It’s hunting season, which means Josh “Fuzzy” Pallister is working almost nonstop. “I’m here every day, all day,” he says on a recent morning, looking around his white-walled packinghouse from his customary position next to the cutting board.
Under hanging green and black hoses in his custom-built shop along Upper Valley Road, bloody elk ribs spill out of a wheelbarrow along one wall. Inside a freezer, rows of white-paper wrapped meats present a label and year (“Polish 25” or “Tenderloin 24”). One room over is Pallister’s taxidermy gallery: pronghorn, mountain lion, black bear, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, moose, and more.
One room further, next to the walk-in fridge, cattle and game are hung by their haunches for carving. And so ever-present they’re part of the scenery are Ken Jonasen and Frank “Stormy” Knight, Pallister’s hunting buddies for some 40 years. Once he opened the facility, his two friends just started pitching in, without pay, and have returned every year since.
