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Front page of the Wall Street Journal today!
I've never been hunting, but was pleased to see hunters portrayed in a positive light. What a great way to help the needy, and have fun at the same time.
Front page of the Wall Street Journal today!
To Feed the Needy,
Iowa Looks Hungrily
At Its Glut of Deer
As State Eggs On Hunters,
Venison Meatballs Become
A Soup Kitchen Staple
By ROGER THUROW
November 20, 2006; Page A1
MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa -- As he does most nights, 58-year-old Dennis Helgeland joined dozens of others in the soup kitchen line at the House of Compassion. His gait quickened when he saw what the ladies from the First United Methodist Church were serving:
Spaghetti and venison meatballs. "I love venison," he said, as he asked for an extra big helping.
Roger Thurow
Dennis Helgeland enjoys spaghetti and venison meatballs at the House of Compassion in Marshalltown, Iowa.
Though tender cuts of venison are an entree in fancy restaurants from New York to Paris, many people, including some hunters, dismiss the meat as too gamy. But "around here," says Mr. Helgeland, "it's like a delicacy."
With the deer-hunting season going full blast, ground venison is standard fare at soup kitchens and food pantries across Iowa. "Our hamburgers are venison, our spaghetti Bolognese is venison, our meatloaf is venison," says Jean Bergen, director of the House of Compassion, a church converted into a homeless shelter and community kitchen. Last year, volunteers from Marshalltown churches distributed and cooked more than two tons of ground venison in the kitchen beneath the stained-glass window.
Iowa's Help Us Stop Hunger program targets two troubling trends: rising populations of deer with too much to eat, and hungry people with too little. Through HUSH, which was concocted by the state three years ago to control the exploding deer population, more than 250,000 pounds of venison are expected to be donated by hunters to local food banks. That should result in more than 1 million meals of chili, stew and sloppy Joes.
"I'll make meatloaf," said Kim Clapsaddle as she and her 3-year-old son picked up their monthly ration of food -- including four pounds of ground venison -- at the Emergency Food Box pantry across the street from the House of Compassion. She and her husband earn just above minimum wage in jobs at a Laundromat and a carpet-cleaning company. "It's tough to make ends meet," she said.
John Remster was thinking stuffed peppers. A single father who was unemployed before landing a job making furnace parts, he added six pounds of venison to his box of pantry food. "I'll cook it up like ground beef and won't tell anyone what it is," he said. "Most times you can't tell the difference."
Last hunting season, Iowa hunters shot more than 210,000 deer and donated 5,608 to food banks. Reports from meat lockers and butcher shops indicate donations are increasing this year. "You can only eat so much deer," said Kevin Bradley after he dropped off a dead doe for cold storage and processing at the Milo, Iowa, locker south of Des Moines one October Saturday. The post-office worker told his 12-year-old son, who shot the deer: "Someone else will get the meat who needs it more than we do."
Beef is rare at soup kitchens and pantries."We never get donated hamburger," says Ms. Bergen. So the Food Bank of Iowa in Des Moines collects venison recipes, some of which come from nutrition students at Iowa State University. "One guy made venison stroganoff," says Carey Miller, the food bank's deputy director. "We tasted it. It was very good, so we put it on our list," which is passed along to food pantries and soup kitchens.
Before this year's hunting season, the state's deer population had soared to about 450,000, from only 10,000 in the 1950s, matching a nationwide Bambi boom. Like residents in many other states, Iowa's farmers and suburban gardeners have watched deer ravage their crops. Insurance payouts from deer-vehicle crashes -- as many as 20,000 a year -- have escalated to upward of $50 million in Iowa alone.
"In Iowa, there's so much food for the deer with all the corn," says Fred Haskins, executive director and legislative counsel of the Iowa Insurance Institute, an association of property-casualty companies.
At the same time, the number of people in Iowa without enough food was also increasing. In 1999, about 7.6% of households couldn't afford to feed their families at some point during the year. In 2005, it was 10.9%, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"HUSH is a win-win," said Chris Lane, a 33-year-old credit-card marketing manager at Wells Fargo & Co. in Des Moines and an avid hunter. He was sitting in a camouflaged shelter, bow and arrow at the ready, as a steady drizzle ushered in a cold October morning. Although he came up empty that day, he had already donated seven deer to food banks this season, which runs from mid-September to late January. "This is a good conservation management tool. I'm out in nature as a sportsman, and the hungry get the venison."
This philosophy is spreading through hunting circles nationally. Safari Club International Foundation, a hunting organization, says its Sportsmen Against Hunger programs donated 94,815 pounds of meat last year. So far this year, chapters across the country have almost doubled that amount.
Another organization, Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry, claims to have donated 1,600 tons of venison to food banks since 1997. Now operating in more than 30 states, FHFH was founded by retired Maryland schoolteacher Rick Wilson after a roadside revelation.
One evening, he says, he came across a woman on the side of a highway who was struggling to load a road-kill deer into her trunk. He warned her that if she didn't report the animal to the police, she could be fined for transporting an untagged deer. "I don't care," she told him. "My kids and me are hungry." As she drove away, Mr. Wilson says, "I knew I had just looked into the eyes of Jesus."
Iowa officials had thoughts that were more practical than ecclesiastical: How to encourage hunters to thin the growing herds. Most hunters take only one or two deer a year, aiming to get trophy antlers or to fill their freezers. What would they do with extra deer?
The state launched a pilot program in 2003 in which it paid for donated deer to be processed at meat lockers, which butcher meat and provide cold storage. The venison was then handed over to food banks. Because of limited funds, only 1,600 deer were donated that year, and 1,900 the next.
In 2005, the state legislature added a $1 surcharge to every deer license sold. It also allowed hunters to buy multiple permits to kill deer. For Iowa residents, the first permit, usually used to shoot one buck, costs $27. Additional permits cost $12 apiece and are restricted to antler-less deer, usually does. The new surcharges cover the $60 that is paid to meat lockers to process each donated deer. Last year, the number of donated deer tripled as hunters gobbled up extra permits.
"I'm happy to do it," says Ralph Roloff, who owns the locker in State Center, Iowa, that supplies the House of Compassion. He says the $60 pretty much covers his cost of processing a deer and considers any extra expense to be his contribution. He remembers his own family using food stamps when he was growing up.
At the Milo locker, which handled 226 HUSH deer last year, owner Darrell Goering also endorses the program as a taxpayer, noting that it's cheaper for the state to pay for a pound of lean deer meat to feed the hungry than for a pound of similarly lean beef.
"You get more bang for your buck," he says.
Write to Roger Thurow at [email protected]
I've never been hunting, but was pleased to see hunters portrayed in a positive light. What a great way to help the needy, and have fun at the same time.
