Process Your Wild Game and Livestock at the Chop-N-Block in Winter Haven, FL

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The Good Old Boy Network here in Central Florida just got a gift in the The Chop-N-Block, a top quality livestock and wild game processing facility!

Visit The Chop-N-Block on Facebook !

Located at 3386 Cypress Gardens Road in Winter Haven, FL, the Chop-N-Block is owned by Baxter Troutman (a former Florida State Legislator) with manager Chris Branson, a master butcher from the Frostproof area, heading up the processing effort.

With this new offering, wild game hunters and those who raise their own livestock can turn to the Chop-N-Block to have their catch or harvest transformed into everything from tasty thin-sliced venison bacon, summer and smoked sausage, custom steaks, burgers, and more.

“There really is very little we can’t produce here,” stated Troutman on a recent visit. ”We put a few favorites on the board, but Chris can do a whole lot more with the meat our customers bring in.”

I think it’s fantastic that we have a facility here in Winter Haven that promotes and facilitates small scale meat production. At one time, there were more than 1,300 meat processing facilities in the US. Today, I’d wager we’re looking at less than 20 if you throw the private operations like the Chop-N-Block in with the major corporate facilities.

Customer Service and Quality Reign at the Chop-N-Block

Hunting takes place at all hours, and once you bag that deer, turkey, wild hog, or whatever else you may be hunting, you need to get it processed as quickly as possible. This is where the Chop-N-Block shines. “I’m basically here 7 days a week,” says Branson. ”All customers need to do is give me a call, arrange a time to drop off their animal, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

One area where the Chop-N-Block hopes to see more business is in livestock processing. In fact, there is every sign that they may become a processing operation of choice for many of the 4-H or FFA livestock entries for this year and into the future.

This level of service is huge, especially here in Central Florida, where hunters with little space or time to process their own kills have very few if any retail processing operations to turn to. Let’s face it. You can’t exactly show up to the 24 hour Wal-mart with a freshly killed 200 lb. wild boar and ask them to process it for you. Though, it sure would be fun to try, just to get a video shot of the person’s face when you ask them!

Community Minded Operation

Often, any sort of left over meat or food products a retail operation ends up with winds in up in the trash, even when it would otherwise be very acceptable for public consumption. A twist on this issue comes up when you’re dealing with feral animals here in FL. Take a nuisance wild hog for instance. One man’s nuisance could easily become another man’s dinner… for weeks!

According to an article in the September 2011 issue of Central Florida Ag News, the Chop-N-Block plans to offer its processing services free of charge to hunters who hunt such nuisance animals. The mean can then be donated t0 local charities like Meals on Wheels, Hunters for the Hungry, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Like the BBQ World, Hunters are Part of a Niche Population

As big as competition BBQ seems sometimes, it really is a niche community. Word gets around regarding who the good guys (and gals!) are, and it take very little time for folks to learn where they need to go for the best cuts of meat, the finest rubs, tastiest sauces, most rockin’ cookers, etc.

The same goes for the hunting community. As word about the quality and type of work offered by the Chop-N-Block begins to go viral, many of those who might self-process their kills may find it easier and more efficient to bring their bounty to Troutman and Branson. This idea is supported in a recent Ledger article on the Chop-N-Block, where Justin Clark of Haines City, FL brought a field-dressed deer he killed in Missouri into the Winter Haven shop to be fully processed based on word of mouth he heard about the shop on his way back to FL. ”I was just going to cut it up myself, but I don’t have a grinder or cuber like these guys for the extra things,” he said.