A state program designed to help put wild game on the tables of Maine’s hungry may benefit between 5000 and 8000 families each year, according to the program’s director, Jason Hall.
The program, called Hunters for the Hungry, began in 1996 as a way to provide meat from deer, moose, and bear to hungry people across the state, according to Hall.
The program, a cooperation of the Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry and the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, gets its meat from donations, road kill, and poached animals.
Hunters for the Hungry pays for the processing of the game, either fully for the donation of an entire animal or partially for a partial animal, Hall said. “We just pay for what we receive,” he said.
“We try to keep a very wide array of meat processors so every county is covered and we always have someone to turn to in that area,” Hall said.
Likewise, the program tries to match animals with a food pantry or soup kitchen in the county where the animal comes from, Hall said.
“That makes it a lot easier,” he said. “We can’t justify jumping in a vehicle and driving to Caribou every couple days to pick up a moose or a deer.”
That effort also serves to meet the wishes of hunters making a donation, Hall said.
“A lot of people, if they were hunting in Lincoln County and they donate, they want it to help their neighbors – they want it to stay in Lincoln County,” he said.
The program has had a bit of a crunch in recent years after game processors went out of business due to the recession, Hall said. Many processors have regular full-time jobs, and would take time off to open their business during hunting season, he said.
“When the economy went south, they decided they couldn’t take that much time off from their full-time job,” Hall said. Around 30 processors currently partner with the program, he said.
The only participating processor in Lincoln County is Moon’s Wild Game Processing at 313 Castner Road in Waldoboro, 832-4074, Hall said.
Unlike the amount of processors, donations have increased since Hall took over the program and has been promoting the effort, he said.
“When I came on board [two and a half years ago], I was like, ‘This is Maine’s best kept secret,'” Hall said of the program. “We have so many hunters in this state and so many people in need.”
Before Hall started, the program had been averaging around 1500 pounds of meat per year. After actively seeking some publicity and doing some marketing, such as starting a Facebook page for the program, doing radio interviews and going on public access television, the amount of meat handled by the program has grown to 5000 pounds last year, Hall said.
“This year … up in Aroostook County, we’ve already had two moose, two deer, and a bear donated,” Hall said.
Many people also clean out their freezers in anticipation of the upcoming hunting season, which has lead to donations of around 300 pounds of frozen meat so far this year, he said.
Though the amount of meat received is known, exactly how many people or families it benefits varies based on how much meat a food pantry might send home with a recipient, he said.
The program can spend between $5000 to $7000 a year on processing meat, but last year that cost was more than covered due to the Walmart distribution center in Lewiston, Hall said.
Walmart will cut a check to a charity if an employee donates enough time to the charity – $250 for 25 hours of volunteering, Hall said.
A lot of avid hunters from the facility spent time hunting (successfully or not) last year for the benefit of Hunters for the Hungry. In turn Walmart ended up donating $14,750 to the program, covering the processing costs and allowing the program to expand a little, Hall said.
Hall said hunger is a bi-product of poverty, so the extra funds helped to purchase vegetables from local farmers to round out the meals provided by the program and the funds helped keep those farmers employed.
“It was a win-win situation, it really was,” he said.
Hall cited a scarcity of poultry processors and the cost of processing as reasons why Hunters for the Hungry does not process any game birds.
Processing a wild bird costs the program around $8 to $12, whereas a bird could be purchased at a grocery store for around $6, so the money could go farther simply by buying them, Hall said.
“We kind of steer away from it,” he said.
This winter the program will take its first stab at dealing with fish by partnering with the Wayside Food Rescue in Portland to handle the excess or unwanted fish caught in a Cumberland County ice fishing derby in January, Hall said.
For more information, to donate, or to get connected with a processor, call 1-888-433-3763.
