Arkansas hunters help feed families statewide
Twenty-five years ago, the newly founded Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry (AHFH) board of directors met with food bank representatives from central Arkansas. When asked what they needed most, the food bank reps replied, “Protein, protein, protein.”
When AHFH members offered thousands of pounds of ground venison (deer burger), the food bank reps were stunned. When they heard “free of charge,” they wept.
“I’ll never forget that meeting,” says Ronnie Ritter, an AHFH board member then and now, its director since 2009. “I could see the tears in their eyes. They said, ‘You’re going to give that to us?’ They just couldn’t believe it.”
With Ritter literally and figuratively driving AHFH 60 hours a week during the fall and winter, the nonprofit has delivered 1.8 million pounds of deer burger and meat sticks to food pantries and schools in every Arkansas county. That’s 7.2 million servings of prime venison, free to the needy, thanks to the generosity of hunters, processors and financial partners, like the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas.
Deer donations
Another partner, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC), tracks the deer harvested every year at about 200,000. Of the hunters who kill deer, 85% will bag one, maybe two. Most hunters will invest over $2,000 a year in licenses, equipment, travel, processing and hunting club dues, bringing their forest-to-freezer cost to $30 a pound.
Despite the cost, Arkansas hunters donate hundreds of deer annually and take them to processors who will butcher the deer at a reduced rate covered by the AHFH. Each processor then offers the deer burger to nearby food pantries (150 statewide), which keeps the lean protein local, fresh and free.
“It’s an opportunity to serve and to witness to people who need meat and are going through hard times,” says Kruse Meat Products owner Joey Hutchison of Alexander. “I was raised here, like being a part of the community and feel like we are giving to those who really need it.” Kruse is one of the bigger processors supporting AHFH.
Food banks, like Project Hope in Hot Springs, are grocery warehouses for food pantries, nonprofit shelters, children’s homes and homeless feeding programs. Food banks buy food in bulk, use grants and donations to subsidize the price and sell food to non-profit agencies for less than they paid. Thirty volunteers in their 70s work at Project Hope, which receives 10,000 pounds of deer burger a year from AHFH.
“If we did not get that venison,” says Project Hope assistant director Becky Chote, “it would affect the health and well-being of the people we serve and keep them from an affordable protein in their diet. Venison goes out our doors at no cost, and the agencies just love it. They come in and ask for it. For a good, clean protein, you cannot beat venison.”
Hunting hunger
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Arkansas has the nation’s highest rate (19.4% of households) of food insecurity, defined as inconsistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life.
But more elementary school children are active and healthy since 2018, when AHFH introduced Wild Game Western Snack Sticks, made of 70% venison and 30% pork trimmings. Comparable to a Slim Jim, not jerky, they are now available in barbecue and pepperjack flavors. Ritter takes de-boned deer meat in vacuum-sealed bags to Stonie’s Sausage Shop in Perryville, Missouri, where they produce and label the snack sticks. Ritter then delivers them to more than 200 schools in Arkansas.
“We produced 5,000 meat sticks in 2017 for a trial run at Waldron and Nashville schools, and the kids could not get enough of them,” Ritter says. “And they still can’t.”
Over the past three years, young students have consumed about 170,000 snack sticks annually, and Ritter expects the nine-year total to surpass 1 million this winter. If placed end to end, Ritter notes, those 8-inch snack sticks would stretch from Little Rock beyond the state’s borders in any direction.
Every public school in Garland County gets snack sticks for their weekend backpack programs. Cutter Morning Star (CMS), a Class 3A school just outside of Hot Springs, last year put snack sticks (along with oatmeal, Ramen noodles and mac and cheese) every Friday in the backpacks of 80 of its 300 elementary students. CMS teachers and administrators can usually identify students, and the children of families in transition (at two campgrounds near CMS) who are normally lacking food.
“There are some kiddos who are so comfortable now, they will ask for more,” says the school’s elementary school counselor Dawn Coffman. “I have only seen one case when someone asked for snack sticks but did not need them. Ninety-nine percent of those who ask truly need it.”
Meating the demand
Ritter says the AHFH could use 50% more venison to help Arkansas drop in the food insecurity rankings. There are a few processors statewide with extra capacity to handle more deer, and AHFH can quickly transport deer burger to pantries, so processors don’t have to store the meat for long. Ritter expects Arkansas State University’s College of Agriculture meat market to start producing the snack sticks in September.
The ongoing challenge is to convince more hunters to harvest does, not just bucks with their coveted antlers. The AGFC formally introduced its Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP) in 2001. DMAP helps manage deer herds, many with far more does than bucks. DMAP takes biological data and creates a property-specific report with harvest recommendations based on a club’s management goals. The DMAP program has exploded to 765 participating hunting clubs, representing 1.7 million acres of habitat.
“If you want bigger bucks,” says Steve “Wildman” Wilson, who worked 37 years at the AGFC and serves on the AHFH board, “you follow the DMAP recommendations to get your herd in balance. Meanwhile, hunters can keep hunting and kill additional deer.” (There is a statewide six-deer limit per sportsman license holder.)
Hutchison and his daughters understand. They hunt on their family farm outside Benton. The girls want to bag a buck, while their dad harvests mostly does because the 53-year-old meat processor knows his deer go to food pantries at local churches, including his, New Life Baptist.
“It’s a feeding ministry,” Wilson says. “You cannot put a price on watching kids’ faces when they eat snack sticks. I’ve never met anyone against this. It’s good wildlife management and helps feed the hungry. You cannot argue with that, and who needs it more than Arkansas?”