Today, former clients will find Ross deep in the woods of north central Florida. He's hung up his suits in favor of khaki shorts or, sometimes, head-to-toe camouflage garb and matching face paint. He gets around in a six-wheel ATV. His favorite weapon: a Mathews compound bow and Easton arrows.
Three years ago, after helping take PowerCerv public, Ross handed the reins to his co-founder and retired. This summer, he opened Ross Hammock Ranch, a 1,500-acre private hunting preserve that boasts, along with other animals, Whitetail, Red, Fallow and Axis deer. Ross, 45, is among a growing number of businesspeople -- they aren't all men -- working to build a Florida industry around hunting and breeding deer.
The economic incentive: Preserve owners say the state loses millions of dollars a year when its hunters travel elsewhere to shoot deer. On the farming side, breeders such as Jim Ray of Ocala say that until recently, Florida hasn't been able to grow Whitetail deer to the "trophy" size that hunters demand. New DNA technology, however, means that's changing fast. In addition to hunting stock, meat and hides, deer provide antler velvet that's popular in herbal remedies and other products such as doe urine, which hunters buy for as much as $4 an ounce and use to lure bucks.
According to the North American Deer Farmers Association, an industry that didn't exist in the U.S. 15 years ago now counts some 20 breeders in Florida. The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission reports there are now about half that many private deer-hunting preserves across the state. "Most of us in the business are pretty new, and we're learning, but we're optimistic," says Ray, an Ocala businessman whose father and grandfather founded Silver Springs. "This could be very important to the agricultural future of Florida."
Ray, Ross and others cite several reasons for the deer industry's growth. In addition to netting a higher return than other livestock, deer are easier on the land and easier to breed. Meanwhile, demand is up for both venison and live animals. Hunting preserves are becoming more popular as Florida's natural areas are lost to development.
'World Class Genetics'
As he swings open the gate to what once was his dad's cattle ranch east of Ocala, Ray is nuzzled by a yearling Whitetail he calls Fluffy. The chest-tall buck has a tiny set of soft antlers that knock off Ray's cowboy hat when he bends down for a kiss. Clearly good to his animals, most of which run wild under big live oak trees on the 55-acre ranch, Ray is also matter-of-fact about selling them to hunting preserves or harvesting their meat for his venison business. He's made a profit selling deer meat for three years now.
While Ray considers himself a lifelong animal lover -- current household pets include a fawn and a prairie dog -- animal-rights groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals insist he practices the worst sort of animal cruelty. They argue that deer raised around humans become trusting creatures that are easily slaughtered. "They are going to be fed by humans all their lives, and then a human is going to hold a gun to their head," says Brett Wyker of the Pompano Beach-based Animal Rights Foundation of Florida.
The activists infuriate Ray as much as he angers them. He acknowledges there are unethical people in his industry, as in any line of business. "Canned hunts," in which people shoot animals that are tame or old or shoot them in small spaces, are out of line, he and other ranchers say. But they insist that deer roaming free on a large preserve -- with plenty of fresh water and no predators or parasites -- live longer and happier lives than those in the wild.
The state keeps an eye on the industry with "fair chase" regulations that set acreage minimums and prohibit Florida's preserves from importing the zoo animals found in canned hunts, says Eddie White, who oversees the preserves for the wildlife commission. "You could be out at some of these preserves for a week and never see a Whitetail," White says. "They will run and hide as fast and as well as they do in the wild."
At Ray's ranch, tame animals like Fluffy aren't sold or killed for their meat. They're part of his newest business, "Jim Ray's World Class Genetics." Three times a year, the company collects semen from Ray's top Whitetail bucks -- judged by weight, height and the size of their antlers -- and sells it to deer farms throughout North America. Each collection produces between 40 and 100 "straws." Just one straw from a trophy Whitetail can sell for as much as $2,000. "I can make a lot more off the semen than the deer themselves," Ray says.
Working with a University of Florida geneticist, he also uses DNA tracking to figure out which of his does produce the biggest and best offspring. Those, in turn, are inseminated artificially with the top-quality semen.
