SOUTH RANGE, Wis. _ Quinn and Cade Musch are plunging head-first into a business many people want shut down.
The brothers are building a fenced deer farm about 20 miles south of Superior where they will raise trophy bucks with massive sets of antlers and then sell all-inclusive fenced hunts to customers for upward of $4,000 each.
The trophy bucks here are the result of genetic line-breeding, incredible nutrition and time to grow _ they don't get shot as spikes or basket bucks before they get old. They have freakishly huge racks by their third year because of the quality and quantity of their food.
"There's a huge, unmet demand out there from all over. There are a lot of people who are just tired of poor hunting, who want to see and shoot really big bucks," Cade Musch said while leading a tour of the deer farm in November. "The problem is, in the wild, no one is willing to let deer grow to really big sizes. In here, they (the bucks) will get that time."
Except that the animals are deer and not cows, horses or sheep, the place looks much like other farms, with bales of hay and bags of Purina AntlerMax feed on pallets. Musch showed off their high-fenced enclosures where dozens of does and fawns were meandering, resting and eating, and the special pen where he had mature does and an eager-to-mate massive trophy buck with antlers the size most hunters could only dream about.
The farm is called Long Lake Outfitters, LLC, and the Musch brothers have been building their deer herd for the past two years. With the help of two trophy bucks they paid big dollars for in 2018, they hope to have trophy deer ready to sell and shoot by fall 2021.
They have about 190 acres for hunting as well as several acres of deer pens, including the Musch family homestead of 160 acres and 40 more that they purchased, along with a nearby log cabin for their clients to stay in.
The deer farm has two licenses: one from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and the other from the Department of Natural Resources. The perimeter is ringed by two sets of 8-foot-high fencing, in theory keeping all of their deer inside and any wild deer out while not letting wild deer come in contact with their deer. (All the wild deer in the fenced acres were shot, with state permission, before tame deer were moved in.)
While many Northland hunters would bristle at the idea of shooting a deer in a fenced preserve as unsporting, unfair and unsavory, the Musch brothers expect customers to come from places like Texas, where hunting deer in fenced "ranches" or enclosures is common, as well as Pennsylvania, the East Coast, Chicago, the Twin Cities and beyond. But they also expect some locals to pony up for the chance to hang a trophy on the wall at home.
"There's an operation just a little south of here that gets a lot of repeat, local business. Local people like to shoot big bucks, too," said Cade, 30.
The Musches say they got into the business because they grew up on a farm and they love hunting and watching deer. The deer farm combines the best of both worlds, they say.
"We're passionate about deer hunting and we wanted to get into the hunting business," said Cade, who has a day job at the Sappi paper mill in Cloquet. Quinn, 33, works for a local railroad.
"This combination (of raising deer and selling hunts) really lets us maximize the value of our land and do what we love to do," he said.
