Deer harvest looks strong but donations fall off
Food pantry expresses 'definite need' for hunters to donate deer to the hungry
If the trend at a new deer processing facility in Cleveland holds true for other areas, Oklahoma’s hunters this year are taking more animals and keeping more of the meat for their own use in 2020.
Saturday morning deer hunters’ trucks lined up down the street outside the new Wild Country Meats butcher shop in Cleveland and owner Chris Gabriel said the parade outside the shop continued trends both good and not so good.
“I don’t think I’ve seen this many big deer on opening morning,” Gabriel said as he watched the scale climb to 165 pounds for a brute of an 8-point with tall, nearly perfect, symmetry. By 11 a.m. a dozen hung to the side to be carefully caped for taxidermy.
So far this season the number of deer coming in to Wild Country is trending 30 to 40 percent more than in past years, the racks are bigger and the deer are as fat as he has seen, he said.
So what possibly could be the not-so-good trend?
Fewer deer have been donated for charity. Not just a lower percentage out of a greater volume of deer, but fewer animals, period.
While Gabriel and his crew hauled in deer faster than they could process them at the back of the shop, I met with Bob and Vicki Thompson of Escape Ministries in the front end of the shop, which used to be a movie theater on Cleveland’s main drag.
“This year it just doesn’t look good,” Bob Thompson said. “Normally by this time we have quite a bit and so far we don’t have anything. I think people are just needing to keep their deer for themselves.”
“We are in definite need of people who want to shoot deer and donate them,” Vicki Thompson said. “I hope people will fill out all their tags and donate because right now we are completely out of meat.”
After we spoke the Thompsons later picked up the charity’s first box of deer meat for the season, which will go into food boxes distributed throughout the region. Typically they would have had several boxes by now. My guess is their first box was just one deer, about 30 pounds of meat.
The meat will be divided up and included in food boxes the ministry distributes locally and through at least 11 other area ministries that rely on Escape for food boxes. Some will Escape for assistance from anywhere in the state, he said.
“We don’t limit it to any region, if they call from anywhere we will try to help,” he said.
The charity is working on getting some chickens now and occasionally a farmer will donate a beef, but in the winter the majority of the meat distributed from the charity is venison that comes from Wild Country.
“Normally, the average has been 1,500 to 2,000 pounds a year,” Bob Thompson said. “We think, this year, people are worried and they are just keeping their deer.”
Gabriel confirmed that while the number of deer taken in so far this year is up at least a third over recent years, less than 1 percent has been donated to the Hunters Against Hunger program offered through the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.
Through the program the state reimburses a portion of the basic fee for processors across the state. Hunters are asked to give $10 to the processor in addition to what the state gives, but it is not required and Gabriel said Wild Country tells everyone that fee is waived.
All a hunter has to do to donate to the charity is drop off the deer and sign the paperwork. No cost. No fuss. Back up to the door and they lift the deer out of your truck and into the processing shop it goes.
From 1998 until this year Wild Country operated in Hominy but because of the demand for locally processed beef and pork due to the pandemic Gabriel saw the need to more than double the family’s operation.
Now the Hominy shop is dedicated to beef and pork and the Cleveland shop—which I have to note is of first-rate design and operation—is set up to process deer in the back with a storefront that will sell commercial meats from the Hominy shop.
By the time the first week of March came with the pandemic this year, the Hominy shop was booked with beef and pork orders well through deer season, he said. Now they are filling up with beef and pork orders well into 2022.
“If we had not built (the new operations) we wouldn’t have been able to do deer for at least two years, maybe more,” he said.
The huge increase in deer numbers this year might be because other processors are turning away venison orders, but Gabriel wondered if that’s really true.
“There are a lot of little operations popping up in garages and barns this season,” he said. “I don’t know if there really are that many fewer places to go.”
Another explanation is that the number of deer people are taking simply has increased and because people are eating more venison as a healthy choice and understanding how to cook it with a plethora of recipes available online.
“I think a lot of people are doing that,” he said. “They’re saying, ‘let’s get at least three deer this year to have plenty of hamburger in the freezer.”
How to donate your venison
The Wildlife Department supports two programs for donating your deer for hungry families or those who want venison and for any number of reasons might not be able to harvest their own.
Hunters Against Hunger helps hunters connect with processors to donate their deer for a recommended tax-deductible $10 donation (not required). Hunters simply drop off their deer with a participating processor listed on the Wildlife Department web site. The processors connect with local charities to distribute the meat to the needy.
The Deer Share program creates a county-by-county format with coordinators to help deer hunters connect with people who specifically want venison for the table.
With Deer Share, hunters planning to take a deer can post their information to the Wildlife Department before their hunt so someone who is interested fresh venison can hopefully reach out to them before the hunt and commit to accepting the harvest.
That way the hunter can quickly transfer the fresh harvest to the interested party—who can then quickly process the deer themselves or deliver it to a local processor.
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