Making the cut

A couple weeks after the end of hunting season, RJ Keaster put the finishing touches on the last of wild game processed this year by his new family business Keaster Cuts.

RJ and his wife Kathryn bought the business, formerly known as T&A Meats, from Aaron Daniel earlier this year to earn extra money and pay off some debt.

RJ learned to process wild game both through his experience as an avid hunter and through his time spent helping Daniel at T&A Meats.

"(Daniel) has been in the background helping us," RJ said.

During their first season in business, the Keasters processed some 200 animals. Mostly deer.

"It was really good," RJ said. "It was kind of slow in the beginning. It was kind of nervous being a new business. It's hard for people to trust your process. They know what Aaron did, but they've never brought anything to me."

"It's not bad for a first year," Kathryn said.

RJ suspects the fact that harvests were down across the state this season may have played a role in the slow start, but as the season wore on, business began to pick up. During the last seven days of hunting season, they received 60 animals for processing, and were just finishing everything up during the second week of December.

"It was a little overwhelming at the end, but we got through it," RJ said of his crew, which was made up primarily of himself, Kathryn and Ward Roberson, with friends who had worked with Daniel at T&A filling in occasionally.

RJ said the biggest challenge they've faced with the business so far has simply been a matter of time.

"This is probably a little bit more than we thought it was, time wise," said RJ who also works full time as a technician for the Lincoln Telephone Company. He said they took on a lot in the last year, including work with Shane Smith and others to bring Little League Baseball back to Lincoln. "In the beginning of the year I had a lot of time with coaching baseball, so we got a later start than I would have liked on the building. It doesn't even feel like the building is really finished, and we had to go right into cutting."

"It's finished enough," added Kathryn. She explained that they designed their new building around a custom rail Daniel built for moving carcasses around at T&A. They got their facility up and running in time to open Sept. 1.

With their first hunting season under their belt, the Keasters have already built up a good clientele, including a group of hunters with a camp near Ovando, who said they should be bringing them more business next year as more hunters come to their camp.

In addition to processing the regular cuts of meat, they also do snack sticks, polish dogs, bratwurst, Polish and Italian sausage. Using recipes first developed by Daniel. "We changed some of them, just to kind of make it our own," RJ said. They are also willing to work with people to try different things.

"We've ... had people bring their special seasoning to try," RJ said, and Kathryn mentioned they're even making bologna for a client.

"Whatever people are requesting, we want to make everybody happy," RJ said.

"We appreciate the support that we've had," Kathryn said. She said they're open to feedback about everything from the size of the packages they make to their seasoning recipes

Although their first year was a success overall, they hit a few bumps in the road with some unexpected supply chain issues. RJ said in the year since Daniel stopped processing at T&A in 2019 and they opened Keaster Cuts this fall, nearly all their supplies, from spices to suet used in sausages and hamburger to the bags they use, had basically doubled in price, even from suppliers within the state. Shipping costs have also gone up. As a result, they're already looking at having to raise their prices when they start processing again next year.

With hunting season behind them and the last of their processing done, the Keasters are taking a break from meat processing until next fall. They don't expect to process any animals taken during late-season hunts, and though they've had some questions about processing domestic animals, they're not ready to take that on and are planning to stay steady by sticking to wild game.

RJ said they plan to spend time as much quality time as they can as a family until next fall and will start fresh next hunting season.

For RJ, a life-long hunter, part of the enjoyment in processing wild game is meeting new people who come in and hearing their stories.

"We don't try to pry, but it's fun to hear the hunting stories," he said. "I feel like we've made some new friends through the year."