The Hilsman Legacy

Bill Hilsman recognizes the 1986 Big Buck Contest first-place winner Shane Calhoun of Worth County. (Right) Bill admires the extraordinary buck taken by Shane, then 18 years old. After taking this unbelievable 195 4/8-inch non-typical giant in Worth County in November of 1985, Shane won a spanking new Ford Ranger pickup truck.

“We used Hilsman’s Deer Cooler for the first time this year. They are by far the best processor we’ve EVER used!!! The meat is absolutely amazing!!! I made country fried steak tonight and it was so tender I could cut it with a fork!!! I can’t wait to use them in the future!!! Lifelong customers now.” Kesha Nuckols, Jan. 2023.

Most people you know love good venison. And when it comes to skinning deer and cutting up the meat, we seldom associate that task with quality and excellence. Yet if we take our deer to a cooler to be processed, we expect the meat to be clean, neatly packaged and delicious to eat. That doesn’t always happen. We’ve all heard stories about getting deer meat back that is bloodshot and covered in hair. That’s the last thing a hunter or his family wants or expects from the processor. If you’ve ever talked to anyone who says, “Yeah, I had venison one time and it was awful,” you’re probably talking to someone who ate meat that was not properly processed.

When Bill Hilsman started his deer processing business in McDonough back in the early 1970s, those two words—quality and excellence—defined who he was. During the nearly 50 years that Bill Hilsman plied his trade, he took the art of cutting and packaging deer meat to a new level. In so doing, he became known statewide for setting the gold standard for excellence in the processing of venison.

Bill was running a bait and tackle shop on Highway 81 south of McDonough back in 1970 when he got the idea to build a refrigerated deer cooler as a service to his customers. Some of those customers had complained they couldn’t find a place to hang their deer, and Bill had faced the same problem himself. So he saw it as a golden opportunity to start a new business and serve the many deer hunters he knew. Later on, after he sold his bait and tackle shop, the new owner wasn’t interested in running the deer cooler.  

“Daddy didn’t have a way of getting the cooler from the store down to our original nine acres on Old Jackson Road, so he put it on rollers and literally dragged it down Highway 81 and down Old Jackson Road to our place and set it up just behind the house,” says Robert Hilsman, Bill’s son, who now lives in the original homeplace and runs the processing business with the third-generation Hilsman, his son Robbie. 

“Daddy bought a saw from a man who was getting out of the business, and that man taught him how to cut up deer,” Robert remembers. “That was the start of a business that’s been going strong for roughly 57 years now.”

Bill soon expanded the capacity of his cooler to hold about 100 deer. How times change! Today, Robert and Robbie operate three large coolers with a holding capacity of up to 600 deer.

A Way Of Life For Hilsmans

Robert has been involved in the deer processing business for most of his life. 

“It’s just what I do,” Robert says. “Daddy put me to work skinning deer when I was 13. I remember once when I was in high school I badly wanted to go to a Friday night football game.  Daddy told me I could go after I finished skinning all the deer we had taken in that day. ‘And those deer better be clean when you finish!’ Daddy warned. That night I skinned 14 deer in three hours. When I finished, Daddy said, ‘Okay, you can go to the game now.’ I looked at him and said, ‘I’m too tired. I’m going home and going to bed!’ And that’s what I did,” Robert said.       

Robert Hilsman took over his father Bill’s deer processing business in 2018.

“Daddy was a perfectionist. He was always thinking about how to do things better. My son Robbie is probably a lot more like him than I’ll ever be. But since I was around Daddy and the processing business so much as I was growing up, I think a lot of what Daddy did rubbed off on me in a good way. I was always watching him, always listening to what he said and taking it all in. So when he retired back in 2017 at age 80, I pretty much knew everything about the physical part of running the business. What I didn’t know much about was all the office work and bookkeeping that was involved. I had to learn that part and it wasn’t easy.”

Not only did he want to give his customers the best service possible in processing their venison, Bill Hilsman had a creative side that saw no limits. Around 1980, after the business had been thriving for a number of years, he started serving free barbeque lunches to his customers on opening day of gun season. 

Shortly after that he started holding an annual Big Buck Contest each season and giving away a brand-new Ford truck for the buck with the largest antlers. Other prizes like 4-wheelers and pop-up campers went to hunters with the second largest antlers and heaviest weights. The contest became a popular annual event.

“Daddy had a booth at the World Congress Center in 1983 at the big deer show sponsored by a North American Whitetail and Game & Fish Publications. After that, he attended the Buckarama each year to advertise the contest. All of the prizes were given away at the Fisharama in the spring,” Robert said.  

