It’s nice to be able to sit down and enjoy a nice venison dish from time to time at your dinner table. After all, you spent countless hours in your treestand or ground blind waiting for the perfect shot. Money was spent on equipment, licenses and permits, and gas getting to and from your destination.
But take a close look at your situation. Is it like it was a century ago, when killing a deer meant the difference between your family going hungry and having a full belly? For most of us, that’s not the case at all. Whether we kill a deer or not, we’ll have food on the table.
As fortunate as most of us are, we will not worry about where our next meal comes from, whether it be the local grocery store or the woods; we’ll be able to enjoy a nice meal without many worries. The sad truth is that there are families in our state, in our community, maybe down the road, that is not as fortunate as you or me.
My family can kill a deer or two each year and be satisfied with the venison that is in our freezer. But where the problem lies is that we enjoy hunting, but there’s no need to continue hunting if we did not need the venison. We eventually found a family that would take a deer each fall from us for their freezer if we could get them one, and we were happy to donate the meat to them. After a few years they moved away, and we were left wandering what to do with extra deer if we have one. Then we discovered an organization called Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry (FHFH).
We still donate deer to any local families that we know of, but they’re not always known to us. But now we have another outlet for deer that will help feed many families in our community, families that otherwise might not get the needed protein that venison provides.
Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry was founded by Rick Wilson after he saw firsthand the need to help families after helping a single mother load a six-point buck that was lying dead along the side of a Virginia highway into the trunk of her beat-up car. Seeing the look in the woman’s eyes when she knew she would be able to take meat home to her children was a wake-up call for Rick to get the ball rolling on a program that can help provide needy families with venison.
When asking what the mission of FHFH is, the answer is simple. FHFH is an outreach ministry of the people of God called upon to feed venison to the hungry among us nationwide.
Donating a deer to the organization is a very simple task. Hunters simply check in their harvested deer as they normally would. Once the deer has been checked in, find one of the participating meat processors in your state, or any other state for that matter, and deliver the field-dressed deer. Don’t worry about having to pay to have the deer processed. Donations from churches, clubs, businesses, and individuals cover all expenses involved with processing, packaging, and freezing the meat.
Once the meat is frozen, it’s available free for pick-up by local food banks or feeding programs. Individuals are rarely, if ever, allowed to go directly to the processor to pick-up donated meat. From the work I have done with FHFH, all the meat is ground into burger, making it easier to prepare nutritious meals.
I hope you don’t think there’s no need or want for donated venison. The statistics are sad when it comes to people who need this meat. Over 33 million people — 10.5 percent of all American households — have an insufficient amount of food in their house. That’s 20 million adults and 13 million children that do not have enough food. It is not anyone’s fault that there is not enough food in these houses. Times are tough, and many people are scraping together what they can to get by. Buying enough food to keep going, and paying the bills, is about all that is available to these households. I bet if you were to ask, many people would rather not have to ask for free venison, but they appreciate that it is there for them.
Some of the most impacted are children. Studies show that children who do not eat properly have trouble concentrating and bonding with other children and are more likely to be ill, which causes missed school days. If you’d like to help this upcoming deer season, go to fhfh.org and learn how and where you can donate your tax-deductible deer donation. If you’d like to donate money to help with processing costs, or would like to start a program in your community, the information is also on the website. If you plan a hunt out west this fall and bag an elk or antelope, they’d be happy to receive this meat as well.
Hunt and eat the venison you’d like this fall. But if you have enough venison, and would like to continue to hunt, consider donating your deer to an organization that will put it to good use.
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Photos: Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry
