Butchering hundreds of deer a year is bullwork

If recent trends hold, there will be more than 14,000 deer harvested in Delaware during the 2024-25 deer-hunting season. Hundreds of those deer will be butchered by Milton’s Ukie Johnson.

“It’s hard work. It’s bullwork,” said Johnson, standing next to a dozen deer that have been skinned and are drying in the walk-in refrigerator behind his home.

Johnson has owned his own business since 2000, but he has been butchering deer for 40 years, ever since he was a 16-year-old learning the craft under the watchful eye of John Starr at Shockley & Reed.

“I’ve been doing it so long that I know generations of the same family,” he said. “I got to know the grandfather when I was a kid, and now I get to see that person’s grandchild.”

Johnson’s business is open the entire hunting season, but shotgun season is when he’s the busiest. So busy, in fact, that in addition to recruiting friends and family, he takes a week off from his full-time job as a correctional officer. He has to, he says, and for the entire week, he works 3:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. 

“Every day. It’s a long, tough week,” said Johnson, estimating that he’ll process 50 deer per day over the course of the 10-day season.

In an ideal situation, said Johnson, the deer get to dry in the walk-in for up to five days, but it’s shotgun week, so it’s three at the most. Interview over, Johnson went back to work – hunters had dropped off four more deer.

How do you think it’s going?

Speaking of hard work – let’s talk about installing a 35-foot-tall evergreen. For the second year in a row, there was an issue with the installation of Rehoboth Beach’s sing-along tree. Last year, it snapped in half when lifted off the truck. This year, the tree fell over after strong winds tested the strength of a weld on an O-ring, and the wind won.

In both cases, city officials and a crew of men from Harry Caswell Inc., George W. Plummer & Son Inc. and Delmarva Power stepped up to get the situation fixed.

The morning after this year’s tree fell down, I came across Harry Caswell employee Billy Talbot sitting cross-legged, holding the end of a chain that had been fed through the O-ring of the anchor in the ground, while the other anchor chains were tightened.

I asked him how things were going.

“How do you think it’s going?” he said.

A short time later, after the tree was secured for second time, Talbot shimmied up the trunk to detach the U-bolt and strap used to lift the tree off the ground. When he got back down to the ground, he leaned on a nearby trash bin and took a deep breath. It definitely looked like he didn’t want to make that climb again, but undoubtedly, he would have if needed. I don’t blame him.

There will be thousands of people at the Rehoboth Beach Bandstand participating in this year’s annual sing-along. Let’s remember the hard work that went into making the event happen.

Joke of the Week:

Over the course of the next week, locals will be able to get their fill of Christmas parades – Rehoboth’s is Monday, Dec. 2; Milton’s is Wednesday, Dec. 4; Lewes’ is Saturday, Dec. 7. Here’s a parade-related joke. As always, send jokes to cflood@capegazette.com.

Q: What do you call a parade of rabbits hopping backwards?

A: A receding hare-line.