’s 36 years old and has dreamed of this for years.

“It was looking like more and more the older I got, that was never going to happen,” he said. “So, the fact that it happened is great.”

He said it took a detour to work in the oil field, a butcher shop apprenticeship, finding the right building and a lot of money. Specifically, $400,000 in loans.

“It's huge and it's scary,” he said. “They're not 20-year loans either, so they're eight to 10-year loans.”

People come from all over the world to hunt deer and elk in western Wyoming. But Keenan’s most important customers are not tourists, they are his neighbors. They know a good big game processor when they see one.

“What can I do for you?,” Keenan said to a potential customer. “Do you want to sample of our maple bacon snack sticks?”

Local Melissa Lish strolled in to check out Keenan’s operation. She is planning to shoot a deer and elk this year to fill her freezer.

“I'm just tired of processing my own animal,” she said, maple bacon snack stick in hand. “I'm at that age. It’s a lot of work, and frankly, I don't have enough time to do it myself anymore.”

Keenan cannot do it alone either. So, he has hired an employee.

Lately his phone is ringing off the hook. It has a fitting ringtone — an elk bugle, which is a high-pitched scream of sorts that bull elk make to call in potential mates. When the bugle radiated through the building, Keenan broke from cutting meat and answered, “Kampfire Meats.”

Business as the only guy in the Big Piney area processing wild game is good. He has even turned some customers away.