Texas Officials Kill Off Deer Breeder’s Entire Herd, Ending Yearslong Legal War Over CWD Management

The depopulation of 249 whitetails at RW Trophy Ranch puts an end to what state officials have called “the worst-ever CWD outbreak” in Texas history

It’s taken more than two years and five attempts, but on May 28 Texas health and wildlife officials killed every remaining captive whitetail deer on Robert Williams’ high-fence ranch in Kaufman County. Officials say the state-ordered depopulation was long overdue and it closes a tumultuous legal battle that pitted the 85-year-old deer breeder against the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

A team of 68 state workers killed, dissected, and disposed of 249 whitetails at RW Trophy Ranch, according to a TPWD spokesperson. They shot all but a few of those with firearms, as Williams and his daughter Maree Lou Williams had personally euthanized three of their oldest deer before workers arrived. This included a 15-year-old breeder buck named Monarch Supreme, and an older doe that Maree Lou had bottle-fed as a fawn.

“All of [Maree Lou’s] does were pets, but she had one particular doe that would have gone inside the house and slept with her,” Williams tells Outdoor Life. “We darted ‘em and put ‘em down humanely. I just didn’t feel like that old 15-year-old buck deserved such rotten treatment … I should’ve done ‘em all that way.”

Williams says he begged officials to run the deer through chutes — like the ones used to inoculate cattle — while shooting them, but that the workers shot the deer as they ran back and forth in their pens instead. The whole operation, which included the processing and disposal of the deer, occurred between the hours of 7 p.m. and 3:30 a.m., according to TPWD.