BOWMAN, S.C. -- When you ask John Mellis about business, he might just tell you it's dead. And if he did, he'd be right -- but only right in the literal sense.
In the five years since Mellis moved his family business out of genteel Charleston and into the heart of the South Carolina's Low Country, Great Outdoors Taxidermy & Deer Processing has become the place to go for hunters across the world.
"We felt a need to get more inland, with more and more hunting coming this way," Mellis said. "Plus it is much less expensive to live here."
But this isn't just any small business serving the local communities of Bowman and Vance in deer-laden Orangeburg County -- this company fills orders from locations across the globe, with prized game found from stream to safari. Turning to view the showroom from the front counter giant, exotic beasts greet the visitor.
Upon meeting a new customer, Mellis' firm handshake reveals he is a very deliberate man. His attention to detail and affinity for order soon become evident with one glance at his well manicured beard. A surgeon-like precision in all aspects of his life has been parlayed into a successful career as a professional taxidermist.
In fact, during the first year of operation, Great Outdoors only provided taxidermy services.
"The original idea of moving here was to give me more time to be able to hunt and do taxidermy," Mellis said. Great Outdoors soon became too busy for the avid hunter to get out and enjoy the abundance of game in the swampy South Carolina countryside, as he found his business growing at a fast pace.
Beginning in 1981, Mellis began to learn the arduous craft of taxidermy on his own.
"You know those old ads in the back of Field and Stream?" He asked. "I learned what I could from those videos, seminars and mini-courses. I pretty much taught myself."
Soon, Mellis' talent and penchant for realistic creations was becoming recognized in local and statewide taxidermy competitions. After a few years, he had perfected his art to such extent that he won South Carolina's Taxidermist of the Year title for two years in a row.
"I believe in a good finished taxidermy -- the kind that some 15 years later will still look like that first year we mounted it," he said. "So if a customer invited me over to see it, I would never be embarrassed."
Just a year later, when Great Outdoors introduced deer processing, the success was immediate.
"I never thought about deer processing -- I never knew anything about it," Mellis said. "But then I realized it was at least 20 miles to the next-closest processor and I realized there was opportunity here."
After a few tips from already-established competition, a helpful seasoning representative providing insight into formulas, and a few weeks at a processing school in Kansas City named the Cotch College, Mellis again self-taught his way to experiencing instantaneous results at the cash register.
With wife Tara behind the counter and providing insight with recipes, son William handling the butchery and William's wife, Whitney, consulting on packaging, the team hit the ground running and never had a chance to stop to catch their collective breath.
The Tour
Around mid-morning, the majority of the pickup trucks start crackling the gravel in Great Outdoors driveway. Located just off the main drag into "downtown" Bowman, Great Outdoors features a large, white wooden sign at the front of the property.
With truck beds filled with deer carcasses and protruding antlers, camouflage-clad hunters whip their vehicles into the staging area, just before the skinning room to display their trophies. Three built-in drains in the concrete floor catch liquids coming from the truck beds and a sprayer stands at the ready to wash the blood out of sight.
William Mellis wheels out a custom-built deer cart. With the average buck coming in around 150 pounds, the cart is essential. A cross between a shopping cart and some medieval torture device, it carries the fresh kill into the skinning room.
"The deer goes in here," the younger Mellis said "They don't."
A sign posted on the Plexiglas window urges hunters not to enter the skinning room, but instead go immediately to the counter located in the main showroom through a door some 15 feet away.
Once inside the skinning room, Great Outdoors uses a high-tech, electronic track to hang the carcasses and gut the deer. William Mellis uses several different razor-sharp blades to go about his bloody work. Donned in a white apron reaching from his knees up to his chest, Mellis prepares the deer with the greatest of ease. The typical deer is skinned in less than 10 minutes before its carcass moves into the freezer. Skins to be used in taxidermy are identified and stored in preparation to be sent to the professional tanners John Mellis trusts.
"In taxidermy, a good tanner makes all the difference," the owner said.
Once the deer moves down the track, out of the freezer and into the processing room, the delicate task of actual processing takes place. A crew of four other employees handles the task at hand.
With a quarter-million dollars worth of machinery, the processing room gleams with metallic equipment. A vacuum sealer stands in the corner where the meat will eventually be packaged. The room is spotless. Stainless steel countertops receive hourly cleanings and the floor constantly receives attention to stay clean.
He wants every package leaving Great Outdoors to look good, if not better, than what one might find in a grocery store's meat section.
According to Mellis, "packaging is everything. It's just got to look good and have eye-appeal."
Bones are ground and disposed of neatly in a self-contained unit that gets emptied when necessary, but the Mellis' two dogs never have a shortage of bones. Their yellow-lab puppy, affectionately named Vance, chewed on a white bone that still had some meat attached, while Mellis gave the privileged tour.
Hunters can choose from an array of meat choices including steaks, hamburger, bologna, kielbasa, salami, jerky and an assortment of breakfast sausages. Tara's Favorite is a popular sausage choice among most hunters in the vicinity.
Today, company profits come equally from both the taxidermy and processing side of the business. But overall, the costs stay lower on the taxidermy side.
Giving Back and Looking Forward
Orangeburg County boasts one of the best buck yields in the state. The deer population thrives in the rural setting with many feeding in the fields that dot the county. Deer meat has found its way onto the table of the overwhelming majority of individuals living here.
Mellis is currently working on some donation programs to help feed the hungry in this rural area. But he insists he would need the help of the hunters if the program were to become a large-scale operation.
"If hunters believed enough in the idea, they would help pick up half the tab," Mellis said. But the cost and sheer number of deer taken in the area currently limit the creation of such a program.
"It'd be tough to tell people to quit shooting," he added.
The future looks bright for Great Outdoors as the taxidermy side continues to garner national and even global recognition as being among the world's best. During many of the slower summer months, the taxidermy business thrives. And the processing side continues to grow, as well, with more and more deer harvested during the key winter hunting months.
As for the Mellis family, the couple will soon begin construction on a new house located on the back of the property.
"We're not going anywhere," Mellis said. "In fact, we're gonna be here for quite a while."