There are a lot of unique eateries in Alabama, but there aren’t a lot of them that offer customers the chance first to meet a bison (or elk or gator or…) and then eat one.

Except, of course, for Bama Bucks Steakhouse, Wild Game Restaurant and Exotic Animal Park in Boaz, where diners can spend their wait time getting up-close and personal with black bears, lemurs and more before chowing down on a elk steak.

“It’s just been kind of a passion of mine for a long time,” said Bama Bucks Owner Terry Turk when reflecting on how the unique restaurant came to be. “I guess the reason this all really got started is I’ve always wanted to raise white-tailed deer. When I was a kid, there was a neighbor where my aunt and uncle used to live and they kept a little white-tail deer. I’d always go down there and look at it and I thought it would just be so cool to be able to do that someday.”

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Someday arrived many years later when Turk, while working in Florence, met a man who offered to help him get started. Little did he know then that taking on a few fawns would ultimately turn into an exotic animal park and wild game restaurant that attracts customers from all over the South and beyond.

“I got six fawns that first year,” said Turk. “That was almost 27 years ago, and since then, we have probably raised, honest to goodness, somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 fawns. And along the way, we started bringing in some elk and buffalo and so on.”

Turk said they first got into the business of animal encounters by hosting birthday parties with camel rides and baby animal visits on the weekends at the barn and pavilion they’d built on the property. As interest continued to rise, Turk said they considered opening a small concession stand before deciding – albeit hesitantly on his wife Jennifer’s part — to go bigger than that.

“I told my wife we need to do something a little bit more here,” said Turk. “We need a place people can come in out of cold and out of heat, where they can sit down, and they can eat. I kept asking her about a restaurant, and we went back and forth on it. And she kept saying no, no, no. And finally, she caved in and said you do whatever you want to do. You’re going to do it anyway. I just took that as permission and went with it.”

With that, Bama Bucks Steakhouse, Wild Game Restaurant and Exotic Animal Park opened in 2018.

The restaurant includes a full menu of gourmet wild game dishes like Creole-battered gator bites, bison lasagna, elk steak and more that guests would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere, in addition to more traditional fare like pulled pork barbecue, grilled chicken and shrimp alfredo. Among its signature items is the Bama Bucks burger, which includes a bison patty topped with bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion, bison chili, slaw, an onion ring, cheese and a fried egg.

While guests are waiting to be seated, they can pay $5 to tour the grounds and see some of the more than 300 animals, including ostriches, black bears, deer and kangaroos that call the 55-acre park home. They can also view elk, bison and other animals that are offered up on the Bama Bucks menu, though none of the park’s animals ever end up on one of the restaurant’s plates.

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Turk said while he wants every meal at Bama Bucks, which is housed in a rustic-style cabin that seats 100, to be memorable, he hopes customers leave feeling like they were served a one-of-a-kind experience along with it.

“I want people to have a good time,” said Turk. “We have a lot of people that drive three to five hours to come in this place, and I want to give them what they’re expecting. I don’t even want to meet their expectations – I want to be above that. For a lot of people, it’s their very first time to encounter this stuff, like maybe it’s the first time they’ve ever eaten an elk steak or it might be the first time they’ve ever had gator. Maybe it’s the first time they’ve ridden a camel or held a baby kangaroo.

When people come here, I hear them talk. I’ll pass by a table going out and hear someone say, ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever done that,’ and it could be somebody that’s 75 or 80 years old, but they’ve just encountered something they’ve never got to do before. And you know, that’s really satisfying to me. That’s what I like to see.”

Bama Bucks is located at 292 Bryant Road in Boaz. It’s open to the public from 4 p.m. until 9 p.m. on Thursdays, 11 a.m. until 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. on Sundays. Private tours are also available. For more information, visit the Bama Bucks website.