Big Bob’s Meats in Midale is entering its third hunting season, and owner Kylie McGregor says the small-town shop has quickly become a go-to spot for custom processing in the southeast.

McGregor branched off from her family’s longtime Regina operation two and a half years ago, opening her own storefront and processing facility in Midale.
“My dad owns Big Bob’s Meats in Regina, and I started my own business here in Midale two and a half years ago,” she said. “This will be our third hunting season that we’re going into.”

While the storefront offers homemade sausage, cold cuts, and a wide range of local products, most of the fall workload comes from hunters bringing in wild game.
“We process everything from beef and pork, bison and wild game animals,” she explained. “We take moose, elk, deer, pronghorn, anything really, and we take them from the carcass, turn them into cuts of meat or into sausage.”

 

Their first year was so busy that it exceeded expectations. “It was almost overwhelmingly busy in our first season,” McGregor said. “Last year, I stopped taking domestic animals during hunting season, and that made it less chaotic. We did that again this year.”

She noted that a few changes to draw seasons made things start slower this fall, but activity has now picked up quickly with the whitetail season underway. “It is going to be a madhouse here pretty quick,” she said.

Alongside running the shop, McGregor and her family are also growing their own bison herd, a project she says has been years in the making. “I have always been fascinated with bison,” she said. “We got our first animals just about two years ago, and this year we had our second round of calves. We are finally ready to expand our herd again.”

 

Their long-term goal is to raise about 30 cow-calf pairs and eventually supply their own meat to the shop once a future on-site slaughter facility is developed. “We are in the initial stages of developing a slaughter plant,” McGregor said. “Once we get that, we will be able to do the whole farm-to-fork thing and purchase animals from local producers and sell that meat in the shop, including our home-raised bison.”

As hunters head out this month, she emphasized one key reminder for anyone planning to bring in an animal. “We take the animals skinned and gutted and clean,” she said. “We do not do any of the skinning here, so that has to be done before it gets here.”

McGregor encourages anyone who has never stopped in to visit the storefront and see what they offer. “A lot of people do not really realize the variety of stuff we have,” she said. “My dad makes all of our sausage and cold cuts up in Regina, and it is all homemade recipes developed by my dad and my papa, the original Big Bob. If people haven’t been here before, they should come check it out.”