Charities expecting to bag deer this season

DAILY MAIL STAFF

There will likely be more than a quarter-million deer killed inWest Virginia in the current and upcoming hunting seasons, but mostof the hunters won't be able to eat all of what they take from thewoods.

And most hunters believe that wasting what you kill isn't huntingfor sport, it's something to be ashamed of.

But charities that get the meat from hunters into food pantriesand soup kitchens are helping the state's sportsmen enjoy more daysin the field and less concern about a freezer full of uneatenvenison.

With a deer herd about 1 million strong and new opportunities tohunt this season, which will allow the most committed hunters to takeas many as eight animals legally, the charities are expecting to seea banner year.

"It's gone up every year that we've been doing it, and I thinkthis is going to be the best one yet," said Jim Miller, a Martinsburg-area hunter who started the state chapter of Farmers and HuntersFeeding the Hungry in 2000. "I think this is the year that we'regoing to have to put a limit on. I hate to say it, but I don't thinkwe're going to be able to handle everything that comes in."

The problem is that butchering and packing deer costs money andhas to be done in a certified processing center.

A small, faith-based organization like Miller's struggles to paythe $35 to $50 it costs to handle a deer, even when its totalcollections number 174 animals, as they did last year. While eachdeer represents about 50 pounds of usable meat, getting 8,700 poundsof venison to the needy is an expensive undertaking.

"We'd like to do more - the hunters are there and the deer sureare there, it's just the money that's the hard part," Miller said."If we had more processors, we could do more."

Imagine then the challenge for the Hunters Helping the Hungryprogram, sponsored by the state Division of Natural Resources, whichcollected 2,520 deer throughout the central and southern parts of thestate last year.

That translated into 80,390 pounds of ground deer meat, mostlydistributed through the Mountaineer Food Bank. But that meat costalmost $105,000 to get from car bumpers to soup pots.

"The big challenge for us is that the law won't allow us to putany money from the DNR into the actual program - feeding people isn'tunder our job description," said Marshall Snedegar, who oversees theprogram for the state. "So we rely on other people to provide thefunding."

Grant money from the DHHR covers some of the cost and the programraises enough to cover the rest, but Snedegar said that they could doso much more.

"We've only got processing centers in 19 counties. We should be inat least 40 counties," Snedegar said. "There's still a lot of peopleout there that we could be helping."

The organizations that take the meat typically run out byspringtime. Organizations like the Mountaineer Food Bank could holdthe meat in large freezers and keep individuals and soup kitchensstocked until summer.

With more than 300,000 West Virginian's living in poverty, theleaders of the outreaches think there is still plenty of demand.

"My grandfather came up in the Depression and he always taught usthat it is a sin to waste food - if you can't use what you've got getit to somebody who can," Miller said. "That's all this is, justcommon sense."

To contact Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry about a donationor setting up a county chapter, call Miller at (304) 263-2983 orvisit the group's Web site at www.fhfh.org and follow the links forthe West Virginia chapter.

To donate to Hunters Helping the Hungry contact Snedegar at 558-2771 or visit the program's Web site at www.wvdnr.gov/Hunting/HHH.shtm.

Writer Chris Stirewalt can be reached at 348-4824 or by e-mail atcstire@dailymail.com.