Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish Restoration Program

The Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge had a feral hog problem. Their management strategy involved trapping and shooting the animals, and leaving the carcasses to decompose.

The pig, as an uninvited visitor to the refuge, has been utilizing our resources since they got there. So, we’re putting the resources back into the natural system.

The center’s Rob Denkhaus, agrees the hogs represented usable meat, but the center didn’t have a safe way to process it. That’s not an issue for Broken Arrow Ranch. They harvest hogs and other exotics, with on site processing and inspection. They age and package it at their facility in Ingram, and ship it nationwide.

On an annual basis we harvest about seventeen hundred deer a year, about eight hundred antelope, and last year about a thousand wild boars.

And that translates to more than 180-thousand pounds of wild game. Chris Hughes took over the business from his parents, who retired to a ranch in the hill country, where they first observed the exotic species.

They saw an untapped resource here in the area, and a potential market; worked through the government agencies to get all the appropriate regulations in line, and began harvesting animals and selling them to restaurants in 1983.

Tomorrow: How Broken Arrow Ranch works with landowners.

That’s our show… with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program … funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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