Henry County and the McDonough area has undergone dramatic population growth and development, but a tradition remains—Hilsman’s Deer Cooler still operates on Old Jackson Road.

“After promoting the Big Deer Contest at the Buckarama for several years, Steve Burch approached Daddy one day and told him he was interested in doing a similar truck giveaway contest for GON subscribers. By that time, it was getting to be more than Daddy could handle, and he was more than happy to let Steve take over the contest and continue the tradition. But we kept serving barbeque to hunters on opening day for several more years. My granddaddy, John Robert, was always in charge of cooking the barbecue. On the 10th and final year, Granddaddy stayed up all night cooking. The next day we served over 800 plates to hunters. That was a record for us.”           

All of that publicity was obviously very good for business. 

“The highest number of deer we ever processed was 2,300 in the early 1990s,” Robert remembers. “For the past 15 or 20 years, we probably averaged processing between 1,700 and 1,800 deer. Daddy’s last year to work was in 2017. He had been at it for about 47 years. After that, my son and I took over. Daddy passed away on August 11, 2018. 

“Daddy touched so many lives,” Robert said. “You wouldn’t believe all the people who came to his service and stood up and talked about him. He always said he wouldn’t give his customers meat he wouldn’t eat himself. He wanted that meat to be grocery-store quality. I think his legacy that still lives on today is how much we care about what we do. We’ve always had the policy of processing one deer at a time so that the owner of that meat knows he’s getting the deer he shot. Daddy always said, ‘If we don’t care about what we do, how can we expect people to come back?’”     

Robbie Hilsman weighs a deer as Robert fills out a processing ticket for a hunter.

As one might imagine, the deer processing business is a seven-day-a-week job for four grueling months during deer season. Skinning deer and processing the meat is hard work.

“But it’s also a way of life,” Robert says. “Back in my younger days, I was always watching Daddy and learning. I was always listening to what he said. That really came in handy when Robbie and I had to take over the business in 2018 shortly after daddy was gone. It was a very trying year. We had a compressor go out and we lost both coolers the first week of bow season. In warm weather, you can’t leave deer outside for very long or they spoil. I prayed to Daddy to help us out more than once and somehow those prayers were answered. We made it through without losing a single deer.”

Bill had a lifelong love for dogs, and he was widely known for his amazing dog-training skills. During the early 2000s, he gave obedience classes at his home in McDonough and for a time served as president of the Georgia Piedmont Region K-9 Search and Rescue. This also led to helping local hunters find lost deer with Darcey, his legendary female German Shepherd. That dog later found two murder victims and several drowning victims.  

Bill also started a program that provided meat to a local food bank. Back in  the early 2000s he was charging $55 to process a deer. He added $1 to the price of processing (a fee his customers were glad to pay) to help cover his costs for processing deer that were donated to the food bank. Hilsman’s Deer Cooler ended up giving hundreds of pounds of nutritious and delicious ground venison to that food bank.

Sponsored in part by Budweiser, Bill Hilsman’s 1986 Big Buck Contest boasted a new Ford Ranger 4×4 for the largest antlers and numerous other prizes for other winners in various categories.

Speaking of ground venison, Robert tells a story about his dad that shows what kind of person Bill Hilsman truly was. 

“One of daddy’s competitors, a Mr. Miller, had moved his deer processing operation from Clayton County down to Henry County. During the peak of the season one year, his meat grinder went bad, and he called Daddy and asked him if he could send him all of his customers. Daddy didn’t want to take away Mr. Miller’s customers, so he said, ‘Why don’t you just come down here and use my extra grinder as much as you need to so you don’t lose any customers.’ 

“Daddy often said, ‘We can’t possibly process every single deer,’ and he was happy to help his competitors out whenever he could.”      

Today, through hard work and dedication to their customers, three generations of Hilsmans have successfully run their own business and shared their little piece of the American dream. People often ask Robert what time the deer cooler closes. His answer is always the same… “After the last customer drives away.”

In 2005, in addition to providing 700 pounds of ground venison, Bill Hilsman’s idea of charging $1 extra for every deer processed allowed him to donate $500 to Donna Crumbley, who was the president of Helping In His Name Ministries, also know as The Food Pantry. “The meat was such a nutritious addition to our food resources, especially at times when we had no other meat to give to clients,” said Donna. The $500 donation enabled the organization to purchase 3,125 pounds of food from the Atlanta Community Food Bank, she said.

“We’re open every day from opening day of bow season in September to the last day of the regular gun season except Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,” Robert says. “Robbie skins almost every deer. He’s unbelievable. We spend a lot of time together cutting them up. It’s hard work, but we love what we do. However, I don’t mind telling you that when the last day of the season gets here, we’re ready to shut things down!”