If, as the advertisers have told us, orange juice is not just for breakfast anymore, then why not this?
Venison is not just for hunters anymore.
Or maybe this: Bambi. He’s what’s for dinner.
At least those could be mottoes in Illinois, where deer killed by hunters and by the government in forest preserves are showing up on the plates of needy people up and down the state.
As deer hunting season moves into full swing, so has a program called Illinois Sportsmen Against Hunger. Organized by the state’s Department of Natural Resources, Department of Corrections (which provides inmates to answer calls from donors) and the Illinois Conservation Foundation, the program last year donated 11,000 pounds of deer meat to food pantries, charities and churches and has donated almost 26,000 pounds of the meat since 1994.
And that is not the only such effort. For example, forest preserve districts in Cook and DuPage Counties, which cull deer herds as a way to protect the ecosystem, donate the meat to the needy as well. In the last two years, the Cook County Forest Preserve District donated 14,000 pounds to the Greater Chicago Food Depository. In DuPage County, where the Forest Preserve District has culled 2,100 deer from herds since 1992, more than 37 tons of venison have been given to various food pantries in northeastern Illinois, said district spokesman Bill Weidner. This year, Weidner said, the district has received a permit from the Department of Natural Resources to kill up to 600 deer.
Given the uproar over the killing of the deer in past years, the negative response to these distribution programs has been muted. Those involved say that is in part due to the growing acceptance of the need to reduce the size of deer herds, or at least the acceptance that such programs considered absolutely necessary by wildlife biologists are not going to end.
“The reality is Cook County is going to continue the controlled kills, no matter what,” said Scott Cushman of the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Still, Cushman and others in similar organizations aren’t making much noise about getting the venison from the Forest Preserve District.
“We’d hate to see this come under attack,” Cushman said.
Noel Laurent, who is coordinating the Sportsmen Against Hunger program for the Department of Natural Resources, hasn’t seen much of an attack. Nor does she expect one.
“It is an issue activists really can’t argue about because we are giving meat to those in need,” she said. “We are feeding the hungry.”
She said that news of the program prompted one angry letter that was published in newspapers, but that seemed to trigger money donations from people who want to keep the program going.
One activist, Davida Terry of a national animal-rights organization called the Voice for Wildlife, agrees on the meat distribution program–to a point. Without condoning the culling of the deer herds, she said, “If the forest preserve is going to continue to kill the deer, I would rather have it at least feed somebody,” said Terry, a Lake County resident.
But Terry draws the line at bow hunters.
“It’s probably one of the most inhumane ways to kill an animal,” she said. Many of the deer shot with arrows “die a very slow and painful death,” she said.
“It concerns me that sportsmen use deer for target practice and then use (the donation program) to justify their ambition.”
To Laurent, Terry’s argument seems to suggest people are taking up bow hunting as a result of the program. That, she said, is not the case.
“There’s been hunting since almost the beginning of time,” she said. “But there are a lot of hunters who hunt just for the sport of it. They don’t want the venison; it just sits in their freezer.”
However the animals die, the programs to donate the meat to charity are a hit with the organizations distributing the meat to the hungry.
“Any donation of meat really helps us out,” said David Armistead, executive director of the Bethlehem Center Food Depository, based in St. Charles. “(Meat) is fairly expensive, and it is one of the most difficult foods to get donated,” said Armistead, whose organization welcomes what little venison is donated to it.
“It is a very nice thing for us,” Cushman agreed. “We just don’t get very much meat through normal donation channels.”
Those who donate the meat say they address concerns about the quality by allowing only licensed meat processors to handle the meat before it is distributed.
“Hunters cannot process deer in their garage and donate it in the name of the program,” Laurent said, referring to the Sportsmen Against Hunger effort. “This meat satisfies the same standards as meat you buy in the stores,” she said.
The processors take precautions to ensure that the meat they prepare for distribution is safe. Jeff Koehne, who owns Quality Frozen Food Lockers in Peotone, said he thoroughly inspects the meat. For example, he said he will not accept an animal if the hide is already removed.
Bill Rodosky, of Rodosky Meats in Kinsman, said it’s easy to smell bad meat, and he won’t accept meat that smells or looks like it’s gone bad, as meat will if it is not kept cool.
As for the meat itself, those involved with these programs know what venison aficionados have known for years: this stuff is better for you than those hamburgers, and particularly those hot dogs, people eat all the time.
“It is very high protein, very lean,” Cushman said.
How lean? Listen to Richard Czimer Jr., the owner of Czimer’s Game and Seafoods in Lockport:
“Yesterday I heard an ad for a chain store selling 75 percent lean beef,” Czimer said. “With deer, you’re talking 90, 95 percent lean. All of it is meat; there’s hardly any fat at all.”
Those involved with the various programs who have eaten the venison say it has a slightly stronger taste than beef. About the worst thing people have said is that it is so lean that some recipes actually require adding fat.
Nobody at any of the charities or pantries can recall anyone ever turning down venison.
“We’ve had people refuse pork for various religious or health reasons,” said Mary Gammon at the Holy Communion Food Program in Maywood. “But we’ve never had anyone refuse venison.”
Shirley Kiss, the director of We Care in Grundy County, said the organization eliminates potential problems by disclosing what kind of meat people are getting.
“People who don’t like venison don’t show up,” she said. “People who come are very much aware.”
Well, maybe not all the people.
“Sometimes they don’t tell their children what it is, because of the connotation with Bambi,” Kiss said.
In Maywood, Gammon said that though some children don’t know what they are eating, many of them do.
“We call them Bambi burgers,” she said, chuckling.
And Cora Hall, who works in the Holy Communion kitchen and is also a client, said it probably wouldn’t matter to the children if they knew or not.
“All they know is they have hungry stomachs,” she said.
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Donations to help cover the cost of processing the meat can be made to the Illinois Conservation Foundation, Lincoln Tower Plaza, 524 S. 2nd St., Springfield, Ill. 62701-1787.
