Freeze devastates exotic game population
Clifton Franz was sickened by the aftermath of last month’s winter storm.
He runs two 700-acre exotic hunting properties known as Rock Creek Ranch. One is near Killeen, the other near Llano. Both experienced numerous mortalities of exotic animals.
“We found animals just frozen solid. We did everything we could; it just got too cold. … I found an axis buck, completely covered itself in hay. Found an axis doe, underneath a tractor; had gotten into a barn with no snow and froze to death,” said Franz.
Many of the mortalities on Rock Creek Ranch and other exotic ranches across Texas consisted of axis deer and blackbuck antelope, subtropical species native to India. African species also were vulnerable and were lost, such as wildebeest.
The loss of blackbuck and axis on Franz’s ranch is heightened by how important those species are to his business. They’re affordable, the hunt can be challenging and the venison, especially for axis, is delicious.
“Blackbuck and axis are priced for anyone who wants to come and experience an exotic hunt. I’d say it’s the two most popular hunts in Texas,” said Franz, who credits celebrities like Joe Rogan and MeatEater’s Steven Rinella as proponents of axis deer hunting and venison in modern culture.
Franz has never experienced a mortality event like this in his life. He runs his business with the goal of providing a memorable experience while promoting sustainable protein through the harvest of his animals and will continue to do that as he works to bounce back from the freeze.
“We live, breathe and die just growing animals, that’s all we do. So, it’s really sad to watch this freeze knock out tons of population that’s been growing,” Franz said.
“You just got to take the loss and move on, that’s all you can do.”
He’s not alone. Hundreds of miles west at the Canyon Ranch near Sonora, the casualties were staggering.
“We are heartbroken by the toll the storm took on our animals. We are afraid that more than 2,000 of our over 4,000 axis deer population were lost, along with about 60 percent of our blackbuck antelope population,” Canyon Ranch business manager Bill Hall said in a release.
The losses were so severe that most of the scheduled hunts in 2021 had to be canceled.
Charly Seale, executive director of Exotic Wildlife Association, has been assessing the widespread destruction on the industry. EWA is international, but Seale said the bulk of the organization’s 5,000 members, around 75 percent, come from Texas.
“It’s been devastating on the exotic industry,” Seale said.
“And me personally, I lost over 60 percent of my herd.”
Seale said that where there were about 125 axis deer on his ranch in Bandera County, now 25-35 remain.
The preliminary approximation of damages from the winter storm is $2 million in animals and another $500,000 in infrastructure, Seale said, and that is likely a conservative estimate. It is a substantial blow to an industry that has grown to create thousands of jobs and $2 billion in revenue annually since EWA’s inception in 1967.
For more information on the booming exotic game industry in Texas, a recent article by Wes Ferguson of Texas Monthly takes a deep dive into how exotics have become a big business in Texas, and examines the cultural, economic and environmental aspects of the industry.
Texas’ exotic game industry has expanded with bigger herds and more expensive animals since the last heavy freezes of the 1980s, amplifying the impact of this most recent storm. “Super exotics” like sable antelope can be more than 15 grand apiece; losses that are not sustainable for many ranchers.
For now, Texas’ exotic ranchers will reassess how they do things, their preparedness, infrastructure and what species they raise as they look to rebound from the winter storm. Seale says his membership, though, is no stranger to adversity, and they will bounce back stronger than ever.
“Most of our members are making a living from the industry. So, they don’t have a choice. They’ve got to pull their boots on and keep going,” Seale said.
“It set us back a little bit, but the industry will continue and be strong.”
Exotic deaths caused by the winter storm were not relegated to behind high fences.
Free-range axis deer have proliferated throughout the Hill Country. And they took a beating.
“During that storm, I counted a total of 14 dead free-range axis deer all around my place (near Luckenbach). I found them everywhere from the back porch, in the car port, under ash juniper trees and out in open fields,” said Daniel Oppenheimer of Hill Country Alliance, an organization that’s spearheading an axis deer control project to create awareness of the impacts the species on free range can do to the environment through competition with whitetails, traditional livestock and destruction of essential riparian zones that hold abundant wildlife habitat, improve water quality and help control flooding.
The free-range and highfence herds met the same fate because of the situation on the ground before the storm. Mortalities seemed to be most extensive in open grassland areas with little cover.
“There’s probably some things that compounded this. The range conditions in the last three to six months have not been good. So, these animals were already in some amount of nutritional stress. They didn’t have the energy and fat reserves to survive something like this,” said Matthew Buchholz, a PhD student at Texas Tech who has studied axis deer for years.
“Across the species, across the Hill Country, it seemed on average they were not in great condition.”
Buchholz said the timing also was detrimental. About 70 percent of axis fawns are born in early February through early March, putting a lot of newborns on the landscape during conditions incapable of survival. Does, too, would have spent up most of their energy reserves during the final stages of pregnancy.
Diet also could have been a factor in why whitetails survived the cold and axis didn’t. Axis deer eat a lot of grass, while whitetails can’t handle the digestion of grass in large quantities. Grass and ashe juniper, which axis would’ve used to refuge in during the storm, are highly acidic. Buchholz believes the drastic drop in temperature caused hypothermia, which caused axis’ stomachs to change temperature and made the bacteria in the gut ultra-acidic, ultimately killing them from acidosis.
The range conditions, the timing of the storm with fawning, the biological characteristics of the species and the protracted nature of the freeze all combined for the perfect storm against axis.
“By no means is a tropical species from India adapted to live in five days of singledigit weather,” Buchholz said.
Although the storm dealt a crushing blow to axis deer in the Hill Country, the affects are expected to be only a temporary setback for the population.
Axis deer are hardy animals. They have high fawn survivability and it is not uncommon for one to live to be 13-14 years old.
Just like in the high-fence exotic game operations, free-range axis will surely rise again.