Wall Street Journal
11-20-06
Iowa looks to glut of deer to feed the needy
By Roger Thurow, The Wall Street Journal
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.
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 deervehicle 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 percent of households couldn't afford to feed their
families at some point during the year. In 2005, it was 10.9 percent, 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 midSeptember 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.