A funny thing happened on the way to Don Clapper’s contemplated career as a physical education teacher and wrestling coach.

He took a detour into the meat business and never left.

Clapper, who owns Don’s Country Smokehouse in Evergreen, saw his passion for sausage and cured meat products pay off last month when he won the coveted overall grand champion award at the Montana Meat Processors Association cured meats competition.

To accomplish the feat, he earned eight awards to accumulate enough points for the overall title.

Winning is nothing new for the longtime meat processor. He’s got a wall full of award plaques at his meat shop that testify to his accomplishments at both the state and national level. Clapper’s chopped-and-formed beef jerky took first-place honors at the American Association of Meat Processors competition several years ago.

Working long hours in the trade isn’t as much about winning as it is about making something people enjoy eating, he said.

“It’s the gratification of [processing] people’s meat and them getting back a product they like,” he said.

CLAPPER, 55, spent the early years of his life on a farm east of Kalispell where his grandfather, Rue Carr, had a dairy that later was sold to the Leighty brothers. His family moved to Evergreen when he was 5, and he went on to wrestle in elementary school, Flathead High School and the Oregon College of Education, now Western Oregon State University.

He graduated from college in 1979 with a degree in secondary education, specializing in physical education and health. To make ends meet during college, he took a job at a meat market in Independence, Ore., where the owner of German descent took him on as an apprentice.

“I was trained into doing sausage the old-fashioned way,” Clapper said. “He taught me his recipes.”

After completing his student teaching at a “rough” school, Clapper wasn’t sure he was destined for a career as a teacher. He returned to Kalispell and set up a small meat-processing facility in his father’s garage.

Word got around quickly about the quality of Clapper’s wild-game sausage and jerky, and by the middle of hunting season that first year he had 150 frozen carcasses piled up in the garage.

“I loved to take people’s deer and elk and make it into something they enjoyed eating,” he said.

The next year Clapper took out a loan and built the shop he still has at 226 Edgewood Drive, off East Evergreen Drive.

Although some wild-game processors batch customers’ wild game meat together to save time, Clapper is a stickler about making sure each customer gets his own wild game meat back, whether it’s made into sausage, jerky or steaks and hamburger.

“I can do five-pound batches,” he said. “And if it comes in under five pounds I’ll add beef brisket or pork shoulder” to reach the five-pound mark.

During hunting season it’s not uncommon for Clapper to put in 18- to 20-hour days. The customer satisfaction always has been what’s kept him going.

He admits his prices are a little higher than many wild-game processors, but it’s because he guarantees quality.

“I even get tips with the prices the way they are,” he said. For many hunters, it’s well worth the money because they finally have a product that their wives will eat.

Clapper just finished processing the last of the wild game meat in his freezer from the 2011 hunting season, and he expects “quite a few bears” from the spring hunting season.

IN ADDITION to the custom meat processing, Clapper developed a solid retail business at his shop. The retail portion of his business was put on hold two years ago, though, when the county Health Department insisted on a number of costly upgrades before he could continue selling his products.

At the same time, he was hit with a $50,000 bill to pay for his mother-in-law’s nursing-home care after her long-term care insurance ran out.

To help pay the bills, Clapper went to work full time at Stampede Packing Co. in Kalispell, the company where the Redneck brand sausage and cured meat products are produced. It’s an interim job, he noted, until he can make the needed improvements at his shop and resume his retail trade. Clapper estimates being fully back at his own shop by June 2013.

For now, he works at Stampede by day and processes wild game at his shop after hours and on weekends. His wife, Linda, has been nudging him to take some time off, and Clapper envisions the day eventually will come when he can once again linger at his favorite fishing hole.

Before his retail business was put on hold, Clapper had a growing fan club for his snack sticks that came in unique flavors such as huckleberry, honey and cheese, and jalapeno, cheese and horseradish. He also had developed a growing customer base for grilling sausages such as bratwurst and party trays with meats and cheese he smoked himself.

At the annual state meat processors convention, Clapper is a consistent winner in several categories, including bacon and smoked turkey. Three years ago the head judge noted Clapper’s smoked turkey was “the most perfect turkey” he’d ever judged.

Clapper said his secret is using a fresh turkey, and they’re extremely hard to find this time of year.

A first-place winner this year for Clapper was his cured and peppered pressed beef roll.

Innovation is the name of the game, he said, noting how some of his products use unconventional ingredients to get the flavor he wants. One of his snack stick varieties uses Honey Bunches of Oats cereal in the base seasoning.

“People have been amazed with the variety,” he said.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.