Brent Burns of the San Jose Sharks prefers to do things his way. On the ice, he excels as a hybrid, elite-level defenseman and point-scorer. Off the ice, his diet is hyper-specific: When he eats meat, he likes it from his own ranch that he and his family maintain in Texas. Burns says he feels healthier when consuming leaner and fresher game, and enjoys the oversight he has over the process of preparing his own meals, a luxury he doesn’t get on the road.

Many professional athletes find and maintain unusual (and expensive) hobbies, but when Burns gets going about how he populated his land with game including white-tailed deer, antelope, and wildebeest—yes, wildebeest—it becomes clear this is more than a hobby. Burns hunts and farms his own food because, he says, he has a genuine love for nature and wildlife.

It took a while to find the right plot of land—roughly two years, in fact—but Texas was always going to be the spot, given that Burns’s wife is from there. “We wanted to get a place where we can go to when everything’s said and done,” he says. “We finally found this place where there was enough space for what we wanted to do. I’m a huge animal lover, and I’ve been collecting all types for a while. I just love them, and I wanted animals to be a part of my kids' lives too.”

In an interview with GQ, Burns talks about maintaining a diet where you’re harvesting your own meat, what it’s like to run a ranch, and why the outdoors are such a special place for him.

GQ: What kind of animals are you raising on the ranch? Is it mostly livestock?

Brent Burns: Actually, we don’t raise any of the animals as livestock—we let everything live naturally there. We have a lot of axis deer, which is a deer from India. It’s really, really good meat, and such a beautiful animal. There’s a lot going on with it, and the rules around it.

Basically, there’s a season when you’re allowed to kill deer—say, for example a white-tailed deer. There’s a way their reproductive schedule works, and a way their antler schedule works, and so on. The hunting season is based on them having babies. You don’t want to hunt a white-tailed deer in the spring because the doe are pregnant. It’s not good for the species to do that. There’s a lot of criticism of hunters and hunting saying that it’s not good for conservation, but the entire thing is based around conservation. Every rule we set is based on keeping the deer herd healthy. For axis deer, there’s summer and winter bucks. So I’m able to hunt them in the summer and not screw anything up.

So is there a sustainability angle to this for you?

That’s a big part of it for sure. I’m also just very into that lifestyle. I love the outdoors and I love animals. I love to watch them, study them, all that. Hunting is difficult on public lands because of how much I have to travel during hockey season. I had to find a different way to get involved. Where we live in California, it’s hard to find deer in season during the winter.

Is that mostly because it’s a geographical thing? I can’t imagine there’s a lot of white-tailed deer in San Jose.

Yeah, it’s a big city that sprawls out, so you have to drive pretty far to find them. There’s unbelievable hunting in California if you go way further north, but it’s just such a long drive and I usually don’t have the time to do that. The ranch was my solution. Getting my family involved, and giving us all the chance to learn about the animals, hunting, and also a healthy supply of the best meat we can have.