The Impact of the Texas Deer Breeding Industry on the Local Economy

Abstract

The popularity of deer breeding operations has grown significantly over the past couple of years. In particular, rural communities across the state of Texas have seen the benefits of this growing industry. The primary objective of this study is to provide representative cost estimates of deer farms to gain a better understanding of the industry and its impact on the Texas economy. A survey conducted by the Texas Deer Association provided the data necessary for this study. Due to the nature of the data, two different methods were used to estimate total annual expenditures for the industry. The first method involves estimating the total number of different types of operations in the State of Texas: breeding only, breeding and hunting, and hunting only. This was calculated using the percent of each type of operation based on the total number of surveys received, multiplied by the total number of distributed surveys. The total number of each type of operation was then multiplied by the corresponding annual estimated operating expense per operation. The second method estimates the total annual expenditures for each type of operation by calculating the total operational costs for each farm type and dividing it by the response rate. This study uses the average of the two estimated total annual production expenses to provide the most accurate estimate of expenses for projecting the economic impacts of the industry on the Texas economy. IMPLAN was used to calculate the economic impact and understand the effect it has on other industries across the different sectors of the economy.

The Texas deer breeding industry generates an estimated $1.09 billion in total economic impacts. This added economic activity supports jobs for 14,351 Texans. The deer breeding industry has proven to be a significant contributor to the state’s economic activity and vital to the stability of rural economies across the state of Texas.