Derrik Scott Chesser, left, and Billy Coulter begin trimming skin and membrane. The next step is to draw off the animal's hide with a hoist-like device. Billy, whose daughter Jami has worked at Boone's front counter the past two years, is expert at this. He has been a butcher "ever since I got done with school. It's been 17 years. I don't know what else I could do."

Boone's Butcher Shop is a Bardsdale institution since 1946, and the great steer that hangs over the shop's storefront is an icon. Jerry Boone says it was commisioned by his father Luel in the 'sixties. "Two years ago," he says, "some highschoolers stole it, and hid it in the bushes out back. But they bragged about it at a party, not knowing it was my daughter that was listening. "

Jimmy House manoeuvers a deer carcass onto his cutting table. Jimmy's girlfriend is Analyn, a 24-year-old Phillipino he met online. He recently made the long trip to Asia to meet her in person, spending a week getting to know the girl and her family. Analyn is planning to visit in March of next year, and Jimmy says they want to marry in the Spring. "She works in real estate," he says, "and makes about $20 every 15 days. They got McDonald's over there. KFC, too."

(From left) Jimmy "Wiener" House, Jerry Boone, Gary "Doc" Stennbenz (an FDA meat inspector), and butcher Billy "Snoopy" Coulter discuss their options over a broken sausage mixer. Jerry's dad Luel began the operatation in 1946 with a one-room slaughter house. Boone's Butcher Shop, still in the same location, now handles over 1.5 million pounds of beef and more than 50,000 pounds of deer meat a year.

Boone's Butcher Shop processes at least fifty thousand pounds of deer meat a year, all of it brought in by local hunters. The two weeks of Gun Season - the time when deer hunting is most efficient - is the shop's busiest time of year. "On that first weekend," says Donna Boone, "we get so many deer we have no place to put them."

"Klling don't make me sad," says Jimmy House, "but animals do have feelings. They can sense you. I used to have a pet cow. She was like a dog. We'd walk down the road; she came looking for me. I called her 'Moo-moo."

Jimmy House and Betty Byrd discuss where to go for lunch. Jimmy is choosey; he prefers beef to deer meat, because it has more fat. The two decide to go for fried chicken. When asked how he learned which parts of the deer to cut for steaks, he replies, "Years. Years of deers."