Word: deere
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Nature can only provide so much. Deer breeders deliver bigger animals, prized by hunters, for luxurious game reserves (which then charge several thousands of dollars for a "hunting package"). Texas alone has 1,100 licensed breeders with approximately 87,000 deer and a total economic impact of $652 million, according to a 2007 Texas A&M study. Breeders often sell deer at livestock auctions, where the price for a good buck can reach five figures (occasionally a champion buck, just like a prize bull, can sell for half a million dollars). Deer-breeding is the fastest-growing industry in rural...
...high prices have prompted some reserves to reject Texas-bred deer. And so deer are smuggled in from northern states like Minnesota, where the stock is bigger and smugglers offer cut-rate prices. This way, smugglers skirt Texas laws that have closed the borders to non-Texas-bred deer. It's not chauvinism at work. There is a danger that smuggled deer can carry diseases like chronic wasting disease - which is similar to mad cow disease - and bovine tuberculosis. The wasting disease has been reported in deer, moose and elk in 11 states and two Canadian provinces. Wisconsin has spent...
Minnesotan Brian Becker, who was already on probation for deer-smuggling in Oklahoma, was sentenced to 33 months in federal prison in November. Agents estimated that he had made at least $300,000 smuggling deer to one client in Texas. Houston businessman Robert Eichenaur was sentenced to 18 months in jail and hit with a $50,000 fine. Eichenaur was described by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as the owner of a "posh hunting ranch" in the small east Texas town of Bedias. The ranch, Circle E, advertises exotic hunts and charges $12,000 or more for a large white...
Like the cattle rustlers of yore, deer smugglers are outlaws to much of the deer-hunting fraternity. "You can't defend those actions," says Gary Joyner, a spokesman for the Texas Wildlife Association, a group of landowners dedicated to "legal, fair chase hunting" and "stewardship of the land." In Texas the white-tail deer are something of a canary in a coal mine - and a good habitat for the deer is also conducive to songbirds and other native species, says Tom Harvey, a spokesman for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which monitors populations and places regional bag limits...
...Deer-hunting is a birthright in much of the nation and certainly in Texas, where the state's deer are regarded as a bequest from Mother Nature to be harvested, not depleted. "White-tail deer are a natural resource that is open to to everyone in Texas," Williford says. Texas law also prohibits taking wild deer and selling them to deer breeders - game wardens arrested six Texas men on that charge in December. But bans against the sale of white-tail venison and the capture of wild deer have not deterred smugglers and rustlers eager to grab a piece...