Hunters, food bank supply the needy with deer meat

A number of groups have come together to provide deer meat to needy Iowans. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the Food Bank of Iowa are teaming up with deer hunters and meat lockers across the state to support HUSH, a program that stands for Help Us Stop Hunger.

According to its Web site, the DNR recommends that hunters purchase extra antlerless-only deer permits as a way of reducing the deer population. Hunters can donate any legally taken deer of either sex from any season.

?For the avid deer hunter in Iowa this presents itself as the perfect opportunity to hunt longer and have a direct impact in a local community,? according to the DNR?s Web site.

All deer licenses in the state include a $1 per deer surcharge to fund the HUSH program. Part of that money goes to participating meat lockers, which skin, bone and grind the meat into two-pound packages of venison. The meat then goes to local service agencies who distribute it to needy families in their area. In the 2010-2011 season, 86 meat lockers participated in the state. The lockers received $75 for each processed deer. The Food Bank of Iowa partners with the DNR to ensure that the venison is given to qualified Iowans.

DNR Wildlife biologist Greg Harris of Washington said that the $1 surcharge on hunting licenses has not covered the cost of HUSH in the past few years. He said that $20,000 had to be taken from the Wildlife Trust Fund last year to pay for the remainder of the processing.

?I would say this program has been a success,? Harris said. ?The purpose of the program is twofold, to provide for the needy and to facilitate the additional harvest of does to control population.?

Harris said that when the HUSH program started, the DNR was in the process of increasing the number of antlerless licenses it was issuing.

?The feedback we were getting from hunters was that they wanted to hunt more does but they needed something to do with them,? he said. ?The food bank in Polk County was already doing a program with deer, so we became partners with them and eventually we expanded it to the whole state. It?s a good option for people to do something with deer, especially if they?ve already processed all they want and put it in their freezer.?

According to the Web site of the Food Bank of Iowa, 283,000 pounds of ground venison were donated to the HUSH program during the 2010-2011 hunting season.

Harris said that 407 deer have been shot in Washington County this fall. Of those, 185 are bucks, 176 are does and 46 are male fawns. Harris said that, judging by his own bow hunts and by conversations he has had with other hunters, there are fewer deer in the woods this year than other years.

The DNR gives advice on its Web site to hunters who wish to participate in the program. It wrote that all hunters must have a deer permit to harvest deer even if they are donating the deer to HUSH. Likewise, donated deer must be tagged before being transported just as any other harvested deer.

If a hunter donates a deer, the DNR requires that he donate the entire deer. The deer must be field dressed before it is taken to a locker. The DNR also notes that lockers prefer clean carcasses without mud on the hide and they prefer the carcass not be frozen. The deer does not have to be skinned or boned and the donor pays no fee to the locker. Deer hunters must fill out a Hunter HUSH Card at the locker for each deer donated. The HUSH program does not accept road-killed deer.