Jurgen Schulz grew up in one of the most intriguing family businesses imaginable, and one that will probably never be duplicated. Many of the world’s zoos, and for that matter, the world’s people, are beneficiaries of the Schulz family’s work, which continues (on a slightly less ambitious scale) in the Texas Hill Country today.

The story starts in 1898, when Jurgen’s grandfather, Christoph Schulz, worked as a chef on a German ship, sailing the west coast of Africa. Seeing the amazing variety of exotic species, Schulz left his job and began capturing animals to take back to Europe. Beginning with chimpanzees, monkeys and birds, Schulz soon expanded his business until he had become the world’s leading supplier of exotic species to big-city zoos. He founded the first “big game ranch” in Africa, and became one of the most famous hunters in Africa. His wife, Elizabeth, managed the finances and traveled with him to care for the captured animals. A 1948 article in the Sydney (Australia) newspaper recalled how Mrs. Schulz had kept the city’s first rhino alive by bottle-feeding it for several weeks.

During World War I, all collection of wildlife was temporarily stopped, and the Schulzes lost their ranch in Tanganyika. They moved to South Africa for several years, then returned to Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in 1925.

Between the two world wars, Chistoph and Elizabeth Schulz rebuilt their business, led some of the most successful hunting expeditions in history, and supplied African game to zoos all over the world. Some of the biggest shipments went to Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Budapest and Rome; the largest consignment was to the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, Illinois. It included the parents of the first rhinos ever bred in captivity.

Christoph and Elizabeth retired in 1937 to travel around the world, leaving the management of the company to their only son, Walter. That same year, their grandson, Jurgen, was born. World War II shut the business down once again, and Walter’s family was forced to stay in Germany for several years. After the war, the family moved to Angola, then to South Africa, South West Africa (now Namibia), where Walter opened the famous Zoopark Okahandja in 1954, and finally Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

Jurgen and his brother, Uwe, were able to get up close and personal with some of the most celebrated species on earth. “My father loved rhinos,” Schulz recalls. His mother kept 80 breeding cheetahs on the family ranch in Namibia; “Cheetahs might be extinct,” he remarks, if it wasn’t for that ranch. She supplied cheetahs to zoos all over the world.

He recalls how the cheetahs were caught: “They have play-trees that they will come back to,” he explains. “She supplied traps to the ranchers who owned the land where a play-tree was found. Sometimes she’d have to wait for months, but the cheetahs would always come back. She didn’t need any bait; the cheetahs were just so nosy that they’d go into the trap. She’d catch the whole group, one by one.”

When Hollywood came to Africa, the Schulz brothers found themselves involved with the movie business. They supplied advice and animals for several films, including the 1965 movie, Sands of the Kalahari, and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. They also continued the family business, taking large consignments of animals to the U.S. and Europe every year. In the late 1960s, Jurgen organized one of only two successful expeditions ever to Ethiopia for the capture of Somalian wild asses.

In 1970, he emigrated to upstate New York, where he became a partner in the famous Catskill Game Farm. His business changed as quarantines and restrictions made it much more difficult to import big game animals from Africa, but he continued his world travels, touring South America on buying trips, and delivering planeloads of llamas and alpacas to New Zealand and Australia.

In 1992, Schulz bought a ranch in Adamsville (his wife, Jani, was raised in Lampasas) and began a new phase of his business. He introduced Boer goats and Dorper sheep to the U.S., along with Somalian wild asses and spotted, blue-eyed dromedaries (or “paint camels”). He also tends herds of several exotic species such as scimitar-horned oryx, sable antelope and zebra. He and Jani live in a beautiful home overlooking a waterhole that looks like “Africa in Texas,” with dozens of exotic animals crowding around. They also manage an auction barn on Hwy 183, near Briggs, where one weekend every six weeks or so they sell all kinds of unique animals and birds: miniature cows, horses and donkeys; antelope, camels and zebras, four or five kinds of deer and a variety of colorful birds, from canaries to macaws. The auction is called “Kifaru,” the Swahili word for “Rhinoceros.”

More recently, the Schulzes bought a ranch in Costa Rica, where they raise cattle and water buffalo in an oceanfront rain forest. “I’ve always lived in dry country,” Schulz says. “It rains every day there, and the wildlife is different. There’s all these pretty birds, and I can see whales and porpoises from the house.” There’s even a “big waterfall” on the property.

Having lived such a cosmopolitan life, Schulz has learned quite a few languages in his time. He says that he speaks German, Afrikaans and English fluently, but also speaks a little Spanish and Dutch. He even can manage a little of the Bushman “clicking” language.

Although he could live just about anywhere he chooses, Schulz has chosen to live in the Texas Hill Country. But he hasn’t forgotten his boyhood home; with the many exotic species he raises, the view from his living room window looks like a little bit of Africa here in Texas.