Hunting outfitter Adam Batot knew putting three unique but related businesses under one roof would benefit them all. As head of Double Shot Outfitters, he’d guided hunters in Texas and around the world:  New Zealand, Canada, Colorado and Africa.

“When we’d get done with a hunt here, we’d go visit Trey Mitchell (of Mitchell’s Wild Game Processing) and drop off the meat, and then go to Kevin Wick’s (Buckshot Taxidermy Studio in San Benito),” he said. “It would take three hours to get home.”  Batot, who has a degree in wildlife from Texas Tech, decided to set up a one-stop shop under the name South Texas Headquarters. “It makes it convenient for hunters and for us.”

When a client on an African hunt offered to invest in the enterprise last July, Batot already knew  where he and business partner Cody Phillips wanted to locate the business.  South Texas Headquarters opened on Highway 77 frontage north of Combes last November with three independent businesses cohabiting under one umbrella/storefront.  “It was better to open late in the season than miss it,” he pointed out.  “We want you to be able to come here, grab your corn, ammo, ice and hunting license, and head out to the field.”  Hunters began to stop in on the way home with harvested game.

The meat

Trey Mitchell had been processing game for private ranches for 10 years, beginning when one of the hunters he was guiding asked him to take on the task.  He added to his butchering machinery, knives, vacuum packer, coolers and employees when he moved into South Texas Headquarters. “I hadn’t been chasing the larger market, but this has been the best year I’ve ever had.  It was six days a week for at least five months. At any given time, we had 60 animals in the cooler.” Mitchell would skin animals on weekends to have them ready for his crew.  His is one of the few facilities that can handle wild hogs.

Mitchell processes deer, nilgai and various exotics, turning them into roasts, ground meat, steaks, patties and seven different kinds of sausages, from chorizo to bratwurst.  He gives the processing invoice to STH which bills the customer.

The trophy

As Kevin Wick molded clay around the head of polyurethane foam form to make the tanned nilgai hide fit smoothly, he talked about being part of South Texas Headquarters.  “These guys had been talking about opening this place for a few years. I had a pretty good idea that I would get some carryover  from  the processing end.   People want convenience — all in one place.  It finally came together and has worked out well.  It has definitely increased my customer base and work orders with the visibility — people see my work on the wall — and having the processing here.”

Wick himself had tanned the nilgai hide, which helps on the turnaround time for a taxidermy order.  “I try to keep everything under a year, so they get their trophy back before they hit the stands the next season.  A thin hide makes it flexible enough to pull on and for detail.  I’m all about detail. I try to turn out a competition grade mount at a commercial price,” he said, stretching the skin of an animal that had weighed about 850 pounds onto the anatomically correct form.

Over the years, Wick has mounted a Spanish ibex,  axis deer,  black buck, fallow and red stags, gemsbok, zebra,  lechwe, impala, a bear, birds and fish, along with Asian, African and American buffalo, and much more.  Nevertheless, at least 80% of his work is white-tailed deer, either shoulder mounts or life size.  “Every once in a while, we’ll have to do a specialty form,” he said, pointing at a javelina mount which is positioned twisting sideways. “There’s a lot more art to this than people think. The only thing fake is the eyes.”

Keeping a trophy cool and delivered to a taxidermist rapidly is essential to getting a good mount, according to Wick. “You got to treat it like meat you’d eat.  Heat is the number one problem we have here. Once they get too hot, hair will start falling out. At that point, there’s nothing I can do to salvage the trophy.”

Wick is training an apprentice, but the surge of business has not allowed him to hunt and fish as he would like.  “I haven’t been in forever, because who’s got the time?  I have a gut feeling that next year will even be busier, even better.”

Batot himself was at his South Texas Headquarters desk this summer, instead of out in the field where he usually is … and wants to be.  That’s how it goes with a business that is successful in-house, online and in the field.

For more information, see southtexasheadquarters.com.

Story by Eileen Mattei

Publisher’s note: Valley Business Report’s August edition was in the printing process during the events surrounding Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe. All editorial, including photographs, in this feature depict legal hunting activity with the highest regard to wildlife conservation.