Ray hopes his efforts will lead to a breed of larger Florida Whitetails that can proliferate on preserves and farms here. U.S. preserves often stock exotic Axis, Red and Fallow deer, but many sportsmen prefer to hunt the native Whitetail, a skittish deer that grows much larger in the northern part of the country. "Hunters associate Florida with small Whitetail deer," says Ross. "It'll take several years to do it, but what we're trying to do is to change their minds."
'Exquisite meat'
Downstate, another new business is trying to change people's minds about the type of red meat they eat. Twenty-five years ago, a south Florida farmer named Frank Brady was traveling in Texas when he tasted Axis venison. He says he found it "the most exquisite meat God put on the Earth." He bought 80 head of Axis, originally from Nepal, for personal use, turning them loose on his Martin County ranch. They were so prolific that in 20 years he had more than 5,000. Today, the Brady Ranch is said to have the largest Axis deer herd in the U.S.
Midway between the hard-scrabble cattle ranches of Okeechobee County and the sprawling gated communities of Palm Beach County, the 2,000-acre Brady Ranch bridges both worlds. Brady and his wife, Marilyn, continue to earn some income from cattle but have begun earning a larger profit from deer. Other pluses: Deer are disease-resistant, and, unlike cattle, don't destroy their range.
Frank and Marilyn opened their ranch to hunting in 1994, adding exotics such as water buffalo, and this year started a gourmet venison business. A hunting party might fly in on the ranch's 5,000-foot airstrip and drop $10,000 in a weekend on animal, guide and lodging costs. As at other preserves, hunters pay a daily fee to come to the ranch, then more for each animal they shoot. (Shooting a rare Pere David deer, for example, costs $8,000 at the Brady Ranch; a wild hog, only $100.)
The Bradys' accommodations are hunting-lodge rustic, aside from the Jacuzzi, gym and on-call masseuse. They also sell Axis meat -- grilled just pink, a tenderloin is comparable to a cut of chateaubriand, but low in fat and cholesterol -- for as much as $40 a pound. Brady Ranch offers an annual "meat membership" for $1,200 that allows hunters to come three times a year to shoot an Axis doe and have the meat quartered.
Guns an issue, too
Animal-rights supporters are particularly disturbed by the Bradys. The couple sponsored a hunt this year that brought in handicapped children to shoot animals. Groups such as PETA ask how challenging a hunt at the ranch can be if kids in wheelchairs can get close enough to shoot the deer. Also at play is the contentious gun issue. The Palm Beach Post has been filled with letters to the editor that oppose the ranch, charging that hunting encourages bloodlust in children.
The letters also charge Brady Ranch is home to retired zoo animals, but Marilyn Brady is adamant that the ranch has never purchased an animal from a zoo or a circus. "There is nothing I can do to change (the animal-rights activists') minds," she says. "But I would like the truth to be known to the everyday, average person: This feeds people. It's got recreational value. It's got aesthetic value. It's got economic value; and it has value to the animal," she says. "The land and the animals here are in perfect union -- that's why the animals do so well."
Indeed, the Bradys, as well as the statewide industry, have some surprising defenders. Some environmentalists point out that expansive, tree-covered ranches like the Bradys' and Ross' protect large natural tracts from encroaching suburban sprawl. Others find game ranching a promising approach to wildlife conservation. The scimitar-horned oryx, for example, a rare antelope extinct in its native North Africa, thrives today on U.S. game ranches. "When you put an economic value on something, you create an incentive to reproduce it," says Ross. "As long as these preserves are here, these animals will be here. If the preserves are gone, the animals are gone."
Carol Childs, the president of the Florida Humane Society based in Jupiter, says she once finagled a tour of the Brady Ranch, expecting not to like what she'd see. The condition of the animals -- healthy, well cared for and wild -- changed her mind, however. "It is certainly more humane than a slaughterhouse, and it is certainly more humane than the way some people treat their pets," says Childs. "I'm not saying I like it, but I understand it. It's simply a way to make a living."