Crystal Wise
No one can say Ryan Mordecai doesn’t operate a business built on service.
A customer told Mordecai he was selling his ranch he had just bought.
“He was telling me this story, and he said, ‘But the problem I have is this buffalo on it. I want the meat, but I can’t catch it. It’s so mean. It attacks me, attacks the kids …’ yada, yada, yada.
“I said, ‘Well, let’s go shoot it.’ He kind of laughed like you did and said, ‘You would shoot that thing?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’”
The customer got his meat, and Mordecai added a buffalo head to an immense taxidermy collection, a trove he has assembled over the course of a lifetime of aiming and firing.
Meet Ryan Mordecai, regional president of Third Coast Bank and big game hunter, who has harvested all over the world. He is also a board member of the Sportsmen’s Club of Fort Worth, which is dedicated to outdoor and wildlife charitable and educational activities for children.
Soon, much of his collection will find a new home in his new office home on West Seventh Street. Currently, the big stuff is in storage waiting for transport. His home is not an option.
“My wife has a no-dead-things-in-the-house policy,” he says.
Fair enough. We took a peek at what he has hanging in his office at the moment.
What you see in the picture above with Mordecai, from left:
1. For his 40th birthday, Mordecai treated himself to a hunting trip to New Zealand. A flight into Auckland was followed by a drive to Wellington. The party then took a train into the mountains of Riverdale to hunt red stag and follow deer. "The stag meat is so good," he says. "It tastes like elk." Pictured is a fallow deer.
2. This chital deer, or spotted deer, native to India, was imported roughly 100 years ago to Texas. "Now, they're roaming all over South Texas. Generally, males will have six points, three on each side." This guy was harvested in the Rocksprings-Lake Junction area.
3. This biggun was found in Illinois. A friend who helps Mordecai find ideal hunting locales put him in touch with a farmer for this 230-incher. "I always told him that I wanted to shoot an over 200-inch low-fence deer. I'll go wherever. He found a farmer in Illinois. He asked if I could do it. I was on a plane three or four days later and sitting in a corn field in Illinois. It walked out ... ."
And below:
Mordecai says he met the limits on mallards and wood duck on a trip to a friend's ranch in Putnam, a town near Abilene. "He has a big body of water on his ranch. He was telling us that these ducks just keep dumping in on this place. They're coming in ... all green heads. We're like, 'Yeah, right.' Sure enough, he wasn't exaggerating."
Crystal Wise