• Feeding the hungry is a public-private partnership everyone can get behind.
By Jim Low
It started out small. In 1991, the Columbia Area Archers (CAA) organized an effort to share Missouri’s growing white-tailed deer bounty with indigent families. Archers who took part in the Charitable Deer Meat Donation Program that year donated venison from their kills to the Ann Carlson Emergency Food Pantry.
Donations that first year totaled a mere 37 pounds, but the amount grew each year. The program soon attracted the attention of powerful partners. The Conservation Federation of Missouri saw it as an opportunity for hunters to polish their public image. The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) – looking ahead to the time when deer might become so numerous that hunting alone couldn’t keep their numbers in check – saw the program as a way to encourage hunters to shoot more deer. Bass Pro Shops saw a way of boosting sales of hunting gear, and Shelter Insurance decided it made more sense to harvest deer with guns than with minivans.
The social and economic clout of these partners unleashed a juggernaut that none could have imagined. CFM took on the job of coordinating STH efforts statewide. Conservation agents recruited civic clubs, churches, Scout troops and other grassroots organizations to organize local venison donation programs across the state. These citizen groups worked with food pantries, Salvation Army posts and other charitable organizations to identify needy recipients. Meat processors were able to employ more workers grinding donated deer into burger in facilities inspected by state health officials.
To encourage hunters to donate whole deer, CFM, MDC, Bass Pro Shops, Shelter Insurance, the National Wild Turkey Federation and other partners ponied up cash to cover the cost of processing. Archers and firearms hunters, who loved being in the woods but could only eat so much venison, embraced this new, high-minded motive to extend their hunting season. With all this help and a new, catchier name, Share the Harvest (STH) soon was channeling more than a quarter of a million pounds of meat annually to people who needed it most. By the time STH turned 20, it had given needy Missourians more than 2 million pounds of lean, organic, free-range meat. Going into its 25th year, STH has passed the 3 million-pound mark. That’s 8 million servings.
“It’s a real pleasure for us to see how our little program has grown,” says Denny Ballard, former president of the Columbia Area Archers and one of STH’s founders. “From that little seed came something that has helped thousands of people in need and will continue doing so for many years.”
STH was a godsend to food banks through the relatively prosperous 1990s and 2000s. When the Great Recession bottomed out early in the current decade, STH became an indispensable part of keeping food on Missourians’ tables, especially in hard-hit rural areas. Unfortunately, the increased need for venison coincided with a dip in deer numbers statewide. Severe heat and drought in 2012 and 2013 triggered locally devastating outbreaks of blue tongue and the closely related epizootic hemorrhagic disease. As a result, STH donations have declined, falling below 200,000 pounds for the 2016-17 hunting season. STH sponsors expect that figure to rebound as deer numbers recover in the areas hardest hit by hemorrhagic diseases. But this isn’t automatic. Hunters get into the habit of passing up chances to shoot second or third deer, hoping to aid recovering deer numbers. So STH donations could lag behind the actual recovery.
As an act of faith, I donated the first deer I shot last year – a fine, fat yearling doe – to STH. My karmic investment paid off later in the season, when I shot a big-bodied spike buck for my freezer and, later, an even bigger doe, which I gave to friends who let me hunt on their land. As the alfalfa pasture behind my house greens up, I’m seeing lots of deer, which promises another productive deer season ahead.
If you hunt deer, keep STH next fall. Details about how to donate a deer are contained in the annual Fall Deer and Turkey Hunting Regulations and Information booklet, or on this link at MDC’s STH page.