Small black letters — as if printed from a label maker — read “Willbur’s Custom Meats,” pasted unassumingly to the door of a simple white building next to a classic family home. An antler hangs above the door frame; it and the words are the only indication that GPS has successfully done its job.
Through the door, the contrast is startling. Warm lighting reveals wooden walls adorned with taxidermy — deer and elk and even a bobcat. Shelves and hooks house homemade goods for sale, mostly wax melts and candles for the season. An empty wall with labels like “peppermint” “cherry coke” “mesquite” is the only indication of this business’ popular beef jerky, well stocked in the summer months.
They’ve been operating out of this space for eight years now, and the decision to open this meat-processing business happened organically for longtime Henefer residents William “Willbur” and Crystal Larsen.
The couple grew up in the small Summit County town at the opening of Weber Canyon, met at North Summit High School and stayed to raise their own family.
Hunting had always been a big part of their lives, like most people whose families settled in the Wasatch Back.
“We’ve cut our own meat forever, and that’s how I grew up, was hunting, cutting our own stuff. Then she did taxidermy,” said Willbur. “So we had a lot of hunters coming in.”
Like good neighbors, they helped others cut and prepare their meat. And along with taxidermy, Crystal had a talent of coming up with jerky flavors.
“When we were cutting our own, I’d make our own jerky all the time, and then his friends would try it, and they’d bring me, ‘Can you make me some jerky?’ So I’d already making jerky for people, just for fun,” she said.
The two started to think, what if they made a business out of it?
“It was just kind of a, ‘What do you think? Should we try this?’ Because there’s a need. There was a big need back then — this was in 2016 — and you could see there was a need. There was nobody around,” Willbur said.
So, he dropped to part time at the cement plant in Croyden, and they opened for business, and the response was immediate.
“It just went like woosh, overwhelming, too-much-to-handle craziness,” Willbur remembered.
After four years, Willbur quit at the cement plant in 2020, and the couple has been running their business full-time since.
And no, it has not slowed down.
“There’s always a need for somebody to cut wild game, and a lot of folks don’t like wild game,” Willbur said.
It’s the taste that some don’t like, especially deer, which is what makes Crystal’s jerky so popular. They had 14 different jerky flavors available this year, not just the usual teriyaki and hot pepper, but also peppermint, raspberry jalapeño, and their most popular? Cherry coke.
Last year they made around 9,000 pounds of jerky, and cherry coke was possibly half of it, said Willbur.
How does Crystal come up with the flavors, does she have a culinary background? Willbur chuckles at that.
“No, I couldn’t even cook when we first got married,” Crystal said. “It’s just learning. I would get an idea, ‘What about Cherry Coke?’ which he thought was nuts. I’m like, ‘OK, what seasonings taste like Cherry Coke?’ Make a couple batches until I get it how I like it.”
The jerky can be made from pretty much any meat, and they’ve done everything from deer, elk, moose, buffalo, antelope, beef and pork. As well as jerky, they do meat sticks, sausage, summer sausage and brats, and they also do classic cuts like steaks, roasts and burgers.
Hunting permits are released for specific windows, which start around Aug. 1 with and finish out mid-November. But September is when it gets the most crazy with limited-entry hunts.
“There’s muzzleloader deer, muzzleloader elk, rifle elk, rifle deer, and it’s all just continuous, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,” said Willbur.
Which means their freezer — which can hold around 60 deer — gets full, fast.
“Normally I like to hang them for 10 to 14 days,” said Willbur. “It’ll be a little more tender. A lot of people say you don’t have to do that, you don’t need to age wild game, which I think is nonsense, but that’s me, and I’m not a professional. I just go off of what we’ve always done.”
It’s best when people bring their animal to him cool, clean and dry, though it gets hard when people don’t have large freezers to hang it for him. The better condition the animal is kept, the more yield they’ll get from the meat. Once Willbur’s finished cutting, Crystal will start on the jerky process, grinding then mixing the flavors. They’ll get behind pretty quickly with the timing, so they’ll freeze it so it will keep until she can dry it into jerky.
Everything is meticulously labeled and sorted, ensuring they can keep everyone’s meat separate.
“I don’t know how many other plants or places guarantee your own meat back, even with all this stuff, but we do, and we always have, and that’s another reason we started it,” Willbur said.
With a small space like theirs, juggling cutting and jerky-making gets tricky. Willbur said, when the dehydrators start for the jerky, it gets humid and hot in the space, so he’ll come out every morning around 3:30 a.m. to start cutting the meat before getting “cooked” out of the space.
After eight years, they’re still busting at the seams, even with other processing plants like theirs popping up around town, some just down the road.
“There could be probably five of us on the same road, and you’d all be full,” Willbur said. “I’ve had people ask, ‘Well, what if we built a building, make it bigger and hire people,’ because they want a place. They’re tired of not being able to get into a place. You harvest an animal, you want to know it’s going to be taken care of. And anymore, people don’t like doing it yourself either.”
But, expanding is not part of their plan, happy with business for now. With such limited space, they prioritize their own community when accepting animals.
“We try to do just the local people’s stuff. We try to stay away from all the big outfitter, out-of-state people because they don’t come back. And so we try to take all the locals we can, and there’s more than we can take,” Willbur said.
Coalville resident Lacy Brundy said her family has been a Willbur’s Custom Meats client for 10 years now, even before the business started. Depending on the hunts they do, they’ll have Willbur cut and process their wild game, usually ordering back straps, summer sausage and jerky for deer, steaks and burgers for elk, their favorite game meat.
This year, her son Rhett got his first deer, which is already at Willbur’s getting processed.
“I feel hunting has taught our boys many life skills,” Brundy said. “They will be able to put food on their families’ tables, they know the value of a life because of hunting, they understand family traditions and how important they are to us to pass down to the next generation.”
For their family, hunting is also a way to spend time in the beautiful mountains.
“We love just being out in God’s country and seeing places that not many people get to see and enjoy being there. A few years ago I drew a Cooperative Wildlife Management Unit tag and was able to hunt in a place that very select people are able to hunt, and to see a place like that is absolutely amazing,” she said.
Willbur’s love of hunting echoes a similar sentiment, though he’s had to sacrifice it for the business because there’s just not enough time.
“I chose an occupation that takes me away from it, which really sucks, because I love it,” he said. “(Though) it’s a lot different than when I grew up because you could hunt most places, with just asking permission, doing stuff for them.”
Now, hunting is primarily on public land, and there are not as many public lands near there. Plus, the experience has been commercialized.
“It’s for the out-of-state hunter now. The big outfitters. They’re making tons and tons of money,” he said. “They just come here for a five-day hunt, get their animal, try to get it processed here, and then they ship it.”
While the couple is maxed out with clients for wild game, their homemade beef jerky and sausage and brats are usually available during the summer months for sale at their little store. That’s the best time to grab a bag of the cherry coke jerky and see what it’s all about.
The couple said they aren’t planning on going anywhere.
“Our kids don’t want anything to do with this,” Willbur said with a laugh, admitting they might’ve burnt out on the work when the business first started. “It’s just me and her, and we’ll do it ’til we can’t or win the lottery.”
